sazji

I recently had a cold summer soup common (with many variations) in the Mediterranean area of Turkey (Anamur, Mersin, Adana, Silifke) which reminded me very much of Gazpacho, but I actually liked it much better. Something about the texture of gazpacho doesn't quite sit right with me. But if you are feeling adventurous, try this: Batirik 6 medium tomatoes, grated (the peel will be left behind in you hand) 1 c fine bulgur 1 onion, finely chopped 3 small cucumbers - crosshatch the ends by hitting with a knife, then slice to get small pieces 1 bunch parsley 1 bunch (around 12) scallions 5-6 sprigs mint 1-2 tablespoons pepper paste (you'll need to go to a middle eastern grocery for this) 1/3 c olive oil 1/2 c peanuts, pan roasted, processed till fine but not to peanut butter! 1/2 c sesame seeds, pan roasted till lightly brown, processed finely 1/3 c tahini, "fried" in a small pan 1 c or a little less of shredded cooked cabbage Juice of several lemons (to taste) Water Salt 1/2 t cumin (optional) Grate tomatoes, add bulgur and let soak for half an hour. knead with onion, parsley and mint. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead together. The pepper paste is generally salty but add salt to taste if necessary. At this point you can do one of two things: 1. form mixture into "croquettes," and serve with leaves of romaine lettuce, with lemon juice on top, or 2. Add water until you get a soup, and add lemon juice to taste, chill. I have also done it with lots more tomatoes instead of adding water. It's not traditional but it was damn good. The amount of tahini is variable too - some people use a lot more. I've also seen recipes including chopped peppers.

I live where unsweetened baking chocolate is unavailabe. So far I've managed to get it brought by good-hearted guests from the US, which is fine for me. But now several people want the recipe for a vey good brownie I make, and I'm not sure what to tell them. I can get bittersweet chocolate here. The local bulk stuff is about the same sweetness is Nestle's morsels, as a guideline. Can I increase the chocolate and cut sugar, and get a decent result? I will be experiementing myself of course but if anyone has any guidelines it would be appreciated! I have no idea what the percentage of sugar to chocolate is with bittersweet chocolate.

Wow, that was pretty amazing! I found that the kneading at the beginning was helpful too, but the slapping was interesting - reminded me of friends who made strudel dough. But the technique is great, especially the way he gets the loop spinning to keep the end open so he can reach in and double it. Once it starts stretching though you do have to work fast, otherwise it will get away from you! Thanks for posting the video!

I had a sort of nice dessert shared by a friend that almost certainly came out of some Turkish women's magazine. These recipes often read like "buy 3 pre-packaged chocolate cake rounds, make one box worth of packaged chantilly, adding ground pistahios, grate apples, add chopped cooked carrots, one package of vanillin and two T banana liqueur...." But this one was kinda good even if it seems a bit strange (it's not going into recipe gullet!): 1 kilo strawberries 4 c milk 7 T semolina 10 T sugar 1 T margarine (okay, I used butter) 1 packet vanilla sugar Clean strawberries and distribute in six bowls. Mis milk, semolina, sugar and margarine and bring to boil. Lower heat, simmer till well thickened, remove from heat and add the vanilla. Pour over strawberries in bowls, refrigerate. Think "Galaktoboureko filling minus the phyllo, plus fresh strawberries."

Alaskan king crab legs. There was a restaurant in Iowa City, where I grew up, called the Robin Hood Room, and maybe twice a year we'd go there for a "nice" dinner out. (We ate out very infrequently.) Only once did I get anything other than the crab legs, it was veal parmeggiana, and it was good, but it was a bit like having sex and thinking about someone else.... I was never unfaithful again! Also the first bite of good chocolate pudding...

One word: Nescafé.

