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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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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Eid Candies Ramadan 7

The holy month Ramadan ended yesterday, muslims broke their fast for the last time yesterday evening and today we are celebrating Eid (Ramadan Feast). After a month of fasting, people enjoy this feast with sweet foods. The feast lasts three days and these adays are officially holiday for people to spend time and celebrate the feast with their families.  The excitement of Eid starts at least one week before it comes. People do shopping to buy new clothes for themselves, but as you can guess the most excited ones are always children. Their parents buy new clothes and shoes for them to wear on Eid days and we call these “bayramlık” (clothes and shoes special for Eid). Even if they buy these weeks before the Eid, they don’t wear, but keep them in their gardrobes (or near their beds if they are so much excited) until the feast. It’s a lovely tradition for children to wear new and clean clothes during the feast. However, there are of course parents who can not afford new clothes and I can’t help thinking of them during these days. Some considerate people buy new clothes and give them to some poor children, but is that enough? I’m not sure. I wish clothes weren’t so important for these special days.

Besides the preperation of clothes, there is another preperation for Eid. Cleaning the house! When I say cleaning the house, I mean a real and complete cleaning. As they will have many guests during Eid days, women want to welcome their guests with a perfectly cleaned house. So women mop up everywhere, clean the windows, wash and iron the curtains, dust the cupboards and everywhere! We call this cleaning “Bayram Temizligi” (Eid Cleaning). After such a laborious cleaning, you may think that women start the feast so exhausted, but no, they are so strong that they don’t have any complaints about the other works waiting for them such as making a Turkish dessert and host their guests.

In fact, the celebration of the feast starts in the early morning. Fathers go to mosque to perform their ritual prayer called namaz and they take their sons with them. After namaz, people in mosque celebrate their Eid by shaking hands and wishing happy Eid to each other. Meanwhile, moms prepare a perfect breakfast with various boreks and newly brewed black tea. When fathers and sons return, they celebrate their Eid; mom and dad hug each other, children kiss their parents’ hands and put it on their forehead wishing happy Eid. Parents generally give some money to their children to make them happier, which is called “bayram harcligi” (Feast Allowance). Then they enjoy their breakfast and they feel that this breakfast has a different taste after a long fasting time.

After breakfast, their door bell starts to ring, they know it will ring many times today. A group of  children (even the small ones) are waiting with bags in their hands no matter they know the house owner or not. And the owner of the house treat them with colorful candies or chocolate. Children take one or two candies happily and put them in their bags. When the children of that house see them, they immediately grab a bag and join the group as they are looking forward to picking candies from neighbors. They all know that it’s much more enjoyable to keep the candies until they finish all houses. At the end, they open their bags and show how they have plenty of candies and eat them together.

Children turn back to their houses not so late as they know their grandparents are waiting for them, so when they return, without any loss of time, with their parents, they go to their grandparents. They kiss the hands of grandparents in Turkish style and guess what? They are rewarded once more with the feast allowance. Then, they don’t forget their beloved ones who are not with them any more. They go to the graveyard to visit departed family members there. They pray for them and leave some candies on the grave.

After these, on the way home, people make short visits to their neighbors one by one to celebrate their Eid. Turkish desserts such as baklava and kadayif are served accompanying with Turkish tea or Turkish coffee. And while they are leaving, mostly the child of the house is waiting for them near the door with a bowl of candies or chocolate in one hand and a bottle of lemon cologne in other hand. S/he first offers the candies to the leaving guests and then drops some lemon cologne into the waiting palms of these guests. That’s the Turkish way of sending guests during this Ramadan Feast. Some people may also offer candies and the cologne as a way of welcoming the guests. And surprisingly, some people offer these two both to welcome and to send their guests. And people shouldn’t refuse any of these offerings at any of their visits, they are thought to be so rude if they say ‘no’. Can you imagine how sweet we become after Eid?

Personally, I didn’t want to buy candies from stores and I wanted to make something special for this Eid as I thought it would be more valuable for guests and especially for children. I made these natural candies from dates yesterday and as I understand from the eyes of children at my door, they loved it! And when their parents saw these home made candies, even they asked for the second one. I think I should have done more of these.

