TANDOORI INSPIRED CHICKEN TURKISH WAY

Normally, tandouri is something that many restaurants specialized in meat related dishes include in their menu here in Turkey. I think they make tandouri of lamb mainly and I am not sure what the difference is with an Indian tandoori. My mom makes great tandoori at home as well; a bit of spices, long cooking and so soft to almost melt in the mouth! I had two chicken breasts in the deep freeze and to be really honest I can’t say that chicken breast is my favourite kind of meat: I just cannot make it soft! This time I decided to cook it like a tandoori and the result was not too bad! 

I served the chicken tandoori on a bed of pilaf. Chicken and pilav, and a bit of green salad always make a good combination. Try also yoghurt drink with it! 

Ingredients (Serves 2-4)

2 chicken breasts, if you like you can cut each into three pieces

Half a glass of water

2 laurel leaves

3-4 balls of pepper

Method:

Cook all the ingredients for about 45 minutes to an hour on low fire in a pan (lid closed) 

chicken tandoori on a bed of pilaf with some delicious green salad!

chicken tandoori on a bed of pilaf

WET YOGHURT CAKE PERFUMED WITH LAVENDER

(Text in English is below. Türkçe tarif için burayi tiklayin)

I am crazy about strained yoghurt. I really am. What I can tolerate towards the strained yoghurt is the home made yoghurt. The rest is really not something that I will get into my fridge if there is really no other option. Now, you may say “hello, the title reads ‘yoghurt cake, not your love for strained yoghurt’”. My husband brought this regular supermarket type yoghurt the other day. I have a kilo of strained yoghurt in my fridge already and I want to “get rid of” the supermarket type. I browsed the net to search for a recipe with yoghurt! So that I can use it and ignore its fake taste! I found this yoghurt cake recipe! Very well! I have everything to make it. My fake yoghurt I don’t have to throw away as well! When I started with the recipe I noticed that actually I don’t have vanilla at home! Or it’s well hidden in my little boxes with millions of spices, pastry products and stuff. Right at the moment I was looking for the vanilla, I saw the lavender oil that I got some time ago in order to try another desert. In fact, I am not a big fan of vanilla. Another fact, I adore lavender! In the kitchen, in the bathroom, it is one of my favourite fragrances. Lavender cologne, lavender soaps, lavender room odour, and lavender oil – I have it ‘em all you want! 

It is a very easy recipe and successful. I have to admit, I was not loyal to the original recipe not only with the stuff that I replaced, but also with the amounts. This recipe is quite similar to the traditional Turkish dessert called “Revani” and the cake is soaked in “sherbet”, a mixture of water, sugar and lemon juice. Despite the fact that I find Turkish desserts tasty, there is usually one big problem with the ones that you get from the bakeries or restaurants: they are usually sickeningly sweet! If it is a dessert with sherbet, then it is two times sickeningly sweet! So I didn’t follow the amounts given in the recipe to make sherbet! I am glad I didn’t! My sherbet was already sweet enough and I can’t think about what would have happened should I have followed the original recipe! (this should give you an idea: the original recipe said 4,5 glasses of sugar and I only added 1!)

Now, below you’ll find my yoghurt cake perfumed with lavender. Very chic, eh? :)

Ingredients (Serves 6-8)

For the cake:

Half a glass of sunflower seed oil (or vegetable oil other than olive oil, or 50 grams of margarine)

Half a glass of sugar

2 – 3 eggs (the recipe mentioned 3 but I had only 2 and my cake is still delicious hehe)

1.5 glasses of flour

1.5 glasses of semolina

1.5 glasses of yoghurt

Baking powder (a bag)

1-2 drops of lavender oil (not more than that as it is really strong in taste)

For the sherbet:

1 glass of sugar

2.5 glasses of water

The juice of half a lemon,

Half a glass of apple juice (not a must, if you have, like I said, I like changing recipes a bit)

Method:

