Shepherd’s Salad

This salad is said to be the most popular and traditional Turkish salad. As the original names of dishes are as important as their flavor for me, I must start with a brief explanation on  its name. This salad is originally the main dish of shepherds. Shepherd is a person who pastures goats, sheep and cows on mountains. A village has generally only one shepherd and everyone entrusts their small and great cattle to him. He is of course paid for this. In ancient times, shepherds would receive some foods produced or made by the people in that village. These  might be wheat, flour, vegetables, fruits, molasses, dairy products, etc. Although there are still people who pay their shepherds with such foods, paying money is more common today.

A typical Turkish shepherd has a few dogs with him, and these dogs are called shepherd’s dog. This name is also the name of that breed. They are the best friends of him as they help him control the herd. Also, if the shepherd falls to sleep, these dogs become the guard of the herd and the shepherd. These dogs  protect them from wild animals or thieves.

Another important characteristic of a typical Turkish shepherd is that he plays a special instrument called shepherd’s pipe (kaval in Turkish). This instrument is made of a plant like reed. Especially sheep and cows love the sound of kaval. The rhythm of its music is so important as it makes the animals more submissive. The shepherd plays a slow music when the animals are drinking (is it the right verb here?) water from a river and he plays a more rhythmic music while they are grazing.

You can listen to and watch a Turkish man playing shepherd’s pipe in this video. You can also see a typical shepherd and a flock of sheep with a shepherd’s dog here.

Shepherds hit the trail early in the morning and he takes subsistence food in a bundle. His bundle contains tomato, cucumber, pepper, onion (the basic ingredients of shepherd’s salad) and a little bread. All of these vegetables are grown in the village yard and the bread is of course made by the women of that village. He chops these vegetables and eat them with bread for lunch, maybe some cheese or olives accompany this salad but nothing more.

Today, this salad doesn’t belong just to shepherds, all people living either in villages or in big cities love it. This salad is generally served with kebab or other meat dishes and grilled or fried fish. Also, shepherd’s salad is served before the main dish in restaurants to keep the customers busy with the salad while they are waiting for their order. We love to dip a piece of bread in this salad. Although we don’t want to finish it before kebab, it’s impossible to stop eating it. We sometimes order a second one to accompany our kebab or meatballs or another tasty meat dish. And there is always extra vinegar and olive oil in bottles on the table for those who want to add more of these in their salad.

Çoban Salata
Ingredients
-    3 big tomatoes
-    1 medium cucumber
-    2 green peppers
-    1 big onion
-    Half bunch of parsley
-    2 tbsp sumac
-    1 lemon
-    1 tbsp vinegar
-    2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
-    Salt to taste
-    Olives to garnish

Chop the tomatoes, cucumber and peppers in equally small cubes. Do not peel the cucumbers and tomatoes. Put the chopped vegetables in a bowl. Dice the onion in the same way, but before adding them in the bowl, rub them with sumac. Chop the parsley and mix all of them.

Now squeeze the lemon, add vinegar, olive oil and salt to the salad. This salad is not served in a bowl, a boat shaped dish is used instead. And you can garnish it with a few olives before serving.

Note: I would like to thank to Tangled Noodle, one of my blogger friends. She honored me so much not only by trying one of my recipes but also by writing on my blog in details in her last post, Food By Friends: Give Recipe. I felt like a famous cook when reading her post. My cheeks got red many times each time I read a nice word there. So many thanks to her for starting her series of ‘Food by Friends’ with my blog. She shares her observations and experiences related to food. Reading her posts is always so enjoyable and informative for me. I learn even some ethnic dishes of Philippines from her, but haven’t tried them yet as they always include an ingredient that I can’t find in Turkey. However, she shows in her blog that we can substitute these ingredients with similar ones, so I have more courage now to try one of her recipes. If you still don’t know her blog, go check it!

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Lahmacun

This is one of the most popular traditional Turkish fast food. It’s originally from an Eastern city of Turkey, Sanliurfa. Now you can find lahmacun restaurants all around the country and not surprisingly, the owners of almost all these restaurants are from Sanliurfa. And generally they serve lahmacun only, not any other dishes. As people from this small city love hot pepper, the original lahmacun is too hot for the people in the West of Turkey to eat. Then they decided to serve two versions of lahmacun in their restaurants in this part of the country: with and without hot pepper. In these restaurants, there are also red pepper flakes in small bowls on each table. If you aren’t sure whether you can eat hot lahmacun or not, you can order one without pepper and when it comes to table, you can sprinkle red pepper flakes according to your taste.

