Turkish Muse

Kaffeeklatsch, and The Brownies That Went With It

So remember last month when I returned home from pilates class one morning to find that a neighbor had invited me over for coffee? Except it wasn't just one neighbor, it was all the women in the building sitting in a well-appointed salon wearing nylons and heels? And I had rocked up still in my sweatpants thinking I could gracefully defer the offer for coffee and come back another time?

No? Well, you can read that story here.

Since then, I have joined the ladies in my building every other Friday for coffee and sweets, swapping my usual work attire -- which, because I work at home, consists of the above-mentioned sweatpants or pajamas -- for dressy pants and a blouse. I sit and listen, they sit and muhabbet sohbet (chit chat) while I try to keep up and say something useful every now and again.

Last Friday, it was my turn to host, an event I have been nervous about for over a month. I decided to make my Pumpkin Spice Bread, which was specifically requested after I had given some as a gift to a few neighbors.

But just in case someone didn't like the combination of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, I also decided to go for something chocolatey, so I turned to my need-dessert-in-a-hurry recipe: brownies.

These are the simplest brownies to make. All you have to do is combine this, stir that, plop it in the pan and bake. The ease of making them, though, belies the chewy and light wonderfulness that they become.

Walnut Brownies
Adapted from Hershey's

113 grams (1 cup) butter, melted and cooled
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350 F or 175 C. Butter a 9-inch (22 cm) square baking pan.

Stir together butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl. Add eggs, beat well. Stir together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Gradually add this dry mixture to the egg mixture, beating until well blended. Stir in chopped nuts. Spread batter evenly into prepared pan.

Bake about 20-25 minutes, or until the sides of the brownie begin to pull away from the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack. Makes about 9 big brownies or 16 small ones.

Afiyet olsun!

I apologize for only posting recipes with cup and teaspoon measurements. Next month we are going to the states and I plan to buy a scale so that I can actually measure out the weight of all these ingredients, which will make it so much easier to convert, for example, a cup of sugar into grams. Until then, you can use a Turkish water glass (which holds about 6-8 oz) as a cup and a cay spoon as a teaspoon.

What's Cooking: Pumpkin Spice Bread

*knock knock*

Anybody still out there? Yes? Oh good! I'm so glad you haven't left me after my little hiatus there. What have I been doing?, you ask. Oh, the usual. Drank too many martinis on Saturday night at a dinner party, which left me with absolutely no brain cells to write on Sunday. Then got caught up with work on Monday and had somewhat unexpected guests arrive at 8 am on Tuesday. 

But then I put on my cooking apron and decided to do something with the frozen pumpkin puree that's been sitting in my freezer for a month. Come hell or high water, I decided, something must be done with it.

So I searched my favorite cooking websites and found this, which seemed to be the perfect pumpkin spice bread. It got rave reviews from commenters and the pictures looked oh so divine. 

Sadly, however, I had to make several substitutions seeing as how I did not have canned pumpkin (yuck), sour cream or grapeseed oil. I used fresh pumpkin puree, yogurt and corn oil, respectively, in their places, and the bread suffered for it.

Oh, it smelled just divine, don't get me wrong. But the bread was soggy and mushy inside, a result, I think, of too much water in the puree and yogurt. And maybe I didn't bake it long enough. Who knows?

But oh the smells. All that fresh ground nutmeg and cloves and cinnamon....oh my goodness, I knew that I had to try again. And so I went out in search of another recipe, this time knowing that it couldn't have as much water in it, which meant that sour cream or yogurt was out, and preferably called for pumpkin puree, not canned pumpkin.

And oh, I found it. And it was wonderful.

Now, I've eaten pumpkin spice bread as a kid, and it is always good. But this....this is AMAZING. And it's all because of one single thing: fresh spices. They are the single most important part of this recipe.

I used to gripe that it's hard to find ground spices at the supermarket in Turkey, but fresh is so much better, even if I do have to go to three different stores to get enough spices for one recipe and even if I do have to look up what the heck to do with whole cloves online.

Be sure to buy fresh whole nutmeg, which you can grate down with the smaller side of a cheese grater. And purchase whole cloves too, which you can pound into powder in a plastic sandwich bag with a hammer. Or, if you don't have a hammer (and what expat does?) use the heel of a heavy boot.

Hey, I'm all about working with what you've got.

The cinnamon I used was not fresh (that is, I didn't grate any cinnamon sticks for this recipe, but I think I will next time so I've specified to do so in the recipe), but it was fairly new so that helped.

The first loaf I baked of this pumpkin bread was a test one to see if the recipe worked. And huzzah! It did! I baked a second loaf to freeze for the Christmas party we're hosting this Saturday, but the bread wasn't 20 minutes out of the oven before I couldn't help myself, I had to slice into it and eat a big chunk off the end.

All right, I thought. Well, nobody has to know that the end is missing. Everyone will assume someone else at the party ate it.

Nah, I said. Who cares? Here's hoping the pumpkin man at the pazar has more fresh pumpkin for sale!