To keep this separate from the quince recipe -- some other things I'll be preserving this summer: Morello cherries - my favorite fruit preserves. I like to add some ground bitter almonds to them, not too many. Red plums - the new house I've moved to has a tree that is completely bent over with them, and I figure it should be about 3 weeks before we're swimming in them... Black mulberries - these are the huge, sweet-tart ones with intense hot pink/purple juice. Also an enormous tree of them in the yard. I've had very nice mulberry preserves here, but have never tried it myself. Most of the mulberry "reçel" I had, I found a bit too runny though, so I'll be experimenting. I'm also going to make liqueur out of them. Black plums - not sure what the exact variety is - there is a Sunday market in one neighborhood here that is held by farmers from around the area of Inebolu/Kastamonu, about 8 hours east of Istanbul. every August they bring in baskets and baskets of small "prune-type" plums, which are very very dark red-purple, almost black, and have a slight bitter overtone. They're okay for eating, but make the best plum jam I've ever had. Two years ago I missed the season, and made do with good purple prune plums available in normal markets, but it was nowhere close. Apricots have just come onto the market, and if I want to preserves I had better get on the stick...the first ones to come are the sweet-tart ones that are great for preserves. These are followed by the `sekerpare` variety, mostly from Malatya, which is very sweet and nice for eating (even the still-crunchy ones are sweet) but they are not very interesting for cooking; you need that tartness. Savory things: I've already made a pickle of a plant called "kayakorugu" here, the latin name is Crithmum maritimum. I've seen it referred to as "Rock Samphire" but that name also gets used for saltbrush (which is also eaten). The one I'm talking about is in the parsley family, it has large, succulent divided leaves that are gray/blue, and clusters of yellow flowers. It grows in big stands by the seaside. There could not be an easier pickle to make - Take the tender leaves (before flowering, when they tend to get a bit tough), soak them overnight in brine, then pack into jars and pour wine vinegar over. A clove or two of garlic in each jar also is very good. You can eat them as is, or put them on salads: here is some on a Greek salad. http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11493026..._3012_43801.jpg I've also made up my mind that I want to make a good batch of Iranian eggplant pickles (cooked, pressed eggplant, mixed with a variety of spices including turmeric, garlic, mint and nigella and then mixed with salt and vinegar) as well as Iranian mixed pickles (finely cut peppers, cucumbers, green beans, cauliflower, celery, the kitchen sink, green tomato, eggplant, lots of parsley, cilantro, thyme, mint, garlic, steeped in vinegar). Except that we can't normally get celery here, so when I want that flavor in something I use the greens of celeriac.

Old Foodie, don't let those big bumpy quinces push you around! They make wonderful jelly, and come with their own supply of pectin, so they're probably the most foolproof jelly ingredient there is! Cloves marry very well with quinces, and you can add one or two cloves to the "recipes" below. For Jelly: I don't have a recipe exactly. Do jelly and preserves a little early when the quinces are not overripe. I quarter and then cut into 8ths the quinces leaving the peels on, and save the seeds (these are covered in pectin). Add enough water just to cover, and boil till the quinces are very soft. Put the mess in a jelly bag and let drain. They say not to squeeze the bag as you won't have clear jelly...I squeeze and get more jelly even if a bit cloudy. While the quinces are dripping, simmer the seeds/cores in enough water to cover, for around 20 minutes. Strain and add to the juice you've strained. Add sugar to taste - if it was a kilo of quinces I end up using about the same amount of sugar. Add the juice of a small lemon (optional). Boil and do the typical doneness test, though for me it tends to set up quite nicely even before it's really "sheeting" off the spoon. For preserves: Equal parts quinces and sugar. Peel, core and grate the quinces. Put together with sugar, let macerate an hour or so. You can add some water if you need to. (some quinces are juicier than others) Some people add lemon juice, I don't. Boil the mixture till the quince is tender. Here you have two choices. Turkish "reçel" (preserves) tend to consist more of fruit pieces in syrup, while in the west we tend to go more for gelled preserves. If you want it to gel, boil the seeds and add the water to the preserves, and boil till you see it thickening. If you want a typical Turkish one, leave the seeds out. Necip Usta's recipe also includes 100g of corn syrup per kilo of fruit, though I can't say I've done it or would care to....!