Ingredients
-    20 dates
-    ½ cup pounded almond
-    2 tbsp orange juice
-    1 orange zest, chopped in very small cubes

To coat the date candies
-    A handful of  pounded pistachio
-    A handful of crumbled hazelnuts
-    A handful of chocolate chips

Pit the dates and put them in a mini chopper and chope them a few times. Then add orange juice to help them to have a right consistency. When it become like a date dough, take it to a bowl. Add pounded almon and chopped orange zest and combine them very well with your hands. Then take a walnut size piece, roll it in your palms, give it a ball shape and coat it with pistachio or hazelnut or chocolate chips. I used all of them to make my Eid candies more colorful.

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Gullac Ramadan 3

In Turkish culture, there are some certain dishes which are made on special days or occasions. Sesame Rings, which I wrote on before,  are one of them. And today I want to share another special dish made just in Ramadan month. This is a simple, but tasty dessert called gullac (güllaç in Turkish letters). I don’t want to translate it into English as it might be nonsense. And I didn’t  rename it in English as I couldn’t find what I could call it. If you have any suggestions seeing the photos or reading this post, I’d be so glad to hear. In Turkish gül means rose and aş means food; gullac  is the abbreviation of güllü aş, which means food with rose. Noone calls it güllü aş today, gullac is easier to pronounce, so it is the modern name of this yummy dessert. So what is the relation of rose with this dessert? Actually, it’s not the rose, but rose water which has that relationship. Rose water used to be the main flavor in this dessert in Ottoman culture because of its refreshing effect. However, today, it depends on your taste to add rose water or not. Some people use it, some don’t. Personally, I don’t love its flavor in gullac much, so I prefer not using it. But it doesn’t mean it tastes bad, it gives a quite refreshing flavor to the dessert.

Another Ottoman tradition about gullac is that it’s always decorated with pomegranate and I love to see these cute red beads on the white surface of this dessert. I think they complete each other and address to our eyes first. And I love to add a third wonderful ingredient for garnish. Pistachios! When you have these three at the same time, the pleasure you feel doubles.

You can see gullac at patisseries and at markets just in Ramadan. Just like dates,in Turkey it is special for Ramadan. This simple and easy dessert is made from gullac sheets. You may think that they are similar to phyllo sheets, but these are totally different. Gullac sheets are so white, thin and crispy. Today, people don’t make these sheets themselves as it requires special talents. These are sold in packages at the markets. And there are about 15 sheets in a package. As far as I know, there are two big companies producing and selling gullac to markets, Saffetabdullah Gullaclari and Istanbul Gullac.

Gullac sheets are simply made of corn starch, wheat flour and water. In the early times of Ottoman Empire, people used to make sheets from corn starch, flour and water and they could keep these for months. As these sheets  are dried and got crispy, people used to soften them with milk and sugar. I guess it wasn’t a kind of dessert those times, but people used to have it as a main dish.  The best part of it for those peple was its simple ingredients. And keeping the dried sheets for long might be the second reason for people to love it. Then as the empire got richer, it turned out to be a dessert special for the palace and it became sultans’ favorite. And today, when you tend to buy the dessert (not the sheets) from a patisseire, you will see that it’s not that cheap. It has that fame as the palace dessert thanks to sultans, it deserves to be expensive, doesn’t it? Business people always know their job!

You can find how gullac sheets are prepared here. As you’ll read here, these sheets are completely natural, they don’t have any additives. Moreover, it is a very light dessert. These are just two of the reasons why people prefer gullac to end their iftar meal with something sweet. You know, in Ramadan, muslims don’t eat or drink anything from sunrise till sunset, so their body needs more sugar than usual because of hunger. Besides meeting people’s sugar need, gullac also strengthen their bodies with vitamins B and E it contains.

Gullac

Ingredients
-    10 gullac sheets
-    1 ½ kg milk
-    350g sugar
-    A cup of crumbled walnut
-    Pistachio and pomegranate for garnish

Put milk and sugar (and 1 tbsp rosewater if you like) in a pot and heat it until the sugar melts. Stir it occasionally. It shouldn’t be too hot to touch, so let it cool a little. When it gets warm enough, we can start to make our dessert. If you use it hot, your dessert gets mushy.

