NOAH'S ARK DESSERT (ASURE)

This dish is believed to be originated on Noah's ark.  They say that the last few days of the flood, most of the food was gone.  They had a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  They threw everything in a pot and made Asure which lasted them until they were able to get on dry land.  This day is declared to be a special day that is later followed by birth of Jesus on the same day.  In Turkey, Asure is made and shared with family, friends and neighbours during Asure month.  It is a celebration of God's generosity and blessings.

1/2 kg cracked wheat
1 cup dry chick peas
1 cup dry haricot beans
1/2 cup white rice
100 gr dry apricots
100 gr. dry figs
150 gr. raisins
1 kg. sugar
2 orange peels
Optional: 1/4 cup rosewater
Optional: Cooked and peeled chestnuts (for bottom of the individual cups)
For decorations: coconuts, cinnamon, pomegranate seeds, walnut pieces

• This is not a difficult recipe to follow but you need to start the process overnight (8-9 hours before) for soak time.
• Put the cracked wheat in a big pot.  Add water.  Water must top the wheat by about 15 cm (put 4 your fingers together as a measurement by sight).  Bring it to boil once.  Set aside for overnight "soaking"
• Put beans ad chick peas together and add water.  Bring to boil once and set aside overnight for "soaking"
• Next morning, drain beans and chick peas.  Add more water and bring to boil.  Reduce heat to medium and continue boiling until they are soft.  Approx. 2.5 - 3 hours.  Add more water if required.
• In a separate pot, bring wheat to boil, reduce heat to medium and continue to boil until very soft (almost mash).  This too takes approx. 2.5 to 3 hours.  Make sure it is not covered to avoid from boiling over.  Add water as required.
• 20 minutes before wheat is finished, add rice.
• Add wheat, beans and chick peas together.  Continue to boil for another 10-15 minutes at low heat.
• Cut up apricots, and figs.  Wash 2 oranges and grade skin.
• Add  sugar, apricots, figs, orange peels, raisins, and rosewater.  Boil once and take off the heat
• As Asure waits, it thickens.  You can add boiled water to bring to desired consistency.
• You can serve Asure in a big pot and so it can be spooned out to smaller cups or you can make individual cups.  Optionally, you can put cooked and peeled chestnuts at the bottom of individual servings.  I personally do not like chestnuts or the pomegranate seeds in this dish
• You can decorate with any combination of pomegranate seeds, coconut, walnut pieces and Cinnamon. 
• You can eat it at room temperature or cold right out of the fridge in warm summer nights.  Believe it or not, some people like to eat this for breakfast.

CHILI

Filling and tasty dish Chili.  Good for cold winter nights or cool spring dinners.  You can have it in a bowl or make individual servings inside buns by removing the middle of the buns to make a "hole" and filling it with Chili.  Go ahead and spread shredded cheese on top. 

250 gr. ground beef or ground chicken
1 can (540 ml) kidney beans
1 can (213 ml) tomato sauce
1 package (35 gr) seasoning mix (I use Clubhouse seasoning packages) or make your own
Optional: Shredded Cheese
               1/4 cup water if you prefer your Chili juicy

Home made seasoning mix:
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon salt
2 minced garlic cloves
2 tablespoon chopped jalapeno peppers
1 onion very finely chopped
1 green pepper seeded and finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

• In a skillet, ground beef over medium heat.  Cook until all the juices and fat evaporates.
• Stir in tomato sauce, and the seasoning mix and cook for 5 minutes until the mixture thickens.  If you like your Chili a little juicy for dunking your bread add 1/4 cup water.
• Add in drained and rinsed in cold water kidney beans and simmer for another 5 minutes
• Spread shredded cheese on top (optional)

VEGETARIAN STUFFED PEPPERS (ZEYTINYAGLI BIBER DOLMASI)

This is a wonderful vegetarian recipe.  Aroma of allspice and cinnamon combined with dill and other herbs makes it appeal to your sense of smell as well as your sense of taste.  Use of different coloured peppers adds colour to your dinner table..This recipe is good for stuffing all kinds of vegetables.  Try stuffing egglplants, zucchini, grape leaves or cabbage for other varieties.  I like squeezing additional lemon juice on my stuffed peppers.  My daughters prefer yogurt and garlic sauce. 

2 cups plain white rice
4 cups boling water (1/2 for the rice, 1/2 for the stuffed peppers)
1 cup olive oil
6 - 7 medium onions
1 table spoon pine nuts
2 table spoonts currants
1/2 bunch parsley
1/2 bunch dill
1 table spoon dried mint flakes
1 table spoon salt (or as you like)
1 whole lemon juice
1 teaspoon each of sugar, allspice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
750 gr. cubannella peppers
Optional: 1-2 Roma Tomatos (sliced to be used as "cap")

• Note: Size and type of the peppers and the amount of rice you will need are directly related.  For example, if you are using mix of big red peppers and cubannella peppers, big red peppers will require more stuffing just because they are bigger.  You'll need to do this sizing by sight.  I used 1.5 tablespoons as average per pepper
• Chop the onions using a chopper or grade them.
• Stir fry onions and pine nuts in 3/4 cup oil
• Add in rice and stir fry together a little longer.  Add in equal amount of boiling to the amount of rice you used.  For example, if your rice was 2 cups, use 2 cup of boiling water.
• Reduce heat to low and cook until rice looks more like a pilaf.  This is approximately 10 - 15 minutes.  Be sure to stir occassionally.  Let it rest for 20 minutes.
• While you are waiting for the rice to cool a bit wash and prepare your peppers by cutting the top parts off and removing all the seeds.  You can make a cap with the top part for presentation purposes but make sure the seeds on the inside the "cap" are all removed.  Chop parsley, and dill.  Juice the lemon, wash your currants and prepare your spices.
• Combine all of the herbs and spices with rice.  Now you are ready to stuff the peppers.
• Stuff all your peppers.  Put the "caps" on them.  The "cap" can be a slice of tomato or the top of the pepper.  Place them in a single layer in a large pot.
• Pour in 2 cups of boiling water from the side of the pot.  Put the lid on a little bit ajar.
• Cook in medium heat until all of the water is gone.  This may take 30 minutes.  You will find the peppers will soften.  In the last 5 minutes, keep an eye to make sure they do not burn or stick to the bottom of the pot.

