Soak bulgur and semolina with a little water and wait about 15 minutes. Mix them with a spoon. Break an egg in it. Add pepper paste, salt and spices and mix. Add flour and the rest of water little by little. Now combine them with your hands and knead it a little until it’s not sticky. You can play with the amount of water and flour to have this consistency.

Make balls as small as hazelnut and put them in a tray. Don’t pile them up in a bowl and sprinkle little water with your hand over them so that they don’t stick one another. Put them aside.

Heat olive oil in a pot. Add pepper paste and dried mint, stir. Pour 3 cups water and 1 cup meat broth. Add lemon juice and boil it. Add bulgur balls and boiled chickpeas when it boils and cook about 20 minutes.

Serve hot.

Heat olive oil and add pepper paste and tomato paste, stir. If it’s thick, add little water to dissolve it and continue stirring.
Sprinkle dried mint and red pepper flakes into it and stir until they combine well.
Pour 2 cups of water and 1 cup chicken or beef stock, keep stirring over medium heat.
Add grated tomatoes and stir for some minutes.
Pour the rest of the water (3cups) and bring it to boil.
You can add orzo when it boils and cook until they are soft.
Now add salt and toss in parsley sprigs as they are, do not chop them. Boil the soup for some more minutes over low heat to let it absorb the parsley flavor. Take the parsley out before serving.
Serve it hot with a lemon wedge. Squeeze lemon into your bowl and enjoy your soup!

This is a traditional soup made in South area of Turkey as it is the hottest region of the country. It even reaches above 40 C (100F) with a quite high humidity level in summer, that’s why people don’t feel like eating anything unless it’s cold and light. They almost always have some cold yogurt soup in refrigerator to snack on or to serve our guests. As it doesn’t have any oil or cream, it is so light and healthy. You can top this soup with dried or fresh mint or thyme, and the combination of yogurt and these herbs make the soup even more refreshing.

This is either called cold yogurt soup or ayran soup. Ayran is a drink made from a mixture of yogurt and cold water, so this name seems better to me.

Boil wheat in 2 cup water until tender and it absorbs water. Let it cool.

Mix yogurt and cold water to make ayran. Toss in boiled and cooled wheat and chickpeas with it. Add salt, thyme or mint.

Wait it in refrigerator for at least half an hour and serve cold. The colder, the better.

Boil stinging nettle, strain and mash it. You will have 2 tbsp stinging nettle when mashed.
Mix yogurt and flour, pour water and olive oil and mix. Pour it into a pot. Add bulgur and boil, stirring continually. Add salt, mashed stinging nettle and boiled chickpeas into this as a final step and it’s done!
Serve hot.

Do you remember the post, Homemade Remedy? I told how tarhana is important in our culture and how it is healthy to have tarhana soup in winter in that post. I’ve got the recipe from our grandma and  I’m ready to share it with you now! She makes it in large amounts to send some to all of her children and grandchildren, so she minimized the measurement for you. She said that people make this drying process in Autumn, so you will have to wait it until then.

Put peppers in a large pot and cook it over low heat. Don’t add any extra water, cook them in their own juice stirring occasionally. Add tomatoes, stir and keep boiling until tender.

Take the pot from stove and add onion. Let it cold.

When it is cold enough, add yogurt, salt and dried mint. Stir.

Then add flour little by little. Combine them very well. You will get a dough thicker than your regular cake batter.

Transfer the dough into a large and deep tray. Knead it very well. Sprinkle a little flour on its surface and cover it with a piece of clean cloth. It doesn’t stick to the cloth thanks to the flour on its surface. Let it to rise.

You will see it rises the following day. Pour milk in a bowl, wet your hands in it, knead the dough, sprinkle a little flour on its surface and cover. Repeat this for 3 days kneading it once a day. Then give a one-day break. Knead it the following day. And repeat this every other day for 12 days. It smells sourish in the first week, but you will feel its nice fragrance in the second week.

After this duration, lay a clean large sheet in a room which is airy enough. We will lay pieces from dough on this sheet. We shouldn’t lay it under sun as sunlight removes the color of vegetables in dough.

Take spoonfull of dough and place it on this sheet. Repeat this until the dough finishes. Dough pieces on the sheet shouldn’t touch one another.

The surface of these dough pieces will get dry after a few hours. Flip them so that their bottoms get dry too. They shouldn’t get too dry, they should be a little moist. When you’re done with both sides, crumble them with your hands as thin as you can. If they are too dry, it will be very hard to crumble them, that’s why they should be a little moist.

Sift it on another clean sheet and take the thicker part on the surface of sifter on another sheet and dry it separately. They shouldn’t mix (you can also make soup form thick part, don’t waste them).

Spread the sifted soup powder on the sheet in a thin layer and dry it mixing it with your hand occasionally in a day until it is completely dry. This might last about a week depending on weather conditions. It is ready to use now! Keep them in glass jars in a dry place.

How to make tarhana soup?

Heat olive oil. Put pepper paste and dried mint, mix them. Add 3 cups cold water. Pour 2 tbsp dried tarhana when it is still cold. Stir it occasionaly until it boils so that it doesn’t get lumpy. Add garlic, salt and chili powder.