Lay a gullac sheet on an average size tray. Wet it with the warm milk. Repeat this with five sheets. After the fifth one, spread the crumbled walnut on it. Then lay the rest five sheets one by one and wet each of them with milk. When you finish with the tenth one, pour the rest of the milk on it. They don’t need to be very good in shape while arranging them in the tray. They will combine when they get wet with milk. After pouring the milk, you will see the sheets are rising, do not touch them. Cover it with stretch film and put it in refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

I always leave the garnishing part to the serving time, otherwise pomegranates and pistachio may change the color of gullac. After taking it from refrigerator, cut it in squares or rectangles, garnish and serve.

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Dates Ramadan 2

Hurma

When you hear imam’s voice calling for the prayer from all minarets of the city, you know that everyone fasting is ready to break their fast. Some people are sitting at a perfect dinner table with a warm soup, a kind of meat as a main dish and various side dishes like rice pilaf, stuffed bulgur kofte, stuffed grapevine leaves or cabbage rolls, a green salad or cacik and a Turkish dessert to end their meal while unfairly enough, some people have just one kind of dish or just tomato, cheese and olive to end their fast. As we witness all over the world, not all people have the same chance of having the same food. However, when they hear imam’s voice as a reminder for breaking their fast, they all have the same feeling. Whatever they have on their table, they think they deserve to eat it after a long fast.

Breaking fast is not simply eating something for muslims. They generally take care to have certain foods at the very begining of meal. Dates (hurma in Turkish), which are known as the fruit of heaven, are on top of this list. The rest are olives and water. As these are holy for muslims, it’s important for them to start their meal with these. Dates, olive, and water have a special place in the holy book Quran, so muslims feel closer to God when they have these first. Why are dates more important for muslims during Ramadan? It’s said that our prophet Muhammed used to break fast with dates, and muslims want to follow him by having dates at the beginning of their meal. I think the prophet Muhammed had a good reason for this. He knew that the amount of sugar in dates would help people’s bodies and overcome low blood sugar caused by hunger during the day, so he advised muslims to break fast with these fruits of heaven. In addition, it’s told in Quran that God helped Meryem telling her to eat dates to bear her baby easily. Doctors still advise pregnant women to have dates during and after their pregnancy. They say that dates contain a big amount of sugar and this helps both recovering weak bodies of new mothers and increasing the amount of milk their babies need. Dates have many other benefits for health as they contain fruit sugar, vitamin A and B, calcium, phosphorus, protein, iron, potassium, magnesium, zinc. As you see, it has the ingredients of most medicine. With these features, it is like a natural medicine against many diseases.

Date trees are so similar to palm trees. The main difference between a date tree and palm tree is that palm tree has no fruits and the other difference is their leaves. Leaves of date tree are so thin and sharp while palm tree has flat and softer leaves. We have lots of palm trees in the Southern region of Turkey, but unfortunately we don’t have date trees.

Dates, which we see at the markets mostly in Ramadan, have different kinds for every budget so that all people can buy. These are imported from Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and mostly from Iran. The cheapest dates are coming from Iran and the most expensive ones are from Medina, Saudi Arabia. There is a special species of dates in Medina, the tree of it was planted by the prophet Muhammed, so it’s known as date of prophet. As you can guess this one is the most expensive one, about 100 Turkish Liras (around $75). Personally, I think some big companies and date traders exploit peoples religious beliefs and they put more price on dates than their actual value. And this has nothing to do with Islam or humanity.

When you go to a restaurant for dinner during Ramadan, you see that there are one portion dates (totally free) on each table ready for muslims to break their fast. You can’t see this after or before Ramadan. When people hear imam’s voice, they have a date first, then they drink water and then start their meal.

Despite all positive sides of dates, it’s not so common to eat dates except the month Ramadan. While we can easily find dates everywhere during Ramadan, we can find them in some rare shops in other months. As a sweet tooth person, I love dates and I buy dates not just during  Ramadan but I eat more during Ramadan. I think they are great alternatives to candies and chocolate. I guarantee they are not less desirable for kids than candies or chocolate.

By the way, there is an interesting tradition in my hometown. Old women don’t waste date seeds, they wrap one date seed with a small piece of cloth, give it a triangle shape and attach it on clothes of new born babies with a safety pin. They believe that it brings luck in their future life. And some people put these seeds in their wallets as they believe it brings money. I don’t have such superstitions, but I love the shape and color of date seeds.