Pumpkin Spice Bread
Adapted from Simply Recipes

1 1/2 cups flour (210 grams)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar (200 grams)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup pumpkin puree (1/4 litre)
1/2 cup olive oil (1 dL)
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated cinnamon sticks

Preheat oven to 350 F or 180 C. Sift together flour, salt, sugar and baking soda.

Mix together the pumpkin, olive oil, eggs and spices with a whisk or a hand-held blender. Combine with the dry ingredients, but do not mix too thoroughly. Mix until just combined.

Pour into a well-buttered (don't skimp!) loaf pan (any size is fine, as long as it is shaped like a loaf of bread). Bake about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean and the top is browned and crackly.

After 10 minutes in the loaf pan, turn out the bread onto a cooling rack.

Afiyet olsun!

What's Cooking: Sugar Cookies

Sugar cookies are a staple in pretty much every American household during the holiday season. They're pretty, they taste good, they don't have any expensive hard to find ingredients and they're great fun for kids, who can use cookie cutters to make fun Santa Claus shapes and Christmas bells out of the dough.

In my effort to celebrate the Christmas season, two of the four above reasons cinched the deal for me on why I should make sugar cookies this year: they taste good and they don't have any expensive, hard to find ingredients.

In fact, you probably already have everything you need to make sugar cookies right in your kitchen. Technically, you can make these cookies year round, but I prefer to eat them only at Christmas.* I think it makes them more special that way.

Most sugar cookie recipes call for freezing or refrigerating the dough for a few hours before baking. This one doesn't and I think it's because this recipe is not necessarily meant for using with cookie cutters. I could be totally wrong about that, of course, so do feel free to try rolling this dough out and making neat shapes.

Me, I'd just rather eat the darn cookie than roll out the dough into snowflakes.

The one thing I noticed when I looked at this recipe was that it called for a lot more flour than sugar, which I thought was odd. Why not call them Flour Cookies, then? I guess that name wouldn't work, though, since in the end they really taste like sugar, not flour. Which is good, obviously.

Ingredients:
(Adapted from AllRecipes)

2 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon vanilla crystals (found in Turkish supermarkets)

Pre-heat oven to 375 F or 190 C. In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and baking power. Set aside.

Melt the butter and let it cool. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually add in flour mixture.

Using a teaspoon, making small rounded dough balls and place them evenly spaced apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Make sure the dough balls are small; the cookies will expand in the oven.

Bake 8 minutes in the preheated oven. Let cookies stand for 2 minutes on the cookie sheet before cooling on a wire rack.

Afiyet olsun!

*To jazz things up a bit, you could add a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon juice or lemon zest, or candy like M&Ms, to make these cookies throughout the year. I'm a simple gal, though, I like 'em plain.

What's Cooking: Homemade Mac and Cheese

Ooooh, boy, you are going to want to try this! After our discussion last week about what kinds of foods from the homeland you keep stashed away here in Turkey, I was hankering for some old fashioned homemade macaroni and cheese. Not the kind from a box, mind you, but the kind with a crunchy baked top oozing with gooey cheesy goodness on the inside.

I had made mac and cheese once before, back in Istanbul, and it turned out okay, but it wasn't good enough to justify the insane cost of the all the imported cheese I used. I decided yesterday to look again at some of my favorite food blogs to find a recipe I thought would be worthy of the 13 TL imported Parmesan I can find at my local grocery store.

This recipe calls for 500 grams (1 pound) of cheese, and really, you can use whatever kind of cheese your little heart desires. I decided to go with a mix of kasar, Parmesan, smoked Gouda and Danish blue cheese. Jeff was a bit worried that all the different cheeses would be too busy, but I suspected they would work out just wonderfully and indeed they did.

Homemade Mac and Cheese
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman

4 cups (500 grams) elbow macaroni (called Pipette in Italian, or Bukle in Turkish)
1/2 stick (57 grams) butter
1/4 cup flour
2 1/2 cups (500 ml) whole milk
2 teaspoons mustard
1 egg, beaten
200 grams kasar peynir
100 grams blue cheese
150 grams Parmesan
100 grams Fume sade (smoked Gouda)
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 teaspoon black pepper
Optional: cayenne pepper, paprika, thyme

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit/175 degrees Celsius. Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish.

Cook the macaroni until very firm, about 5 minutes. You want to macaroni to be "al dente", that is, not quite ready to eat plain. Drain and set aside.

Grate all 500 grams of cheese and set aside in a bowl.

In a large pot, melt the butter and then sprinkle in the flour. Whisk together over medium-low heat. Cook for about five minutes, whisking constantly so it doesn't burn.

Pour in the milk, add the mustard and then whisk until smooth. Cook for about five minutes until the sauce becomes very thick, almost gravy-like. (If the sauce doesn't become gravy like, add a few teaspoons of flour to get it going.)

Add 1/4 cup of this mixture into the beaten egg, which you set aside earlier. Immediately begin whisking the sauce and egg so that the egg doesn't cook. This is called tempering. Once the egg and sauce mixture has cooled, add it back to the sauce.

