Cowpea Beans With Tomatoes

Have I told you before that I’m a teacher? After a long summer holiday, the school finally started yesterday. Although this is my sixth year in this job, I still get as excited as students. I couldn’t sleep well the night beforet as I had series of dreams about my new students. I got up very early, took a shower and had a quick breakfast. I was so curious about my students, so I coulnd’t help thinking continually about them. Would they be passionate enough to learn? Would they be too silent, expecting me to talk the whole class hour? What would they think about me? All these questions were attacking my mind. Although the class started at 9:30, I went to school an hour ago to get motivated and overcome my excitement. Believe or not, I couldn’t get rid of this feeling until I entered the classroom. It was like a feeling of an actress or a singer just before they go on the stage! When you take the first step on the stage (classroom in my case), all questions and negative thoughts go away leaving their place to a wonderful feeling of enjoyment! I understood that I missed those curious looks from a crowd of students. Happily, we had great time and enjoyed the lesson together on this first day. Hope it goes on in the same way until the end of the term.

After school I went to bazaar (farmer’s market) and bought some fresh vegetables from there. It was so crowded as we’re close to winter and we know that in winter it’s hard to see vegetables as fresh and delicious as the ones in Summer and Fall. People were buying more than they usually do. Because of the crowd, I didn’t have much chance to compare the prices. In fact, I got so happy when I saw one of my favorite summer vegetables there that I wanted to do the shopping quickly to go home and cook this tasty ‘green bean like’ vegetable for dinner. I knew that this was the last time to see it at the market before winter. As I wanted to share it with you, I couldn’t pass up this chance!

It is called ‘borulce’ in Turkish. When I look up to dictionary, it says ‘cowpea beans’ for its English meaning. I’m not sure if it’s grown in any other countries. However, when I made a quick search, I saw that there are dishes around the world with its dried version, called black-eyed pea (a very cute name!). We also make dishes from it in Winter, but as we have the chance of buying it fresh in Summer, we use it in different ways. Borulce is a common vegetable of Aegean and Mediterranean regions of Turkey. People in other regions generally learn it from their friends or relatives in these two regions. I’m originally from The South of Turkey (Mediterranean region), but now I’m living in Central Anatolia, where people are not familiar with this tasty vegetable. They may think that it has the same flavor with usual green beans, but they are totally different. Although it’s a member of bean family, it has a more outstanding flavor. Unlike green beans, borulce is thin and has a cylinder shape with and acidulous flavor, which makes it an appealing savory food accompanying Turkish raki. I must also say that although people may add meat in a dish of green beans, it’s never put in a cowpea bean dish.

There are several ways to cook it, but I wanted to share the most common way in Mediterranean region. Agean region has some different versions and I’m going to tell about them in its next season.

Domatesli Borulce

Ingredients
-    1/2kg  cowpea beans
-    4 medium sized tomatoes, diced
-    1 onion, diced
-    3 tbsp olive oil
-    Salt to taste

Clean and wash the cowpea beans. Chop them as small as a half finger. If there are any tough ones, use just their seeds. You see those seeds in my dish in the picture.

Saute the onion in a pot. Add the cowpea beans and stir. Cook it until the beans change their color, about 5 minutes. Then add tomatoes and salt. Stir it once and cover it. Cook it on medium heat for about 30 minutes until the beans get soft enough.

Serve it either warm as the main dish or cold as a savory food.

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Imambayildi

This beautiful vegetable with purple dress is one of my favorite, and of all Turkish people, so we have many different dishes made from it in our cuisine. I always think that eggplant (patlican in Turkish) is like a woman ready for a party with her showy clothes, looking so charming. In Turkish we even use eggplant to define the color purple, we call that color ‘eggplant purple’. We generally see these beauties during summer and fall at bazaar. They have mainly two kinds in Turkey. One of them is short in height and plump, like a pear in shape, but fatter than it, which we call “bostan patlicanı” (garden eggplant) in Turkish. And the other, which I used for this dish, is in average size, like a zucchini and we call it “kemer patlican”. I don’t know if these two kinds have special names in English. If you know, I’d be so glad to hear.

It’s always good to know what eggplant dish you will cook before buying as it depends on the dish to buy either pear shaped or zucchini shaped eggplant. For example, if you’re planning to stuff them, pear shaped eggplants are perfect. It is easier to carve and stuff these as they have a shorter body. However, if you want to make eggplant kebab,then you must prefer zucchini shaped eggplants. The body of these are better to be cut in circles. You know the size of these circles must be almost the same with meatballs. As you see in pictures here, we also buy zucchini shaped eggplants to make imambayildi. Why? Because traditionally this dish must be in a boat shape.