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Suhoor Ramadan 1

Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) is a holy month for muslims and they fast during this month as a worship. It started about a week ago and you can feel  the excitement of people everywhere in Turkey now. Although we can’t say that Turkey is a muslim country, a big number of  its citizens is muslim. The time of Ramadan was arranged by Islamic calendar and as this calendar is a moon calendar, it is 11 or 12 days shorter than Gregorian calendar. As a result, the month Ramadan starts about 10 days earlier each year.

Fast (oruc in Turkish) as a term means not eating or drinking anything and no sexual intercourse from sunrise till sunset. So the starting time and ending time of fast changes in each city depending on their direction.
The first step of fast begins after midnight, which is called suhoor (sahur in Turkish). People must prepare for the fast during suhoor. They can’t have any food after they hear the voice of imam calling all muslims to prayer (there are one or more mosques in a neighborhood and imams call to prayer from these mosques with loudspeakers). Imam’s voice is the reminder for the starting time of fast.

Do you think all muslims wind their alarm clocks and they wake up in the very early morning for suhoor  with its striking? As Ramadan is the month of ritual like traditons, there must certainly be something more interesting to wake people up. Believe or not, some men walk around the streets banging  drums during suhoor time to wake residents of that neighborhood. These men are called Ramadan drummer. They share the streets, so each street has its own Ramadan drummer. Although, some people are afraid of the sound of drums during night, this is one of my favorite traditions about Ramadan. When I was a child, I used to love watching the Ramadan drummer through the window every single night of the month. I found them…well…how can I say? Different from others. Maybe they look like people from a different world or maybe I find them so brave. Can you grab a drum and go out after midnight and bang it with all your might? I can’t. But Ramadan drummers can easily do it. I have many times wanted to ask one of these drummers to borrow me their drum and try it once.  However, I could never even dare to ask it. At the end of Ramadan, each Ramadan drummer walks around the street he is responsible for during day time and rings the doorbells to get some tip. And people give them how much money they want. (image source is here)

At suhoor time, people wake up and prepare some food to eat. This is so exciting to wake up at a very unusual time of night and eating some food with all family members. Doesn’t it sound enjoyable? Doctors say that people shouldn’t have heavy foods at suhoor not to have any health problems. And of course they shouldn’t forget to drink enough water at suhoor. People should prefer healthy and filling foods. People sometimes prefer having Turkish breakfast foods such as olive, cheese, sliced cucumber and tomatoes and of course boiled eggs (egg makes people feel full for a long time) and they have Turkish black tea as a drink. They sometimes have a warming soup and rice or bulgur pilaf or a kind of borek (doctors advice borek with vegetable filling, no meat).  And most people follow doctors advice and they always have compote (komposto or hosaf in Turkish) with their meal at suhoor. Compote is a very significant dish at suhoor as it prevents low blood sugar during the fast. When you have compote at suhoor, you don’t have vertigo caused by hunger and low blood sugar during day time. The other importance of compote is that it meets your need of drink during fast.

As we remember how compote is important for our health during Ramadan, I wanted to share how to make compote of cornelian cherries, which we can find during summer.

Kızılcık Kompostosu

Ingredients
-    250g cornelian cherries
-    1 cup sugar
-    5 cup water
-    A few cloves

Put the water in a pot and heat it. When it boils, add sugar. I don’t like it too sweet, so you can add extra sugar if you like. Taste and decide. Boil it for 1 or 2 minutes. Then add cornelian cherries and cloves. Boil it until the color and texture of cherries change, for about 20 minutes. Let it cool and put it in refrigerator. Serve it cold. This can also be a very good cold drink during hot summer days.

What do people generally have first to break their  fast? Do you have any idea? I’m going to tell about this in my next post.

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Three Layered Pudding

Üç Katlı Puding

Walnut is one of the ingredients I love and use most. I put it in several dishes as I adore its flavor. I sometimes add it in cake with carrot, I sometimes mix it with yogurt to make a savory food like celery root salad, I use it in most of the desserts like semolina halvah, or fig dessert. And this time I used it in this so easy dairy dessert. As you understand walnut is one of the main ingredients in my pantry. This may be beacuse I was taught in my childhood that walnut was a very valuable food.

We used to live in a village when I was a child because of my dad’s job. I was one of those lucky children as I had the chance of eating everything natural. As children of the village, we enjoyed a lot. When we visited some elderlies together, they would give us some walnuts either fresh or dried, but both with shells. There weren’t any markets or shops in villages those times (there still aren’t any of these in several villages of Turkey), so people didn’t have candies or chocolate bars to please children. They would use walnuts instead. As soon as we were given some walnuts, we would kiss their hands, put them in our pockets and went out. Fresh walnuts were our favorite because it was so enjoyable to carve its inside out with a knife and eat that white young and tender part. This wasn’t something easy, but we would love to work on it although this turned our hands into a dark brown color. When they gave dried walnuts, we would break them with the help of a stone in the yard and eat together.

Walnut is so precious for people in villages as it is a source of their incomes. They pick walnuts with a special method. There must be at least three people to pick them. The strrongest of them climb the tree. The rest hold a large piece of cloth just under the tree. The one on the tree shake boughs of it one by one to drop the walnuts on the cloth which the others are holding under tree. Then they dry these walnuts under sun and then sell them to bazaar owners or markets in cities. That’s why it has a great importance and we would be so happy whenever we had them in our pockets.

Therefore, I have had a love for walnut since my childhood and that’s why I use it in my dishes in several ways.

I made this pudding to welcome my parents who visited us two days ago. Originally, the bottom layer is crumbled biscuits, but as I know that my parents have the same love for walnut, I used crumbled walnuts instead.

Ingredients (servings: 6)
-    4 tbsp rice flour
-    1lt milk (5 ½ cups)
-    1 tbsp vanilla
-    1 ½ cup sugar
-    ½ tsp butter
-    ½ cup crumbled walnuts
-    3 tbsp cocoa
-    Grated coconut
-    6 hazelnuts

Mix milk, rice flour, vanilla and sugar together until all combined. Put it on medium heat and stir occasionally. Bring it to boil and keep mixing when it boil until it reaches the right consistency. It lasts about 8 or 10 minutes after it boils. Add butter to make it brighter. Take it from heat.

Put crumbled  walnuts as the bottom layer in 6 pudding cups. Then pour this pudding as the second layer in the cups evenly, but do not fill the cups yet. Leave a little pudding in the pot. Mix cocoa with this pudding and put it back on heat. Mix it continually and bring it to boil. Then pour this cocoa pudding as the third layer. Let them cool and then wait them in refrigerator at least 6 hours. Garnish them with grated coconut and a hazelnut on top.

We took the photo of this pudding with dad, he decided on the background color and gave me some directions. However, he couldn’t wait more and grabbed the pudding and asked for a dessert spoon to taste it. He had one full spoon and another and another and when he reached the bottom layer, he realized the walnut surprise which doubled his pleasure.

Kissing Hands

Kissing hands in Turkish culture is totally different from other cultures. We kiss hands of elderlies to show our respect. When children visit their grandparents especially on specail days, they kiss their hands and the grandparents hug them and kiss their cheeks. If they are generous enough, they give some pocket money to their grandchildren. There is a special style of kissing hands in our culture. You first kiss and then put hand on your forehead. If you just kiss and leave the hand, it means you don’t know how to kiss hands. This is a part of our culture just as a sign of respect, but there are some people abusing this tradition. They kiss hands of people to flatter them and to have make benefit from them in someways. Originally, we just kiss our grandparents hands. That’s it, nothing more.(image source)

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Kemalpasha Dessert

Kemalpaşa Tatlısı

I love every kind of dessert, and I can eat anything sweet at any time. Fortunately our cuisine has such a great variety of desserts that I make a different one each time we crave for sweet. We can classify Turkish desserts in two categories according to their main ingredients. One of them is dairy desserts, the other is sorbet desserts. Today I made one from the second category. I learnt its recipe from one of my friend who is from Bursa, a beautiful green city of Turkey. It is very important to learn it from a person from Bursa as this dessert is a special dessert of the city, so I must admit that I’m a lucky person to have that friend.

Kemal Pasha dessert is peculiar to a town of Bursa called Mustafakemalpasha. As you can understand from this name, the dessert takes its name originally from the name of this town. And the town takes its name from our leader and the founder of Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. As he was a great general, he is called Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The people of this town gave its name as Mustafakemalpasa in 1922. For more information about this town, you can visit here.

