chocolate muffins with white chocolate chunks and St. Patric's day decorations

It is a rainy cold day here in London but i think the weather conditions is not going to stop the Britons to celebrate the St. Patric's day. Some weeks ago there was a post in this blog on the pancake day. Let me remind you what pancake day is: during the transition from winter to spring according to the Christianity consumption of some foods such as butter, eggs are restricted for purifying purposes. This time of the year is called lent. However at the St. Patric's day the constraints of the lent is lifted and at the beginning of  the  17th century it became a festive day so it has become another excuse for celebrations.

Muffin with white chocolate chunks

Originally St. Patric's day is representing the arrival of Christianity to Ireland however this St. Patric's day is evolved into  a celebration of Irish culture especially in commonwealth countries and USA.  Nowadays during the celebrations wearing green, drinking Guinness beer , and using shamrock as a clothing item became a custom. According to the wikipedia St. Patric arrived to Ireland with a three leaf shamrock representing the trinity. Hence shamrock is the symbol of the St. Patric's day. 

Dry ingredients, muffin tin, muffins with St. Patric's day decorations

I was going to bake cupcakes but the feedback i received from friends made me bake muffins instead.  My friends think that the cake of cupcakes are less tastier. But when you are placing the frosting there is a disadvantage associated with muffins since they rise uniformly so you end up with a rough surface. So the icing doesn't look perfect. But the taste is worth it! 

Ingredients (yields 10 - 12 muffins)

• 1 cup chopped white chocolate chunks
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cups of butter unsalted
• 2 tbsp granular sugar
• 1/4 cups of soft brown sugar
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 5 grams of vanilla powder (you can alternate this with 1 tsp vanilla extract)
• 1 3/4 cups self raising flour 

Recipe

1. Set the oven to 180 C/ 360 F and line or grease your muffin tin
2. In a bowl mix the granular sugar, cocoa powder, flour,  baking powder 
3. Add the chocolate chunks to the mixture mix lightly with a spoon
4. Crack the egg to another bowl  add the vanilla powder and beat it heavily
5. Add the butter an sugar to the bowl and beat it with an electric mixer
6. Add the milk to the mixture and keep beating in medium speed
7. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix it lightly with a spatula or spoon until the flour disappears 
8. Spoon the mixture to the muffin tin
9. Bake it for 15-30 mins (mine took 20 mins) 

Icing: 

• 200 grams of white chocolate
• 3 tbsp light cream cheese
• 1 tbsp icing sugar 
• 1 tbsp green food colouring

1. Melt the chocolate in a bowl by placing the bowl in a hot water
2. Dip the top surface of the cooled muffins into the melted white chocolate  
3. Wait for the chocolate to solidify you can put them into the fridge for 5-10 mins to speed the process
4. Mix the food colouring , cream cheese, and icing sugar and draw 

Decorated hearth shaped muffins 

Creamy Mushroom Soup

It is a grey and gloomy day here in London, so are the pictures in this post. Mushrooms are a big part of my diet especially chestnut and portobello mushrooms are the ones that I use probably the most. But shitake mushrooms are my favorite in terms of taste and texture. I used to make this soup with shitake mushrooms back in States as they were available in local grocery store all year long. But they are harder to find in London at least in my local grocery store. So I used button and oyster mushrooms instead. It is a very tasty soup and I highly recommend you to try this recipe if you are a mushroom fan like myself. I have been making this soup since 2008 and the recipe is originated from the blog called Ev cini.

Oyster mushrooms, button mushroom, Spanish onion

Chopped onions and mushrooms sizzling with olive oil

Mushroom soup with toasted bread 

Ingredients (4 serving):

• 10 button mushrooms
• 12 oyster mushrooms
• 500 grams of warm/room temperature milk
• 500 grams of warm water
• 4 tbsp olive oil 
• 4 tbsp flour (i used self raising)
• 1 medium size spanish onion 
• 1/2  tsp freshly grounded black pepper

Recipe

1. Finely chop the onions
2. Chop the mushrooms in small sizes 
3. In a non-stick pan/pot caramelise the  onions with 2 tbsp olive oil 
4. Add the chopped mushrooms to the pan 
5. Let them cook until the mushroom juice is evaporated (at this point mushrooms should be more brownish and much smaller in size)
6. Take the cooked mixture out of the pan
7. To an empty pan (i recommend non-stick again) add 2 tbsp olive oil and 4 tbsp flour
8. Cook it in low by stirring until the flour looks tanned
9. Add the cooked mushroom and onion mixture to the pan with flour 
10. Add the black pepper and keep stirring
11. Add the milk slowly to the pan and stir heavily, bring the stove to boil
12. Add the  warm water
13. When the soup is boiled serve it to the bowls and add some chopped parsley on top 

Ricotta Cheese and Three Fresh Herb Muffin

In this post i decided to let the picture speak about the food. The savory muffins were delicious and i used the ricotta cheese i bought from La Dolce Vita Italian Fair. I will write more about it soon in another post. Now enjoy the pictures and scroll down for the recipe. 

Cooked savory muffins

Step by Step Muffin Dough: thyme leaves, sun flower seeds, muffin dough.

Dry ingredients with three herbs

Savory muffins at the silicone hearth shaped muffin tin

Savory ricotta and three fresh herbs muffins

Ingredients: (yields 8 - 12 muffins)

• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 cup yogurt 
• 100 grams of ricotta cheese (about 1/3cups)
• 1/3 cup sun flower seeds
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp apple cider
• 1/2  1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 egg 
• 6 branches of fresh basil (finely chopped )
• 6 branches of dill
• 12 branches of fresh wild thyme

Recipe:

1. Wash and chop the fresh herbs (for thyme tear the leaves and throw away the rest) and set them aside for drying or towel dry them 
2. Toast the sun flower seeds with 1/2 tsp salt 
3. Set your oven to 360 F/180 C and grease or line your muffin tin 
4. Leave the salt at the pan and take the toasted sun flower seed out to a bowl
5. Add the flour, baking powder, salt to the bowl mix it lightly
6. Add the finely chopped basil, fresh thyme, and finely chopped dill to the dry mixture and lightly mix it  
7. Crack the egg to another bowl and add the apple cider beat it with a whisk 
8. Add the yogurt and keep whisking
9. Add ricotta cheese to the liquid mixture and keep whisking
10. Add the liquid mixture to dry mixture just mix it with a spatula until the flour disappears (do not over mix it) and spoon it to the muffin tins  (this mixture still will be more dense than your regular fluffy muffin dough)
11. bake it for 15-30 mins mine took 20 mins

Glazed Vegetables Revisited

Baby potatoes, bugs-bunny carrots, bird eye chili, lime, and lemon

Pinterest is a great website to roam around and get some ideas on how to make and be creative with cooking/baking. When i was checking the pins added by the people i followed on pintesrest i came across to a beautifully taken picture of glazed carrots. They glazed the carrots with olive oil, cumin, and lime. It was so beautiful so i decided to make my glazed vegetables with lime juice as well. 

Glazed vegetables with olive oil lime juice and bird eye chili

When i was on my everyday grocery shopping i saw the carrots as my friends calls the bugs bunny carrots and i picked them up to make glazed vegetables.  i cleaned them get rid of the green part and boiled them and boiled baby potatoes with skin on. once the carrots are boiled then it is easy to peel the skin of the carrots. I peeled it because it is more shiny and the color is more vibrant on the inside. Then i lined my tin with baking paper, added some bird eye chili (it is extremely hot use it with caution), olive oil, sea salt and left them at 350 F /180 C in the oven. And for potatoes i used the same procedure but left the skins on and cut them in  half. After 15 mins i took both of the vegetables out and added lime juice and finely chopped parsley on top of the veggies. It was looking good and tasting good as well :) Highly recommended. 

Glazed baby potatoes with bird eye chili, parsley, and lime juice

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Choclate Chip Cookie Dough Chilled in the Fridge for 24 Hours

I would like to start by expressing my graditude to Esma for making the beautifully taken pictures possible. 

We all have a love relationship with chocolate from early ages. I can't recall the first time i met chocolate but i remember the big box of chocolates with hazelnuts that my parents used to keep in somewhere i can not reach. As years go by, i started to fell apart with chocolate and still unless it is not orange flavoured i don't really have much affection for it. I am now trying to re-establish my relation with chocolate by following the path led by artisan bakers. Although the chocolate chip cookie sound like a not so serious step for my ambitions on chocolate, I believe that on anything in life you have got to get the fundamentals right to move forward. So if you can do the fundamentals perfectly, then you can add on it. 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Truffles

According to the NYT article the chocolate chip cookie is coming from a local baker living near Boston, Mass and since then it has been the regular item on bakeries and your local coffee shop. Even the packaged versions are sold in the selves of the supermarkets probably packed with loads of preservatives. In the NYT article they interviewed with several bakeries and try to understand the  best technique used to make the perfect cookie. According to the article the secret is chilling the dough! 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I used the recipe given in Cafe Fernando because it was using the least amount of eggs that I could find on the internet. I used a mixture of chocolates to make the cookies including the leftovers from the strawberry tuxedo recipe so there was white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate. Later on, when I was eating the cookies, I would say I like the taste of the white chocolates probably the most. So next time i am baking cookies, I will try to use the cocoa in the dough and use only white chocolate chuncks. The cookies turned out pretty good crunchy on the outside and inside is moist and chewy. I think I kept them in the oven a bit long. I think it would be more chevy if I took the tray out when the cookies were melted and still looking white and fluffy.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients (makes 20 cookies): 

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/2 tsp. baking soda (you can use less, loads of it makes the cookies bitter)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup butter at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp of vanilla powder 
• 1 1/4 cups chocolate chunks

1. Put the butter in a bowl and add the sugars and beat it with an electric mixer in high.
2. Add the eggs mix until you get a  creamy textured mixture. 
3. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet while beating with the electric mixer
5. Add the chocolate chunks and fold them into the dough with the help of a spatula. 
6. Refrigerate the dough 24 to 36 hours or more.
7. After 36 hours set the oven to 360 F /180 C, line your baking tray and take the dough out and make truffles out of it. 
8. Leave generous amount of space between truffles and bake 10-15 mins. 
9. The cookie should be still fluffy, soft, and tanned a little or white when you take out of the oven.

Pasta Salad with Halloumi and Mushroom

Let me mention Mark Bittman again, I might look like i am obsessed with Bittman but really i think his approach is admirable that is why in this blog i always mention his recipes and his food philosophy. Bittman says he prefer more sauce and less pasta and i would say i am at the same wagon with him. However, there is an exception on this rule, if we are talking about the quality, freshly made pasta then the equation changes. In this recipe i am making a pasta with loads of veggies and i would like to call it a salad, or a veggie dish rather than a pasta. Because essentially it is a veggie dish rather than pasta. I don't want to give the exact reipe for this since i want you to mix the ingredients on your taste.

I used pasta shells on this dish, around 250 grams. 2 big and 12 small  mushrooms, 2 courgettes, 150 grams of hallomi cheese, half a bunch of parsley and some coriander, you need to have chilies in this dish and even garlic would be very nice i didn't put any but do add them if you are willing to try it.

I chopped the mushrooms and courgettes and drizzled extra virgin olive oil seasoned with sea salt. I left them in preheated oven for about 25-30 mins at 370 F/ 180 C. Hallomi cheese i baked in oven 8-10 mins at 370 F/ 180 C but you can grill it if you like. Then i cooked the pasta shells for about 6-7 mins until al dente and mix all of the ingredients. Finally add the finely chopped parsley and coriander, you can use basil instead of coriander and you can also add some freshly grounded black pepper.  If i had chilies i would add them at this point too. Again it is up to you play with the amount of the ingredients you can use shiitake or chestnut mushrooms instead of button ones and you can add different herbs. If you want more cheese or different cheese types you can go for feta cheese. You can even change the cheese with yogurt or sour cream. I really like this light pasta salad and te best thing about this recipe is you don't fry anything once you are done with the chopping everything is pretty easy an straightforward. 

An Experiment Fails: Frozen Chocolate Covered Banana Bites

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT TRY IT AT HOME! 

Seriously Don't! :) 

During my typical journey to school I take London overground and i can check the pictures at pinterest on this part of the journey. The other day i was roaming around pinterest  and I was also looking for some easy snack recipe ideas. Then I saw a gorgeous picture of chocolate covered frozen banana bites and clicked for the recipe. The recipe was using pure peanut butter and bitter chocolate to cover the bananas. I don't have any allergies and the picture was amazing so i thought i would give it a try. On my way to home I stopped by in the grocery store picked up the purest peanut butter i could find which was unsweetened peanut butter with palm oil and sea-salt. Oh well it is sea-salt it can not be that bad. Then i picked up bananas and 70% chocolate. When i came home i chopped the chocolate measured 1/3 cups, 1/3 cups peanut butter and microwaved those two for about a minute. I chopped the bananas and dipped them into this mixture and lied them into a baking paper covered tin. I sprinkled unsweetened coconut flakes on top and froze it overnight. According to the recipe it was suppose to taste like vanilla ice cream. Although they looked very pretty the taste was quite horrific. So if you are going to dip fruits in chocolate don't use peanut butter, if you are going to then use just 1 tbsp for 1/3 cups chocolate. I think that is enough to give flavor. The taste was quite bad but i think i have got some nice pics and a lesson out of it so it was worth to try. 

