Borek with Vegetables

Sebzeli Börek

We saw an extraordinary vivacity in our neighborhood this evening. Some people were setting up a music system in front of our building, some were placing plastic chairs in the shape of a circle. These are signs of a ceremony, so we thought that there would be an engagement ceremony or a party for a bride and her friends (called “kına” in Turkish), which is a common tradition held in the evening followed by the wedding ceremony on the next day. However, we were wrong.

While were trying to guess what was happening, the door bell rang. It was our neighbor from the first floor. She invited us to the ceremony they were holding for their son, who would join the army to carry out his military service. ıt is compulsory in Turkey for all males at the age of 20 to complete this military service. It may last from 5 months to 15 months according to the education level of soldiers and some other reasons. If they are studying or working at this age, they can delay it until a certain age.

In Turkey, people hold a ceremony, generally outside their houses for their sons just before he leaves his home and goes to the city where he gets the training. There is a music system or a timpanist is hired. Neighbors, relatives, the boy’s friends all gather here and they dance. The boy’s family serve some drinks. People dance, especially the boy’s friends and family members. Older relatives give some pocket money to the young as a gift. Then his family takes him to the bus station to send him off. His friends and some nighbors accompany them and they go on singing songs and dancing until he gets on the bus.

I prepared a quick borek with what I had in my pantry and took it to my neighbor and she served it to their guests. She also served pilaf with chicken and cold ayran. It was a great party for their son before his military service.

Ingredients
-    1 stalk leek, chopped thin
-    1 potato, grated
-    2 carrots, grated
-    1 big onion,diced
-    1 cup parmesan cheese, grated
-    2 tbsp olive oil for sauting
-    3tbsp olive oil for spreading between sheets
-    1 egg
-    ½ cup yogurt
-    5 phyllo sheets

Saute all the vegetables in olive oil for about 10-15 minutes. add some salt.

Mix egg, 3 tbsp olive oil and yogurt.

Preheat the oven to 180C (400F)

Lay one of the phyllo sheets and spread the yogurt mixture on it. Lay the other sheet and spread the half of the sauted vegetables on it, then sprinkle the half of parmesan and lay another phyllo sheet on it. Brush it with the same egg and yogurt mixture. Lay the other sheet and spread the rest of sauted vegs and parmesan. Cover this with the last phyllo sheet and spread the rest yogurt mixture on it. Cut it with a knife as squares or triangles before putting it in oven so that its inner part also cooks. Cook this in oven for about 50 minutes.

By the way, I’ll be away for a few days as I’m traveling to Istanbul today for a work. Besides this work, I hope I can visit some good restaurants. I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Cigarette Borek

Sigara Boregi

Our national football team had a match with Spain yesterday. We love watching matches with friends, so we called some friends and invited them to watch the match together. They already knew that we’d prepare some food for the night, but this time they  had a request from us: Cigarette boreks!  Of course we accepted.

They came just before the match began and they all went crazy with the smell of cigarette boreks. They brought several bottles of beer, so we understood that it was a part of their plan. We all agree on cigarette boreks go perfect with cold beer. Although Spanish team defeated with a 2-1 score, we had great time because both teams played well. By the way, I should admit we grabed a cigarette borek each time our players missed a goal. It’s better than cigarette itself at all.

The name of this borek is cigarette just because of its shape. You put some very healthy ingredients in it like cheese and parsley instead of tobacco.

Ingredients

- 3 phyllo sheets

- 1 cup white cheese, crumbled

- Half bunch parsley, chopped

- A very small cup water, just to stick the ends

- ½ cup vegetable oil

Lay the sheets on the counter and cut them into pieces of triangle. You see it in the picture, if you like you can cut them bigger, but originally they are small.

Mix chopped parsley and cheese together. If you like you can add spices you like. We love it plain.

Grab a triangle and put some cheese mixture on the wide side of it. First fold the left and right edges and then roll it up. To stick its end, dip your finger into the water in small cup and rub it on the end of the triangle.

Heat oil in a pan and fry these cigarette boreks until golden brown.

You can serve these crunchy cigarettes as a kind of snack with beer or tea. You can even surprise your family or friends by serving it at breakfast. The sound it makes while eating is as enjoyable as eating it.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

High Society Manti

Sosyete Mantisi

I know I already have two different recipes of manti in my blog, but I tried this one for the first time and adore it. I learnt it from my second mom  (my mother- in-law), who is also a creative cook. She knows how much I love manti but also I don’t have much time to prepare an original manti. While talking on the phone, she suggested a manti recipe, which is totally new to me. I heard its name many times, but never tried. She told me that this time saving  recipe is just for me and added it is as tasty as traditional manti. It is time saving because 1)you don’t prepare the dough, you use phyllo sheets instead. 2)you don’t work on making small shapes, this one is pretty big when we compare it to traditional manti. For these two reasons it’s called High Society Manti (Sosyete Mantisi). You know people from high society don’t like working on effortful dishes. Altough I’m not a member of that society, I’ll make this hearty manti during my busy working term.

