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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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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Chuk Chuk

Do you remember my friend Jyldyz from Kyrgystan? Previously, I published two of her recipes here. One of them is Ash Plov, and the other is Khirgiz Manti. They were just wonderful and we loved them. Her recipes add a great variety to my recipes here, which are all from Turkish cuisine. I’d like to thank her again for being so generous to share her mouth watering recipes with us. Here is a very Kirghiz dessert and I’m sure we’ll all love it too. I made it yesterday night (yes night again!) and we ate it all. It was a night when I craved for something sweet and my husband suggested Jyldyz’s recipe. Luckily he reminded me of this yummy dessert, otherwise I was planning to have a bar of chocolate.

Ingredients:
-2 cups high quality flour
-1 cup sugar
-5 eggs
-1 cup fruit-drops (you can use dried fruits, raisin, apricot, almonds, nuts, walnuts etc.)
-1.5 cup honey
- 2 cups vegetable oil (for frying)
-1 tbsp baking powder
-A pinch of salt

Break fresh eggs into a bowl, add some sugar ( a little), and mix them.  Combine flour, salt, baking powder and make soft dough. Divide dough into several pieces, roll it out into a layer about half a cm wide, and cut into short noodles. Fry the noodles in the boiling oil. When the fried dough is ready, the pieces become yellow-reddish in color and crispy.
Mix honey with sugar and boil the mixture in a separate bowl. You can test if the honey is ready this way: take a drop of honey with a match and if the jet of honey trickling from the match and becomes brittle after cooling down, then it’s time to stop boiling. You shouldn’t boil the honey for too long as it can slightly burn, become dark and spoil the taste of the dish.
Put the boiled noodles into a bowl, pour the honey (hot) and mix well. After that put the mixture on a tray or a flat plate, wet your hands with cold water and shape chuk-chuk as you wish (it can be a pyramid, a cone, a star, etc.). You can decorate the ready chuk-chuk with fruit-drops and let them harden. To harden the shape of your chuk chuk can help the refrigerator.
Chuk-chuk is served either in the whole or cut into pieces.

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Semolina Halvah

İrmik Helvası

Semolina is called “irmik” in Turkey and it’s made of Durum wheat. We use semolina in different ways, but its halvah is the most popular one. It has a yellow color just like bulgur (pounded wheat). They are so similar that if you’re not familiar with both of them, you may be confused. The difference is; semolina is more yellow and thinner than bulgur. Bulgur is mainly used in savory dishes (bulgur pilaf) whereas semolina is generally used in desserts (semolina cake). But semolina is also used in some dough to prevent it from sticking (balls with garlic) and also in bred dough to make its outer part crust.

Semolina halvah is one of my favorite desserts as it has a very aromatic scent and it’s easy to make. I must make a confession here: I don’t know why, but generally I crave for this halvah at nights and yes I make it at nights. This semolina halvah is from last night. ALright, I know how unhealthy it is to eat such a dessert at night, but I go to bed very late, I mean not just after eating it. Can it be a good excuse? It’s the destiny of semolina halvah in my life, to be eaten at nights! But I also feel so sorry for the neighbors as we’re living in a building with four floor and 4 apartments on each floor. I’m sure they felt the smell of tasty halvah last night, and it’s evil enough to cause others to crave for halvah at such a time. And to lighten my guilt, I gave a bowl of semolina halvah to each neaighbor in the building this morning.

Note: Originally pine nuts are added to this halvah, but we ran out of it and I used walnuts instead, which is also fine.

Ingredients
-    2 cups semolina
-    125g butter
-    2 cups sugar
-    4 cups water
-    Half lemon
-    A handful of crumbled walnuts or pine nuts
-    Castor sugar to garnish

Melt the butter in a large and deep pot. Pour two cups semolina and walnut in it and saute it over low heat stirring continually with a wooden spoon. Low heat is so important here, otherwise semolina gets dark very easily but not cooked. So you must be patient to wait some time (about 20 or 30 minutes) to cook it fine. Do not forget to stir it continually if you don’t want an overcooked halvah. You will feel its hearty scent and see the change in its color. It will turn from yellow to brownish color gradually. This means it’s cooked.

Meanwhile boil 4 cups of water in another pot and just before taking it from fire, squeeze half lemon in it.

While the semolina is still on fire, pour the boiled water on it very carefully. Since both of them are very hot, when you pour the water, you’ll hear a very loud boiling noise “cossssss!”. To prevent it from splashing on the oven, cover its lid immediately. After a few minutes, add sugar and stir. Cook it for a few minutes more and take from fire. I love it hot, but generally it is served cold. You can serve it in small bowls or you can turn the bowl upside down on a plate to give it a cute shape just like in the pictures here. Then you can garnish it with castor sugar. Cinnamon is also a good alternative for garnishing.

A Joke From Turkish Elderly

Unfortunately, making semolina halvah is generally associated with fumerals in Turkey. People make this halvah and serve it to the guests who come for condolence. The relatives or neighbors do this on behalf of the family. Although this dessert has such a disrepute, we all love it make it very often. Moreover, elderly people make a joke of this dessert among their fellows. When an elderly tells his fellow that he’s craving for semolina halvah, they start to laugh and the other says “you’ll have to wait more because I’m not planning to die yet”.

(This picture is taken by my husband in Turgutreis/Bodrum and these lovely people are mom’s neighbors).

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Dried Fig

Kuru incir

I want to introduce the kinds of dried fruits used in Turkey in my blog and dried figs will be the first today. Dried fruits have an important place in Turkish kitchen, I don’t know if other cultures have the same habit of getting prepared for Winter during Summer. In Summer, people in Turkey are just like ants as they love spending time on kitchen preparations for Winter. What are these preparations? They dry fruits, vegetables, they make pepper paste and tomato paste and dry it under sun. They make the utmost benefit from the sun as the climate is so convenient for drying things. However, those living in big cities don’t have a chance of doing these at home, so they buy from a supermarket or go buy it from villages nearby. As you all know, buying something from its origin is always the best.

Dried fruits are used in different ways. They can be used in compotes (stewed fruit), in cakes, in desserts, in some dishes or they can even be comsumed plain.

Mom brought these dried figs you see in the picture from Aydın, the city of Turkey which is famous for its figs. She bought them from villagers at bazaar, so they are all natural unlike the ones sold in supermarkets.

Tons of figs are sent to other cities of Turkey and all around the world from Aydın. As you know, fig is a Summer fruit and when I was a child, I used to look forward to climbing its tree and eating kilos of fig on it in Summers. Its leaves make you itch, but it didn’t matter for me as a child.

Towards the end of Summer, people in Aydın start to dry figs for winter. They pick figs and lay them on a piece of cloth in a field and these figs start to dry under sun and then they are coated with flour to prevent any decays. Dried figs are as tasty as the fresh ones, so these are like a kind of dessert even plain. And you can eat them as a healthy snack between meals. Moreover, it has also several benefits for our health. It is rich in proteins and vitamins which renew cells in the body. It helps our digestion system with its fibrous structure, protects our body from bacterium, reduces the level of cholesterol in blood.

Although it has a large amount of sugar in it, it’s not harmful as it’s all natural sugar. Doctors recommend those who hate milk to eat figs, which contain the necessary calcium for health
In Winter people generally consume dried figs plain or with walnuts,  they make jam of it, they make desserts of it, or they use it in cakes. We love dried figs so much that we always have a jar of them on the kitchen table to reach easily whenever we crave for a snack or dessert. So these dried figs can replace candies, chocolate or other junk food.

Fig Tree

There is an idiom in Turkish culture: to plant a fig tree in one’s yard. It means to make something very bad for someone, to give harm to someone. The reason behind this idiom is that roots of a fig tree are very strong and they can spread easily. If we imagine that someone plants a fig tree in your yard, your house will collapse soon because of the roots of the tree.

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Quince Dessert

There is a folk song in Turkish culture. It starts with “Quince trees bloom, is Summer close?” In fact, this is a love song and it has no direct relation with quince, but I always remember that song whenever this fruit starts to take its place on the stands at markets. As you can understand from that folk song, a quince tree blooms towards Summer and it bears fruit in Autumn. It is also possible to find this fruit in Winter here. It is a very popular fruit in Turkey. Moreover, Turkey is the top country growing quince around the world with a 35% portion.

We use quince in several ways, making quince jam, quince compote, quince dessert even dried quince in cakes or compotes again. We benefit not only from the fruit but also from its leaves, blooms and seeds as a cure for several illnesses. The fruit is very rich in vitamins, especially vitamin C, so it becomes a perfect protective fruit against cold and cough when you eat it fresh. Also, you can boil its seeds or blooms with milk or water to protect from cold and cough. And if you’re looking for a cure for your stomach ache, boil its leaves in water and drink it.

I can’t think of a person who don’t love this extremely beneficial fruit. When it’s the quince season, we often make its dessert. It’s so easy and scrumptious. If you love light desserts, here is the recipe.

Ingredients
•    2 quinces
•    4 tbsp sugar
•    1 ½ cup water
•    A few cloves
•    Cream for garnish

Peel the quinces and cut them into two. Discard the seeds, but don’t throw them away. We’ll use them beacuse they give the red color to the dessert. If it’s an Autumn quince the red color is more vivid. Some people use food dye for this color, but I don’t prefer it. Its own seeds give enough color and of course I’m always in favor of natural things.

Pour the water in a pot. Put the quinces in it and place 1 tbsp sugar on each half as you see in the picture. Add the seeds for color and a few cloves for a nice aroma. Put the lid on the pot and bring it to boil.

When it starts to boil, lower the heat to minimum and boil it for one and a half hour. Do not try to stir it with a spoon, just shake the pot a few times.

To serve it, take one half of quince on a plate and garnish it with some cream. You may also garnish it with some walnut or pistachio, or you may prefer it plain.

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Apple Compote

In Turkish cuisine, we have a variety of components in courses. If we have a main dish with meat, chicken or vegetable, we have one kind of pilaf or pasta near them. But it doens’t end here, we also have cacik or yogurt, a kind of salad, or greens such as parsley, garden cress, dill, arugula or scallion, or a kind of compote. You can guess how crowded our dinner table is.

Last night, I realized that we had two apples left and they were about to go bad, but they were still resisting. I decided to make compote from these apples without hesitation.

Compote is a kind of light dessert that you can have with pilaf, pasta or after meal (my husband also loves it near some soups, chickpeas or beans). Compote is made from fresh or dried fruits, both are delicious and healthy. It helps digestion system and doctors advise it to those having problems with liver.

We generally prefer to have it cold, that’s why I make it at night to make it ready for the following day. If you don’t want your children so much coke, compote may also be a good alternative for it in summer. But if you like, you can also have it warm.

Ingredients
•    2 apples
•    2 cups water
•    5 tbsp sugar (if you like it more sweety, you can add more)

Mix water and sugar in a pot and boil it.

Peel the apples, discard the seeds and slice.

Add apple slices into boiling water and boil them until they get they get tender. Then let it cool and put it in refrigerator.

Tip: If you put the apple slices in water at the beginning and then start to boil, apples will be mashed. So you should boil the water first, and then add the apples or other soft fruits.

If you like you can also add a few cloves into the boiling water to give it a different flavor.

And I want to share my happiness with you. Mommy gourmet gave me a blogger award, Kreativ Blogger Award. I’m so honored. I’d like to thank her from here. I also love reading her blog which is full of recipes with sincere stories. And now I want to pass this award on some other blogs that I follow.

1 – The Daily Spud
2 – Oyster Food & Culture
3 – Sophies Foodiefiles
4 – Tangled Noodle
5 - Cinnamonspiceandeverythingnice
6 – Sankeerthanam
7 – HealthyandGourmet
8 – lisaiscooking
9 –Rubber Slippers in Italy

Note: I’d like to pass it on more bloggers, but some of them already got it from Mommy Gourmet.

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Pumpkin Dessert

I love dessert of any kind and we have always a kind of dessert in our kitchen. Coming home from work, I brew some tea and take a piece of dessert (of the day) on a plate to forget all my tiredness. We made this pumpkin dessert so often as it’s very easy and light in calories. Some people sprinkle some crumbled walnut or add some cream on it, but we like them just how they are, so we don’t add anything to it.  You see in the picture  at the bottom how it’s tempting at our open market. And we are lucky enough to get them sliced and chopped there.

Ingredients
•    1 kg pumpkin
•    600g sugar

Slice the pumpkin in the size you like. Wash them well and clean their seeds and chop them big. If you have the opportunity, you can buy it chopped. Put them in a large pot by adding sugar between each line. Put its lid on and wait it for one night, at least 6 hours. During this time, pumpkin pieces release their juice, so we don’t need to add extra water while boiling it.

After a night, put the pot on the medium heat and boil the pumpkin pieces until they get soft. Bring it to boil a few times without the lid on. In this way, the syrup of it will be denser. Then let it cool in the same pot. Do not take them on a sevice plate while they are stil hot as they can get crumbled. After they are cold enough, wait it in refrigerator for a while. Then serve it cold. If you like, you can garnish it with some pistachio, walnut or coconut.

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Kaki (Persimmon) Puree, The Saver

Kaki (Persimmon) is called “Hurma” in Turkish. We grow kakis in our yard. Most people do not know this orange colored fruit even in some regions of Turkey. Luckily, we have it in our yard. I know that kakis are originally from Far East. But it can be grown in certain parts of our country. You should wait until they are ripen enough, they should be so soft that you can not hold it hard. If it is not soft enough, you will have a stringent taste in your mouth. There are also some species which are edible hard, but stil they are more yummy when soft.

This magical fruit can save you from a friend/child begging for dessert at a night time. So here is the simplest recipe of night dessert/ snack.

Ingredients
•    3 kakis
•    1 tsp cinnamon
•    Almond

Put the kakis in a food processor and mash them. Pour it in a bowl. Sprinkle cinnamon, mix it. Garnish it with almond pieces. That’s it! This is not only yummy but also a healthy way of soothing your appetite.

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