Add about 1/2 to 2/3 of the grated cheese to the sauce and stir to melt the cheese. Add the salt and pepper.

Pour in the drained, cooked macaroni and stir to combine all the cheesy goodness with the pasta.

Pour into a buttered baking dish (a 9x13 inch pan will work great) and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the top is brown and crispy.

This mac and cheese is so awesome you won't even need to put ketchup on it.

Afiyet olsun!

What's Cooking: Izmir Köftesi

If you've spent any time in Turkey, you surely have eaten köfte. Most of the time you get it grilled (izgara köfte) and if you're really lucky, the köfte is moist and flavorful. But sometimes ... well, let's be honest here: Most izgara köfte at your run of the mill lokanta is dry and and flavorless, resembling more a frozen meat patty that was just run through the George Foreman grill. Yech.

Which is why when I saw this recipe for Izmir Köftesi, which requires the köfte be fried slightly, then baked in a tomato sauce, I knew we had to try it. And am I ever glad we did. Since making it the first night, Jeff and I have eaten this dish another handful of times, and we are planning to make it tomorrow night for dinner guests. (Hi, Mike and Den!)

The recipe makes a HUGE pan of kofte, so it's more than enough for 2 people and plenty for 4. Plus, you can freeze leftovers and reheat them on the stove later and the köfte tastes just as good as when it came out of the oven.

On a side note, I have never seen this dish offered in any local restaurants, so I don't know why it is called Izmir Köftesi. Maybe it's a dish made more frequently in the home?

Izmir Köftesi

(Adapted from The Sultan's Kitchen, page 77)
serves 4-6

Ingredients:
1 kilo lean ground beef or lamb
1 small onion, grated
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 eggs
1 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
salt and pepper
1/4 cup virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3 large tomatoes, diced
2 cups water or lamb/beef stock
2 medium green peppers, seeded and cut diagonally into slices

Heat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Make the sauce first. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the tomato paste, then add the tomatoes and water or stock. Season with salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil. Let simmer, stirring occasionally, while you make the köfte so that the tomatoes boil down.
Combine the ground lamb or beef, onion, garlic, eggs, paprika, cumin and parsley in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. With moistened hands, mix the ingredients for about 2 minutes. Keep a bowl of warm water nearby to wet your hands while working. Shape the meat mixture into 20-25 oval balls.
Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat, add the köfte and lightly brown the meat all over (about 5 minutes). Place the köfte in an ovenproof dish and set them aside.
Pour the tomato sauce over the köfte. Arrange the green peppers on top. Cover the dish and bake for 40 minutes. To check for doneness, cut one köfte open; it should be brown, not pink.
Serve with fried potatoes or rice and salad.

 

Afiyet olsun!

What's Cooking: Domates Soslu Hamsi ve Sardalye

As promised several months ago, today I am kicking off Turkish Muse's newest feature, Recipe Review, where I will attempt to cook, bake and saute my way through the mainstays of Turkish cuisine (and some American dishes now and again). I've always wanted to learn how to cook, and now that I finally have this totally rocking kitchen, I have no excuse not to do so.

See?

And that's only half of the kitchen.

Wanna see the other half?

See? I really have no excuse.

So last week when my friend Chole was in town visiting and we saw some fresh hamsi (Black Sea silver fish, sometimes translated as "anchovy") and sardalye (sardines) at our local fish market, we snapped them up and took them home. If you live in Turkey, you probably already know that September 1 is the official start of the sardalye season (at least it is here in Izmir, the fishwife told us), but starting in July you can find the fish at your local fishmonger. (To find out what fish is available when in Turkey, check here.)

When we brought the fish home, we were at a bit of a loss as to what exactly to do with them when I suddenly remembered that I had seen a recipe for fish on one of my favorite Turkish cuisine recipe websites, Binnur's Turkish Cookbook.

Technically, the recipe calls for gumus baligi (smelt), but since they're all silver fish, I figured it would work out just fine.

We started with blanching the tomatoes for the sauce that we were going to put on the fish. I would have happily skipped this step, but Chole insisted it be done, so I let her take over.

We put the tomatoes in a big pot and added olive oil, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper and let it simmer for a while. (Sorry the lighting in these pictures is so bad, we're working on getting better lights for the kitchen.)

While the tomato sauce worked its magic, Jeff coated the fish in flour and laid them out on a plate.

Then it was time to fry them. Be sure to use sunflower oil, NOT olive oil for this part. Why? I have no clue, but that's what the fishwife told us at the market.

The fish only need a few minutes on each side, so flip them about every two minutes or so. Watch out for flying hot oil!

After the fish is cooked, lay them on a plate lined with paper towels.

And you're done! It really is that simple.

We spooned the tomato sauce over the fish and served it with some simple rice and fresh, warm Ramazan bread. So simple and yet so divine.

To get the recipe, find it here at Binnur's Turkish Cookbook.