Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Afghan Squash and Beef Dish / Afgan Etli Kabak

Writer's Note:  I've moved to DC!  In the process of moving and settling in the blog has fallen to the wayside, but I have decided to resuscitate it with a tasty Afghan dish adopted for Turkish palates. There is an amazing Afghan restaurant called The Helmand in Boston (it has a twin in San Francisco).  The food is amazing, and I have been hooked ever since.  A version of this dish is served there.  It is completely addictive and keeps for days in the fridge.  I promise you won't regret the effort. 

Ingredients:

Squash:
2 lbs butternut squash or acorn squash, cut into 1 inch cubes (don't need to peel the acorn squash)
1/3 cup brown sugar
2-3 tbsp. Garam Masala
1-2 tsp. Aleppo Pepper
3-4 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. kosher salt
fresh pepper to taste

Beef:
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 lb. ground beef
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp minced fresh ginger (or garlic)
1 cup diced canned tomatoes
2 tbsp. tomato paste
1 cup hot water
1 tsp. salt

Yogurt:
2 cups plan full-fat Greek yogurt
1-2 tsp. dried mint
1/2 tsp. salt
2-3 garlic cloves, mashed in mortar and pestle (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  In large baking dish, toss the squash with the other squash ingredients and bake for 40 minutes until bubbly and a little browned, stirring once after 25 minutes.

While the squash are baking, saute the onions in olive oil until soft, then add the cumin, coriander, salt and ginger/garlic and saute until fragrant (3 minutes).  Add the beef and saute until brown.  Add the green pepper and saute 2-3 more minutes.  Add tomatoes and cook for 7 minutes or until tomato juice is absorbed.  Finally, add the tomato paste and the water and simmer over medium heat until the water evaporates and the flavors have blended.  Taste and adjust seasonings for your taste.

Combine yogurt ingredients except for the mint.  Serve beef mixture over the squash with yogurt on top.  Sprinkle dried mint on top of each bowl. 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Turkish Meatballs on the Grill / Izgara Köfte

Writer's Note: In Turkey the relationship with your butcher is as important as the one with your doctor.  Turks develop relationships with their butchers over years, even generations.  When I told my aunt that I wanted to include a recipe for meatballs on this blog, she told me that the only factor that mattered was the quality of the ground beef.  "Can Americans go to their butchers and request specific cuts?  Because the recipe is simple, it's all in the beef."  For Turkish meatballs you want to ask your butcher for ground beef from the rib area of the back of the cow (kaburga), as close to the bone as possible.  After that, the recipe is easy.  You can also use a combination of 25% ground lamb with the beef.  Lean beef will dry on the grill and leave you with dry, tasteless meatballs.  This is not a recipe for health fanatics.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef, from the rib area
2 medium sized onion, diced finely
2-3 slices crustless bread, dried thoroughly
3 tbsp cumin
2-3 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. ground black pepper
2 tbsp. Aleppo pepper and/or 1 tsp. dried thyme, 2 tbsp. olive oil (optional)


Directions:

Heat your barbecue.  Pulse the dry bread and onions in a food processor just until ground.  Be careful not to turn them into a paste.  Knead all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl for at least 10-15 minutes until incorporated (this tenderizes the meat).  If the mixture feels dry, you can add a few tablespoons of olive oil.  Fashion the mixture into patties 1 inch thick and 3 inches wide (they will shrink as they cook).  Grill until cooked through and serve with a tomato salad.  You can also grill cut onions or green peppers and serve them along with the meatballs.

Purslane Salad with Garlic-Yogurt Dressing (Semizotu Salatası)

Writer's Note: Most American cooks do not know about purslane, and American farmers often treat it as a weed to be eradicated. But according to Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma, it is one of the two most nutritious greens in the world (the other being lamb's quarter). I searched high and low for purslane until I located it at the Hollywood Farmer's Market. It's likely to pop up at markets and specialty food stores as it becomes more popular. This is a traditional salad made from purslane in Turkey. It is also lovely cooked with onions and olive oil as a spinach replacement.  Purslane is a rather delicate green so be gentle with it and cook it within 2-3 days.

Ingredients:

2 large bunches purslane
3-4 garlic cloves, peeled
2-3 cups yogurt
5-6 tbsp. olive oil
1/3 teaspoon salt and salt to taste

Directions:

Using a mortar and pestle, mash the garlic cloves and 1/3 teaspoon salt to a fine paste. This is an excellent way to work out your daily aggressions in a productive fashion. There should be no chunks of garlic left in the paste. Whisk the garlic paste and yogurt together to make the dressing for the purslane. Wash the purslane carefully and pull off the individual leaves from the stalks. Mix the dressing with the purslane leaves, drizzle olive oil over it, season to taste with salt, and serve.  You can decorate the salad with black olives or a few sprigs of dill.


Thursday, March 17, 2011

Strawberry Raspberry Balsamic Jam / Çilek Frambuaz Balsamic Reçeli

Writer's Note:  Berlin is refusing to acknowledge spring.  We have a few warm days and then, pow, like a slap upside the head, the cold and rain come pouring out of the sky like the wrath of a thousand Prussian soldiers.  I am in serious denial about the weather so spring jam seemed like a properly defiant act. 

Ingredients:

1 lb. strawberries
pint of raspberries
juice from 2 lemons
1/4 - 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
2 1/2 cups sugar

Directions:

Clean strawberries and raspberries and cut off strawberry stems.  If the strawberries are really big, cut them into two or three.  Macerate the strawberries and raspberries in the lemon juice and sugar overnight in the fridge.

Heat the stove to medium and cook the berries for about 20-30 minutes in a teflon or copper saucepan.  Jam can really ruin your pots so teflon is a must unless you have a copper saucepan.  After about 15 minutes pour 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar into the jam.  Taste after 5 minutes and continue adding until you have a balance of sweet and acidic that is to your liking.  Jam is ready when you spread a small amount on a plate and it has a thickened jammy consistency.

You can store the jam in pre-sterilized jars.  Sterilize the jars by boiling them for 5 minutes.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Ginger Whiskey Pear Preserves / Armut Reçeli

Writer's Note: Turks make their own preserves.  Strawberry, sour cherry, fig, green walnut, quince, unripe pistachio, orange . . . you name it, they will turn it into a sweet, sticky beautiful spread.  Rarely, however, do you see pear preserves.  Since there aren't that many fruits in season right now, pear is an obvious choice in Berlin (always available here in the Arctic tundra). Turkish preserves are not like American jams, they are bits of lovely fruit swimming in a viscous pond, less jammy, more fluid.  And if you want the mother lode of jam recipes, I suggest picking up a copy of Christine Ferber's Mes Confitures, which is the only book on jam making you will ever need.  These preserves make an excellent peanut butter and jelly sandwich -- gingery and less sweet than your usual fare.

Ingredients:

3-4 ripe pears,* peeled and diced into 1/2 inch pieces
3 cups sugar
1/2 cup whiskey
1 inch ginger, minced
juice from 2 fresh lemons (the lemons have pectin, and allow the preserves to thicken properly)

Directions:

Macerate the pears in the other ingredients for at least two hours on the counter, or overnight in the fridge.  Pour ingredients into a non-stick saucepan or skillet (I use a copper saucepan which evenly distributes heat and prevents scorching but they are expensive and, frankly, unnecessary for this recipe).

Heat over medium heat for 20-30 minutes until the sugar bubbles and has thickened.  To check doneness, take a small spoon of the liquid and spread it on a small plate.  When the liquid is viscous and jammy, it is done.  Preserves that have been boiled too long will harden into a rock after they cool so it is best to start testing after 20 minutes.

If you are going to use the jam right away, you can put it in a jar in the fridge without sterilizing the jar.  This recipe makes one medium jar of preserves.  However, if you want to put some away for later use, it is best to boil the jar and lid for 5 minutes and then pour the jam in while it is hot so that the jar reseals.

*To ripen pears:  put the pears in a dark paper bag somewhere warm for 3-4 days.  Even hard as rock pears will ripen.  I used to use the laundry closet, which really confused my roommate but accelerated the ripening process.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Apple and Endive Winter Salad / Kış Salatası

Writer's Note: Finding fresh vegetables in Berlin is a bit of a challenge.  Somehow Germans seem to subsist solely on bread, cheese and sausage for nine months out of the year.  On occasion, however, in Turkish markets and upscale grocery stores, you can at least scrounge together a few elements for a nice winter salad.  Tangy green apples with sweet dried cranberries and tart pomegranate syrup work really well together.  You can easily make the dressing without the syrup, but you'll miss out on the awesome double tartness of the fresh pomegranate and the syrup.  Kind of like I am missing out on the awesome variety of vegetables available anywhere else in the civilized world.

Ingredients:

2-3 endives, sliced into 1/2 inch slices
1 large bunch mâche (field salad) or watercress, washed and dried
1 cup pomegranate seeds
1-2 green apples, diced
1/3 cup dried cranberries
sunflower or pumpkin (or other) seeds

For dressing:
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp. dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. dried mint
1/2 tsp. salt
pinch of sugar
3 tbsp. pomegranate syrup

Directions:


Emulsify the dressing ingredients with an immersion blender and drizzle over the salad ingredients.

Potatoes with Scrambled Eggs / Yumurtalı Patates

Writer's Note: My mother made this dish for us on Sunday mornings. It was certainly a family favorite. Clearly not only my family's favorite because there are several Turkish Facebook pages devoted to the dish.  Facebook has gotten out of hand. I'm happy to be a fan of a band or writer, but a breakfast dish? People have way too much time to dither around. Soon they'll be fans of the avatars of their favorite breakfast dishes.

Ingredients:

2-3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil 
3-5 medium-sized young potatoes, red or white, boiled and diced into 1/2 inch cubes (peeled or not, your choice)
4 eggs
4 tbsp. milk
salt and pepper to taste

Optional:
1 cup yogurt
2-3 garlic cloves
1/4 tsp. salt
Aleppo pepper and dried mint

Directions:

Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a frying pan.  When hot, put in the potatoes and allow them to brown a little, only stirring occasionally.

In the interim, while the potatoes are cooking, whisk the eggs with the milk and salt until they are well combined and frothy. Once the potatoes are cooked, pour the eggs into the frying pan and allow them to sit for at least 30 seconds.  In order to get large curds of fluffy eggs, slowly scrape swaths of egg across the pan once every 20-30 seconds, without stirring the eggs.  When they are just set, turn off the heat under the pan.  Serve with fresh ground pepper.

Optional: If you want to top with garlic yogurt, mash the garlic with the salt in a mortar and pestle and then combine with the yogurt. Sprinkle mint and Aleppo pepper on top if you like.

*For this dish I would use a red or yellow-skinned potato, not a russet potato. The potato will have a cleaner, lighter taste that will balance well with the eggs. But if russet is all you have, by all means, you can use those too.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Well-Mannered Sour Meatball Soup / Ekşili Kofte

Writer's Note: The lemon and egg mixture that is used in this soup is called terbiye which literally translated means "manner" (of the Emily Post variety) -- you literally manner your soup.  This soup is perfect on a winter evening, especially if you have a cold.  Enjoy!

Ingredients:

300 grams ground beef
1/3 cup basmatic or jasmine rice
1 tsp. dried mint
1 tsp. Aleppo pepper
1 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
freshly ground pepper to taste
2 slices old bread, crusts removed and torn into small pieces
1 medium onion, grated

2 eggs
2 lemons, juiced
salt to taste

Directions:

Heat your oven to broil or the highest temperature.  Fill a medium-sized pot with water 3/4 full and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Knead the first 10 ingredients (for the meatballs) for at least 5 minutes until well combined.  Make small meatballs no larger than the size of a quarter (or a 2 Euro coin for those on this side of the Atlantic).  Lay the meatballs evenly spaced apart on the foiled baking sheet.  Broil the meatballs for 7-8 minutes until just a little browned on top.

Drop the meatballs into the boiling water and continue to boil over medium heat for 30 minutes.  The meatballs will turn the water into a nice beef broth for the soup.  Turn off the heat under the soup.  You can skim off the oil from the top of the broth or leave it to flavor the soup, as you like.

While the meatballs are cooking, whisk the two eggs with a fork until well combined.  Add the lemon juice and continue to whisk until the color has lightened and it is frothy (at least 3-4 minutes).  This is the terbiye for the soup.  The trick is to add it to the soup without cooking the eggs.  By adding only small amounts of the broth (a tablespoon at a time) you can slowly raise the temperature of the terbiye without cooking the eggs.  Add a tablespoon at a time, continuously stirring, until you have about two cups of broth mixed into the terbiye.  Slowly pour the terbiye into the soup.  Add salt to taste, and a little extra lemon juice if you like, and serve.