When we get to the Arabic month of Muharrem, in order to make Aşure (Noah's pudding) we normally have the wheat for that purpose in our kitchens. As I was thinking of what to cook as a main course, I picked up the book called Gurme Kent Gaziantep Kitchen. Adapting a recipe from that book to our house's taste and to my cooking style I ended up with this recipe I'm sharing.
Making the classic recipe of this meal called Keşkek needs too much of an effort. Keşkek was included in the Somut Olmayan Kültür Mirası(intangible cultural heritage) category in 2011 by UNESCO with "from preparation, presentation to consumption, stands to be important from the perspective of gender equality and sharing" rationale. The article called keşkek by Gonca Tokuz is highly detailed and informative.
tags
red pepper paste,
shelled wheat,
beef for stew,
chickpea,
garlic
My grandmother's sister Aunt Jale Egeli, loved getting our very large core family together, and she was a very good cook and a very elegant hostess. She always served various tasty food.
Hem karnımızı hem de ruhumuzu bol bol doyuran teyzemi anmak için onun meşhur ıspanak yemeğini yaptım. Hem görüntüsü hem de tadı muhteşemdir. 🙂
tags
pearl onion,
spinach
I have been buying cookbooks with a never ending curiosity and pleasure for the past 25 years. My culinary library probably exceeds 500 books. With all the facilities of the web, even though it is less compared to the old days, I am still buying. With every new book I buy, I check from the first to the last page and mark the recipes I want to try. Of course, though rarely, I run into books with no interesting or 1-2 tried recipes and never read more than once. And then I have those books concentrating on specific subjects and specific kitchens, which I always check when searching. In addition to all that, I specially try to buy my favorite chefs' books. I have special reference books that I use for searching and deeper learning purposes, and my 3-4 books often used on my kitchen shelves.
A book I bought in November 2008, The Flavor Bible is one of my kitchen books. A couple, Karen Page ve Andrew Dornenburg, created a magnificent taste combination map on paper. Whenever I want something different or a way to enhance the ingredients that I have at hand, specially when with a recipe that I really know, I pick their book up. For example, adding turmeric to baked caulifloweris a detail I got from that book.
If taste combinations is of interest to you, interactive style of The Flavor Connection Map (lezzet ilişkileri haritası) çok ilginç ve eğlenceli bir kaynak. 🙂
Vegetable stock is a must in our house. When cooking a meal, using vegetable stock instead of water deepens and enriches the taste.
1 kup sebze suyunu 1 taşım kaynatın. 1 tatlı kaşığı mısır nişastasını, kaynattığınız sudan 1 kaşık ekleyerek eritin ve kaynayan sebze suyuna yedirin. 3 dakika yüksek ateşte pişirin. Ocağı kısıp 3 dakika daha pişirin, kaşığın arkasını hafifçe kaplayacak koyulukta olmalı. Ateşten alın, soğusun. Salata sosu yaparken zeytinyağının 2/3ü yerine hazırladığınız koyultulmuş sebze suyunu kullanın. Hem sosta kullandığınız malzemelerin tadı belirginleşecek hem de yağdan gelen kalori 2/3 oranında azalacak. Sırf bu sebepten bile sebze suyu yapmaya değer. 🙂
tags
carrot,
parsley,
garlic,
onion
It really takes too much of an effort and time making beef broth at home, but the difference it adds to our taste buds is great. If you can cool it really fast and place it in your freezer it will live a long life. You will also feel comfortable when you are in charge of all the ingredients that goes into your broth.
tags
carrot,
celeriac,
parsley,
garlic,
onion
Crepes, known to be basic French food, can be prepared both as something sweet or something salty. It takes it's name from the Latin word "crispus" meaning curly or wavy.
At first, people used buckwheat flour for crepes. White flour got cheaper at the beginning of 20th century and also the crepes made with this flour are softer, so it became the basic flour to be used.
We call crepes as akıtma in Turkey. Crepe makers that you can run into at every corner in France use something very similar to our own iron flatbread making plates. They use a special hand tool for spreading the crepe mix over the hot plates.