As for the name of this traditional Turkish dish, I didn’t translate it into English as it may sound nonsense. The pure translation is this: The Imam Fainted. Funny, isn’t it? I love not only the dish itself, but also its name. There are several versions of the story of this name. But I want to share the most common and the shortest one. Here it goes!

Once upon a time, there was an imam in a country. He picked some eggplants from his garden on a hot and muggy summer day and took them home. He asked her wife to cook a tasty dish with these eggplants. His wife wanted to make a different dish and she first fried the eggplants, cooked tomatoes, peppers etc in another pot and combined them in a boat shape, then cooked it in oven. However, she put too much oil to the dish. The imam couldn’t refuse to eat it, but fainted at the end of his meal with the effect of hot weather and too much oil. His wife screamed “the imam fainted!” (imam bayildi). Since then, this dish has been called imambayildi (two words combined).

In another version, it is said that the imam fainted even before eating, when he saw the amount of the oil in the dish as oil was so expensive those times.

I don’t love frying something in a pan as I have to clean all the kitchen afterwards, I prefer doing this process in oven. How? It’s in the recipe.

If you get curious enough about imambayildi, let me stop telling stories and give its recipe:

Ingredients (servings :4)
-    4 medium sized eggplants (zucchini shaped)
-    1 medium onion, diced
-    2 green peppers, chopped
-    3 medium sized tomatoes, peeled and diced
-    3 cloves garlic, minced
-    2 tbsp minced fresh mint
-    2 tbsp minced parsley
-    Olive oil
-    Salt to taste
-    2 sugar cubes
-    ¼ cup water
Wash the eggplants. Peel them lengthwise, leaving strips. Cut the green parts around the stems, but leave the stems.

Wait the eggplants for about 15min. in a bowl of salted water to remove their bitterness. Then squeeze them gently and dry with paper towel. To let the heat enter their inside, pierce them on their several parts with a fork.

Preheat the oven to 200C.
Oil a small oven tray and lay the eggplants in it. Then pour 1 ½ tbsp olive oil on each. Put it in oven and cook until they get tender enough (about 30 minutes). You can check it with a small knife.

Meanwhile, we can prepare the filling. Heat 3 tbsp olive oil in a pot and saute the onion. Add peppers and saute. Add tomatoes and garlic, cook it about 5 minutes. Put 2 sugar cubes and enough salt in it. Add fresh mint and parsley, stir a few times and take it from fire.

Take the eggplants out from oven. Cut their stomachs so gently, not too deep. Grab a dessert spoon and give it a boat shape by moving their sides gently aside.

Now put the filling mixture evenly into their opened stomach. Drizzle little olive oil on each eggplant. And pour ¼ cup water in the tray. Cook it in oven at 180C for 40 minutes.

This is a kind of traditional Turkish olive oil dishes that may be served warm or cold either as a main dish or as a side dish. Personally, I love to eat it dipping some bread into its ‘stomach’ and a cup of yogurt goes very well with it.

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Leek With Olive Oil

Zeytinyagli Pirasa

Leek is one of the vegetables that many children hate eating. In Turkey, moms struggle a lot to have their children eat it. There becomes an invisible fight between moms and children and the winner of the fight depends on moms’ different kinds of methods. Some moms threaten them to tell their father that they don’t eat leek. Some remind their children of poor people who can not find any food. Some make leeks talk to their children, leeks say that they feel so sorry when they are refused and they ask crying why children don’t love them. You decide which method is more effective.

You may ask the method of my mom. I think she was luckier as we had some vegetables in our garden including leeks and she used to take me with her to pick some leeks. She used to love the vegetables she grew with dad so much that she used to pick all vegetables by flattering and talking to them. As a child I thought that these vegetables were like members of our family, so never refused eating it. And I understood how delicious it is when I grew older, it’s one of my favorite dishes now. Most children feels the same when they grow, but of course there may be some stubborn ones.

Olive oil is the key point of this dish. If you have the chance of finding natural olive oil, it becomes more tasty. It is served  cold or warm (but not hot) as a main dish or a side dish/appetizer.

Ingredients
-4 leeks
-1 carrot
-1 lemon, squeezed
-1tsp salt
-1tsp sugar (or one cube sugar)
-1/4 cup rice, washed
-1/4 cup water
-1/3 cup olive oil

Some people also add onion, but as leek itself is coming from onion family, I think making it without onion is better.

Cut the tops of the leek and wash them well. Cut them into diagonal slices. Set them aside.

Peel the carrot and cut it vertically into four pieces, then slice them as big as a half finger.

Put half of the olive oil in a pot and saute the carrot slices first. Add sugar and then the leeks. Stir them well and add the lemon juice and cover the pan. Cook it over medium heat for 15 minutes and then add rice, water and salt in it. Bring the heat to the lowest and cook it until the rice cooks. After it is cooked, let it cool in the pan. And finally drizzle the rest of the olive oil on it before serving. This is another important tip; when you add some raw olive oil before serving, all the dishes with olive oil tastes even better.

Mom And Child Leeks

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Balls with Garlic

There was a feast in our kitchen today. Mom is here! She came from Tarsus/Mersin this morning. And of course I was retired from cooking for this first day. I must admit that most of the things I know about cooking are from mom. She loves cooking and she loves teaching what she knows. Balls with garlic (Sarmsaklı köfte) is another dish from my childhood.  As mom knows how to make me happy, she makes it whenever she visits us.  So today she made it and I took the photos. Here is mom’s recipe and I’d like to thank her again.

Ingredients

For its dough:
•    4 coffee cups pounded wheat (bulgur)
•    4 tbsp semolina
•    4 tbsp flour
•    1 egg
•    1 tbsp pepper paste
•    1 tsp cumin
•    1 tsp red pepper flakes
•    1 tsp salt
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    1 water glass warm water

For its boiling

1 liter water, salt and half lemon.

For its sauce:
•    1 head of garlic, mashed
•    4 tomatoes, grated
•    Half bunch of parsley, minced
•    1 coffee cup olive oil
•    1 tsp cumin
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    1 tsp red pepper flakes
•    1 tbsp pepper (or tomato) paste
•    1 lemon
•    1 tsp salt

Soak pounded wheat and semolina with warm water and wait 10 minutes. They should absorb all the water. Add the spices and the egg into it. Then knead it well. You can sprinkle little water while kneading. Now add flour and continue kneading. When the flour disappears in the dough, it’s finished.

Take a piece from the dough as big as an egg and shape it like a thick stick in your hands. You can see it in the picture.

Then take pieces from this thick stick as big as a hazelnut and roll it in your hands. Then gently press on this small ball with your finger. Wet your hands occasionally, or you can’t shape the dough. Do the same until all the dough finishes.

Put one liter water in a large pot. Add salt and juice of half lemon. When it boils, put the balls into it. Cook them without stirring (maximum 15 minutes). Do not overcook them. When the balls get as soft as pasta, it’s cooked.

Take the pot from fire and drain. Put the balls on a service plate.

To prepare its sauce,  put grated tomatoes in a large skillet. Cook it until it becomes thick enough. Add olive oil, pepper paste, salt and other spices in it. Finally add mashed garlic, stir it a few minutes and take it from fire. Put the minced parsley in this sauce and mix it (if you like, you may not combine the parsley with the sauce but sprinkle on the balls after the sauce).

Now drop some sauce on the balls with a spoon. And serve it with lemon slices, pickles and garden cress.

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Stuffed Grapevine Leaves

In Turkish cuisine, there are a lot of dishes that are stuffed with different kinds of mixtures. We can stuff any vegetable or even meat with something. We fill peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, any vegetable that can contain something inside, with a kind of rice mixture or sometimes with cheese. We also fill chicken, some fishes or a part of lamb with some other mixtures. Moreover, we can create the “container” ourselves by kneading different kinds of dough (of flour, ground wheat or semolina).

We use grapevine leaves for a kind of stuffed dish. People generally prefer it with different kinds of rice mixture (we call it grapevine with olive oil), but there are also people adding minced meat into this rice mixture (we call it grapevine with meat).

If you ask me, the one with olive oil (rice only) is better as this is a kind of cold dish. If you make it with minced meat, you should serve it hot. Stuffed grapevine leaves may be eaten as a main dish with a dollop of yogurt near it after a hot soup,  or it may accompany other appetizers near raki (it beacomes an appetizer too). Moreover, it can also be your snack, which is my favorite.

Generally, I don’t prefer making it in small amounts, I make a pot of stuffed grapevine leaves and keep the leftovers in refrigerator. Whenever I feel hungry, it makes me happy to know that I have some stuffed grapevine leaves waiting for me in my kitchen. I think, it’s the same for others. When I open the refrigerator to snack a few stuffed leaves for the second or third time, I always realize that, it’s not just me who is throwing them one by one to my stomach. And most probably, I find the pot empty the next time.

There are even different versions of  that rice mixture filling depending on the regions. Some make it with just rice and onion, some add a lot of greens in it, some add tomatoes and pepper paste, some add currant and pine nut, some add little sugar in it, some don’t, some saute this filling mixture before stuffing the leaves, some don’t. You see, there are a lot of versions, you can add your own ingredient to make it peculiar to yourself.

Here is my recipe:

Ingredients
•    500 gr grapevine leaves (canned or fresh ones)

For filling mixture:
•    2 cups rice
•    5 onions
•    1 tomato
•    2 cloves garlic
•    Half bunch of parsley
•    Half bunch of dill
•    1 lemon, juice only
•    1 tbsp pepper or tomato paste
•    1 tsp dry mint
•    1 tsp salt
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    ½ tsp cinnamon
•    1 cup extra virgin olive oil

If you have canned leaves, you don’t need to do any work on them,  just washing well is enough. But if you have fresh ones, do the following:

Put a liter of water in a pot and boil it. When it boils, put the washed leaves in the pot. And boil them until they change from green to yellowish (about 5 minutes). You shouldn’t keep them in hot water too long, otherwise they get too soft to be folded. Drain them and wash again with cold water and put them aside.

To prepare the filling; first wash the rice and drain it well. Put it in a large bowl. Then chop onions, garlic, tomato, dill, parsley one by one and add them into the bowl. Then pour half of the olive oil and lemon juice in it. Put the pepper paste and stir. Now it comes to spices. You can be as creative as you can in this part. I put black pepper (so important for its flavor in this dish), cinnamon and dry mint besides salt. Combine them well. I don’t cook this mixture, I use it raw whereas some prefer sauting it a little.

Cover the bottom of the pot with grapevine leaves. We’ll put the stuffed leaves on them.

Now we can pass to stuffing and folding part. Take one grapevine leaf, cut its stem and lay it on a plate or counter.  Put its veiny part (the darker colored part) upside. Put some filling mixture on the larger side, the side of its stem. Do not put too much filling, otherwise it may protrude.

Fold one side on the filling, then fold the other side.

And fold the larger parts on these.

And roll it to wrap it up. Put it in the pot. Do the same until you finish the leaves.

Lay the stuffed leaves in the pot side by side, without leaving any space between each.

When you put all of them in the pot lining one above another, put a dish upside down on the top to prevent them from scattering. Pour 1 or  1 ½ cup water, depending on the depth of your pot. The level of water shouldn’t pass over the stuffed leaves, it should be in the middle. And pour ½ cup olive oil on it. Put the lid on the pot and cook it on the lowest heat for about 2 hours. Then check it if it’s done. If the rice in it is cooked enough, that’s fine. Take it from fire and let it cool. Then you can take it on a service plate and garnish it with lemon slices.

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Romano Beans with Olive Oil Recipe (Zeytinyağlı Barbunya Tarifi)

This recipe of romano beans is made both as an appetizer and main course. I cook this dish when I come from work hungry as it is very easy to cook. I prepare romano beans in small bags and put them in deep freezer in Summer, so in Winter I always have them almost ready.

Romano beans are rich in proteins, calcium, vitamins A, C and help our metabolism work, so I often cook this unique taste.

Ingredients

• 1 onion, chopped

• 1 green pepper, chopped

• 1 potato, diced

• 1 carrot, diced

• ½ kg romano beans

• 1 tomato, chopped

• ½ lemon

• 1 teaspoon cumin

• Salt

• ½ cup olive oil

• 1 cup water

Saute onion and pepper with olive oil in a pot until they get golden. Add tomato and stir. As soon as it gets like paste, add romano beans and water. Boil it until beans are about to tender (about 20 minutes). Then add potato, carrot, salt, cumin and lemon juice. Stir it again and put the lid on the pot. Cook it until the vegetables get tender (about 15 minutes).
Serve it hot or cold.
You can squeeze lemon on it while eating.

Note: If you want to feel the taste of olive oil more, put the half of the oil aside and add it in your meal after it is done.

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