Beetroot Sauce

(drawing by mom)

Are you those kind of people who love to snack while watching a movie or while working on your PC? If you are, what kind of things do you eat or drink? We sometimes have dried fruits with Turkish tea or cheese and red wine or beer and pistachio, crackers or chips. And we love to try new sauces with chips and crackers and our favorite ingredients in these sauces is strained yogurt, which might be called greek yogurt abroad.

I have heard many times that beetroot is on top of healthy foods. It is said that beetroot protects our body from diabetes and tuberculosis, helps liver work regularly and overcomes anaemia. Some doctors even claim that beetroot juice can be a remedy for cancer. So I’ve decided to have it more often in my kitchen. I’ve been trying to discover some new dishes with beetroot. Some fast food restaurants here have a pink sauce that is taking my attention and I love to have it in sandwiches or on baked potatoes. I’ve learnt that they make it by mixing yogurt and beetroot.

I had been planning to make this sauce for some time until last Friday. We made this pink appetizing dip on Friday and have it with crackers while watching a movie called Soul Kitchen by a famous Turkish director, Fatih Akın. It is an amusing movie about an unlucky man trying to save his restaurant. We enjoyed it a lot and it was also great to have something to eat while watching as there were always people eating and drinking something in that restaurant.

Pancar Sos
Ingredients
-    2 beetroots
-    2 cloves garlic, mashed
-    Fresh dill, chopped
-    ½ cup strained yogurt
-    1 tbsp mayonnaise
-    Salt

Boil the beetroots without peeling. When they are soft enough, take them from fire, wash and peel. You can drink the remaing water in the pot. I squeeze some lemon in it and I loveto drink it when it gets cold enough.

Grate or puree the peeled beetroots.

Mix strained yogurt, mayonnaise, salt and mashed garlic until combined very well. Then add the beetroot and chopped fresh dill. Put it ina bowl and serve it with crackers or chips.

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Fluffy Pogaca

I can’t tell how I was surprised by these mini balls when I first tried the recipe. I had  tried several pogaca recipes before this one, but this one was the best ever. The ones I tried before were not as soft as this one. These are so fluffy and tempting that you can even get up in the middle of the night to have one.  It is always a great pleasure to see the very delighted face of people when they have the first bite. It is also a wonderful feeling to be sure that they will ask for the second or the third even for the forth.  One day, I put some of these to my lunch box and shared them with some colleagues. They ate the pogacas with big eyes, which means they can’t believe how these simple looking balls can be that yummy.  And the best thing about these pogacas is that they don’t get stale easily. You will see that they are still so soft even after a week, so I generally make these on Sunday as a preparation for weekdays. I never leave for work without having breakfast and I get up easier knowing that my breakfast is already ready on the table. A cup of milk always goes very well with these magical balls.

Pogaca is a traditional savory pastry in Turkey just like simit and acma. All pastry shops here have these three as their main products. And people stop by these shops on the way to their work early in the morning to buy some of these. Students can find these even at school canteens, so if they can’t have breakfast as soon as they wake up at home, they have simit, acma or pogaca at school with a cup of tea. There are a few versions of pogaca with different fillings like feta cheese, kasar cheese (yellow cheese), potato or mince. It is even possible to find it with no filling. They may be big or small in size in pastry shops, but I prefer making them small as they look more cute in this way.

Now you may be wondering how these pogacas get that soft. The secret is hidden in its dough mixture. This recipe, from a Turkish food magazine called Lezzet suggests using mineral water instead of regular water. It is not known by most people in Turkey that mineral water and soda water are not the same. Mineral water comes from a natural spring whereas soda water is produced in laboratories.  Soda water is carbonated, which makes it an artificial drink while mineral water naturally has carbon dioxide in it with lots of minerals. For more information about mineral water, you can visit here. As it is scientifically proven that mineral water is healthy, we can drink or use it in our kitchen without worrying.