SALMON ON A BED OF SPINICH

Spinich is a very good compliment for Salmon.  You can cook them separately and combine on your plate as you wish.  If you like the taste of Salmon more, you can use less Spinich on your serving. 

 

4 pieces of Salmon
2 tablespoons Butter
1 garlic clove (crushed)
1 Lemon
Salt

500 gr Spinich (1 package)
1 Onion
Salt
Black pepper
2 tablespoons cooking oil

• Clean and chop Spinich.  Chop the onion
• Saute the onion in 2 tablespoon of oil. 
• Add Spinich, salt, pepper and cook in slow heat.  Approx. 15 minutes.  No need to add water. 
• Cook Salmon as you wish.  I cooked mine on the barbeque wrapped in foil.  Put Salmon stakes or cut up pieces on a large piece of Aliminium foil.  Sprinkle salt, butter and lemon juice.  Wrap in foil and cook at medium heat on the barbeque for 20 minutes
• Serve Salmon on Spinich with your favorite side dishes like rice and coleslaw or potato salad

Oven baked option:

• Put  washed and cleaned Spinich on a large pan
• Put Salmon fillets on top of the Spinich
• Sprinkle Salmon with salt and pepper
• Pour butter, lemon juice and crushed garlic over everything
• Cover the pan with foil
• Cook for 30 minutes at 350 degree (preheated oven) 

FRESH FRUITS

I love fresh fruits.  I always make sure we have some ready for after dinner.  Good replacement for high calorie deserts.  I have recently learned that fruits should be consumed 1 hour after you have your meals or 1 hour before in order for your body to benefit from all of its nutrients.  I am not sure I can wait that long after dinner to dig into nice cold fruits on a hot summer evening... This is my arrangement for a recent get together at my house with a few good friends.  Nothing special really... I just cut them up, arranged them nicely, cooled them in the fridge and served.

"TURKISH PIZZA" WITH MEAT TOPPING (LAHMACUN)

Life is very busy....  It is always good to know short cuts for when you are in a hurry.  Although short cuts are not as good, they are close enough in taste to serve as quick alternatives.  Here is the short cut for this recipe...  Making the dough and the crust is the most time consuming part of this dish.  You can use store bought Tortillas for the crust.  Down side of using Tortillas is they are best right out of the oven but they dry out when left over for use the next day. 

Another option is use of store bought fresh pizza dough.  This option does save you time in making the the dough but you still have to roll them out to make the crust.  They keep well for the next day.  I personally don't like to do this because I find Pizza dough very sticky for this recipe.

Of course the best taste comes from making them from scratch...

Dough:
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon dry yeast (1 package)
2 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 cups flour

Topping:
500 gr. lean ground beef or lean ground lamb
3 medium sized onions
3 cloves of garlic
3 medium sized tomatos
3 cubanella peppers
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon red pepper paste
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Salt, blackpepper, cumin, red pepper flakes

Filling (Optional):
Parsley
Lemon juice
Onions

• To make the dough, heat 1/2 cup milk in the microwave to luke warm; in a tall glass.  Add in sugar and yeast.  Let sit for 15 minutes.  The yeast will rise in the glass.
• Mix together remaining milk, salt, yeast and flour.  Make a fairly hard dough.  If you need to, you can add a bit of water.  Let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Take your dough and break into small "balls" size of a large lemon.  Let it rest for 1 hour. 
• Prepare the topping by putting all of the ingredients into the blender and mix at high speed until you get a them to the consistency of a paste
• Roll out very thin crust with each of the small balls
• Divide the topping to equal the number of dough balls and put paste over each of the crusts
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  This is a must!
• Cook until the bottoms of your pizza turns golden brown (10 - 15 minutes)
• Serve with cut up lemon (to be squeezed on the pizza), sliced onions, parsley.  Some people also like sliced lettuce and graded carrots as a filling
• You spread lemon juice all over the "pizzas" and roll them up like a wrap to eat

If you end up with too much of the topping and not enough dough, try topping slices of French bread or English muffin for snacks.

BARBEQUED KOFTE (IZGARA KOFTE/IZGARA SIS)

One recipe, multiple ways to serve.  Make it into Koftes (meatballs) and serve with rice and salads or put it on skewers for stuffed pita along with your choice "stuffings" such as lettuce, onion, tomato, mayo, hot peppers, maybe even green olives (yum yum).

How about using a burger maker to serve as hamburgers on gourmet burger buns or smaller meatballs on minibuns for baby hamburgers as appetizer at a large get together? 

Meatloaf is another choice with mashed potatos and beans as side dishes.  So many ideas from a single recipe.

500 gr. lean ground beef (for variation you can use 1/2 ground chicken and 1/2 ground beef)
1/2 package Lipton's onion soup
1 onion chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
salt
pepper
chopped parsley (optional)
Barbeque sauce (brushed on the kofte's just before taking them off the barbeque)

• Mix all of the ingredients together and shape them any way you like
• Barbeque.  We like a little brushing of barbeque sauce on the kofte's just before taking them off them the barbeque
• Serve with fresh salads.