Aubergine Parcels with Chicken

The American name, eggplant, well describes the way Turks regard this vegetable: mother of vegetables, the fons et origo of all good cooking. Treat aubergines firmly: you have to impose on them a bit, otherwise they consume oil and can even taste bitter. Stuffed, sliced, mashed, stewed, fried: the cooks at Topkapi Palace devised many ways of cooking aubergines. They had more varieties to play with than the solemn, shiny purple sort we’re used to. In Turkey, aubergines range from near