1. The oven needs to be preheated at 200 degrees. So you can start with that.
2. Before you start with the cake, you can already take care of the sherbet. Mix everything together and boil on low fire. It needs to cool down. So once it has boiled, you can place it in the fridge.
3. Mix the sugar with the eggs very well till the mixture turns white.
4. Add the yoghurt and the oil and mix some more.
5. Add the flour, semolina, baking powder and the lavender oil, and mix slowly but well.
6. Take a square pyrex (small or medium size shall be fine) and oil it. Spill some sugar over it.
7. Pour the mixture in the pyrex and place it in the oven. Let it cook till the cake becomes brown on top.
8. We will pour the sherbet into the cake however we need to take care of their temperature a bit. The sherbet needs to be cold, and the cake needs to be warm (thus wait a couple of minutes after you take it out of the oven). Pour the cold sherbet into the warm cake and cover and let the cake soak the sherbet.
9. You can serve it with cream on top if you are determined to gain 100 kilos more! :)

everything mixed

cake soaked in sherbet

cake soaked all the sherbet

yummy ending!

happy ending!

AUBERGINE KEBAB

(Recipe in English is below. Tencerede patlican kebabi tarifi için burayi tiklayin)

Aubergine is something very popular in the Turkish kitchen. It’s consumed a lot and as main dish, as mezze, as stew etc. This recipe is of a traditional and a simple stew; but we also tend to call stews as kebabs sometimes (kebab in a stew pan, would be more correct). I made this dish yesterday. It’s been a while that I’ve used aubergine in my kitchen so it was missed a lot and very welcome! 

As side dish (see in the pictures), I boiled some bulgur with some “firik”. Firik is also some kind of wheat but rather unripe. It has a smoky fragrance and it has a taste of its own. You gotta try! 

With such a plate, you gotta have "cacik", the amazing threesome of strained yoghurt, grated or chopped cucumber and garlic! You can garnish your cacik with dill, mint or coriander.

Ingredients (serves 4-5)

5 aubergines, stripe-stripped lengthwise and cut in very big cubes. The cubes should be big enough otherwise you’ll have aubergine soup :) You may also consider resting your aubergines in salted water in order to release the bitter taste they may have.

aubergines peeled

aubergines cubed

100 – 150 grams of lambs meat, cut in cubes (not too small though)

lamb meat cubed

2 medium onions, cubed

onions cubed

2 medium tomatoes, cut in cubes

3-4 teeth of garlic, chopped roughly or not chopped at all!

tomatoes cubed and garlic

1 spoon of tomato paste (domates salçasi in Turkish)

1 desert spoon of red papper paste (biber salçasi in Turkish)

1 glass of warm water

3 spoons of olive oil

Salt to your liking

1 – 2 sugar cubes

Method:

1. Sauté the onions and the garlic in the olive oil for a minute or two.  
2. Add the meat and continue sautéing for two minutes. 
3. Add the aubergines. Add the tomato. Add the water. Close the lid and cook in low temperature for half an hour or three quarters. The aubergines should be soft but they should remain intact qua shape. 
4. When the aubergines are ready, add the salt and sugar and mix. 

step 1

step 2

step 3

happy ending!!!

THAI INSPIRED SALAD

I am a big fan of Thai kitchen. I love their salads, their curries, their soups…everything I have tried so far, I loved.  The characteristics of the Thai food for me are the rich flavors, the fragrant and the understanding of aesthetics gifted to Thai people. The richness created with legumes and herbs! I believe that the Mother Nature has been so generous to that part of the world and we are blessed to enjoy such delicious ingredients! 

No matter where I am on travel, I am always digging to dine in a Thai restaurant if I know there is one on my way. I have been to many of them so far around the world: for example in Brussels and in Antwerp, in Berlin, in Madrid, in London, in Istanbul and of course in Bangkok and Koh Samui! I am so determined to go to a Thai restaurant (because I hear the delicious food calling me everytime :) ), whoever travelling with me has to join. I take people to Thai restaurants and explain them what I know. I think Thai government should give me the title of “thai kitchen embassy” or something. :) For Europeans, and for Turks, it is a kitchen that is still quite foreign, I have the impression. Such a shame. 

This salad is something that I prepare with pleasure and it is a quite quick kind of recipe. But why not a Thai salad but instead a Thai inspired salad? Years ago, in a supermarket in Belgium, they gave a piece of paper with a Thai salad recipe on it in order to promote their Thai products. Having been inspired by the many other Thai restaurants I have been to, I don’t know how far away I am from a genuine recipe anymore. But more important, in London, in Istanbul and in Belgium what they serve is not that far away in what I have eaten in Thailand. Though, to some Thai people, it is still not genuine due to the difference they taste in the aroma of the herbs and the freshness of them. And, despite the fact that I love Thai kitchen, I can’t eat so many chili’s as they do :) Somebody in Thailand once told me that it is not Thai food unless there is chili in it :) I didn’t use any chili in my salad. So I want to remain modest and I want to call my salad a Thai inspired salad :)

As for some of the ingredients, I don’t think it should be difficult to find them in Europe. In Turkey, I haven’t seen any glass noodles yet. I know I have seen some rice noodles. If you can’t find any glass noodles, you can use rice noodles instead. When in Thailand, I went to a supermarket, and I bought all the glass noodles I saw on the shelves :-) They were of course cheaper, they are genuine and they can remain fresh in their package for years :)

I used some lemon grass paste and Thai chili ketch-up as well. The lemon grass paste I brought from Belgium, and the Thai ketch-up is something I got to learn in Thailand. In Samui island, there was this nice little restaurant we used to go to, and there I was finally invited in the kitchen to be shown how my favourite Thai food is genuinely being prepared. There I saw that they add a bit of this ketch-up to the salad dressing with something like starch. To this day, I still don’t know what exactly it is because the people in the restaurant didn’t know what this product was called in English and I can’t read any Thai. Still, I brought some with me :)

glass noodles, chili ketch-up and lemon grass paste

Instead of salt, fish sauce is used and luckily I still have some left in my big bottle of fish sauce. You can find that in the supermarkets everywhere, I think.

As for the herbs are concerned, coriander is the queen of all the herbs in the Thai kitchen. It is something I love!  If you haven’t tried it yet, it has such an aromatic taste, you will either love it or hate it. It is the Asian parsley, as some people call it. Anyway, in the restaurant in Istanbul, I was told that despite the fact that coriander grows in Turkey, the aroma is not like the herb grown in Thailand. Could very well be. So that’s why they import it as well. 

Below is the recipe, but the amounts I used might seem to be too much for you, but it is for a salad-only dinner. Enjoy!

Ingredients (serves 2-4)

5-10 leaves of fresh mint, sliced roughly or not sliced (depends on how you like ‘em) 

mmm, fresh mint

Coriander (the amount you add is up to you, but you gotta add it!!!)

coriander

1 spring onion, chopped

4-5 leaves of purple basil (it something that I had in my fridge, so I didn’t stop myself from adding it :) it is not a must)

purple basil

coriander, purple basil, mint

1 small to medium size onion, sliced

5-10 leaves of lettuce, sliced thin

1 medium to big size tomato (you could use 4-5 cherry tomatoes instead), cut in big cubes

1 cucumber, sliced in halves

1 lemon (Lime is used instead of lemon in Thai kitchen; however, I didn’t have any), pressed

lettuce, onion, cucumber, tomato and lemon

onion, tomato, cucumber

 80 grams of glass noodles , soaked in cold water for 20-30 seconds; then in hot water for 4-5 seconds (or according to the instructions on the package)

glass noodles, ready

1-2 spoons of Thai chili ketch-up

1-2 spoons of fish sauce

1 spoon of lemon grass 

200 grams of minced meat (pork, lamb, veal – whatever you like)

1-2 teeth of garlic, chopped fine

Method:

1. Mix the lettuce, mint, coriander, spring onion, onion, cucumber, tomato, purple basil leaves in a big salad bowl.
2. Mix the lemon juice with the chili ketch-up and fish sauce to a dressing. And soak the glass noodles in this dressing.
3. Cook the minced meat on a pan and add the garlic and lemon grass paste.
4. In the middle of the salad, place the glass noodles. Toss the rest of the juice and scatter on the salad. Spread the minced meat over the salad

step 3

yummy ending!!!

mmm!!