Birthday Fare

One of my birthday treats to myself this year was making a favorite Turkish meal of mine (thanks to my sister-in-law keeping an eye on the kids!): red lentil soup, pogaca (with a literal twist!), and a nice salad of mixed greens, cucumber and green onions.

lentil soup (this needs its own post sometime)

& the pogaca with a twist

You may or may not remember a post I did back in December on these little cheese-filled Turkish pastries (complete with a pronunciation guide, by the way).  What often keeps me from making them is that it just takes so much time to prepare all the little individual pastries, especially when I have two kids who always seem to need/want a lot of attention between 4 & 5 o'clock.  I just cannot focus with a baby crying and clinging to my legs!  

Anyhow, as you can tell from the picture, I decided to simplify the process and hopefully get the same flavor by rolling the dough out as for cinnamon rolls, sprinkling with the feta cheese and parsley and baking it as a loaf.  Viola!  The texture and taste were spot on, and it took oh-so-much less time!  See the original "Pogaca" post for a link to the recipe I use.  And happy (birthday) cooking!

Pogaca

Pogaca are little cheese/herb-filled Turkish pastries that I got a sudden hankering for last week.  My sister-in-law has never been afraid of making Turkish foods that she loves, so I was inspired to try these even though I'd never made nor seen them made before.  

First off, we must work on our pronunciation.  It might be tempting to look at "pogaca" and want to say "po-gak-a".  Um, no.  I apologize for not having Turkish characters (or not knowing how to access them), but the "g" should have a curl on its head (making it silent, drawing out the preceding vowel) and the "c" really needs it's tail (making it a "ch" sound).  Thus, we say "poh-ach-a" with a kind of dip in the voice after the "o".  All right, then.  Practice makes . . . good enough.

I found a great recipe online that yields a dough with a kind of flakiness.  It was very easy to work with and the pogaca were delicious--cold or re-heated--several days following.  The only changes I made to the recipe were to make a 1/2 batch (which I made into 20 pastries) and to use a mixture of feta and cottage cheese rather than all feta to make the inside a little creamier.  I think next time I would even go 1/2 and 1/2 on the cheeses; I would also make a 1/4 batch and do something like 15 pastries to get more of a two-bite size rather than a four-bite. 

I shaped mine by taking the ball of dough in both hands, sticking my thumbs in the center and turning it as if making a vase or cup on a pottery wheel.  You don't have to kick your foot as you do this, though.  Once I had the "walls" of the dough thin enough I put about a TBSP of filling in, pinched it shut, then turned it over and smoothed it back into a ball shape. 

As the recipe says, there is no need to pre-heat the oven (fun!), but I would recommend checking on them after about 25 minutes to see if they're browned to your liking.  I thought 35 minutes got them a little too dark for my taste.

If you're looking for an easy, fun pastry project that tastes delicious and keeps well, try making pogaca!  Did you remember to say "poh-ach-a"?

Birthday Baklava

A few months before I turned 30, I made a list of "30 Things I Want to Do Before I Turn 30". I numbered to 30 down the page, carefully circling each number. I wrote a first entry: "Make Baklava".

I never wrote anything else on the list.

Dawn my 30th birthday. I haven't made baklava yet. I do have a recipe. And phyllo dough. What I don't have is pistachios and enough butter. I make a run to the store. I know I'm not going to get the baklava in the oven before 11:27 am (the time I was born). When I get home my husband is fiddling with the microwave--he's turned the clock back a few hours to give me more time to meet my goal. Sweet.

Another delay. I could only get pistachios in the shell. We spend about 10 minutes shelling 1 pound of nuts.

Yet another delay. No food processor to crush them in. I painstakingly clean out our coffee grinder and process the pistachios in miniscule batches until they're all chopped nicely. I add 1/2 cup sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon, and set them aside.

I melt a stick of butter with 1/4 cup canola oil.

Assembly time! The first five layers of phyllo dough get just butter brushed in between them. Then I start layering them with butter and nuts until I've used all but the last five layers. I don't trim the sheets, just alternate which side of the pan I fold the excess over on. The top five layers get just butter again.

