Caponata - Italian aubergine antipasti by Jamie Oliver

Naturally, what else I should have carried with me to family gathering at the weekend than my new 2kg Jamie Oliver book. During the train trip I has read Jamie's experiences in Italy, what he had studied from the local Italian people. While I was reading I had already decided what I will cook today for lunch. My choice was the Italian caponata. 

This Sicilian food is eaten by the Italians warm as vegetable side dish or cold as antipasti. The key of the caponata's success is the good quality of ingredients, the fresh aubergine, the racy tomato and the vinegar. 

Ingredients (for 4 person):
2 bigger aubergine
5 bigger tomato
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 small banch of fresh parsley
sea salt, freshly ground black pepper
1 heaped teaspoon oregano
2-3 tablespoon white wine vinegar
one handful of green olives (seed removed)

olive oil

1. Wash the vegetables, cut the aubergine, tomato into bigger pieces, peel the onion and garlic. Chop finely the onion and cut into thin slices the garlic cloves. 

2. Pour the olive oil in a bigger sauce pan, add the aubergine, season with oregano and salt and cook for approx. 4-5 minutes till golden brown. 

3. Add the onion, garlic slices and the finely chopped parsley and cook for another few minutes.  If the aubergine seems too dry, pour more olive oil. Add the olives and pour all with the vinegar and season with pepper. When all the vinegar has evaporated, add the chopped tomato and steam for 15 minutes. Our caponata is ready, when the tomato gets soft as well.

4. Taste before serving. If it's needed season with salt, pepper and sprinkle with some fresh parsley. 

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Turkish stuffed pepper - Etli biber dolması + a little Turkish cuisine science

On Saturday walking in the Big Market I was thinking about the weekend menu when I saw that beautiful bell peppers are sold at one vendor. They had just perfect size for the Turkish stuffed peppers so I bought four pieces immediately.

Dolma

The Turkish word dolma (means "stuffed, filled") comes from the Turkish verb dolmak which means "to be filled". The dolma word is used for stuffed dished, for instance vegetables, meat, fish, fruits and even desserts.

The dolma's tipical filling is rice, minced meat, onion, tomato or tomate sauce, pine nut, olive oil, mint, dill, salt, pepper, sugar and raisin (if it's olive oiled). It can be served as meze, cooked in olive oil or as warm dish filled with minced meat.

The neigbour countries of Turkey took over the use of the word dolma, dolmadaki in Greece, t'olma in Georgia, tolma in Armenia, dolmeh on Persian areas, dolme in Arabian countries, sarmi in Bulgaria, sarma in Macedonia, sarma, which is known more as "stuffed cabbage" in Hungary and Romania.

When the dolma doesn't contain minced meat, it's often called yalancı dolma which means "fake" dolma.

The most popular dolma dishes are:

Vegetable dishes:

- Yaprak dolması vagy sarma - stuffed grape leaves

- Biber dolması - stuffed pepper (generally green or red peppers are used)

- Kabak dolması - stuffed zucchini, squash, pumpkin

- Kabak çiçeği dolması - töltött zucchini blossom

- Lahana dolması - stuffed cabbage

Besides the above dishes in the Turkish kitchen stuffed tomato, eggplant, leek, quince and onions are prepared.

Fish and seafood

Midye - mussel

Hamsi dolması - stuffed anchovy (Anchovy is a type of black sea fish and very popular in Istanbul)

Uskumru dolması - stuffed mackarel

Desserts

Kadayıf dolması - This is the only one Turkish dessert which is called dolma. (Clicking on the link you will see how it looks.)

But let's turn back to my small Turkish stuffed peppers, we say Etli biber dolması in Turkish. The word etli means "meaty".

Ingredients:

4 db middle size bell pepper (red or green)

For the filling:

20 dkg minced beef meat

1 small onion or 4 fresh onion (finely chopped)

1/4 cup parsley (finely chopped)

2 bigger or 4 smaller tomato (inner part)

1/4 cup rice

olive oil

2-3 tablespoon water

salt, pepper (to taste)

+ 1-2 tablespoon tomato sauce mixed with 3 tablespoon olive oil and 2 dl water

1. Wash the peppers, then cut off their tops but don't throw them away. We will need them later, since we will put them back after we fill our peppers. Clean out the seeds from the peppers.