Yumuşacık Poğaça
Ingredients
For its dough:
-    4 cups flour
-    ¼ cup warm milk
-    1 tbsp dry instant yeast
-    ½ cup vegetable oil
-    1 tbsp sugar
-    1 tsp salt
-    ¾ cup mineral water
For its filling:
-    Half bunch of parsley
-    1 ½ cup feta cheese
For coating their top:
-    1 egg yolk
-    Poppy seeds

Mix sugar and yeast with milk. Combine all the dough ingredients including this milk mixture and mix them well. You can add a little more flour or mineral water if either of them is not enough. You should have a pliable and nonsticky dough. Cover it with a moist cloth and let it rest for 45 min.

Chop the parsley and mix it with cheese.

Take a small piece from the dough and flatten it with your hands. You can do this on the counter. Put a tsp of cheese mixture on it and close it up folding the edges upwards like a bundle. Do the same for the rest of the dough. Place a parchment paper in a baking tray and place the pogacas on it. The folded side of pogacas should be at the bottom to have a ball shape.

Preheat the oven at 180C.

Beat the egg yolk well and coat all the pogacas with it using a brush. And sprinkle poppy seeds on each pogaca. Bake them about 30 minutes until they get golden.

I love them when they are still warm, so after taking them out from oven, I  throw a few of them into my mouth.

Note: These ingredients make about 40 pogacas as I make them so small that you can eat them in just two bites. You can make them bigger if you like or you can use the half of these ingredients if you want fewer.

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Pasta in Oven

As we are in Winter break here, I don’t need to go to school everyday.  I didn’t want to wake up early yesterday morning, in fact I didn’t want to get out of the bed eventhough I woke up. It was great to know that it was Monday but there was no work.  After lingering over breakfast, I decided to do some house chores and to change the planning of some rooms. I feel refreshed whenever I make some “restoration” inside the house by changing the places of the coach, armchairs, bookcases (we have 6 big bookcases), and the other portable things in the house. It’s like moving to a new house, so whenever I get bored, I do it at least once a year as I do love renewals. Of course I wasn’t alone while doing these, I could have never managed all these without the help of my hubby.

When I was having a cup of Turkish coffee to take a rest, I realized that the dinner time was coming. And guess what? I remembered that we had invited two friends for dinner. “What are we going to cook?” was the question I repeated a hundred times. And hubby offered his practical proposal: Pasta in Oven. Yep! It was a great idea because it was easy and scrumptious. I have never met anybody refusing pasta no matter how it is cooked. However, when cooked in oven, pasta becomes more special with its irresistible look. It looks like a kind of borek, doesn’t it?

Our friends were happy to see the new planning in our house and feel the wonderful smell of  pasta coming from the kitchen. It was ready when they came, but we needed some fresh salad to serve. We always love to work with our guests in the kitchen, so I didn’t refuse their proposal for help and  put the necessary ingredients for a salad on the counter. Hubby served us red wine as he knew how to motivate us to work. After a very short time, our dinner was ready with a great trio: Pasta in oven, green salad and red wine.

Fırında Makarna
Ingredients:
-    ½  package of pasta (I used bucatini, thick spaghetti)
-    1 cup feta cheese
-    3 eggs
-    2 ½ cup milk
-    3 tbsp olive oil
-    3 tbsp flour
-    1 cup chopped parsley
-    1 cup grated kasar cheese (yellow cheese), for its top
-    Salt
-    Black pepper

Heat water in a large pot. When it boils, put the pasta in the pot, add a few drops olive oil, this will prevent the  bucatini sticks(?) from sticking to each other. And boil it for 10 minutes. Takeit from fire, put it under cold water and drain. Put it in an oven tray, add crumbled feta cheese with parsley and mix them.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Mix milk, flour, egg, olive oil, salt and black pepper together until smooth. Seperate a little of this mixture aside and pour the rest on pasta and mix. Spread the seperated milk mixture on its top. Cook it in oven for about 30 minutes. Then take it out and put the grated  kasar cheese evenly on the pasta. Put it back into the oven and cook it until the cheese melts (about 5-7 min). Serve it cutting in squares.

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