Next I score the baklava into diamonds (and triangles at the edges), and sprinkle a little nut dust in the middle of each piece. As I'm doing this, I realize that the nuts will probably burn while baking and I should wait until after the syrup is poured on, but it's too late now.

The pan goes into the oven at 325F for one hour. While it bakes I prepare the syrup: 1/2 cup water with one cup sugar. Bring this mixture to a boil and boil, stirring, for 5 minutes. Let cool.

When the baklava finally comes out, the cooled syrup gets poured over it. I dust with some fresh pistachios. Viola! Birthday Baklava! Too bad I have to let it cool before tasting.

Cook's Word: This was actually fairly simple and fun to make. I might skip the pistachio shelling next time and just use walnuts, but for such a special occasion, I'm glad I chose the better nut. =) If you like a more syrup-y baklava, just increase the amount of syrup. The friend I got my recipe from prefers to use the proportions I've used here, and I think that's a good idea.

Sarma

Sarma is a Turkish word meaning "a wrapped thing". You might be more familiar with the Greek term "dolmathes". More often than not, I call them "dolma", but that is a much broader term for a variety of stuffed vegetables. What they are is grape leaves filled with rice, currants, and spices. No meat this time, though I've tried with venison before. I'm still playing with how I like them, so no recipe yet. Just some play-by-play for fun . . .

about a TBSP of prepared filling is placed on a leaf

each bottom wing gets folded up like so . . .

then the sides are folded in as you roll it all up

done. (expect for steaming!)

steam in pan about 1.5 to 2 hours . . . they're worth the wait

As you can see, not a fast food. Rather time-consuming and tedious, a food well-suited to a cooking party with lots of friends around. The up-side is that they're yummy and fun to eat (finger food!). AND since you've gone to all the trouble and made a HUGE pot, there are leftovers for snacking!

I think this is a love affair that will continue to be refined with time.

Fish No. 1: Antepli

I'm calling this "Fish No. 1" because I intend to start cooking with fish more often, and I can't imagine cooking it the same way every time. Hence, Uncensored Kitchen material. =)

The sauce I put together for this fish was inspired by my time in Turkey. It seemed to me that most of Antepli* ("from Antep" or "Antep-style") cuisine centered around the same five basic ingredients: tomato, hot pepper, lemon, olive oil, and parsley. Any dish I make with these five I consider to be "Antepli" (which is why this entry has a "Turkish Food" label). Okay, enough quotation marks.

Here's the basic recipe for the sauce, which was pronounced "very good" (whoops! there are the quotation marks again!) by the Uncensored Kitchen's taste-tester.

Anita's Antepli Fish (for two pieces of fish)
(all measurements are approximate. sorry!)

1/4 med. onion, diced
A LOT of garlic powder (by mistake) maybe 1 TBSP?!?
2 TBSP tomato paste
2 TBSP hot pepper paste (or 2 more TBSP tomato paste & dried hot pepper)
1 TBSP lemon juice
2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil
TBSP or so of minced fresh parsley
salt and pepper

Instructions: combine ingredients in bowl and stir until mixed well. Spoon over fish in baking/cooking dish. Bake/cook until fish is done (3-5 minutes). Well, that was easy!

Cook's Word: While my taste-tester and I both enjoyed the sauce as-is, the onions could be sauteed in the olive oil first if you really don't like slightly crunchy onions. And I think I would add more parsley the next time, too. I wrote "bake/cook" because it really depends on how you want to cook your fish. I couldn't justify heating the oven for two pieces of fish, so I did mine in a clay dish on the stove top. Delicious served with rustic hand-mashed potatoes (with some ground rosemary, butter, and milk added in!), and a simple spinach salad with vinaigrette and goat cheese. Yum!

just because: dinner by candlelight

* "Antep" is a shortened version of Gaziantep, the city in southeastern Turkey where I lived. The suffix "-li" means "with" or "from".

Pepper Paste

Thanks to a generous gift of hot red peppers from my mother-in-law I was able to embark on a first-time journey of making Turkish red pepper paste, or "biber salcasi". In the southeast of Turkey where I sojourned for a year, no kitchen is complete without a bucket of pepper paste handy. Yes, a bucket. In Gaziantep cuisine, food prepared without at least a spoonful of this rich, zesty red goo is pretty rare.