I know several people with the wooden stick aversion. My upstairs neighbor was a professional cook for years and makes wonderful things, but olives are bad news for him. Olive oil is wonderful but he claims olives taste like barf. I am one of the "forks on teeth" people. More if I do it myslef (though I probably do it fairly often unconsciously). But it's like fingernails-on-blackboard. My brother used to do a big scrape with every bite and it drove me nuts. We also had Frankoma pottery service when I was growing up, and the sound of a spoon scraping the bowls at breakfast was like a dental drill to me...it would give me shivers. It was bad enough that my mom and brother and I used plastic cereal bowls in the morning, but my dad didn't like them. And he had to get ever last goddam GrapeNuts Flake out of that bowl, and every bit of milk too! Sccrape sccrrrape! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHH! As for foods - fresh tomatoes are borderline for me. I used to have such an aversion to them that I was once forced to try my mom's home-grown ones, and went running back to the bathroom to spit them out. It was as much the texture as the flavor. I didn't really ever learn to like them till I had wonderful, perfectly-ripened sweet tomatoes in Greece in salads. But any mealiness, anything less than perfectly ripe still is disgusting to me. Canned sardines I also find hideous. A very strange one, but one I've come across several times here in Turkey, is the aversion to watching a lemon being squeezed. The secretary at an instrument shop I help out at once in a while cannot stand watching someone squeeze a lemon. If you ask her why, the answer it "Because they're sour!" But she eats the lemon. At home, her husband has to do it. So one day the owner and I were out to lunch, and coming back to the shop, I saw a guy selling lemons off a cart on the street. The little "good angel" on my right shoulder didn't stand a chance... I got one, and when we got back to the shop, I went to Asli and said "I brought you something," and pulled out the lemon. "Very funny," she said, thinking that was the end of it. I the crammed the whole lemon into my mouth (it wasn't a big one), and chewed it, sending lemon juice running down my chin. I thought she was going to kick the bucket right then and there. Yes I realize that when I die, I will go to hell, where I will fry in hot oil while demons crowd around scraping great, rusty forks across their teeth....

oh dear...that one's gonna stick with me for a while...

Many years ago, I went with a friend to eat dim sum in a place we liked in Seattle. During the conversation, I had said something about being mortified in a grocery store because of a friend's pranks, and he said "why should you be? It was your friend doing it, not you." I asked what he'd do if I did something completely bizarre in public and he said "you can't embarass me." I begged to differ, but he said "Nah, anything you'd do would embarass you more." Well, that was really the wrong thing to say, and not being the one to pass up that kind of challenge, I took an end joint of a chicken foot, placed it on my spoon, and cocked it back, aimed at no place in particular. My friend looked a bit taken aback but played cool, and said "you won't do it," and proceeded to take a steamed shrimp dumpling and put it in his mouth. I let fly. The chicken knuckle did fly near an overly-hairsprayed beehive of a hairdo but unfortunately I can't report that it lodged there, or even made contact. Ah, but my friend...he has a very "explosive" sudden laugh, and the newly-inserted shrimp dumpling came back out rather...explosively, like those old pop guns...rickocheting off the corner of the table and about a yard behind us onto the floor, where a waitress was approaching with a cart of offerings. She looked at him, sitting there with a red face looking completly mortified, and sympathetically, said, "oh...you don' like it?"

God....why do I find that so depressing.....

Well this recipe is a winner, I read it a few weeks ago here and have made it three times since then, as chard is cheap and in abundance now, and I have a bonanza of cilantro in my garden (won't for very much longer at this rate though!). I upped the amount of lentils slightly for my own taste, but it's still definitely soup with plenty of broth, not porridge. My neighbors are making it too...

Knee-swozz... actually the problem in appearance seems to be the canned salmon that broke down all through the salad; I bet if you grilled a filet and put it in right at the very end, it would be beautiful. Hardboiled eggs are very hazardous in that respect too; I've made lots of ugly things with hardboiled eggs — a particularly vile spinach salad comes to mind... I looked it up on the net and found a couple of really beautiful presentations, and a couple bear puke versions as well! (Why am I feeling queasy just now...) As for English - though things are a bit more complicated (great vowel shifts, no formal orthography till about 300 years ago), I think it's fair to blame the French for much of the bizarreness of English. Heck, Niçoise not withstanding, it's a small price to pay for croissants and creme brulee, non?

Sucuk (spicy Turkish sausage) dipped in sweet/sour (more sour) pomegranate molasses. Perfectly boiled-then-grilled octopus with a splash of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Profiteroles filled with pastry cream and raspberries and covered with white chocolate sauce. (Hey, it's not "really" chocolate...) Just got reminded of this in another thread - a slice of really good tsoureki (like challah but with 8 eggs, lots of butter, lightly sweet, and with a good dose of mahlep), toasted, and spread with entirely too much butter. A really good keşkül (recipe to be posted soon). Um...I haven't been getting much sex lately I guess....

Tsoureki.... You should have made one for yourself too, they are wonderful! And toasted in the morning, with entirely too much butter...even better. I used to make it fairly regularly as a "special occasion" bread for breakfast. Here's another recipe, a bit (!) richer: 2 packets of yeast 225 gr butter 1 1/2 c sugar 1/2 t salt 1 c hot milk 6 well-beaten eggs, room temp 1+ kilo flour mahlep egg yolk mixed with a little water to brush tops sesame or slivered almonds if you want Preheat oven to 200C Melt butter in milk, add sugar and salt, when lukewarm add yeast, mix well, add eggs. Mix into flour to make a somewhat soft dough, add mahlep, knead well, around 15 minutes. Put in a buttered bowl, cover with a damp towel and let rise in a not-too-warm place (if it's too hot, you will get a sourish flavor from the yeast). When it's doubled, punch it down, divide into three pieces, form into balls and let rest 10 minutes or so. Roll into long pieces and braid. If you want you can turn the whole braid into a circle and put a red egg in the middle for easter but I usually just do a straight braid. Brush with water/egg yolk and sprinkle with almonds or sesame. Let rise once more, put in oven on greased pan and bake for around 40 minutes till done. Some people like anise instead of mahlep, or orange peel, but for me mahlep is the best...

It's been a while since I've had anything really worthy of these pages. Actually the first one somehow looks better in the photo than in real life! I was walking a visitor through fresh favas with olive oil and it got a little overcooked - people aren't used to the idea of cooking beans for only ten minutes. The beautiful green of the fresh beans goes pale and pasty if they start breaking down; kinda makes me think of Linda Blair for some reason... <a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b60/sazji/MVC-897S.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a> The second was a Lebanese Chard and Lentil soup with lots of lemon, garlic and cilantro. Also wonderful, but even in real life it ain't pretty (though a garnish of fresh cilantro really helps). <a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b60/sazji/MVC-898S.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

