Potato Omelette

If you are following my blog for some time, you know how much I love breakfast. Breakfast means a happy start for me. But what do I call as breakfast? Absolutely not a bowl of cereals! That could be a perfect snack for me, not more than this. The word breakfast suggests mainly the fascinating smell of Turkish black tea spreading into the kitchen. There there must be various cheese, black and green olives, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, various jams, a few sprigs of fresh herbs like dill, mint, parsley or arugula and egg (either boiled or fried) on a breakfast table.

These are the main foods at a typical Turkish breakfast and I do love them all. However, as I’m working during weekdays, I don’t have time to have such a big and complete breakfast in the mornings. I have simply a toasted sandwich just before leaving home. That’s one of the reasons why I love Sundays, I have hours to have a big, appealing breakfast. Believe or not, I count the days until Sunday with the dream of a complete breakfast. For me, preparing breakfast is as heart warming as having breakfast. To make that breakfast more special, we love to make something special for that morning. This potato omelette is one of the dishes we make specially for Sunday mornings. In fact, this omelette has a different meaning for me. I used to make it so often when I was a university student away from parents and living alone. It wasn’t a breakfast though. As I didn’t know many recipes and as I found it so easy to prepare, I used to have it as a lunch or dinner after coming from school. You see how things might change? This tasty omelette became one of my favorite breakfast foods. I no longer have it as a lunch or dinner as I can make lots of different dishes instead. It’s up to you when you have this omelette, but I’m sure you will love it. And a fresh salad goes very well with it.

I used a copper pan to make this omelette, but if you don’t have it, you can use a non stick pan instead. Copper pans are associated with omelettes in Turkish cuisine, so it’s our first choice if we make an egg dish.

Patatesli Omlet
Ingredients (serving:2)
-    1 large potato, chopped in small and thin cubes
-    ¼ cup of cheese of your choice, crumbled or grated
-    3 eggs
-    A few sprigs of fresh dill, minced
-    Salt
-    Black pepper
-    Cumin
-    Red pepper flakes
-    1 tbsp butter
-    ½ tbsp olive oil

Melt the butter in a copper pan, add olive oil and fry the potatoes in it on medium heat. Make sure that the inner sides of the pan is also oiled. This will make it easy to transfer it on a plate when cooked. While they are frying, break the eggs in a bowl and beat them very well. Add salt and spices in it with minced dill and mix well. Stir the potatoes occasionally. And do use a wooden spoon for this not to damage the pan.

When potatoes are fried, lower the heat and add cheese on them ( I used yellow cheese, which is called kasar peyniri in Turkish). Stir a few times and without waiting long, pour the egg mixture. Do not stir it after adding the beaten egg in it. Just make some small touches in the center and around the omelette with your wooden spoon to give enough space for the egg mixture to reach the heat. Do not overcook it, it will be ready in 2 minutes.

You can serve it as it is in the pan or on a plate with a herb on the top.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

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.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Spinach with Egg

Spinach is a symbol of Winter in Turkey. I love this green vegetable so much that I miss it in Summer a lot and as I don’t want to use frozen ones, I wait for the end of Summer impatiently. And I realize the coming of Winter when I see spinach on bazaar stands. I use it in many ways; I use it green salad, I make borek(a kind of pastry) of spinach, I make several  dishes from it. Moreover, I don’t waste their heads (In fact I couldn’t decide what word to use to describe that part of spinach. I mean not the leaves, the root or the pinkish end), I also make a dish from it.

And when I have a look at my blog, to decide what to add, I noticed that I haven’t added any recipe of spinach yet. So I decided to cook an appetizing spinach dish for dinner. I’ll add the other spinach recipes later.

In Turkey, generally people love spinach dishes with yogurt, but doctors say that when you eat it with yogurt, the calcium in yogurt and the vitamins in spinach combine and this makes zero benefit. If you don’t care about vitamins, but you are just in search for taste, go ahead. I sometimes do that as they are perfect pairs. But generally, I cook it with egg and no yogurt is needed that time. I think that writing about this yogurt-free recipe first will be a good idea.

Ingredients
•    500gr spinach (and water and salt for cleaning)
•    1 onion, diced
•    1 tbsp olive oil
•    ½ tbsp pepper or tomato paste
•    1 tsp salt
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    2 eggs (depending on the number of servings, this one is for two)

Cleaning spinach requires utmost attention because it may have a lot of sand or soil among its leaves. To clean it well, you should put some warm water in two seperate large bowls.

Cut their roots (the small pinkish parts at the end) and put them aside (we’ll use it in another dish a few days later).

Put the spinach leaves in the first bowl, wash them there and transfer them into the other bowl full of water. Then fill the first bowl with water again, this time add 1tsp salt in water and then transfer the spinach into this one and wait for some minutes. All the sand will subside at the bottom thanks to this salt. Then do this step one or two more times until you believe it’s completely cleaned. If you have the chance of buying cleaned spinach, you are so lucky that you don’t waste any time doing these steps.

After cleaning them well, chop them with a knife or tear them with hands. They don’t have to be thin as they get smaller while cooking.

Put olive oil in a skillet and saute the diced onion in it until golden. Then add pepper or tomato paste in it and put the chopped spinach into it. If your skillet is smaller for the amount of spinach, don’t worry; put them little by little. When they start to cook, they shrink, so all of them will fit into the skillet.

When they all lose their color, add 1 tsp salt and black pepper into it and put its lid on. Cook it on medium heat for about 15 or 20 minutes until all its water evaporates. Then break the eggs on it.

And while serving put one egg with the spinach on each plate. You can serve some scallions or other greens like garden cress, arugula, lettuce or some pickles near it.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Menemen

You already know how much I love egg. I can eat this delicious product of hens everyday and in every version. I feel a great admiration to these productive animals every time I eat or use egg in some dishes. I believe that hens want to send us their eggs as a gift. I love first their  apperance, either broken or unbroken. They are so cute in a rush basket and when cooked, they are beautiful with the combination of yellow and white. They are so compatible that they shouldn’t be seperated except for some dishes.

Generally I prefer a boiled egg for breakfast, but this boiling procedure is so important. You should be very careful to take the egg from fire in the right time. My favorite egg shouldn’t be too soft or too much cooked, it should be in between. I don’t know if there is a word for it in English.  After it starts to boil, I keep them two minutes on fire, not more not less. Then I have my favorite egg version. I sprinkle little salt and cumin on my egg while eating and feel that indefinable pleasure. Then I thank these altruist animals (hens and cocks of course) for not grudging their eggs from us.

Apart from boiled version, I also love eggs in menemen if I have enough time to cook. Menemen is the name of a dish that enriches your breakfast with its appetizing smell and its colors. It’s a kind of dish that we generally have in breakfast, but people may also have it as a main dish if they want a quick prepared dish for lunch or dinner. It’s certainly up to you when to eat melemen.

Ingredients
•    2 middle sized tomatoes, chopped
•    2 green peppers, chopped
•    1 scallion, chopped
•    3 eggs
•    1 tbsp olive oil
•    Salt
•    Black pepper

Saute peppers and a scallion with olive oil in a pan. Then add tomatoes and cook them until their water mostly evaporates. Then add salt and stir. With a wooden spoon, arrange the places of three eggs. Break the eggs into the empty places you arrange. And help the eggs cook well with small touches (with the wooden spoon) to their whites. It will be ready in a few minutes. Then sprinkle black pepper on it for the highest delight.

And here are the main characters of this post. This picture is from a nearby village where we can have fresh eggs.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite