My new favorite recipe. Bamia is an Arabic dish with a vegetables and meat, some sweetener like pomegranite juice and a sour element like lemon. Traditionally it is made with some okra and tomato sauce as a base. If you use asian eggplant vs. the big Italian eggplants, the texture is melt in the mouth tender because there are no seeds.
This is similar to Indian recipes where you strain the seeds out of eggplant with your fingers.

Very good.

I add okra, tomato, chili, garlic and simmered it in water. Couldn't stop eating it.

This is the first vegetable stew I have had which melts in your mouth. A texture unknown in other vegetable stews. If you cook other veggies this long they turn into mush. This recipe calls for cooking until they are overcooked but the texture does not taste overcooked. Okra, tomato, eggplant work. Something like broccoli would be a disaster.

I left the tomato sauce out by accident and found you could taste the sweetness of the eggplant which you don't get with the tomato sauce. I think in the old days the recipe did not use the big tougher Italian eggplant and they used fresh tomato or tomato sauce. The current interpretation with ingredients you get out of the supermarket doesn't bring out the delicate flavor and taste of Bamia.