In high summer, when the spicy red bell peppers are peaking, Antepli housewives hunker down with their buckets and knives and pare loads and loads of peppers for grinding. Once ground, the peppers morph into an orangey "soup" that is poured into pans and set out in the hot sun to thicken over a period of days. Each day the pepper soup is worried over and stirred. It's color begins to brighten as water evaporates off. Finally, it is paste. Olive oil and salt are added as preservatives and the paste is stashed under the kitchen sink or another convenient location to be dipped into daily for soups, meat dishes, kofte, to spread on bread, you name it.

I was not so fortunate as to have a reliable stretch of hot, sunny days, so had to resort to using the oven, set at 200F, to make my pepper paste over a period of several hours (I did it along with my dried tomatoes). I was also not so fortunate as to end up with a whole bucket of it the lovely goo. Rather, from 12 hot peppers and two large sweet red bell peppers my labors yielded about two cups of this delightful stuff. It is so precious to me, that I even had a dream last night about one of my sisters shamelessly using up all but a few spoonfuls of it in a single day! I was happy to wake and discover my jar of pepper paste silently, calmly holding out on my fridge shelf, just where I'd left it.

The Peppers (and how they shrunk) . . .

orangey soup stage

Finally, biber salcasi!

Lahmacun

Lahmacun (pronounced "lah-ma-joon" with a hard "h") is also known as Turkish pizza. But don't be expecting lots of great tomato sauce and melty cheese. This is very different from the western pizza that we know. The only resemblance is that there is some topping cooked on top of dough.

It took me awhile to get to like lahmacun. I think things really clicked when I learned to eat it with a sprinkle of lemon juice and a sprig of fresh parsley rolled up in it. Wow. Pair all that with a cool glass of ayran (that salty yogurt drink) . . . you can see why I was craving it.

My friend came over to hang out while I was cooking. Besides whipping up a great salad, she also faithfully recorded all the ingredients for my lahmacun with amounts:

Lahmacun Topping

1 lb. ground venison (lamb would be best, but beef also works)
1 green pepper, finely diced
2 med. tomatoes, finely diced
1 med. onion, finely diced (are you getting the theme here . . .)
Parsley (I only had what was growing in my back yard--1/2 a bunch would be good), finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 TBSP tomato paste
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
2 tsp. black pepper (ah, ah, ah-CHOO!)
2 tsp. salt
1 TBSP olive oil

Here comes the fun part . . . place all ingredients in a bowl and squish together with clean hands. The smell is incredible! Roll out your dough--any yeast dough will do--into thin circles or ovals. Spread a thin layer of topping on each piece and bake at 425-ish for 10-15 minutes, depending on how sure you need to be that the meat is thoroughly cooked.

Serve with lemon wedges and sprigs of parsley. Sprinkle the juice right on the lahmacun, place the parsley on top and roll it up to eat! Of course, ayran is great to drink with it, especially if you've added a lot of hot pepper.

I ended up making way too much topping, so I baked six (for the three of us) and kept the rest of refrigerated until the next day when we had a family picnic. I made the lahmacun in varying sizes over the two days, but overall it made enough to feed 15 adults (about two pieces each) and a small child. Served just by itself with salad would probably only feed 10 people.

Afiyet Olsun!
(the Turkish equivalent of Bon Appetit!)

Cook's Word: Not quite the same flavor I remember from Turkey, but delicious anyway. I think I would add more hot pepper next time to make them more spicy. Using lamb would also increas the authenticity of flavor. It sure was a fun project, though! And not nearly as hard as I though it would be.

Taste Testers: finished them all off! (so I guess they liked them)

How Does Your Yogurt Grow?

Yogurt. So many uses, such little time. And that's generally the problem with making your own. It takes so much time! Here's how the recipe I used goes:

Put milk in crock pot on low for 2.5 hours.
Turn crock pot off and let sit for 3 hours.
Add yogurt culture.
Wrap whole thing in towel and let sit 8 hours.