This dessert is a kind of cheese dessert and as this cheese is originally produced in that town, kemalpasha dessert first came out there. It has been produced in the town since 1960 and it is a great source of income for the people of the town. There are more than 10 companies in the town producing and selling this dessert. This dessert has two steps; cooking in oven and boiling in sherbet. These companies cook the cookies of the dessert in oven two times,  package them and then send them to markets. These packaged ones are ready to be boiled in sherbet and you can find several brands of kemalpasa in markets. This dessert has such a significant role in the life of the town that there is even a kemalpasha dessert festival on September 14.

The secret of this dessert is the unsalted cheese it contains. This cheese is produced from the milk of cows which are raised in the town of Mustafakemalpasha. However, as I don’t have the chance of buying this special cheese, I use regular unsalted cheese.

Ingredients

For its sherbet:
-    2 cups water
-    1 ½ cup sugar
-    1 tbsp lemon juice

For its dough:
-    1 1/2 cups flour
-    1 tsp baking soda
-    2 eggs
-    5 tbsp butter
-    150g unsalted cheese or sweet curd
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First, you should prepare its sherbet. Boil water and sugar in a pot about 10 minutes. Once it boils, add lemon juice.  Boil it one more minute and take it from fire.

Preheat the oven to 180C (400F).

Sieve the flour in a tray. Break eggs in the middle of the flour. Mix it with your hands. Then add baking soda, butter and crumbled unsalted cheese. Knead all of them well. It should be soft enough, but shouldn’t be sticky. Lay greased cooking paper on a tray. Roll about 20 pieces from the dough as big as a walnut. Put them in the tray and cook then for about 20 minutes until golden.

After they are cooked, take them out from the oven. Let them cool for about 20 minutes. Then, heat the sherbet again and when it boils, put these dessert cookies into the boiling sherbet and boil them until they get soft. This takes about 10 or 15 minutes. Then take them with the help of a collander.

Serve it cold. If you like, you can serve it with ice cream or cream. I love it plain. For the decoration, after taking it with a collander, I added 1 tbsp more lemon juice to its sherbet and it became crystallized. I took one spoon from this sherbet and dropped it on the desserts. It doesn’t have such a decoration in its original form, it’s just something I made up.

If you want, you can keep this dessert cookies for a long time after you cook it in oven. And you can boil them in sherbet whenever you want.

Cologne in Turkish Culture

Cologne has a big role in our culture. It has various kinds, but the most popular one is lemon cologne. People use it for many reasons and at many places. One of the places where cologne is used is inter city buses. The bus staff drop lemon cologne in the hands of their passengers one by one. You open your hand, he drops some cologne into your hand, you rub your hands together and take to your nose to feel that refreshing scent. This great product not only cleans the atmosphere of the bus but it also helps you feel relieved during your travel. The staff repeat this a few times until the bus arrives its destination. (image source is here.)

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Summer Dream

Yaz Rüyası (Meyveli Kup)

I have a very special reason for making this fresh dessert. Guess what? One of my close friends got engaged! Their engagement celebration was last weekend, but as it was held in a different city far away from here, I couldn’t join it. I thought that I could  invite her and congratulate her with this “Summer Dream”. I would also invite her fiance, but he doesn’t live here, so my only guest was my friend.

I know she adores dairy desserts, especially Turkish pudding with rice. But this time I made something different because I wanted to use some summer fruits in my dessert. I bought the freshest fruits from this week’s open market: peach and kiwi. I used them raw so that we could feel their real taste and not to kill their freshness.

The original name of this dessert is coupe with fruit, but my friend wanted to call it “summer dream”. I loved this name more, so I used it as the title of this post. I’m sure she was influenced by the fruits I used, but I believe that she was more inspired by her dreams about next two months. Their wedding is going to be in August, so she is very busy with planning the ceremony and thinking about her future life.

As I said I couldn’t join her engagement celebration, but she shared her happiness with me by bringing a few chocolate. During an engagement celebration in Turkish culture, chocolate or Turkish delight is served to guests. Future bride and groom keep some of them for their friends who can not join the celebration. They give these to their friends when they first meet them. They can even carry these in their bags to share with friends as soon as possible. There is another thing the future brides carry in their bags: a piece of red ribbon, again to share with friends. You may wonder what this red ribbon is. In engagement celebrations, the rings are tied to each other with a red ribbon. Generally a respected person put these rings on the bride’s and groom’s fingers and then cut the ribbon from the middle so that equal pieces of ribbon fall to their share. The bride to be keeps her part for a very good purpose. She cuts this part of red ribbon into small pieces and share them with her friends, the girl ones who are single. It is believed that they will find their soulmate with the help of this small piece of red ribbon. It is also believed that if the piece is short, they will meet him in a short time, if it’s long, it will take a long time for her to meet him. My friend was also carying pieces of red ribbon to give her friends, of course not for me as I’m already married.