Boil it for 10 minutes more. Serve it when it’s still hot. A small bowl of yogurt makes a great pair.

So the smell of this soup takes me cold outside warm inside Winters with my family. I would forget the freezing cold outside once I felt the smell of this soup coming from the kitchen when I returned from highschool. I also remember chatting with mom about our days. Then my brother, who was away from us studying at a college, appears in my mind with his phone calls. We would have long talks on the phone and I remember how I missed him. So this yogurt soup is so special to me.

Have you ever had similar flashbacks caused by a smell?

Put 4 cups of water and rice in a pot and boil until rice gets tender.

Mix yogurt, yolk, and flour in a bowl. And when rice is done, we will pour the yogurt mixture into the pot. But be careful on this. Don’t do it at a time so that yogurt doesn’t precipitate. Take a ladle of boiling water and pour it into that yogurt mixture, mix it quickly. Do it a few times and when the mixture gets warm enough, pour it into the pot slowly and stir continually at the same time.

Keep stirring a few minutes and then leave it to boil. Do not cover it, or it might boil over. It will be done after  boiling for about 10 minutes. Add salt as a final step here.

For the sauce, heat butter in a pan. Add dried mint when it melts and pour it either on the whole soup in the pot or seperately when serving.

Note: If you aren’t careful about the following tips, your soup doesn’t have the right consistency and precipitates.

• Don’t forget to warm the yogurt mixture before pouring it into the pot.
• Add salt as a final step, not at the beginning or during boiling.

When she was younger, mom used to make our own bread like phyllo sheets and they would meet our monthly bread need. We wouldn’t buy bread loaves then. And whenever there was some piece of dough left, she would make these tiny squares from it. I mean she wouldn’t prepare the dough just for making the squares, but made these just after finishing rolling the phyllo sheets. The soup made of these squares are called Tutmac Soup or Kesme Soup.

The procedure to make these tumac squares is almost the same with Thimble Soup(Yüksük Corbasi), so you can check the recipe for the dough here. The only difference is that you will cut the squares even smaller and you will not stuff them with anything. After cutting them, dry them in a preheated oven over 170C for about 15-20 minutes. Then put them in jars and you can keep them for months. Whenever you want to make a traditional soup for your guests, you can make tutmac soup with these squares.

Tutmac Corbasi
Ingredients
- 1 cup green lentil
- ½ cup tutmac squares
- 5 or 6 cups water
- ½ lemon, squeezed
- 1 tbsp pepper paste (or 2 tbsp tomato paste)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp dried mint
- Salt to taste

Boil the green lentils until tender and drain to get rid of its black water. Pour 5 cups of water in a pot, add lentils and bring it to boil. When it boils, add the squares and boil until they get soft (about 10-15 minutes). Pour the lemon juice. Take it from fire.

Melt the butter in a pan, saute the onions and garlic in it. Put pepper paste and dried mint, mix until combined. Pour this mixture in the pot, sprinkle some salt, stir and bring it to boil.

If you like, you can drizzle some yogurt on it.

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.

After breaking their fast, peole generally start their meal with a soup to warm their empty stomach. It also has a control on your appetite. When you start with a soup, as it removes the feeling of hunger, you eat enough from the other dishes. You always want to eat more if you don’t have a warm soup at the beginning. Among the soups I learnt from mom, red lentil soup is my favorite. Our negihbors used to love it, too. One bowl was never enough for them, so mom used to send them a small pot full of this soup. This is a traditional Turkish soup and you may find it at every Turkish restaurant at any time. Its cooking style may change although the ingredients are mostly the same. Here is mom’s style red lentil soup.

Mercimek Corbasi
Ingredients (servings 6)
-    1 medium sized onion, diced
-    1 medium sized carrot, finely chopped
-    1 medium potato, finely chopped
-    1 cup red lentil
-   6 cups water
-    1 tsp red pepper flakes
-    1 tsp cumin
-    1 tsp black pepper
-    1 tbsp dried mint
-    Salt to taste
-    2 tbsp olive oil
-    1 tbsp flour
-     1 ½ tbsp butter

Heat olive oil in a pot. Saute onion,  then add carrot and potatoes. Stir occasionally.

Wash red lentil, drain and add it to the pot. Saute it for 3 minutes. Keep stirring. Pour 6 cups water, add the spices and salt and boil it until the vegetables and lentils get soft enough. If they can easily be mashed when you press with a spoon, it’s done. It takes about 30 minutes over medium heat. Do not cover the pot during this time as it can rise and overflow.

In a small pan, melt the butter. Add flour and mix it continually. When it becomes creamy, pour it into the pot with lentils.

To have a smooth soup, mash everything in the pot using a blender. Then put the pot back on the fire and boil it for 5 minutes. It’s ready to warm your stomach now.

Traditionally, this soup is always served with lemon wedges. When you squeeze it on your soup, its taste is completed. To have the utmost pleasure, I always sprinkle extra red pepper flakes and dried mint on my soup.

Thimber Soup from zerrin gunaydin on Vimeo.