Ingredients
•    One phyllo sheet
•    ½ cup vegetable oil (for frying)

Filling:
•    150g mince (ground meat)
•    1 onion
•    1tsp salt
•    1tsp black pepper
•    1tsp red pepper flakes
•    A few leaves parsley
•    2 tbsp vegetable oil

For its Sauce:
•    A bowl of yogurt
•    4 cloves garlic, mashed
•    Red pepper flakes
•    Dried mint

Note: I made it from one phyllo sheet as we were just two at dinner and 8 pieces came out from it.

First let’s prepare its filling. Mince the onion and saute it in oil in a pan. Then add ground meat, salt and other spices. Stir while sauting. Don’t let the ground meat cook completely, 5 or 7 minutes sauting will be enough. Then let it cool.

Lay the phyllo sheet on the counter and cut into pieces of triangle shapes as you see in the picture. To cut it into 8 pieces, first make a plus on the phyllo sheet with a knife, then cut it again between each line.

After having 8 pieces, grab one of the triangles and put some filling mixture on the broad side of it. Do not put it much, otherwise it will be difficult for you to wrap it up.

Wrap the triangle as you see here, you can stick the end of the sheet by dipping a finger into a little water and touching on the end.

Then twist it as in the picture, the triangles turn into rose like shapes. To prevent any distortion in this shape, insert a toothpick attaching the end and the head of the sheet. Do the same until you finish all triangles.

Heat he vegetable oil in a pan. Then stir fry these rose like pastries. It doesn’t need to be too crispy, when it turns to brown, it’s OK. Take them on a serving plate.

For its sauce, mix yogurt and mashed garlic. Pour some on the fried pastries and sprinke some red pepper flakes. Unfortunately I forgot to sprinkle some dried mint on it, I realized it when I finished all. I was so impatient to eat them that’s why I forgot it. But I know it’ll be more hearty if you don’t forget to add it.

I’d like to thank to Mely from mexicoinmykitchen, who has delectable Mexican dishes in her blog. I’m always so curious about Mexican cuisine,  which takes my attention especially with its spices and special sauces with traditional flavors, so I learn a lot from Mely. Go visit it!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Bazlama Bread

Bazlama

This is a traditional bread, generally baked over wood fire in villages. When my grandpas were alive, we used to visit them  very often. They used to live in a village and whenever we went there, grandma would always bake bazlama for us. She would also brew a teapot of tea again over a wood fire. I don’t know why, but the fire of wood changes the taste of everything. If you have the chance of cooking a dish over wood fire, you’ll understand what I mean. Even tea gets a different flavor when brewed over it.

Grandma would always serve bazlama with a piece of butter she herself made and with some olive oil which they themselves produced. So this simple breakfast became a feast for us. Imagine a piece of newly baked bazlama, still fuming, and dipping it into some very natural olive oil or spreading some fresh butter, which has a milky scent, on it.

As I don’t have a chance of baking it on a wood fire, I bake it on a non stick pan over the lowest heat of the oven. Today the special item for our big Sunday breakfast was this bazlama. We ate it dipping in olive oil.

Ingredients
•    3 cups flour
•    ½ cup yogurt
•    1 cup warm water
•    1 dessert spoon instant yeast
•    ¼ olive oil
•    2 tsp sugar
•    2 tsp salt

Put the flour in a bowl. Add yogurt and mix it. Then add olive oil, sugar and salt. Mix the warm water and instant yeast in a cup very well and pour it in the mixture. Then knead all of them. You see my measurement cup here.

The dough should still be sticky, don’t worry. Cover the bowl and wait it in a warm place at least 5 hours to rise well. Waiting it for a day is better.

When the dough is OK, you can bake it and eat hot. Sprinkle some flour on the counter, take a piece of dough, a bit bigger than orange. Round it in your palms, then put it on the counter. Widen it by pressing your hands on it. You don’t need to use a rolling pin as the dough is so soft.

Heat a non stick pan, and put the shaped dough on it. Cook it turning it out continually over the lowest heat. It will be done in about 10 minutes. I make five bazlamas from these ingredients.

You can serve it with olive oil near it. We also sprinkle some dry thyme in our natural olive oil.

Note: I made this before reading the article, 10 pre-polluted Americans by OysterCulture, which is about food safety including the harms of teflon. And now, I’m definitely confused about using non stick pans. There should be a substitute.