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

3. For the filling mix the ingredients with a spoon and your hand. Fill the peppers with the ready-made mixture, but don't push the filling hard from the top only pat softly. At the end put the "hats' back on the peppers.

4. Lay the peppers in a big oven-proof pot sideways then pour the tomato sauce-olive oil-water mixture next to them. Bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes with a lid half covered. If the rice get soft in the filling, we can be sure that the peppers are ready too.

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Turkish stuffed eggplant - Karnıyarık

At the weekend I was in Turkish mood again. Almost for a week I haven't prepare any Turkish food, I started to have withdrawal symptoms. 

On Sunday I undertook to cook the lunch. This is interesting only because once in a month when I go to my hometown to visit my parents, I enjoy that I'm a kid again, mum cooks, so I can get rest a bit as well. However on Fridays and Saturdays I always bake together with mum. We chat meanwhile something stupendous is born in the oven. 

Regarding the Sunday lunch, because there was minced meat, fresh eggplant at home and mum hasn't eaten karnıyarık yet, I prepared this for her.

The Turkish word karnıyarık means originally "split belly". This dish is made and as beloved by all in every part of Turkey  as the eggplant itself too. At least 100 different kind of Turkish recipes exist for the use of eggplant. By going over the ingredients and cooking metohd, most probably it springs from southeastern and eastern part of Turkey. The filling is made from onion, garlic, tomato, fresh parsley and minced meat (originally with lamb meat).

One of the well-known version of karnıyarık is imam bayaldı with a small difference. Imam bayaldı is made without meat and served as cold appetizer, meze but the karnıyarık is served generally warm.

Ingredients:

3 small eggplant

30 dkg minced lamb meat (or beef. This time I used minced chicken breast)

1 medium onion (finely chopped)

3 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)

40 dkg tomato (peeled and chopped)

2 tablespoon tomato paste 

1 green paprika (finely chopped)

1 bunch of parsely

1-2 tablespoon olive oil

salt, pepper

+ for topping: 1 tomato (divide into 6 thin slices)

                           6 thin slices green paprika

1. Wash the eggplants, cut down their green ends, cut in half lengthwise and salt. Set aside for 10 minutes then wash them again with clean water, put them next to each other in an ovenproof pan. Place in the 200°C preheated oven for 20-30 minutes covered with aluminium foil until they get almost totally soft. You can prod with a fork and check when they are ready. 

2. Meanwhile simmer the onion with some olive oil. Add the minced meat, the garlic and the chopped paprika. When the meat is simmered, add the tomato, the tomate paste and season to taste. Cook it ready within approx. half an hour, stirring it from time to time. Remove from the heat and stir in most of the chopped parsley.

3. When the eggplants are ready, take out from the oven (but don't switch it off), with the help of two spoon take out the inner part of the eggplant but without cutting through to the skin on the opposite side and leaving 13 mm uncut at either end and let them cool for a while. Stuffed the epplants with the meat, decorate with the tomato and paprika slices and put it back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes. 

Serve warm. You can eat with bulgur or garlic yoghurt sauce as well, but it can be a main dish  in itself too. This is one of my favorite Turkish eggplant dish.

Afiyet olsun!

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Turkish Fried Zucchini Salad - Gazientep style (Kızarmıs Kabak Pıyazı)

And here is another Turkish appetizer for the hot summer days. It can be prepared as appetizer, meze or as a light lunch.

Where is Gazientep and what is its cuisine famous for? 

Gazientep is a city in south-east Turkey and one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The city's local dishes are many and very various which is the result of besides the history, the geography. The Gazientep kitchen includes a lot of meat, yoghurt, vegetables, red pepper, garlic, baked goods. The city is also famous for its special cooking techniques and utensils and also for the spices they use. Such as saffron (hasbir), tarragon (tarhın) stb.

The area's popular dishes which are counted here:

- lahmacun (a.k.a Turkish pizza, a thin dough topped with minced meat, generally lamb or beef. It's sprinkled with lemon juice, wrapped up with lettuce)

- çiğ köfte (meatball made with raw meat)

- zerde (Turkish dessert, sort of sweet pudding made from rice and coloured with saffron)

- firik pilav

- sarma and dolma (stuffed vegetables, stuffed cabbage and grape leave) 

Ingredients:
small zucchini(s) 
olive oil
boiled egg(s)
tomato(s)
red pepper flakes (if you like hot, you can use chili flakes as well)
salt, pepper to taste

Put a saucepan of water to boil on medium heat. When it boils, place the eggs in it and after reboiling cook them for 10-12 minutes.

