Vegetable Stew

I believe that this vegetable dish is created by someone who hates wasting foods. The main characteristic of it is that it contains more than two kinds of vegetables. You can use any vegetable you have in your refrigerator. I generally cook it with the leftover vegetables, so I don’t need to do shopping specially for this dish. We buy several vegetables when we shop from the bazaar and we cook each of them on each day during the weekdays. For example, one daywe cook a dish with green beans, the other day a dish with eggplant, and so on. As we are just two people (my husband and I), less than half of these vegetables is always left each time we cook something. Then at the end of the week, we combine all the leftover vegetables, which resulted in a tasty vegetable stew.

In fact, this dish has two main types in Turkish cuisine: Summer Vegetable Stew (Yaz Türlüsü) and Winter Vegetable Stew (Kış Türlüsü) depending on the season of the vegetables we use.Summer vegetable stew mainly contains green beans, okra, zucchini, eggplant, potatoes, green and red peppers as these are fresh in Summer. As for Winter vegetable stew, the vegetables above are replaced by the vegetables that can be found fresh in Winter such as leek, celery root and carrot. Besides the changing vegetables, we always have onion and tomatoes in both versions. However, as tomatoes are fresher in Summer, we can use more of them in Summer vegetable stew. Another difference between these versions of stew is that Winter vegetable stew may have some meat whereas Summer vegetable stew is generally prefered with olive oil and meat free.

Which version do you think is mine here in this post? It is in between the Summer and winter versions. As it’s still possible to find fresh eggplants, and zucchini these days, I couldn’t miss this opportunity. However, we can’t see okra at bazaar anymore as it’s exactly a vegetable of hotter days, so I couldn’t add it to my stew. Also, I used carrot, which is absolutely a Winter vegetable, to make the stew more colorful. That’s why I can’t call it either Summer or Winter stew. How about calling it no season vegetable stew?

Most Turkish women saute onion in olive oil and then add the other vegetables to make a vegetables stew, but I prefer placing the vegetables in layers in the pot and add olive oil on their top. This way, you can feel the flavor of olive oil more and I read somewhere that this method is better for our health.

As this is an adjustable dish, feel free to change the vegetables or the amounts of them.

Türlü
Ingredients
- 10 green beans
- 2 medium size eggplants
- 1 large potato
- 1 medium sized zucchini
- 1 big carrot
- 1 medium sized onion
- 4 medium sized tomatoes
- 1 red pepper
- 1 green pepper
- 4 cloves garlic
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Salt to taste
- 1 tsp black pepper
- ¼ cup hot water

Slice unpeeled eggplants and zucchini into circles. Peel the carrot and slice it into circles, too. Chop the potato in cubes. Cut the beans in half finger size. Peel and dice the tomatoes and onions. Chop the peppers. Slice the garlic cloves. Put these vegetables in seperate bowls to make it easy to arrange them in the pot.

Place the carrots at the bottom of the pot as the first layer. Then put the green beans and potatoes. Now toss half of the peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes on them. Go on with eggplants and zucchini coins. Finally, add the rest of the peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes on the top. Sprinkle salt and black pepper on them and drizzle olive oil. Cover the pot and cook it on low heat. After about 10 minutes, add hot water and go on cooking on low heat for about 40 minutes.

Vegetable stew is served hot with some rice pilaf and with a bowl of yogurt near it.

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Zucchini Stew

Kabak Yemegi

We went to the vegetable bazaar today and all greens took my attention. Whenever I go to this bazaar, I want to buy everything I see on stands. Today it was more colorful and fresh as a reflection of coming Spring. While we were filling our bags with tomatoes, the vendor was continually praising zucchinis near tomatoes. He was telling how fresh they  were and giving a recipe at the same time with the sound “Mmmm”. His recipe was so easy, saute the zucchinis and pour some yogurt on it. If you’re following my blog for some time, you may remember that we don’t like zucchini only recipes. There must be something adding some tasty flavors to this tasteless vegetable. Although I didn’t have any idea of such a recipe, I couldn’t resist more and bought half kilo zucchini at the end.

You might realize that I’ve been cooking some dishes with green lentil for some time. I thought that it would be a great idea to cook zucchini with green lentil. I mentioned this ‘new’ and ‘creative’ recipe during a phone conversation with mom and she laughed at me. She told me that there was already this zucchini stew in Turkish cuisine. Although, it’s not a new recipe for many people, this was a new dish in our kitchen, which made us decide to buy some zucchini on the next bazaar day.

Ingredients
•    3 zucchinis
•    4 tomatoes
•    1 onion
•    ¼ cup green lentil
•    1 tbsp dried mint
•    1 tbsp salt
•    ½ tbsp tomato or pepper paste
•    2 tbsp olive oil

Chop the onion and saute it in olive oil. Add green lentil and stir.

Dilute the pepper paste in a small bowl and add it into the pot.

Chop the zucchinis thick and throw them into the pot, cover it. Meanwhile peel and dice the tomatoes. Add them in the pot, sprinkle salt and dried mint on it and stir. Put the lid on the pot and bring th heat to the lowest. It will be ready in 30 minutes.

I felt that this would be a tasty dish even when it was cooking as it smelled so appetizing. And we thought that green lentil had a magical flavor that made everything delectable. If you still have suspicions on zucchini, I strongly recommend this recipe.

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Bulgur Pilaf with Green Lentil

Mercimekli Bulgur Pilavi
This pilaf is another rare recipe even in our country. So many people don’t know this pilaf, they generally cook tehm seperately, bulgur pilaf near green lentil stew. I love them, but I also love them combined in the form of a pilaf. If you have a kind of stew, this pilaf will be a perfect side dish.

Ingredients
•    1 cup bulgur
•    ¼ cup green lentil, boiled
•    2 cups water
•    2 green pepper, 1 onion
•    2 tbsp butter
•    1 tbsp olive oil
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    2 tsp salt
•    ½ tsp cinnamon

Melt the butter in a pan and add olive oil. Saute chopped  green pepper  and onion until soft, then add bulgur and boiled green lentil in it. Saute them for 5 minutes until bulgur gets crispy. Then pour water and sprinkle salt, black pepper and cinnamon in it and stir. Cover the pan and bring the heat to the lowest. When all the water’s gone, let it rest.

To serve it, put some in a small bowl and reverse it on a plate. You can garnish it with fresh dill or parsley. And if you have a bowl of homemade yogurt near it, you enjoy it more.

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