Orange and Chocolate Muffin

I promised my colleagues that I will bake for them. So i decided to bake them the lemon and popyseed muffin but then, although it would be a bit risky, I decided to try something new. I have been thinking about muffin variations and since I am a big fun of both citrus and chocolate I wanted to put together this two ingredients in muffin. I picked orange and googled for recipes on orange and choclate muffins. I will tell you how I search for recipes, I type my key words in Google image search and look at the pictures. If there is an artisan picture of the food I check the web site. So it is a trick I use to spot the artisan baking websites/recipes. However i couldn't manage to find one with loads of orange and minimum eggs, so i made up my own recipe.

Here is a bit information on the different types of muffins. Muffin originally refer to bread the muffin recipes given in this blog are usually american style muffins and they are yeast free. The English muffins are usually made with yeast and they tend to be thinner but wider usually disk shaped. The English muffins are spitted into two and served toasted they tend to resemble  light bread. The American style muffins are more like a cake and it comes in all different forms in sweet and savory.


Finally some fun-facts about muffins from wikipedia: The corn muffin is the official state muffin of Massachusetts. The blueberry muffin is the official state muffin of Minnesota. The apple muffin is the official state muffin of New York.

Here is the new member of our muffin family:

Ingredients: (yields 16-20 muffins)

• 4 cups of flour
• 2 eggs 
• 1/2 cups orange zest
• 1/4 cups orange juice
• 3/4 cups +1 tbsp soft brown sugar
• 1/4 cups granulated white sugar
• 1 cup +1/3 cups chocolate (i used 100 grams dark chocolate (70%) and 100 grams orange flavored chocolate) 
• 1+1/2 cups Greek yogurt 
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cups light olive oil 
• 1/2 cups coconut oil

Recipe:

1. Grade the skins of 6 small oranges finely (1/2 cups)
2. Chop the chocolates in small cubic pieces
3. Grease or line your muffin tin and set the oven to 180 C/ 375 F 
4. Crack the eggs in a bowl and beat heavily then add the orange zest keep beating add the brown sugar and keep beating then add the granulated sugar and whisk heavily (at this point you can use an electric  mixer that would make things a lot easier and quick)
5. Add the yogurt and keep whisking then add the oil to the liquid mixture. 
6. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients flour, chocolate, baking powder mix lightly.
7. Add the liquid mixture to the dry mixture mix lightly until the flour disappears.  
8. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tin and bake 15-30 mins depending on your oven. 

English Pancakes for Pancake Day

This morning my friend tweeted me about the pancake day and i wasn't aware of it until she explained what pancake day is. So to the best of my knowledge, today is the Shrove Tuesday, also called in French Mardi Gras meaning fat Tuesday. According to Catholic belief (or tradition i am not very knowledgeable in this matter) tomorrow is the first day of Lent, where forty days of cleaning begins. I assume it is the month of fasting, restraining from some things so the eve of lent is somewhat the last chance for some to eat flour, sugar, eggs, and butter since those foods are restricted during Lent. 

In this post we are going to present English Pancakes which differ from North American ones and looks more like the French crepes. The North American ones are puffier and this is done by using baking powder/soda and just like in muffins lightly mixing the liquid and dry ingredients until the flour disappears. English Pancakes  are thin and before it is cooked the mixture is very well mixed and more liquid. 

I have one problem with pancakes/crepes the fact that they smell like eggs, otherwise they are fun and easy to make  and the toppings are to die for. Therefore, I always try to prevent this egg smell i try to use best quality eggs, and i always add citrus zest to to the eggs and beat it heavily. If you have any other recommendations for preventing the egg smell on pancakes/cakes please comment below, i would love your suggestions:) 

Today i was talking about the pancake day with my British colleague and it turns out it is popular here in UK to have them with lemon and sugar topping where as in North America Maple syrup is more popular. Personally I try to be more creative about it, i tried nutella, lemon curd, cheese,  and several different types of jams before. It is up to you savory or sweet be creative with the topping. 

