Torly
Vegetables cut large and roasted together in a tomato sauce until everything is soft enough to eat with a spoon. Lent food, and one of the best vegetarian dishes in the cuisine.
Photograph credit: Τουρλού λαχανικά στο φούρνο - Tourlou vegetables in the oven by topsyntages.gr · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Make Ahead and Storage
Refrigerated for 4 days and better on day two. It freezes for 3 months.
Photograph credit: Τουρλού λαχανικά στο φούρνο - Tourlou vegetables in the oven by topsyntages.gr · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
How to Make Torly
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Heat the oven to 220°C / 425°F.
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Toss all the vegetables with the oil and 1.5 tsp salt and spread across two large trays so nothing is crowded.
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Roast 25 minutes, turning once, until browned at the edges and half cooked.
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Whisk the tomatoes, purée, garlic, ground coriander, cumin, salt and water together.
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Tip all the roasted vegetables into one deep dish and pour the sauce over.
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Lower the oven to 190°C / 375°F and bake 45 minutes, until everything is completely tender and the sauce has thickened around it.
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Rest 10 minutes, then scatter with fresh coriander and serve with lemon and bread.
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Worth Knowing
- Roast first, sauce second. Otherwise it is a boiled stew.
- Cut everything large so the pieces survive.
- Two trays for the roasting — crowding steams them.
Some Background
The vegetables are roasted before the sauce goes anywhere near them, which is the difference between torly and a wet vegetable stew. Twenty-five minutes in a hot oven drives off water and browns the cut faces; only then does the tomato go in, and it coats rather than boils. Cut everything large — 4 cm — because the point is soft, yielding pieces that keep their identity, and small dice simply dissolves into a mush.
What to Put Next to It
Aish baladi · Plain rice · Egyptian tahina
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Eish Merahrah, Roz Mermah, Egyptian Rice with Vermicelli.
Changing the Recipe
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
The Numbers per Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. Garnishes, greasing and other items with no amount are not counted. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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