Stuffed Peppers: Turkish Style

Stuffed vegetables are one of the main and probably the most consumed  and loved dish in Turkish households. It can be stuffed in many different ways, as you wonder through the country, trying stuffed vegetables from different regions you can see many variations. Two main difference everywhere in the country is either stuffing them with ground meat filling or just with vegetarian filling. The meat filling can have different spices and also rice in it. My favorite is the one without meat so called "zeytin yagli". Another main distinction in this dish is stuffing either dried vegetables or fresh ones. In my opinion, if you are stuffing fresh vegetables i think you should make it vegetarian and for dried vegetables using a meat filling is a better option. Make sure you put loads of fresh dill when you are using meat in the filling. Vegetarian filling can be just rice and spices or in addition to that it can have pine nuts, sugar, and small sized dried grapes.  

Uncooked stuffed peppers 

In Turkey the most common stuffed vegetable is pepper, unlike Europe or US Turkey has smaller, crunchier, and of course better tasting peppers. So the size of the stuffed vegetable is much smaller sometimes it can even be a bite size. The second most popular vegetable is zucchini (courgette), and i think the third would be the dried eggplant (aubergine). Usually my mum throws couple of stuffed tomatoes into whatever stuffed vegetable she is  cooking. But if you are planning to do so as well i would advise you to use the oven. I will come to that in how to cook the stuffed vegetables. After stuffing the vegetable we usually close the top of the vegetable with a piece of tomato this will help you keep the stuffing inside the vegetable and the sour tomato will leave a beautiful flavor.

Another way of making stuffed vegetables is using grape leaves it is very common even in England you can find stuffed grape leaves but it is never as good as your mum's stuffed grape leaves if you are Turkish, Middle-eastern, or Greek . My parents usually stuff the grape leaves with vegetarian filling and it can be eaten cold or warm. When my grandmother or my mum is using meat filling they stuff the cabbage leaves. In the western part of the country around Aegean sea coast it is popular to stuff the pumpkin/zucchini flowers. 

Cooked stuffed pepper

The cooking is both straight forward and tricky. I usually boil them some people cook them in the oven which make sense if you are especially using tomatoes.  You don't want to overcook them the rice should be  still in good shape. I haven't manage to cook them perfectly yet but i will let you know when i do so. I will give you one i learned from my mother, if you are using fresh grape leaves and you want them to look green after cooking you want to slice lemons when you are boiling them. 

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

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:) 

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.

Potato Salad with Celery and Fennel

Back in Christmas time me and my lovely fiance, who was in town for 3 weeks only, visited the fish house at Brough Market. He had the famous fish and chips and i had a sea bass with veggies. I had fennel in the veggies and it was assorted with the olive oil. I previously tried using fennel in the salad etc... Although I have been a big fan of distinctive tastes such as rocket, celery, ginger; fennel never really worked out for me. But that fennel at the fish restaurant was absolutely my taste. So last weekend when i went for grocery shopping, I bought some veggies including fennel. And the other day I made an incredible salad and used the boiled fennel. Also I have to tell you i tried the boiled fennel just with extra-virgin olive oil which was absolutely heavenly. I think it goes very well with the fish, you won't be disappointed i promise.

One thing you need to be careful about is not over boil the fennel. You don't want it to loose it's texture, you want it to be a bit crunchy but still boiled.

Salad Ingredients:

• 1 fennel bulb
• 400 grams baby potatoes
• 3 celery leaves
• 2 artichokes (you can take this out if you don't like artichoke)
• 1/3 bunch dill
• 1 red chili
• 2 short spring onions (or chives for taste)

Dressing:

• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 lemon juice

Boil 1 liter water with 1 tbsp of salt, slice the fennel and soak them to the boiling water for 3-5 minutes. Drain the fennel with the help of a large spoon set them aside. Using the same boiling water put the baby potatoes with skins on and cleaned artichoke inside the boiling water. Let them boil until tender. Drain and slice the baby potatoes (if they are big) with skin on and dice the artichoke. Chop the celery leaves, and dill roughly.

Squeze the lemon and olive oil in a separate bowl mix them until you obtain a green- yellow looking mixture add sea salt if necessary. Pour the dressing in to the salad and mix it. Then spread finely chopped red chili on top.

Cocunut Tofu Curry

After a long and exhausting day i get to try a coconut recipe.

This recipe is adapted from The Minimalist from Nytimes. http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/the-minimalist-curried-tofu-with-soy-sauce/
It turned out really good, i twisted the recipe a bit here is my version of it.

• 1 large Spanish onion
• 1 pack of soft organic tofu
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 2 tbsp of soya sauce
• 15-20 pine kernels
• 1/2 tbs cumin
• 1/2 tbs ground sweet red pepper
• a pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil

I have followed the instructions given in the Mark Bitman's recipe. Diced the onions and fry it until it is soft and brown. Add the cumin and let the cumin toast.add tyhe pine kernels keep stirring and add the coconut milk (The Coconut milk was solidified when i opened it i was surprised cause i have never worked with coconut milk before but it turns out it might happen when it is cold around and considering the Siberian freeze in UK... Anyhow don't panic when your milk is solidified or separated mine turned out fine when it was heated.) The coconut milk has a heavenly smell when it is heated. Then I added the tofu and soy sauce salt and pepper for taste. It is very easy to cook and very tasty as well. Highly recommended:)

Food = Dilemma

I decided to be a vegetarian (consuming fish and diary) about two years ago, when I moved to states I figured how different meat tastes comparing to Turkey. At the time, I also had a bias to be a vegetarian. As a child I never really consumed meat and diary products willingly. When I was five I witnessed a sacrifice and since that day my parents forced me to eat animal products. My dad prepared milks professionally mixed with egg and honey in the mornings until one day I discovered the cracked eggs at the kitchen trash. I have always been criticized to be a picky eater, my mum spend more time at kitchen because of me, and I guess my parents still feel frustrated (mainly concerned) about my eating habits. So I had to carry my picky eater guilt all around for years now.

After I moved to States, I was finally felling free to eat what I actually wanted. Ohh the land of freedom, I simply love this piece of land... But this time my subconscious was bothering me and kept telling me "you should consume protein!" and after 8 months of struggle between my picky and responsible self I decided to quit eating red meat (never consumed pork due to religious reasons), and chicken. And end up eating pasta or salad almost always:)

However, after two years my responsible self emerged and now she is telling me my memory skills is not as good as it was two years ago. And guess what, she is telling the truth. I don't know if it is related with my eating habits, or some other reason (e.g. ageing), but my memory is not as good as it used to be.

Considering this I decided to visit the Fish House at victoria park road in the rainy Sunday. Btw about 8 months ago i also gave up eggs and fish. So I went there and ordered the catch of the day(i cant remember the name of the fish now:( ). And there it was poor fish grilled, battered with olive oil, fleshy, juicy, served with roasted potatoes, baby tomatoes, garlic. I do adore cooking, i think its an art and I consumed this piece of art end up enjoying mostly the vegetables:) Especially garlic tasted like candy to me. What's wrong with me? Am I a vegetarian or born to be vegetarian and forced to be a carnivore. My point is, food has always been a dilemma for me. I love eating, but I always get confused about what to eat. Maybe we shouldn't put ourselves strict rules and try to enjoy responsibly from what is good for our minds & bodies.

I found this talk after I finished with my post;