So we celebrated her happiness together with this dessert followed by Turkish coffee. She told a lot of things about the celebration; how they danced, how people enjoyed themselves, and how she felt happy being together with  both her beloved and her parent. I wish her a happy life with her future husband.

Ingredients (servings: 5)
-    1lt milk
-    1 cup sugar
-    1 cup of water
-    6tbsp wheat starch
-    6tbsp rice flour
-    1tbsp vanilla
-    1 kiwi
-    1 peach

Chop the fruits as you wish.

Pour the milk inot a pot and mix it with sugar. Put the pot on medium heat. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, dissolve starch and rice flour in a cup of water. Add this little by little into the heating milk. While pouring it with one hand, stir it the milk continually with the other hand. Keep stirring it until it reaches the consistency of pudding. Add vanilla just before taking the pot from the heat.

Pour it evenly into small cups until half. Do not fill the cups completely. Put little chopped kiwi or peach on it. Then pour the rest. You will have fruits between two layers in this way. And you can decorate your dessert with the rest of the chopped fruits. Let them cool in the fridge at leat 3 hours.

Some time ago, Vanessa at http://mommygourmet.blogspot.com/ declared that she would hold a contest. The rule of the contest is to have a meal with a friend and write about this alongside the recipe. I’d like to send this post to her as we really enjoyed the evening with my friend.

Smart Peach

The beautiful peach decided to take a shower before someone ate her. The uncle farmer applied insecticide to her since it was a bloom. She washed and cleaned her body very well to get rid of all pesticides on her body. She knew that people would make compotes, jams of it or use it in various desserts or cocktails, and she didn’t want to be used without being perfectly cleaned. (drawing by mom)

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Fig Dessert

İncir Tatlısı

I wrote a little about dried fruit in Turkish culture before while telling about dried figs. We love eating it so much as plain, but I made something sweeter today. I know summer is very close and we’re going to have fresh figs soon, but I couldn’t wait until mid August, when we start to see figs at open markets. So when we still have time, I wanted to use the last dried figs in my pantry. But I must admit my friend’s effect on my decision to make fig dessert today. She loves desserts so much that she always craves for something sweet just after having lunch or dinner. And a cup of tea is an indispensable mate for her dessert.

We decided to have lunch at home together. We quickly prepared menemen (an easy dish of eggs, tomatoes and peppers) and enjoyed it with cacik (a cold soup of yogurt and cucumber). But I wanted to make a surprise for her by this fig dessert. As it’s very easy to make, she didn’t have to wait long for a cup of tea and a portion of dessert. It was the first time for her to have this dessert, but she enjoyed it so much that she got my word to make it again.

Ingredients
-    20 dried figs
-    A little pounded clove
-      ½ cup walnut, cut into four
-    1 cup water
-    1 cup sugar

Wash and clean the figs and soak them in hot water for about 20 minutes.

Drain the figs and insert your little finger to its bottom to make the hole bigger. You’ll fill the figs with walnuts through this hole. Place two or three big pieces of walnut into these figs.

Lay the filled figs in a pot, their stems look upward.

Add clove, sugar and water. Cook it on low heat until it reaches the right consistency for about half an hour.

You can serve it with a dollop of ice cream. As we didn’t have any ice cream today, we ate our dessert plain.

Fig Tree

I want to give another benefit of figs, which I forgot to mention in “dried fig” post. When you pick a leaf or the fruit itself from its tree, you see a white liquid just like milk dripping from it. If you happen to drop that liquid on your body, itching is inevitable for you. So you should be careful if you have that chance of eating figs from the tree. However, there is a secret of this white liquid,  which you may find weird. It is a great treatment for wart on skin. If you have any warts on your body, drop a few driblets of “fig milk” on it, you will see a clear recovery on your skin in a few days time. I took this photo last month for those who have never seen a fig tree. These figs are unripe, and we expect them to ripen in August.

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