Yine bir klasik ve yine benim uyarlamamla karşı karşıyasınız. 🙂
tags
milk,
whole wheat flour,
egg
Turkish Agricultural authorities started a campaign with the "do not waste your bread" slogan which is ekmeğini israf etme in Turkish. And according to a research made after the campaign, bakeries and all the other bread makers included, daily bread production is 90.9 million loaves, and unfortunately around 3 million of them stay in shop without being sold. Waste in restaurants, hotels, staff and student cafeterias and homes bring the number up to 4,9 million standart (250 g) loaves. Most of this waste becomes animal feed and the rest goes to waste.
Ay çöreğinin pastanelerde bayatlayan kekleri değerlendirmek için yaratıldığını biliyor muydunuz? 🙂
This recipe gives you an easy way to use stale bread with your own ingredients.
tags
bread,
apple,
dried fig,
cinnamon,
oatmeal
As I have noted when talking about my baked pumpkin mücver, pumpkin is both a symbol of Halloween and of Thanksgiving in the States. Pumpkin pie is a must on Thanksgiving tables, and the idea of this celebration that takes place on the 4th Thursday of each November, is blessing the coming year and the abundance of its crops.
Pumpkin was first grown in Central America around 5.500 BC. It was one of the first food item brought from the New World by the European explorers. UK where the pie culture goes long ways back in history, pumpkin was immediately utilized. One can very easily find pumpkin pie recipes in the cook books of the 17th century. It is assumed that this specific pie found its way to the States with the first British settlers.
Klasik bir tarifi bizim evin damak tadına uyarlamak bu tartta gerçekten kolay oldu. 🙂 Umarım siz de denersiniz.
tags
pumpkin
Nutmeg, known as small Indian nut in Turkish, is believed to have developed first on the Banda Islands east of the Malaysia peninsula. Nutmegs are native to Indonesia and are extensively grown in tropical Asia and America.
It is said that massaging with nutmeg oil relieves rheumatic pains.
It is supposed to have been an expensive and highly esteemed spice in the cuisine of the Middle Ages. It was very popular from the 15th to the 19th century. It was generally carried in wooden or silver boxes with an in-built grate.
Dutch merchants held the nutmeg trade in their hands for a very long time. However their monopoly was broken when spices were smuggled out of the Islands and grown elsewhere.
It is rumoured that the single ingestion of a large quantity of nutmegs may cause hallucinations, that it is a hallucinogen. Such a large quantity of the spice is also poisonous.
Indonesia and Granada, whose flag bears the image of the nutmeg are leaders in nutmeg production. The first harvest to be obtained from a nutmeg tree requires 7-9 years after it is planted and reaches its full production in 20 years.
Nutmeg is the essential spice for sauce bechamél. It also goes very well with spinach. It is sprinkled on hot or cold eggnog as an ornament.
I suggest you buy nutmeg whole. Prick a needle into it to check that it is fresh. A droplet of oil should appear on its surface. Grate the required quantity indicated in the recipe. Nutmeg powder very quickly loses its aroma and taste.
The word sauce comes from French, and it bears the meaning of a taste adder which makes the food more appetizing. Fluid or semifluid sauces enhances the looks, smell and the taste of the food they are served with, but they also help the meals to be digested easily and to be more useful health wise. In the old days when proper refrigeration was not available, meat, poultry, fish and seafood could not be kept for long time periods and sauces sometimes covered the unusual tastes.
The Mythical French Chef Auguste Escoffier simplified the works of another chef before him, namely Marie-Antoine Careme, and defined Veloute, Espagnole, Sauce Tomat, Hollandaise and Bechamel as the five main sauces of the French Cuisine. All other are derivatives of the main 5. Bechamel sauce is generally served with white meat, eggs and vegetables, and is made by cooking butter and flour and slowly adding milk to reach a desired thickness.
Tariflerimde mümkün olduğunca beyaz un yerine tam buğday unu kullanmaya özen gösteriyorum. Tereyağı yerine zeytinyağının tadını tercih ediyorum. Bu tarif tam KLASİK değil yani. 🙂
tags
milk,
whole wheat flour,
olive oil
EN 
TR