The shape of lahmacun may change depending on its region. Originally, it is so thin with a crispy texture and as big as a serving plate. It may be either round or oval in shape. However, in the region of Mersin, where my hometown Tarsus is located, there is a very small version of lahmacun. It is called fındık lahmacun because of its small size. In fact, people of Tarsus call it just lahmacun as there is no big versions here. Findik lahmacun is a term used in other parts of the country to differentiate between two versions. Findik (fındık) means hazelnut and this word is generally used to show how small something is. This lahmacun is as small as a saucer and I find it cuter than the big one. And unlike the big version, findik lahmacun is not crispy as it’s not that thin. I do love both versions, but this small one is more advisable to make at home. You can eat it with a big pleasure even the following day as it’s still soft. However, the big and thin ones must be eaten once they are cooked.

In Mersin (A Southern city of Turkey) and its small towns like Tarsus, there are special bakeries just for cooking lahmacun in stone ovens.  Women prepare the topping mixture at their homes and generally their husbands take the mixture to such a bakery and ask when it will be ready. They come back to take the cooked lahmacuns at the time he is given. He pays the money and leaves a few of them to bakery people. As you see, this is an easy way of making lahmacun, you just prepare the topping and the rest of the work is done for you at bakeries. However, if you’re not living in that part of Turkey, but still want to make findik lahmacun, you’ll find its recipe below. This is again a recipe from mom. My parents are still living in Tarsus, so with the help of these bakeries, they have that chance of making easy findik lahmacun. However, mom always prefers the most difficult way! As long as she has enough time, she always makes all work including its dough and topping at home. I learnt this recipe as a child as we used to make lahmacun together at the weekends.

Even though the origin of findik lahmacun is Tarsus/Mersin, it’s now served in most restaurants in big cities, but not as a main dish. Because of its small size, people generally have it as an appetizer while waiting for their order. As a person who knows the original version, I must say that these small appetizers are not completely the same as the original one. They are as crispy as big lahmacun whereas the original findik lahmacun has a softer texture as I explained above. While there are six to ten findik lahmacuns in a portion in Tarsus, restaurants in other cities serve one or two before the main dish.

You may find that lahmacun looks like a pizza, but there is a big difference between them. A pizza is sliced and it can be eaten with a knife and fork while you don’t need knife or fork to eat lahmacun. Put some parsley leaves, squeeze lemon, wrap it and it’s ready to eat. Although it is served sliced in some restaurants today, it’s not the right style to eat lahmacun. I think this shows an inevitable effect of some international dishes on local dishes.

Fındık Lahmacun

Ingredients
For its dough:
-    5g dry yeast
-    4 cups flour
-    ¼ cup olive oil
-    ¼ cup milk
-    ¼ cup warm water
-    1 ½ tsp salt
For its topping:
-    200g ground beef
-    3 medium size tomatoes, thinly diced
-    1 bunch of parsley, minced
-    1 big onion, thinly diced
-    1 tbsp pepper paste
-    Salt to taste
-    Ground black pepper to taste
-    2 tbsp olive oil
-    2 tbsp water
-    Extra oil for the oven tray

Mix the yeast with warm water in a glass and wait until you see foams on its top.

Sift the flour in a mixing bowl and pour the yeast in its center. Mix them together.

Add milk, olive oil and salt. Knead them to have a soft dough. If the water is not enough, add little more. It shouldn’t be sticky. Put the dough in a bowl, cover it and wait for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prepare the topping mixture. Mix the ground beef with all the topping ingredients.

Pick walnut sized pieces from the dough and roll them one by one as big as a saucer. They mustn’t be too thin.

Preheat the oven to 200C.
Oil the oven tray and put each round piece on it.

Divide the topping mixture on these evenly. And cook them 10 minutes.

Serve it hot with some parsley leaves and lemon wedges.

We put a few parsley leaves on it, squeeze lemon on it and fold it to eat.