Can an arabic speaker tell us what the root of "halwah" means? In Turkey and Greece at least, the counterpart terms "χαλβάς" and "helva" could be considered blanket terms for pretty much any sweet where something is cooked/toasted in oil followed by the addition of a sugar syrup, and then poured out to set. I wonder, is it the same in Arabic-speaking countries? Here, saying "halwa has/doesn't have such-and-such" would be a bit like arguing what should be in "soup." Necip Usta, a famous cookbookwriter and chef in Turkey, gives 11 recipes, none of which are for tahini halva. This is probably because it's gained status as a dish that one buys, not makes, either due to difficulty of preparation, the need to make large quantities to make it worth trouble, or the requirement of special equipment that most people can't fit into their kitchen...other examples are döner kebab, lokum, pişmaniye). Necip's book has ten recipes for halvahs made from semolina, flour and cornstarch with different additions and ways of adding the syrup and sugar, as well as one for carrots (cezeriye) which can be considered a kind of "helva" here. In Çanakkale and some other places they make one with cheese that is very rich and delicious (höşmerim). In Edirne it's called just "peynir helvası." I have seen only one recipe for tahini halva, in a magazine in Greece. It didn't look so horribly difficult, it involved basically "frying" the tahini in oil and then adding a hot syrup to make it boil up. (You do this with the flour and semolina types as well, but...it's not so much oil involved...maybe this is why people hesitate to do it at home? The furious boiling when you pour a few cups of syrup into hot semolina browned in butter is fearsome enough; if you are going to pour it into a couple cups of boiling oil, you better have yourself a big pot!) Around Istanbul I've mostly seen the semolina helvas made at home. In Greece, it's the only one I've seen. As you go east in Turkey the flour helvas become more common. Some of them use pekmez (grape molasses) instead of sugar syrup; they are delicious. These are mostly meant for quick consumption. There is also one, "yaz helvasi" (summer helva) that is made from an extremely fine semolina and is quite firm, with a much higher ratio of sugar, and it can be kept for long periods. It usually has walnuts in it, sometimes cocoa, and reminds me a bit of fudge. As for additions - almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, pistachios, orange peel, kaymak, lemon peel, sesame..you name it. Sometimes the syrup is made with milk instead of water.

Tah dig - I got "lessons" (which mostly consisted of my friend's Iranian mother saying "AAAA! DON'T DO THAT!!!!!") in making good chelo. Of course everyone does it a little differently, so nothing here is gospel. I soak the rice overnight, especially if it's a good basmati or domsiah. This makes it extend when you boil it. Boil till it's almost done but still has a bit of hardness/resistance in the center. I think it probably takes a few times with it coming out tough or mushy before you get it. When it's done, strain it but my friend's mom nearly throttled me when I went to rinse it out. "IT WILL LOOSE ALL ITS FLAVOR! DOOOON'T!" Kobra Khanom runs a tight kitchen. As for the tah dig - you can do several things. I think I like the potato one the best. Use a thick non-stick pot if you can, to get good heat distribution. But it also works in plain old teflon. Cut the potatoes thin, about 1/8 of an inch or so. Put a tablespoon or so of oil on the bottom of the pan, and arrange the potatoes. Pile the strained rice loosley on top, and poke holes in the pile for good steam permeation. Cover the pot with a clean towel and put the lid on (it should fit tightly, weigh it down if you have to). Fold up the edges. Put the pot on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes; you should hear things popping in there. It shouldn't burn - think of how long it takes to get potatoes to brown normally. Then turn it to medium low (not *too* low) and let it go for about 20 minutes. NOTE YOUR FLAME SETTING! You shouldn't be opening up the pot, but if you check after 20 minutes and things are not quite done, you need to turn up the heat. You can sprinkle a bit more water if it's dried out. When the rice is done, turn it out and remove the tahdig which should come out easily. If it's not well browned, make a note to turn up the heat a bit next time. You'll find the sweet point eventually. For me the harder one is doing it with lavash...it's much easier to burn. A friend's sister puts shreds of dry bread (not the crust) all over the bottom of the pot, and then puts the rice on. It makes a very delicate, crisp bottom. I have tried it once and failed miserably...so I'll turn the heat down a bit for that one!

Boza I love - gotta go get some soon before the season is over! Şalgam....*shudder*. I've tried it so many times and tried to learn to like it but I have the same reaction as the poster above had...I almost hurl. How can something that smells so wonderful be so repulsive (to me)? Here it is made with "black carrots" which are really very very dark red, can be fairly large, and are beet-like in color. If anyone wants to grow them, I wouldn't be averse to popping some seed into the mail. They make good salad too.