Basically the stuff sits, and the cook waits.

My first attempt last Thursday was fraught with many worries. I was worried my crock pot wouldn't hold the heat properly. I was worried about having bought ultra-pasteurized milk when the recipe explicitly stated: "pasteurized and homogenized is fine, but do not use ultra-pasteurized." Whoops. I turned the crock pot on. I turned it off. And I waited. And I worried. And for all that worrying, I forgot about it.

I called my husband at work: "Did you check the yogurt when you got up this morning?" He forgot too. I fretted to my co-workers: "It probably completely flopped. I bet it's just warm milk." And so on . . .

At 11:00 am--well after the stuff had been sitting for 8 hours--I finally saw the results of my (well, the yogurt's, really) labors.

Not bad. The recipe had forewarned that homemade yogurt is thinner than what you buy in the store. And so it is. I was ecstatic! Right off I mixed some of that lovely, runny yogurt with water and salt and drank some ("ayran" is a very refreshing drink when you get used to it). More of it was dumped into a colander for making labane (check back later), and the rest went into the fridge. I have wisely kept 1/2 cup in a separate container labeled: "Yogurt Starter: Please do not eat!" for my next batch tonight.

If you want to try this crock pot version of yogurt visit Nourishing Days. I originally got the recipe off of a blog called "Keeping the Home" which has fascinating instructions for making your own toothpaste, deoderant and the like, but the yogurt recipe is no longer available there. The one I'm sending you to has the same directions.

Enjoy!

Cook's Word: This is too much fun!

P.S. My apologies to Keeping the Home. The yogurt recipe is indeed still available there.

Mushy-Butt Zucchini Dolma II

When I made the zucchini dolma last Friday, there were two peppers and one zucchini that didn't fit in the pan. I stowed them in a smaller pot in the fridge to cook at a later date. Sunday afternoon, between church and running off to a graduation, I took the opportunity. To try to correct some of the flavor, I simmered the dolma in tomato sauce with garlic added to it.

Taste-Tester(s) Say(s): "It tastes more tomato-y; it has more flavor"

Cook's Word: It still needs a lot more salt and tomato paste in the filling. And it was still mushy. My next attempt may include partially pre-cooking the rice so that the vegetables themselves aren't subjected to too much steaming. When I get it "perfected" I promise I'll post my recipe!

Mushy-Butt Zucchini Dolma

For my inaugural post, I was hoping for a huge triumph in the kitchen. What I ended up with was (as per post title) "mushy-butt" dolma. Well, alright, they weren't a total failure (read "waste of time and money"), but they weren't the dolma of my dreams. "Dolma", by the way, means "stuffed" in Turkish.

The story begins, well, I can't remember exactly. Pick one of the following scenarios: at the thrift store where I picked up the corer/peeler do-hicky; on a Sunday afternoon, discussing Turkish food at length with my new sister-in-law (who also lived in Turkey); or at the grocery store when I spied just the perfect dolma-making zucchini. In any case there was a circumstantial convergence such as produced the following display on my counter:

Having scoured the internet for recipes and gathered all the appropriate materials, I felt eager and equal to the task at hand. Thanks to Almost Turkish Recipes for the inspiration recipe.

The corer/peeler do-hicky does its thing to
the zucchinis--insides have been stashed in
the fridge for a stir-fry experiment later on

The stuffing: rice, cooked ground beef, chopped onion,
whizzed tomato, fresh parsley, dried oregano,
Turkish red pepper flakes, black pepper, salt, and a
leeeetle bit of olive oil. This stuff smelled a-MAZ-ing!

The stuffing stuff way outnumbered the zucchini
so we ran over to Save and Prosper for some green
peppers. These babies are stuffed and ready to cook!

. . . and cooked . . .

Eaten with homemade yogurt (another
post about that to come, I promise)

Taste-Tester(s) Say(s): "Yummy, yummy in my tummy."

Cook's Word: On my little recipe card I wrote, "needs more salt! Add garlic to filling & tomato paste--don't use oregano!" In other words it wasn't what I was expecting, but I've got some ideas and am determined to try again. Also, I'll try not to cook it to "mushy-butt" stage again.