Sabiha Gökçen

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Borek with Potato

Patatesli Börek

Borek is one of my favorite Turkish pastries and it’s one of the most common pastries served to guests. I generally make borek at the weekend as a preperation for week days. As I leave for work early in the morning, borek becomes my best breakfast. You know how much I love breakfast, but during weekdays, I don’t have enough time for a big one, so if we have prepared borek, I just heat them in oven and have a quick breakfast with two squares of borek and a cup of tea.

Moreover, if I have something different for breakfast, I put a few borek squares in my lunch bag and take it to work. It becomes a perfect lunch accompanied by a glass of ayran as borek is also eaten cold. When I take some for lunch, I always take more than I eat because I love sharing lunch with my collegues. Borek has a lot of varieties, you can use different filling mixtures for it. Generally, it is filled with cheese, minced meat, potato, spinach, etc.

Ingredients
•    5 phyllo sheets

To stick these phyllo sheets
•    1 cup yogurt
•    ¼ cup olive oil
•    1 egg

For its filling
•    5 middle potatoes
•    1 big onion
•    1tbsp pepper or tomato paste
•    1tsp cumin
•    1tbsp black pepper
•    1tbsp salt
•    ½ grated yellow cheese

For garnish
•    nigella sativa

First we’ll prepare its filling. Boil the potatoes in a pot full of water until they get very soft. You can check them with a fork, insert it in one of the potatoes, if it’s soft enough, that’s ok. Then peel the potatoes and chop them in small pieces. Put it aside.

Chop the onion and saute it until golden. Add tomato/pepper paste into it and stir. Put the boiled and chopped potatoes into it, sprinkle salt and other spices and saute all of them for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Take it from heat and let it cool.

Now we’ll prepare the mixture to stick the phyllo sheets. Mix yogurt, oil and egg until well combined. This mixture prevents the borek from splitting off.

Preheat the oven to 180C (356F).

Lay one of the phyllo sheets on an oven tray. Then spread the yogurt mixture on it with a brush. If the sheet is too big for the tray, you can tear it into two pieces and then lay it on the tray. It doesn’t need to be perfect in shape. Then lay onether sheet on this one. Spread some yogurt mixture again. Now put some filling mixture (not much as you’ll put the rest soon).

Lay another sheet on potatoes and spread yogurt mixture again. Now put the rest of the pototoes and sprinkle grated yellow cheese on it. Lay the last two sheets on them spreading yogurt mixture between them. Finally spread all the mixture on top of it to have a well cooked borek. Cut it into squares. And sprinkle some nigella sativa on it. Cook it for about 40 minutes.

You can also have these boreks as a snack.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Bakeries prepare for you

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Simit

Simit is an indispensable pastry of Turkish people. It’s similar to bagel but it has sesame seeds and grape molasses unlike bagel. We can eat it at any time. It may become a habbit for us to buy some simits on the way to work in the early morning and to share them with our colleagues. So we start our day at work with great energy thanks to a simit and a glass of tea.

We can say that simit is the first and the most popular fast food in Turkey. There are several vendors selling simit on almost all the corners of city center. If a person is in city center and feels hungry, he buys a simit no matter what time of the day it is.  I took this picture on a street of Eskisehir. The vendor didn’t want to be in the photo, so I took the pigeons instead. I know they are like customers rather than a vendor, but were so cute.

Or some vendors even pass by your neighborhood with a tray full of simits on their head. Yes, you’ve read it right, on their heads! I don’t understand how they don’t lose their foot, they walk very well on the contrary. Moreover, they sing out “Simitçiiiiiii!”. Simitçi is himself, meaning the person who sells simit. And by singing it out, it informs people at their homes that he’s passing, so if one wants to buy it, he goes out and and buy simit.

Generally people prefer drinking tea with it, but some people may prefer ayran as well. And of course some cheese will be the best pair for simit. Yet, some people love spreading chocolate on it just like hubby.

We generally buy simit from pastries as we can not make the same at home. I don’t know exactly why, but all bakers agree on that, maybe it’s because of the high heat at bakeries. We make just similar pastries at home.

If you want to try it (or something very similar to it), follow the recipe:

Ingredients
•    1kg flour
•    42gr yeast
•    15gr salt (1 ½ tbsp)
•    1 tsp sugar
•    2 cups warm water
•    1 cup water
•    3 tbsp grape molasses
•    Sesame seeds

Melt the yeast and sugar in a glass of warm water and wait it 2 hours. Put the flour in a tray and when it rises well, pour it in the center of the flour and add salt in it.

Preheat the oven to 200 C (392F).