Here as far as I know they use quicklime, which used to be used for wall plaster as well. The lime is added to the water (stand back and be careful) and allowed to "burn out," (read: boil violently) then it settles out. The water is added to the soaking water for the pumpkin (it's also used in other preserves such as green walnut - though I prefer them without it - and tomatoes). After soaking the squash must be washed in several changes of water. In Turkish it's known as kireç (kee-retch). This way of preparing pumpkin is more common in (surprise!)the E. Mediterranean region. Another (perhaps better known) popular way of doing pumpkin sweet here is to cut the pumpkin into chunks, and fitting them tightly into a wide pan. You can do two layers if there is not too much space between the pieces. They are then covered with sugar and allowed to stand for several hours overnight. In the morning the liquid will have been drawn out of the pumpkin, which with the sugar will form a syrup with no need to add any water. Add a clove or a cinnamon stick to the syrup if you like, and bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer till the pumpkin is uniformly cooked. It will keep its shape fairly well, it won't be mushy. After it cools, you can serve it in many ways. The most popular are 1) topped with chopped walnuts, 2) topped with kaymak (clotted cream), and 3) topped with tahini and pekmez (grape molasses) and ground walnuts as well. As if the syrup didn't give it enough sweetness. But with a strong glass of unsweetened tea it goes down pretty good! Edited to add a note about cezeriye/jezeriyah - here it is made with carrots, but mostly from the very dark type, colored like a beet. The carrots are cooked till mushy, pureed, sweetened and cooked into a thick paste. sometimes with the addition of walnuts or pistachios. Then it's cut in squares and rolled in grated coconut. It's divine. And supposed to be aphrodesiac, but so are so many other things here...

As for favorite ways for making Tabbouleh...how far afield counts? In SE Turkey in the area around Antep and Adana, spitting distance from the Syrian border, it's called "kısır." I'd say it's probably half bulgur half other ingredients. The other ingredients are lots of parsley and olive oil but also tomato, green onions, mint, garlic if you like, and what really sets it off: red pepper paste. I've also had kısır with a bit of fennel greens in it (the wild stuff, not the bulb fennel which has almost tasteless leaves). The tartness is either in the form of lemon juice or pomegranate molasses. (If pomegranate molasses is used, you need to make sure and get a really sour one, not the Qortas brand which is quite sweet to my taste.) Or you can do a combination of both.

Wow...it's been two years since I've been back to Seattle and five years since I lived there...lots of new names. But I do remember Fran's caramel ice cream, it's amazing! Caramel is actually a very popular flavor for ice cream here too but I've never found a place where it's so intense as Fran's. The brownie looks wonderful.

OH... oh... that would be possibly around September....when I'm thinking of making a trip back to Seattle....hey, Balthazar, ol' buddy, ol' pal...need any exotic Turkish ingredients? Seriously, what an amazing event. Years ago some friends and I had a "chocolate dinner" for Valentine's day, with little savory things in between. We really paced ourselves and there were some wonderful desserts, but we still got overloaded. Did you serve something to help people clear their palates? It's had to imagine what any chocolate would taste like after I'd tried 20 or so things...

We had an accidental dessert party today! It was formally an eclipse party, as I was way too swamped with work to act on my temptation to go hop on the first bus to Antalya, I just called a bunch of friends and we had an "eclipse potluck." They are always fun when you don't tell anyone what to bring and leave it up to them, but this time, what showed up was: One macaroni salad (mine) One carrot cake sans cream cheese goo (mine) Two tahini çöreks (leavened, sweet, very heavy with lots of tahini) A pound of butter cookies "Moon çöreks" (A thin dough wrapped around a crescent of dense chocolate/cinnamon/raisin cake) Apple filled "foldover" cookies Chocolate filled cake And most of it is still sitting in my house waiting for someone to devour it...and I dearly hope it won't be me! Well, just a little more o' that carrot cake, the edge is all uneven after all... Off topic: the day was perfect, 72 degrees, the eclipse was only 87% in Istanbul but that was enough to really reduce the light (which is not like evening light at all...it was more like the sun had been replaced by a slightly dim fluorescent lamp), and all the shadows went ragged. The round dots projected onto the pavement through the hundreds of holes in our patio chairs all turned into crescents. But next time I'm saying "to hell with it" and hopping on that bus!