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Zucchini Soup

I woke up with a terrible sore throat this morning. I mean it was that pain waking me up and it was so hard to gulp. It is not a kind of feeling I’m familiar with as I rarely fall sick even in the coldest weather. I have such a strong body that I don’t need to wear so thick clothes during Winter while everyone tries to cover their whole body, even their foreheads. My friends are always surprised how I can bear such freezing degrees. When they ask me how, my constant answer is related to what I eat. And I recommend them to do the same. For one thing, we always have a jar of nuts ( a mixture of walnut, hazelnut and almonds) on our table in the kitchen, so it’s easier to remember to eat these as they have lots of benefits for health. Even if I don’t have time for breakfast in the mornings before leaving for work, I grab a handful of nuts and eat them on the way. I have the necessary energy thanks to these nuts during the day as they prevent my body to get weak. Another thing that we always have in our pantry in Winter is grape molasses, which I told about in another post. We either eat it mixing with tahini (sesame seed paste) at breakfast or have a spoonful of it like cough syrup at nights. We try to have grape molasses at least three times a week in this way. These are two important parts of our eating habits during Winter. We absolutely owe them a lot. But how come I had that unbearable throat pain this morning? I have no idea! Maybe because of hectic weeks at school I’ve had recently or the crowded classes I’ve been teaching. To prevent the illness from going further, I took some vitamins and drank herbal tea during the day.

Although I felt better at the end of school time, I didn’t want to prepare a complete meal for dinner as I was off my food. The only dish I could eat was a warm soup. When I opened the refrigerator, I saw we had almost nothing left except a few zucchinis. I didn’t know a soup with zucchini, not so common here. Remembering that a close friend mentioned a zucchini soup she cooked before, I took a deep breath of relief. I called her without wasting any more time and got the recipe from her. The result was incredibly tasty and I had two bowls. This was my total dinner, but it was enough for me, at least today. (drawing by mom)

Ingredients
-    2 zucchinis, thinly chopped
-    1 onion, diced
-    2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
-    4 tbsp yogurt
-    2 tbsp flour
-    5 cups hot water
-    1 tbsp olive oil
-    Salt to taste
-    Fresh dill and red pepper flakes to garnish

Heat the oil in a pot and saute onion and garlic. Add chopped zucchini and saute them for about 5 minutes. Pour hot water into it and bring it to boil.

Mix yogurt and flour in a bowl. Do not pour it directly into the pot. Take some hot water with a ladle from the pot and add it little by little to yogurt and flour mixture. This helps yogurt to ‘adapt’ to the heat of the soup. Otherwise, it goes bad. If it’s still cold, add some more hot water into it and mix well.

Pour the mixture into the pot, but don’t hurry while doing this. Stir well and mix it with a blender until smooth. Boil it a few minutes more. Add salt and serve it hot.

You can garnish it with fresh dill and red pepper flakes.

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Sekerpare

It was six years ago when this yummy dessert jumped to the top of my favorites list. I started to work and live in Eskisehir then. It was a new city to discover for me and the first thing taking my attention was, after its freezing weather, its pastry shops located all around the city. There were so many pastry shops selling various savory and sweet pastries and it was impossible for me to ignore their tasty products displayed in shop windows. As I always have a sweet tooth, I was more interested in desserts. Luckily, I wasn’t the only person who was trapped by these screaming pastry shops. I met a colleague who was new like me and we discovered the city together. We became homemates soon after we realized that we had so many common points. For one thing, both of us were blinded with the desserts posing in the pastry shops on our way home. Isn’t that enough? We tried almost all kinds by tasting one each day and this one in the picture became our favorite. Especially after dinner, one of us would go buy it while the other would brew black tea. It was the best time of the day for us if we had a movie accompanying our sekerpare and tea pleasure.

It is called sekerpare (sugar bit) in Turkish. As its name implies, it will be the best solution for you if you have difficulty to satisfy your sweet tooth. I decided to try to make it at home after marrying a man who loves sweet foods as mush as I do. Guess what? It is as tasty as the ones we used to buy.

Ingredients
All ingredients must be at room temperature. These ingredients make 50 pieces of sekerpare.

For its dough:
-    2 cups flour
-    ½ cup semolina
-    ½ cups sugar
-    1 egg
-    125g butter
-    1 dessert spoon baking powder
-    Hazelnut
For its syrup
-    2 cups sugar
-    2 ½  cups water
-    1 tbsp lemon juice

As we must let the syrup get cold before pouring it on sekerpare cookies, start with making the syrup first.
Pour water and sugar in a pot. Heat them until it boils. Let it boil about 15 minutes until it reaches the right consistency. Add lemon juice and take it from the heat. Put it aside and start preparing the cookies.

Combine butter, flour, semolina, sugar, an egg and baking powder and knead them well.
Preheat the oven at 180C.

Pick walnut sized pieces and roll them. Put them in an oiled tray leaving enough space between each as they will rise when cooked.

Place hazelnuts on their top pressing gently. Cook them in oven for 25 minutes until golden.

Pour the syrup when the cookies are still hot. You can pour it with a ladle on each piece. Wait until the cookies absorb the water. You can serve it with black tea.

Note: I make 50 piece from these ingredients, but pour the syrup on 25 of them as I put the other half in refrigerator to make it another time. When I have any unexpected guests, I just prepare the syrup and pour it hot on the cold cookies to serve them tasty sekerpare. Don’t forget the rule for pouring syrup on cookies for skerpare. If the cookies are hot, the syrup must be cold and vice versa.

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Meat Wrapped Cheese

I was arranging the photos of this post this morning when I heard a peddler’s voice outside. I couldn’t undesrtand what he was selling at first. In fact, street peddlers are famous for their special style of calling out. Each of them has his own style and people don’t understand what they are saying or selling just by listening to them. The only way to understand what they are selling is looking through the window, so I opened the window and saw that it was the voice of a second hand dealer. He was like a person passing by my childhood. With all the dust on his clothes, he was ready to take me to those old days. There used to be more peddlers like him 20 years ago, you could hear at least three different voices in a day, I remember that one of them used to visit our neighborhood every morning, one used to visit at noons and one in the afternoons. And I was always so curious about the things they bought. Although their number is not as many as it was, it’s still possible today to hear or see second hand dealers.

What do these second hand dealers do? Eventhough the things they deal with may change, they simply exchange old things with a very small amount of money or with something housewives need. As a child, I found them more interesting and special than other peddlers selling vegetables and fruits. They’ve become even more interesting and valuable for me today.I’m not sure how much they are aware of their value  in history with their role of reintroducing the old things to modern life. They are like messengers between the past and the present. (I took the photo of these second hand dealers below a few years ago).

In big cities, they generally buy old stamps, old medals, old postcards, old discs, gramophones, radios, oil lamps and pay little money in return. Most people don’t care the amount of money much as they just want to get clear of these dusty old things. So interestingly, while these people see these things as rubbish, there are some people waiting for buying these rubbish from antique shops with a god deal of money. After buying them from their owners, second hand dealers sell these to such antique shops.

In smaller cities and towns, second hand dealers buy things just made of iron or metal, they weigh it with scales and pay its money to the owner. So it is sometimes so funny to see an old oven or a stove on the scales. And I guess they take these scraps to a recycling place and sell them there.

In some regions, in small villages, these peddlers buy anything old from dishes to shoes and they give some plastic bowls or clothes pins in return.

This morning, when I heard the the peddler’s voice, I realized the value of second hand dealers once more. If there weren’t any people buying and selling old things, we wouldn’t know what kind of things our grand grandparents used, so we owe the second hand dealers a lot.

I finished arranging the photos of the dish with these thoughts in my mind. This is one of the special dishes my husband knows. He said that he learnt it from one of his friends when he was single. And whenever he sees that I can’t decide what to cook, he sets up to the plate and cooks this tasty dish. I think my hesitation suits him more as he is a big fan of meat. Otherwise, I may cook something with spinach, leek, okra, zucchini, etc. If you’re looking for an easy and tasty meat dish, here is the recipe.

Kasarli Sarma Kofte
Ingredients
-500g minced meat
-1 cup bread crumbs
-3 tbsp olive oil
- salt
- black pepper
- dried thyme
- 2 tbsp water
- 150g yellow cheese (kasar peyniri)*
- 2 red bell peppers
- 2 green peppers
- 2 potatoes
- 2 tbsp olive oil

*Yellow cheese is a kind of sheep milk. It is light yellow in color and has a hard texture. This is the cheese generally used in toasted sandwich or in such dishes as it melts when cooked. If you don’t have kasar peyniri, use a cheese which melts in the dishes.

Combine minced meat, bread crumbs, water, oil, salt and spices. Knead it well until the right consistency. It must be like a dough so that you can shape it. Add more bread crumbs if necessary.

Preheat the oven at 200C.

Oil an oven tray and spread the kneaded minced meat in it. The thickness must be about one inch. It doesn’t have to cover all its bottom.
Cut the yellow cheese in strips. And place them on one side of the meat.

Chop one of the red peppers and one of the green peppers in small cubes. Put some of them on the cheese.

Then fold the right and left ends of the meat to prevent any cheese leakage.

Then wrap the cheese with meat gently. Do not hurry while doing this. Do it as if you’re shaping clay. If any distortion happens, correct it with your hands.

Slice the potatoes and the rest of the peppers and place them around the meat. Sprinkle salt on potatoes and drizzle 2tbsp oil on them.

Cook it for about 50 minutes and serve it hot. You can serve rice pilaf and tomato salad near it.

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