Savory Pastry

Tuzlu Kuru Pasta

My friend, my neighbor at the same time, called this afternoon and invited me to have Turkish coffee together. She’s very good at making Turkish coffee with a lot of foams on top and she knows I love it. As I mentioned in my “Turkish Coffee” post, it’s a tradition to drink this coffee with one or more friends, never alone. So if you crave for Turkish coffee, you should invite a friend.

You know Turkish coffee requires something sweet near it (a piece of chocolate, Turkish delight, chocolate cake, cookies, etc.), so I took some cacao cake that I made yesterday. Of course she greeted me with a big smilewhen she saw this cake. While we were having our well made coffee, we decided to make some savory pastries together. We love working together in the kitchen, so we enjoyed a lot playing with the dough and preparing these pastries.

Ingredients
-4 cups flour
-250g butter
-2 eggs
-1 yolk
-1tsp salt
-2tsp baking powder
-100g cheese, crumbled
-nigella sativa

Note: All of these should be in room temperature. We made about 40 pieces of pastries from these ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F)

Pour the flour in a large bowl and break two eggs in the middle of it. Add butter and salt, then mix them with your hands. Put the crumbled cheese and knead the dough well. You’ll see how cheese adds its taste. Make two big balls from this dough. Sprinkle some flour on the counter and roll them out one by one as big as a small plate.
Beat the yolk in a small bowl and spread it with the help of a brush on the dough you roll out. Then sprinkle nigella sativa on them. We used three kinds of nigella sativa here; white, brown and black.

Grab a cookie cutter with the shape you like and cut them carefully. We used a star shape cutter here.

Lay an oven proof paper on a tray and arrange the stars on it. As we love playing with the dough, we also gave some spiral shapes with our hands.

Place the tray in oven and cook them for 25 minutes. Do not wait them in the oven, take out immediately. When they get cold enough, you can serve it with a cup of tea at breakfast or at afternoon tea times.

And my friend was so kind to put some of these pastries in the cup with which I brought my cake.

Guest in Turkish Culture

There is a very nice tradition in Turkey. If you take something you make to your neighbor, she absolutely puts some food from her kitchen in the same bowl in return. It is a sign of generosity of both sides. Here you see a Turkish villager waiting for her guests (mom and I). It is also a part of our tradition to welcome our guests at or outside the door, which shows our respect to our guests. And we do the same while they are leaving our homes.

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Open Sandwich with Tomato

Domatesli Kanepe

I was working on this Sunday, so unfortunately we couldn’t have a big breakfast. You know it’s so important for me to have breakfast with a lot of items, it’s like a feast for me at weekends. I got up early yesterday morning with no desire of going out. But I had to!

When I went out, all these feeling disappeared as I saw that it was a lively Spring day. And I really enjoyed walking to work. But this is not the thing I want to share with you today. I’m planning to add some Spring pictures soon, but not today. Today’s surprise is from my husband. He called me before lunch break and wanted me to return home for a late breakfast in the break. Normally I wouldn’t go for such a short time, it was just one-hour-break. However, he persuaded me by telling that there was a surprise waiting for me. I understood the advantage of living close to my work and went home at lunch break.

By the time he opened the door, I understood what his surprise was. These open sandwiches with tomato! One of my favorites. And he had already brewed the tea. So this late breakfast with these small, crispy, hot sandwiches (not lunch) made me feel better. It also helped me feel Sunday although I worked.

Here is the recipe of these yummy open sandwiches by my husband.

Ingredients
-1 loaf bread
- 2 tbsp butter
- 4 tomatoes
- 2 green peppers
- ½ tbsp tomato paste
- ½ cup cheese (any kind you like), crumbled
- dried thyme

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).

Slice the bread in small and thin shapes. Lay an oven proof paper on a tray. Array the bread slices on it. Top each slice with 1tsp butter. 2 tbsp will be enough for all slices, so try to put it equally.

Peel tomatoes and squeeze its water, you may leave a little water inside, but not much. If you don’t squeeze it, the sandwiches may be lumpy. Chop tomatoes and peppers in a bowl. Mix tomato paste with them. Sprinkle a pinch of dried thyme. And put this mixture equally on the slices.

Crumble the cheese (he used white cheese and it was little salty, so he didn’t add any salt to this tomato mixture. If your cheese is not salty, add a pinch of salt to it). Then put cheese on the slices with tomato-pepper mixture.

Cook them for half an hour and serve hot with a cup of tea for breakfast. It also makes a perfect snack. Enjoy!

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Bread or Egg or Both

Bread is the main food near other dishes on a traditional Turkish dinner table. No matter what we eat, we always have some bread on the table. Also, most people think that they don’t feel full if they don’t eat any bread. Especially when there is a stew, we love dipping a bite of bread into it.

We either make it at our homes or buy it from bakeries. But generally in our villages women make their own bread, weekly or monthly. That kind of bread can be kept long, and they are stored in a special cage. When a woman in a village informs that she’ll make some bread, several neighbors come to her house and they make it altogether. No woman make it on her own, there are always other women helping her as they make their bread monthly. And she does the same when it’s another woman’s turn.

I love tasting different kinds of bread, and creating something different from them. And on last Sunday, I prepared something for breakfast from bread slices. (You’ve learnt how much I love breakfast!). These bread slices with egg (and you know I LOVE eggs) are one of our favorites for Sunday breakfast.
Ingredients (servings 2)
•    4 slices of bread (any kind you like)
•    2 eggs
•    ½ tsp cumin
•    1tsp dried thyme
•    3 tbsp olive oil

Break the eggs in a bowl, add spices into it and beat them very well.
Put olive oil in a pan and heat it.
Dip the bread slices into the egg mixture. I should admit my slices are a bit thicker than usual, but I love them like that.  Then stir fry them in the hot oil.
Serve them hot with some cheese, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. And of course a glass of tea should accompany at breakfast.

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Cheese on Board

We went to a vegetable bazaar this morning and I felt the spirit of nature there when I saw the vivid colors of fresh vegetables. I wish I had the ability of painting, I could reflect all those colors and frehness in my pictures then. Unfortunately, I can not draw even a stick man, so I decided to buy some fresh vegetables and cook them instead.

I love chatting with old ladies while shopping in this bazaar, I learn a lot of tips from them. To give an example, I learnt how to make pickles from an old lady in the bazaar. She was buying some green herbs and I asked what they were. And this long lady explained the importance of these herbs in making pickles (I’ll give the recipe of pickles later).

Do you wonder what I learnt from an old lady in the bazaar today? A very healthy vegetable dish! While I was buying some tomatoes and parsley, she asked if I knew the price of zucchini or not. The vendor was too busy, that’s why she asked me. Because I came there earlier, I heard the price from the vendor. I said it to the lady and she started to put some in a bag (we can select and put the vegetables in bags in this bazaar). This old lady seemed so friendly to me, I thought that I could ask what she would cook with zucchini. She replied with a cute smile and gave a very unique recipe of zucchini. I generally don’t prefer buying it as my husband and I find it a bit unsavory, maybe because it doesn’t have a strong taste. But we are aware of its benefits to our health, so we are open to new recipes.

After eating this zucchini dish, we agreed on that this will be one of our favorites. It was incredibly tasty. Another recipe which gives a yummy taste to zucchini was from Farida. We tried it last week and started to love zucchini thanks to her. You can find the recipe here.

So here is the zucchini recipe of the sympathetic old lady I met at bazaar:

Ingredients
•    4 zucchinis
•    ½ cup white cheese, crumbled
•    ¼ cup grated yellow cheese
•    A few leaves of parsley or dill
•    8 tsp butter
•    Salt
•    Black pepper

Wash zucchinis very well and cut a vertical piece of each. But be careful, you shouldn’t cut the head and the end of it. Then carve it deeply discarding its inside. Do the same for all zucchinis. (if you don’t want to waste these parts, put them in the deep freezer to use in some vegetable stew or pies).

Put some water in a pot, add salt and boil the carved zucchinis in it for about ten minutes. When they get softer after ten (or fifteen) minutes, drain them.

Preheat the oven to 180C(350F).

For filling, in another small bowl, mince the leaves of parsley or dill and mix them well.

Lay a piece of grease paper in an oven tray. Place the zucchinis on it. Put 2 tsp butter inside each zucchini and then fill them with the cheese mixture. Finally put grated yellow cheese on the top and sprinkle little black pepper. Put it in oven and cook them until their top becomes a little brown (about 20 or 30 minutes). After they cook, you can garnish them with carrot sticks.

If you are looking for new recipes for zucchini, this will absolutely help you.

Note: The name of this dish is given by me, not from the old lady.

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Curd Salad

I started to think about my Sunday breakfast last night. Having a big breakfast makes me happier and it’s a very good start for a day. During weekdays, I never skip breakfast, but those are a kind of fast breakfast with a sandwich or a piece of cake or toast. And this is not what I understand from breakfast. There should be a variety in my breakfast and I can only find time for such a breakfast on Sundays.

So today is one of those happy days for me as we prepared a big breakfast with my husband.  Besides eating, I also love that preparing part. He turned on the music player and with Anastacia accompanying us with her energizing songs, we had great time preparing our breakfast.

In this post you’ll read a recipe of a kind of cheese salad. I love every kind of cheese and everything based on cheese. Therefore, it is the main ingredient of our breakfast, we often have two or more types of cheese on the table.

The cheese salad here is made of curd (of yellow cheese). This curd salad brings a very appetizing flavor to your breakfast. If you are one of those breakfast lovers, I’m sure you want to taste it. If you don’t like having breakfast, you can also use this curd salad as a filling for savory pastries.

Ingredients
•    1 cup curd
•    1 tbsp dried red bell pepper, crumbled*
•    1tsp thyme
•    A few leaves of dill, minced
•    1 tbsp olive oil

Combine all ingredients except olive oil. Pour it on the top after they are combined well. And it’s ready. You’ll see how you can eat more in breakfast with the help of this salad.

*You can also used the usual red pepper, but the one I use makes it more delicious. Mom dries these red bell pepper in Summer. After they are totally dried, she crumbles them and adds some olive oil and little salt to keep these crumbled peppers for Winter days.

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