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.

Sometimes Breakfast: YooBerries

Sometimes a breakfast can be as simple as strawberries and yogurt. In this modern world most of us trying to be fit and fast. But most of the time the cereal breakfast is just daunting and again in the weekdays we don't really have time for a tasty start to the day. It takes 1 minute to put cereal in a bowl and pour the milk in it, and it takes 1.5 minutes to put strawberries and honey to the bowl and process it with the hand blender, put the yogurt on top. Here you go the perfect breakfast you add some healthy cereal or muesli on top if you like which will up to 2 minutes but i promise it would be much tastier than regular cereal breakfast. I used Greek yogurt in this recipe you can either buy one or make your own Greek yogurt as thick as you would like. Mark Bittman beautifully explains (in the video below) how we make Greek yogurt in my family. Actually, our Greek yogurt is called "suzme yogurt", the literal meaning is drained yogurt. In Turkey "suzme yogurt" is very popular and it is rather sour, salty. It makes really good the Turkish yogurt drink so called "ayran". I will put up some delicious ayran recipes soon although most of the foreigners doesnt really enjoy the traditional one which i looveee. Anyways back to the breakfast: you can make your own greek yogurt without using salt and you can use it in this recipe. In that way, at least you can make sure that haven't use excessive amount of thickeners.

Ingredients (makes 1 portion):

1/3 cups of fresh strawberries

1 cup of greek yogurt

2 tbsp honey

1. Put the strawberries in a bowl and add 2 tbsp honey and roughly chop it with a hand blender.

2. Add the yogurt and mix with the spoon.

3. top it with 1 or 2 strawberries.