Ingredients: 

• 2 cups milk/yogurt
• Zest of 2 lemons 
• 2 cups of flour 
• 1/2 tbs salt
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 eggs

1. Zest 2 lemons in a bowl and add the eggs keep beating
2. Add the butter and milk
3. Combine the salt and flour in another bowl and  add the liquid mixture while whisking at this point you might want to use an electric mixer since you don't want and lumps in your mixture, then put the mixture to the fridge and eave it there for 1-2 hours. 
4. Heat the non-stick pan and start pouring liquid in thin layers and  flip it one the other side is cooked. 
5. Then use your favorite toppings and enjoy your pancakes/crepes.  

Easy Veggie Sushi Rolls

There are many kinds of sushi out there but in this post we are going to be covering rolled sushi so called makizushi. According to some sources sushi means seasoned rice, this makes the rice one of the most important ingredient in sushi. This means you need to know how to cook and season the rice , it is not rocket science but as easy as it seems cooking rice is one of the hardest thing to do in the kitchen. I think for any type of rice you are making you need to know the secret ingredient or that secret step, which is going to get you the perfect rice. However if you are aiming to make sashimi, it doesn't have rice in it so it is another story. The other important criterion is fresh ingredients, obviously. To me the garnish is important as well i would like my sushi to be served with loads of wasabi,  soy-sauce, and ginger pickles. Another important thing which effects the taste and smell of the sushi is the nori, I think the nori should be toasted otherwise the sushi smells a bit weird which is not good. So don't forget to toast your nori before starting rolling up your sushi. 

I have made this rolls a while ago so i won't give the exact recipe over here but i can give you another link which will take you to design*sponge where i have got this recipe in the first place.  It explains pretty well how to roll the sushi and exact amount of ingredients is given as well. So click here if you want to take a look into the original recipe. The original recipe uses sliced carrots but i grated my carrots because i wanted consistency in the texture since avocado and cucumber are not as crunch as carrots are. 

For those of you who are living in London i am sure you can find the required ingredients from anywhere but if you dont want to look around i have bought nori, soy sauce, wasabi powder, pickled gingers, and sushi rice from church street whole foods market. I bought the sushi rolling mat from well street Tesco and it was only 1 pound but saved my life you are going to need it badly when you are rolling. 

Finally i want to share an inspiring video from guardian on sushi making. The way they obtain the wasabi is so impressive, enjoy:) 

Banana and Coffee Flavored Whole Wheat Muffins

Most of the blogs i have visited doesn't have a multiple versions of one dish, so i want this blog have variety of options on muffins. I personally find easy to make muffins and in my opinion muffins are delicious treats. I would like the visitor have variety of options in this blog so it will save them searching on the internet or the cookbooks for recipes. I am planning to add sweet and savory muffin recipes to the blog and hopefully we will have a database of muffin recipes in a month or so.

The other day i was going through the recipes at the Minimalist column in NYT. If you read my previous posts you would guess i am a big fan of this column and i usually try the recipes given in minimalist column. I like how the videos are simple and short and i also like the way it has been presented by Mr. Bittman; I mean he is so natural and he is not trying to sell the recipe. When i was roaming around the videos i found the whole wheat muffin recipe and i decided to try it. It turned beteer than i thought here is the recipe:

Ingredients (yields 8 muffins)

• 2 1/2 cups & 4 tbsp whole wheat self raising flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup soft brown sugar
• 1 cup mashed banana
• 3 tbsp very strong coffee
• 1/2 cup greek yogurt

1. Grease your muffin tin and set the oven 180 C/ 375 F
2. Beat the egg in a bowl then add the brown and white sugar keep beating.
3. Add the mashed bananas & yogurt to the mixture.
4. Slowly add strong coffee to your mixture.
5. Melt the coconut butter in microwave or in a sauce pan and while mixing slowly add it to your the liquid mixture
6. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients whole wheat flour, salt, and baking powder.
7. Slowly add the liquid mixture to dry ingredients and dont mix it heavily. mix it with the help of a spoon until the dry ingredients disappear.
8. Split the mixture to the muffin tin and put it in to the preheated oven mine baked in 15 mins but it depends on your oven.