While the eggs cook, wash the zucchini, cut in round slices. Heat up a pan with some olive oil and fry the zucchini slices until both sides take a light golden colour.

When everything is ready, place the zucchini slices in the middle of a plate, cut the eggs and tomatos into slices and arrange them around the zucchinis on the plate as well. Sprinkle with some salt, pepper and red pepper (or chili) flakes. In the end pour some olive oil on everything.

Afiyet olsun!

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Mücver - Turkish Zucchini Fritters

I know I was disappeared for a long time. Since my last post I spent a perfect week in Stockholm, the African summer arrived to Budapest as well and now I'm planning our holiday. I count the days, only 16 days left!! Wuhuuu!! :)

In Stockholm we cooked-baked a lot of delicious food, Turkish, Mexican, Italian etc and we had an awesome Turkish dinner with M's Turkish friends. First of all we wanted to entertain them at our place but in the end we were 8-10 of us so we organized it at our friends' place.

Everyone prepared something for the dinner. We brought baklava, Şekerpare, hummus, Pamuk poğaça, carrot salad with yoghurt and we made freshly the adanda kebab too. The guys made mücver, eggplant cream, green salad, bulgur and we drank Rakı (It is the Turkish national drink, an unsweetened, anise-flavoured alcoholic drink what is traditionally drunk with chilled water. More about  rakı in a later post.)  like we were in Istanbul. Meze with rakı... this combination reminds me always of our Turkey trip last year!


Meze is small plates of appetizers, served hot or cold, served for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Endless kind of meze are known, can be vegetarian, with beef, chicken or fish.


I bring now one of the popular Turkish meze-s, the mücver.

Ingredients:
1 piece of big zucchini
1/2 onion or 4 green onion
4 tablespoon parsley
4 tabelspoon dill
2 eggs
200 gr feta cheese or white cheese
1 cup spelt flour (I used half cup of wheat flour and half cup of spelt flour)
salt
pepper
+ olive oil for frying

Peel then grate the zucchini into a big bowl, sprinkle with salt and let drain for 5-10 minutes. After 10 minutes squeeze the zucchini with your hands to remove the unnecessary liquid from the bowl.




Add the finely chopped dill, parsley, onion, salt, pepper, feta cheese and eggs to the grated zucchini and mix well. Add the flour slowly to the mixture.


Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. Take a big tablespoon of mixture, place on the frying pan and flatten it with the spoon.


Fry them on each side until golden brown, 3-5 minutes.When they are ready, place the fritters on a paper towel to remove of the excess of the olive oil.


You can serve it hot or cold as meze, as you prefer, with garlicy Turkish yoghurt or cacik (Turkish cucumber salad with yoghurt and garlic).


Afiyet olsun!

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Spelt buns

In April I decided to try candida diet what I think everyone can do from time to time because of medical indication or without it as well to clean our body and get rid of the consumed sugar, flour and all the carbohydrates.

Before anyone would get frightened, luckily it is allowable to eat bread made of spelt flour during the diet therefore noone needs to fear of starvation. 

Rita's recipe proved a perfect choice. Though I have changed the recipe a little bit and baked in bun shape instead of bread, but I think both of them is very delicious and stodgy. 

Ingredients (appr. 6 buns):
25 dkg spelt flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoon seed (linseed, pumpkin seed, sesame seed etc.) - optional
3 tabelspoon olive oil
1 dl lukewarm water
3 tablespoon yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 180°C. 

In a big bowl mix the flour, salt, baking soda (drip some fresh lemon juice on it and let it bubble), the seeds. Add the liquid ingredients, the yoghurt, olive oil and that much lukewarm water to get a well kneadable, not too hard dough.

Divide the dough into 6 part, form buns from them, place them on a baking paper (what you grease with olive oil before) then cut X on their top with a sharp knife and sprinkle with some flour.

In the preheated oven bake the buns for around 30 minutes. 

You can bake them in bread form as well or smaller-larger bun form. It is very stodgy because of the spelt flour, not like a distended bread what you can buy in the supermarket or at many bakery.

1-1- smaller bun is always enoguh for me for one dining therefore the above amount buns can be enough for 3-4 days.  

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