NOTE: Do not forget to turn on the volume to hear the music of a Turkish band, Bandista.

This is another popular wedding dish in Turkey, but this time its region is different. It is called yüksük çorbası (thimble for yüksük, soup for çorba) as its shape is like a small thimble. This is a traditional wedding dish of  Southern region of Turkey, especially of Çukurova area. It is mostly made in villages there. Everyone knows that yüksük çorbası will be served whenever there is a wedding in these villages as it is the main dish of the ceremony. Weddings are generally held in large squares of the village where all guests gather. And during the wedding, this traditional soup keeps boiling in big cauldrons on wood fire. Making this soup is not easy, so not only the families of bride and groom, but also their neighbors gather before the wedding day and make it altogether. As you can see in the video, the step which requires the most time is the filling the squares step. That’s why this step is done by all the women there while the final cooking/boiling step is done by one or two talented old ladies.

As it’s a wedding ceremony, the number of guests is more than two hundred. Both people of that village and the people living in villages nearby are invited to this ceremony, and this number increases.  The number of guests increases a lot more if the host of the ceremony is well known around the area. The higher the number of people joining the ceremony, the more reputable the host is.

Yuksuk corbasi is served to these guests on a tray by young men of the village. A handkerchief is tied on their arms to show that these young people are voluntary waiters of the ceremony. If people have something to  ask for something, they call one of these voluntary young people.

Meanwhile, there are two men playing drum and horn (image source is here) and if people want, they dance. Generally the first people who start the dance are the groom and his friends. While they are dancing, generally the groom’s family members throw banknotes towards the dancing people. This is like a show of reputation and power. A little boy who is appointed by the drummer picks these banknotes and gives them to the drummer. They share the money at the end of the ceremony.

After having a bowl of yuksuk corbasi, the guests congratulate bride and groom or their parents and leave.

Besides its fame on wedding ceremonies, this dish is also made in cities in daily life as the city people have no chance of joining wedding ceremonies at villages. It is very similar to manti (another traditional Turkish dish which is famous in Central Anatolia), but their cooking styles are different.

Yüksük Çorbası

Ingredients

Its dough
-    4 cups flour
-    3 eggs
-    2 cups water, increase if needed
-    2 tsp salt

Knead the dough well by mixing all the necessary ingredients. While kneading,, wet your hands occasionally and you can add more water if it doesn’t reach the right consistency. Knead it until it doesn’t stick to your hands. Divide this dough into big equal pieces. The dough we knead makes 4 equal balls and a small ball. Sprinkle some flour on them and cover them.

Its filling mixture
-    3 small onions, chopped
-    1lb ground beef
-    Half bunch of parsley, chopped
-    1 dessert spoon salt
-    1 dessert spoon paprika powder
-    1 dessert spoon ground blak pepper
-    1 dessert spoon pepper paste

Mix all these ingredients for the filling mixture.

Sprinkle some flour on the counter. the one you take on it and sprinkle flour on it, too. Then press on this dough and flatten it. Then roll it out in a circular way. (See the video above). While rolling, sprinkle little flour on it occasionally so that it doesn’t stick to the rolling pin. When it gets as thin as we want, sprinkle flour on it and fold it as you see n the video. And cut this first into stripes, then into squares. Take one square, put little filling mixture into it and combine its four corners to give it a thimble shape. If you like, you can combine its two corners to give it a triangular shape. Put the ones you finish on a large tray, do not overfill the tray, otherwise they all stick to each other.

Its final cooking
-    2 cups meat broth
-    2 cups chickpeas, boiled
-    1 lemon

Put water (about 4 cups) in a pot. Add meat broth and chickpeas, bring it to boil. when it boils pour lemon juice and add salt. Then put the dumplings in the boling water little by little. After about 10 minutes, they’ll start to float, which means it’s done. Take it from heat and pour 1 cup of cold water into the pot. This will help the dumplings not to stick to each other.

We generally put about 3 cups of dumplings to make this dish and we leave the rest to put into freezer to cook later. If you want to do the same, just cook the rest of the dumplings in oven until they are light brown. Let them cool and then put them in freezer in freezer bags.
Now we can prepare its sauce.
Its sauce
-    2 tbsp olive oil
-    1 dessert spoon pepper paste
-    1 dessert spoon dried mint
-    Paprika powder and ground black pepper for your taste
-    2 tomatoes, grated

Note: If you don’t have pepper paste for the sauce, you can substitute it with red pepper flakes or paprika powder.

Heat the oil, put the pepper paste in it and mix. Add grated tomato and spices. It’s ready after 3 minutes. Pour the sauce into the soup and stir. It is ready to serve.

You can also prepare a bowl of yogurt sauce to serve with it.

Yogurt sauce
-    1 cup yogurt
-    3 cloves garlic, mashed

Mix these together until smooth and serve in a seperate bowl. If you want, you can also drizzle some yogurt sauce on this soup and enjoy it more. Personally, I love both versions, so I have half of my soup plain and then I put some yogurt sauce on it and double my joy for the other half. I don’t exclude none of the versions in this way.