Wheat Salad with Feta Cheese and Basil

Bulghur is a widely used grain made from drum wheat. I will explain how bulghur have been made traditionally and still in the small villages farmers use the same technique to make bulgur from their home grown corps. First they boil the drum wheat and sun-dry it. Then the drum wheat can be broken into pieces with a very primitive machine featuring a heavy cylinder shaped stone rolling over the wheat. Or more labor intensive way could be using an old style mortar the wheat can be broken into pieces by using little water and repetitively crushing it in the mortar. The grade of the bulghur depends on how long you beat or rolled over the wheat. This process is now industrialised but still small farmers use the old fashion way of producing bulghur.

So here is what wikipedia says about the nutrition facts of 1 cup bulghur;

• Energy: 2003 kJ (479 kcal)
• Dietary fiber: 25.6 g
• Protein: 17.21 g
• Carbohydrate: 69 g whereof 0.8 g sugars
• Fat: 1.86 g whereof 0.2 g saturated fat
• Potassium: 574 mg
• Iron: 3.44 mg

• Glycemic Index: 46

In Turkey we have two different grades of bulghur. The one with smaller size called 'ince bulgur' it doesn't need to be properly cooked and it has been used with many different dishes. The regular sized bulghur have been used in pilav which is rice made with bulghur instead of rice (i dont know if it makes any sense but a well made bulghur pilav is very tasty). The regular sized bulghur has also been used in cold soups, even in stuffed vegetables or stuffed grape leaves. We currently have excessive amount of bulghur at home and we never really use it. So i decided to search for a nice recipe to make use of bulghur and found the bulghur salad with herbs recipe from BBC's recipes. Here is how i did it,

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup Bulghur Wheat
• 2 Cups Water
• 2 Branches Fresh Rosemary
• 4 Branches Fresh Basil
• 9 branches Fresh Mint
• 300 gr Cherry-tomatoes
• 200 gr Feta Cheese
• 1/2 Tsp Salt
• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil

1. Put the bulghur wheat, rosemarries, salt, and water in one pot and bring the stove to boil.
2. Wash and towel dry the basil and mint then finely chop the two herbs.
3. Dice the feta cheese
4. When the bulghur is drained the whole water in the pot fish out the rosemary.
5. Combine the herbs, cherry tomatoes, feta chesee, bulghur, and olive oil in a bowl.
6. When serving you can use some reserved feta and basil to make it look pretty.

Glazed Vegetables

Glazed vegetables are my favorite simple food, i love them so much and most of the time consume it as a main course. First I boil them then i glaze them with olive oil and put them in to the oven for 5-10 minutes (don't put the soft vegetables like broccoli, spinach etc. into the oven just drizzle some extra-virgin olive oil and serve). Dead simple, very tasty. You can either eat it with the main course or you can eat them by themselves. Highly recommended!

You dont really process the vegetables, so it boils down to the dipping sauce. You can use whatever suits your taste as a dipping sauce. Here is what i use,

1 Cup Greek Yogurt
1 Tbsp Red Pepper
1 Tbsp Zahter (A Palestinian Spice )
Salt for taste.

Lemon and Popyseed Muffins

Lemon is my favorite ingredient, and poppy seed is a plant my farmer grandparents have had been growing for years now. In my family traditionally we use the poppy seed for breads and lemon for salad except my mother she prefers lemon by itself like, she can have lemon as if she is having an orange. So those two popular items have been brought together by the Americans (I guess). The other day my friends wanted to get together for brunch and we decided to host it in our house. Since i have been obsessed with muffins these days, i decided to bake muffins with my two favorite ingredients. Then i set down on my beautiful mac and googled for the recipes. Although there is tons of lemon poppy seed recipes at the web it is not easy to find a good one. After some research and clicking on too many websites, i found a good one from your home based mom and i have as usual twisted the recipe a bit.

Muffin Ingredients (makes 8 muffins):

• 1 egg
• 1 cup greek yogurt
• 1/2 cups coconut oil (you can use butter)
• 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 6 lemon zest (Attention please this recipe is extremely lemony if you want it to be less lemon flavored use less lemons)
• 1 and 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 3 tbsp poppy seed
• 1/2 tsp salt

Icing:

• 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tbps and 1/2 tsp lemon juice

Steps:

1. Grate the zest of the 6 lemons
2. Combine the zest with 1/2 cups granulated sugar in a mortar, pestle the lemon and sugar by pressing and turning the stick in a drilling motion . (This will allow the essential oils extracted from the zest and integrate with sugar)
3. Add the brown sugar keep pestling.
4. Add the egg mix until you get a creamy texture. (at this point you can use an electric mixer we used a fork and man power since i had friends who wanted to participate making and baking process:))
5. Melt the coconut butter at the microwave or in a saucepan and let it cool then add it to the mixture slowly with a spoon while mixing.
6. Add the yogurt and keep mixing until you get a homogeneous mixture.
7. In a separate bowl mix the dry ingrediens flour, poppy seed, salt, baking powder.
8. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients mix until the flour disappears. (This part is important you do not want to over mix it you want sort of fully mixture rather then creamy one for muffins.)
9. Paper line of grease the muffin tray and spoon the mixture to the tray.
10. Pre-heat the oven 360F/180C and let the muffins bake for 15-20 mins with the help of toothpick check the muffins.
11. Mix the icing ingredients and pour the icing on top of the muffins.

Enjoy....

A failure: healthy muffins

I think a real blogger should not just post the successful recipes and also the failures so if you ever come across to something similar you should maybe consider improving the dish. I am obsessed with muffins and baking these days. i have tried the raspberry lemon muffin recipe from Cafe Fernando with blueberries couple of times and i loved it but i was striving for a healthy muffin. And there is a daily blog that i check almost everyday called simply breakfast. I decided to try the recipe for healthy breakfast muffins since it had loads of coconut in it. So i was excited to try the recipe and went down to the shop after work and had an accident during shopping with the olive oil ended up ruining my ugg boots :( Now that i think about it, it was a sign for me to not to bake these very healthy muffins. So here is the recipe,

• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 2/3 cup desiccated coconut
• 1/4 cup ground Almond
• 3 eggs
• 1 banana
• 1 Tbsp greek yogurt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 10-15 frozen blueberries

Combine everything and put them in muffin tin and pre-heated oven 350F until it is golden.

The original recipe has 2 Tbsp jam in it. It occurred to me that it wouldn't be sweet but honestly i though you would get a good flavor because of the massive amount of coconut. Also one more irritating think about this muffin is the presence of eggs is so dominant. I am not an egg lover so it was pretty hard for me to consume even half of it. When we were discussing with my friend we thought you might be able to get something out of it if you consume it like pancakes with maple syrup. If you like eggs and coconut it might be a good choice for you but not my taste...

Turkish Ravioli (Manti) with Mushroom Filling

I am not big on blogging world but every once in a while i read through blogs. So far i can state that the women bloggers tend to give recipes on their blogs. To validate my assumption, i wont break the tradition and give a recipe of vegetarian manti. For those who are not familiar with manti it is fresh pasta with ground beef filling. It is a traditional food and you should definitely eat if you are planning to visit Turkey. I don't know if it is purely Turkish or originated from middle east though. But yeah i changed the recipe a little and used a whole wheat flour, and used a vegetarian filling instead of ground beef. That made the manti a little bigger in size than it should be but you can make the filling more smooth with a food processor and come up with smaller sizes. The smaller the size is the better. It kinda shows how professional you are on making manti. And the other difficulty i came across was working with whole wheat flour. I used a regular whole wheat flour and when i mixed it with a liquid it was very sticky. i would recommend the all purpose flour. If you can find, get the ones made for pasta. (And to be honest regular flour tastes better:))

What you need for dough:

1. 1 egg

2. 2 cups of flour (i used whole wheat, you can go for all purpose)

3. Water

Ingredients for filling

1. finely chopped small onion

2. finely chopped portobello mushroom (any mushroom will do the job)

3. 1 green chilli

4. finely chopped parsley

5. grated mozzarella cheese

7. pinch of salt, freshly grounded black pepper, dried rosemary

8. two table spoons of olive oil

Before starting dough making, prepare the filling. You need to cook the onion first with olive oil then add the rest. Be creative with the filling, add the flavours you like. And to add the mozzarella you need to wait until the cooked ingredients cooled down.

So you need to mix the ingredients for the dough until you get something feels like dough. it shouldn't be very sticky. You will be rolling out the dough, so you want it to have a smooth consistency. If the dough looks too big then divide it into pieces and roll out the pieces. Then make square pieces from rolled dough with knife and put the filling inside the squares. Pull the opposite sides of the squares together and stick them to one another (that process takes forever). After you are done you can bake them and cook in a boiling water or without baking freshly cook them in boiling water.

And be creative with the sauce, traditional Turkish sauce for manti is yoghurt mixed with crushed garlic and melted butter with powder red pepper is added on top.

afiyet olsun...

P.S. comment below if you know where manti is originated from.