Mix 1 glass of warm water with 2 tbsp grape molasses. And pour it into the flour mixture little by little. Knead it well until it loses  its stickiness.

Mix 1 cup of water with 1 tbsp grape molasses.

Saute the sesame seeds 10 or 15 minutes until brown. Do not overcook them, it changes their taste. And put them on a plate.

Pick a piece of dough and shape it in your hands. It must have a circular shape. First dip it into the grape molasses and water mixture then roll it into sesame seeds.
Oil the oven tray and place all the simits in it with some spaces between each.

Bake them over 200C for 30 minutes and serve them hot with a glass of tea or ayran.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Red Bell Pepper Loaf

This is another dish from my childhood. This is not well known around the country, it is baked generally in the Southern part of Turkey. And I haven’t met a better cook than mom baking this snack. I remember that we would always have biberli in the kitchen and whenever we feel hungry, we had a few slices.

None of my friends here knows this tasty pastry and when I make it, I always hear this “Mmmm” sound. They say that the ingredients are so simple and ordinary, but the taste of it is certainly extraordinary. Most of my friends think that it’s very similar to pizza, but I think it’s definitely more delicious. Then they take the recipe from me and it becomes a traditional snack in their kitchen too. And here is the famous recipe of mom.

Ingredients
•    4 red bell peppers, chopped
•    1 green pepper, chopped
•    4 onions, chopped
•    4 tbsp sesame
•    1 tbsp pepper paste
•    ½ cup olive oil
•    salt

For its dough:
•    2 cups flour
•    1 cup yogurt
•    1 tbsp yeast powder
•    Salt
•    ½ cup warm water

Sift the flour in a large bowl. In a small cup mix yeast powder, salt and warm water, and pour this mixture in the flour. Combine them well. To have a softer dough, add yogurt and knead the dough by adding some warm water little by little. Knead it very well until it doesn’t stick to your hand. Then make a big ball from this dough and cover it with a wet piece of cloth. Put it in a warm place and wait at least one hour so that it rises well.

Meanwhile you can prepare the mixture you’ll spread on the dough. Combine all peppers and onions in a bowl. Add sesame, olive oil, pepper paste and salt in it. Mix them well.

After the dough rises enough (after at least one hour), preheat the oven to 180 C (350F). Oil the oven tray and take the dough on this tray. Now it’s time for your hands to work more. Lay the dough on the tray equally. The dough should be still as a whole, do not pick any pieces from it. When you finish laying it, spread the pepper mixture on the dough with your hands.

Before putting it into the oven, cut it as squares. If you do so, it will be easier to remove them from the tray after it’s cooked.

Now you can place it into the oven and cook it for 40 minutes. And be cautious, neighbors might start to ring the doorbell because they start to crave for biberli when they feel its scrumptious smell.

You can serve it at any time of day as a kind of snack or in the morning as a part of breakfast.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Borek with Minced Meat Recipe

Borek is one of the most popular pastries in Turkish cuisine. It’s similar to pasty but made with phyllo pastry. You can put any ingredient you like. There are a lot of kinds of borek here; with cheese, with potatoes, with minced meat, with spinach, with green lentil, with leek, etc. Today I made meatballs, and didn’t use all the meat, so I decided to make some borek with the rest of the minced meat. It’s so easy and delicious. You can have it with your breakfast or at 5 o’clock tea or at any time you like.

Ingredients

•    4 phyllo pastry sheets
•    1 egg
•    1 coffee cup milk

For filling
•    ½ kg minced meat
•    1 big onion, diced
•    ½ cup olive oil
•    1 cup minced parsley
•    1 tsp salt
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    1 tsp red pepper flakes

For garnish
•    2 tbsp nigella seed

First let’s prepare the mixture for filling. In a large pan, saute onion in olive oil until golden. Add minced meat, salt, black and red pepper. Saute them until the water of mince meat evaporates. When you take it from heat, add parsley and mix them. Let it cool.

Lay one of the phyllo pastry sheets on a table or counter. Cut it into 4 pieces evenly (you’ll draw a plus while cutting to have 4 pieces).  It will be like a triangle. Put some filling mixture with a spoon on the widest side of each piece. Then fold the vertical sides so that the mixture won’t come out. Then start Rolling from the widest side to the narrow. Finally dampen your fingers and stick the last fold with your fingers gently.

Preheat the oven to 180C (356F).

Oil the oven tray with a brush and place these pieces of borek on it.  Do the same for all phyllo sheets.

In a small cup mix milk and egg together. With a brush spread it on each borek.

Finally sprinkle some nigella seed on each of them.

Put the tray in oven and cook them 30 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prepare your tea and after taking the tray out, serve it with a cup of tea.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite