Poppy Seed Bread

Hashasli Corek/Ekmek

I didn’t know that poppy seeds are edible before coming to Eskisehir, the city where I’m living now. There are many pastry shops here and they have various breads that I didn’t see in my hometown. One of these unique breads is bread with mashed poppy seeds. As you can guess, it didn’t last long for me to become a big fan of this fantastic bread. We often buy it from a pastry shop nearby in the early morning when it’s still warm and we have the pleasure of eating this bread at breakfast with some cheese, sliced tomato and cucumber accompanied by newly brewed black tea.

It wasn’t enough for me just to eat the bread with this special ingredient, it was a must for me to learn more about it. Hubby said poppy seeds are commonly used in his hometown, and his mom knows a lot about it. And when I asked my mother-in-law (Mom II) about poppy seeds, she took me to her childhood with her lively descriptions, it was so exciting for me to be in a different time and learning about some past piece of life.

She said that she spent most of her childhood in huge poppy fields full of purple, red and white flowers and she explained how much she admired these lovely poppy flowers spreading as far as the eye can reach. She seemed as if she was really there while she was describing those fields, it was so clear from the light in her eyes. I think those times might be the root of her love of drawing and painting. I didn’t even know that poppies are lovely flowers. She explained that poppy flowers are just like wild beautiful flowers we see on mountains in Spring. Unlike these flowers, poppies are grown and processed by people. Poppy seeds are planted in fields and after some time, they come out of earth as fresh herbs. Mom II said that they would make salad from these herbs  when they were still fresh. Growing older, these herbs become harder and bitter. They grow as high as an average human height and then they start to bloom in various colors and generate their fascinating masterpiece in fields. These flowers drop their petals after a certain time and form cones containing poppy seeds. Mom II told me that it was a big pleasure for her to break these cones, shake it down into her palm and throw the seeds into her mouth. It sounds great, doesn’t it?

These poppy seeds are used in pastry decoration and when they are mashed they turn into another amazing flavor. These are in three colors: black, yellow and white. Yellow and white mashed poppy seeds are used in pastries. As these are light in color, they don’t spoil the color of dough (you see in my bread above). Also, the rate of oil they include is not so high, which is better for pastries. As for the black mashed poppy seeds, it is mixed with grape molasses just like tahini and becomes a perfect food for breakfast especially in Winter.

Mom II also stated that it was a tradition in her childhood that to serve different kinds of breads with mashed poppy seeds during festivals like Ramadan or Greater Eid. When children knocked the door, the host was supposed to give some slices of poppy seed bread to them. It was one of the ways to make children happy on these special days besides candies and handkerchieves.

I learnt this yummy poppy seed bread from mom II. Unlike the ones in pastry shops here, this one has raisins or currants in its filling mixture, which makes it more special. So here is the recipe:

Ingredients
Dough:
- 1 ½ tbsp instant yeast
- 1 cup milk(warm)
- 3 cups flour
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp sugar
Filling mixture*:
-    1 cup yellow mashed poppy seed
-    1 cup olive oil
-    ½ cup raisin/currants
Mix all the ingredients for dough, knead it and wait it for 1 hour to rise. It shouldn’t be sticky, if it’s still sticky, then add a little more flour.
Preheat the oven at 180C.

Then knead it once more. Sprinkle a little flour on the counter and roll it out in a rectangle like shape.

Mix mashed poppy seeds and olive oil very well, it mustn’t be thick, must be like a flowing mixture. Spread this on the dough and then throw the raisins/currants on it.

Then roll the dough tightly.

Cut the dough roll into two with a sharp knife.

Turn their insides with filling mixture upside.

Put one half on the middle of the other half and give them a shape of hook.

Plait each pieces until the end.

Oil a circle oven tray and place the bread dough gently in a circular shape. Combine the two ends of the dough and stick them together by pressing gently with your fingers.
Bake it for 35 minutes and serve it with black tea or coffee.
*If you can’t find mashed poppy seeds, here is an alternative recipe for its filling:
-    ¾ cup poppy seeds
-    ¾ cup raisin/currants
-    1 cup milk
-    2 tbsp corn strach
-    1 egg yolk
-    2 tbsp butter

Put the poppy seeds, raisin and half of the milk in a pot. Boil it over the lowest heat until the seeds and raisin rise and there is no milk left. It takes for about 10 min. Meanwhile, whisk corn starch, yolk and the other half of milk in a bowl. At the end of the cooking time of poppy seeds and raisins, add the yolk mixture into the pot and boil stirring until it gets thick enough. Take it from fire and finally add butter and stir well.  Spread this mixture on the dough you roll and bake it in the same way.

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Easy Apple Pie

This recipe is from Ozlem, one of my friends from school. It was last year when I had the chance of eating this yummy sweet thing. She invited us (hubby and me) to her home for watching a movie together. This would be our first visit, so we didn’t want to go there with empty hands ( This is a Turkish expression that means ‘without a gift’). We thought that it would be great if we had something sweet while watching the film, so we bought sobiyet (one of the Turkish traditional desserts) on the way to her home.

A few hours before we left home, she called and told us not to go there with full stomachs. This means that she would cook something for us. In our culture, it’s a sign of politeness to say that you will prepare some foods for someone indirectly and you just say “Do come hungry!” or “Don’t eat anything before coming”, something like that. As a response, you are generally supposed to say “Please do not tire yourself, we can cook something quick together as we want to spend time with you, the food is not so important”, something with this meaning. It is again a sign of politeness. However, I’m sure people get curious about the foods they will meet as soon as they hear the first kind of expression. I love this implicit dialogue between host and guests. Then it’s like a surprise for you to see the foods prepared by the host.

We were fascinated by the tempting smells coming from the kitchen by the time she opened the door. She is a sincere friend with a very nice smile, so she made us feel comfortable as if we were at our own home. She welcomed us to her kitchen and it was a great surprise for us to see several amazing foods on the table all of which served very well to our eyes. And luckily there was a lot of room for these foods in our stomachs. Again for the sake of politeness, we said “ It’s very kind of you, but you needn’t have prepared all these. We could have a simple breakfast together and that would be enough for us”. Of course three of us knew that nothing would stop us eating those well prepared dishes. Do you wonder what she prepared for us?

A kind of fried dough pieces.

Dark and cute cookies.

A tasty potato salad.

And a different, yummy apple pie, which is unforgettable for me. It was much more yummy than  it looked. I couldn’t miss that opportunity of learning a new recipe of a dessert of course. She generously shared the recipe with me. And I’ve made it several times since then.

We had great time together eating these delicious beauties and watching the movie Valkyrie. At the end of the night, just when we were leaving, she sighed “Wait! I forgot to serve the fruit cake I made! It was in the oven and completely got out of my mind!”

Different from her original recipe, I changed the type of the biscuits in its ingredients and also I added walnuts. She used plain tea biscuits, but I used a kind of digestive biscuits this time. I think mixing these two types of biscuits would be great, too. You can use any kind of sweet biscuits that are like crackers.

Elmalı Kolay Pay

Ingredients
-    2 packages digestive biscuits
-    4 apples
-    5 tbsp sugar
-    2 tsp cinnamon
-    ¼ cup crumbled walnuts
-    1 package (150g) of whipped topping
-    1 cup of milk
-    Pistachio and mint leaves for garnish

Crumble the biscuits in a bowl.

Peel and grate the apples. Saute them in a pan, add sugar and cinnamon and stir occasionaly. Cook them until they are not juicy anymore, about 15-20 min. Toss the crumbled walnuts and mix them all.

Wet the bottom of a glass pie tray so that you can take the slices from the tray easily. Put some crumbled biscuits at the bottom as the first layer, then spread the apple mixture on this layer. Mix it gently. Then pour the rest of the biscuits as the third layer and the rest of the apple mixture on it. You can make small touches to dampen the biscuits with the warm apple mixture. Wait until it gets cold.

Meanwhile mix the whipped topping with a cup of milk until it gets stiff enough. Spread this whipping cream on the pie. And wait it in refrigerator at least 5 hours.

Decorate it with pistachio and mint leaves before serving. And a cup of black tea or coffee will be perfect to serve with this easy and yummy pie.

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Potato Omelette

If you are following my blog for some time, you know how much I love breakfast. Breakfast means a happy start for me. But what do I call as breakfast? Absolutely not a bowl of cereals! That could be a perfect snack for me, not more than this. The word breakfast suggests mainly the fascinating smell of Turkish black tea spreading into the kitchen. There there must be various cheese, black and green olives, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, various jams, a few sprigs of fresh herbs like dill, mint, parsley or arugula and egg (either boiled or fried) on a breakfast table.

These are the main foods at a typical Turkish breakfast and I do love them all. However, as I’m working during weekdays, I don’t have time to have such a big and complete breakfast in the mornings. I have simply a toasted sandwich just before leaving home. That’s one of the reasons why I love Sundays, I have hours to have a big, appealing breakfast. Believe or not, I count the days until Sunday with the dream of a complete breakfast. For me, preparing breakfast is as heart warming as having breakfast. To make that breakfast more special, we love to make something special for that morning. This potato omelette is one of the dishes we make specially for Sunday mornings. In fact, this omelette has a different meaning for me. I used to make it so often when I was a university student away from parents and living alone. It wasn’t a breakfast though. As I didn’t know many recipes and as I found it so easy to prepare, I used to have it as a lunch or dinner after coming from school. You see how things might change? This tasty omelette became one of my favorite breakfast foods. I no longer have it as a lunch or dinner as I can make lots of different dishes instead. It’s up to you when you have this omelette, but I’m sure you will love it. And a fresh salad goes very well with it.

I used a copper pan to make this omelette, but if you don’t have it, you can use a non stick pan instead. Copper pans are associated with omelettes in Turkish cuisine, so it’s our first choice if we make an egg dish.

Patatesli Omlet
Ingredients (serving:2)
-    1 large potato, chopped in small and thin cubes
-    ¼ cup of cheese of your choice, crumbled or grated
-    3 eggs
-    A few sprigs of fresh dill, minced
-    Salt
-    Black pepper
-    Cumin
-    Red pepper flakes
-    1 tbsp butter
-    ½ tbsp olive oil

Melt the butter in a copper pan, add olive oil and fry the potatoes in it on medium heat. Make sure that the inner sides of the pan is also oiled. This will make it easy to transfer it on a plate when cooked. While they are frying, break the eggs in a bowl and beat them very well. Add salt and spices in it with minced dill and mix well. Stir the potatoes occasionally. And do use a wooden spoon for this not to damage the pan.

When potatoes are fried, lower the heat and add cheese on them ( I used yellow cheese, which is called kasar peyniri in Turkish). Stir a few times and without waiting long, pour the egg mixture. Do not stir it after adding the beaten egg in it. Just make some small touches in the center and around the omelette with your wooden spoon to give enough space for the egg mixture to reach the heat. Do not overcook it, it will be ready in 2 minutes.

You can serve it as it is in the pan or on a plate with a herb on the top.

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Vegetable Stew

I believe that this vegetable dish is created by someone who hates wasting foods. The main characteristic of it is that it contains more than two kinds of vegetables. You can use any vegetable you have in your refrigerator. I generally cook it with the leftover vegetables, so I don’t need to do shopping specially for this dish. We buy several vegetables when we shop from the bazaar and we cook each of them on each day during the weekdays. For example, one daywe cook a dish with green beans, the other day a dish with eggplant, and so on. As we are just two people (my husband and I), less than half of these vegetables is always left each time we cook something. Then at the end of the week, we combine all the leftover vegetables, which resulted in a tasty vegetable stew.

In fact, this dish has two main types in Turkish cuisine: Summer Vegetable Stew (Yaz Türlüsü) and Winter Vegetable Stew (Kış Türlüsü) depending on the season of the vegetables we use.Summer vegetable stew mainly contains green beans, okra, zucchini, eggplant, potatoes, green and red peppers as these are fresh in Summer. As for Winter vegetable stew, the vegetables above are replaced by the vegetables that can be found fresh in Winter such as leek, celery root and carrot. Besides the changing vegetables, we always have onion and tomatoes in both versions. However, as tomatoes are fresher in Summer, we can use more of them in Summer vegetable stew. Another difference between these versions of stew is that Winter vegetable stew may have some meat whereas Summer vegetable stew is generally prefered with olive oil and meat free.

Which version do you think is mine here in this post? It is in between the Summer and winter versions. As it’s still possible to find fresh eggplants, and zucchini these days, I couldn’t miss this opportunity. However, we can’t see okra at bazaar anymore as it’s exactly a vegetable of hotter days, so I couldn’t add it to my stew. Also, I used carrot, which is absolutely a Winter vegetable, to make the stew more colorful. That’s why I can’t call it either Summer or Winter stew. How about calling it no season vegetable stew?

Most Turkish women saute onion in olive oil and then add the other vegetables to make a vegetables stew, but I prefer placing the vegetables in layers in the pot and add olive oil on their top. This way, you can feel the flavor of olive oil more and I read somewhere that this method is better for our health.

As this is an adjustable dish, feel free to change the vegetables or the amounts of them.

Türlü
Ingredients
- 10 green beans
- 2 medium size eggplants
- 1 large potato
- 1 medium sized zucchini
- 1 big carrot
- 1 medium sized onion
- 4 medium sized tomatoes
- 1 red pepper
- 1 green pepper
- 4 cloves garlic
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Salt to taste
- 1 tsp black pepper
- ¼ cup hot water

Slice unpeeled eggplants and zucchini into circles. Peel the carrot and slice it into circles, too. Chop the potato in cubes. Cut the beans in half finger size. Peel and dice the tomatoes and onions. Chop the peppers. Slice the garlic cloves. Put these vegetables in seperate bowls to make it easy to arrange them in the pot.

Place the carrots at the bottom of the pot as the first layer. Then put the green beans and potatoes. Now toss half of the peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes on them. Go on with eggplants and zucchini coins. Finally, add the rest of the peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes on the top. Sprinkle salt and black pepper on them and drizzle olive oil. Cover the pot and cook it on low heat. After about 10 minutes, add hot water and go on cooking on low heat for about 40 minutes.

Vegetable stew is served hot with some rice pilaf and with a bowl of yogurt near it.

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