Turkish Recipe : Köfte

Another staple of Turkish cuisine is köfte : usually a meat-based or grain-based dish that can be from hamburgers to meatballs to vegetarian ones eaten with salad.


This recipe is really easy to make.

Ingredients :
Ground Beef
3 eggs

3 tbs tomato sauce
and as many spices you would like
flour

Mix all the ingredients except the flour well. And then add enough flour that the meat will be able to stay together.  Put in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Then form in little round hamburgers

cook in a little oil, until brown all the way through. And enjoy !

Turkish Recipe : Stuffed Grape Leaves

These are better than the ones in the can or those found in a restaurant. And most of the ingredients can be found right in your pantry.

The only ingredient that might take some time to find our the grape leaves, but if you are in Europe, these will not be that hard to find. A pack of 50 can be found in any Turkish grocery story for about 2,50 euros or you can pick them fresh while in Turkey. My mother-in-law sent me home with a bag of 200.

The term sarma derives from Turkish verb "sarmak," which means to wrap or to roll. It can be prepared with rice and spices (vegetarian) or with rice and ground meat. Both are delicious. To find a recipe with ground meat check out this one. I prefer to make my grape leaves the vegetarian way, because I usually make dolma (stuffed peppers, another interesting recipe to come) the same night.

There are no set ingredients to this recipe, I usually just eyeball and pour in the ingredients and taste it before "stuffing them."

1-2 cups of rice washed

1-2 onions grated

1/2 tomato grated

2 tbs. tomato and/or pepper paste - I usually add lots

parsley chopped finely

salt

mint and other spices

1. Mix well all of the ingredients

2. Boil the grape leaves for 10 minutes to clean off the excess salt. Then cut off the stems and "hang" them to dry around a strainer

3. Put one leaf (the shiny side down) and a little of the rice mixture in the leaf and fold tightly.

 

Put in a pot, until they look like the picture above, I usually line the pot with parsely stems or lettuce. Fill the pot with water about half-full and then cover with a small plate and cook for 20-30 minutes or until the rice is tender.

Feel free to post your pictures or comments on any recipes that you try out!

Turkish Recipe : Mercimek Corbasi

or better known in english as Red Lentil Soup.

Lentils are a turkish staple, everytime I go to someone's house for dinner we eat this soup - because it is good and easy to make.
At my house, we eat this soup at least once a week, it is perfect for when feeling a little under the weather or when looking for a filling soup. Usually goes perfect with a salad or köfte (little hamburgers) which I will post later in the week.

Red Lentils

This recipe is based off the recipe found here :
for the soup: makes 6 servings
1 cup red lentils
1 medium size onion - I usually grate the onion but finely chopped works well too
1 carrot - as with the onion I grate the carrot. if you don't like carrots you can substitute one small potato as well
1 tbsp tomato or pepper paste - Sauce biber or pepper paste is very difficult to come by in the usa so
1 tsp salt - I usually give my husband
4 cups of water

spices to add : mint, basil or paprika
--With a regular pot: Sautee the onion with 1 tbsp oil for 3-4 minutes. Add the paste and cook for a couple of minutes, and add the rest of the soup ingredients. Put everything for the soup in a big pot and cook on medium heat until the lentils are soft and mushy, for about 20-25 minutes.
Then enjoy!

Turkish Recipe Week

During this last week and half of Ramadan, I am going to share some recipes that I have learned whether it be from my in-laws or online.

grape leaves

grilled chicken

meatballs

Some recipes that I have already wrote about include :
Yogurt à la Turque I will be doing a follow-up to this one because I have discovered a better way to make yogurt
Turkish Bread
If you are interested in learning a specific one, please do not hesitate to ask.

Flowers Everywhere

Every single time I leave our apartment, I pass these flowers and I think about how pretty they would be in our kitchen.

I really just want to get a pair of scissors and cut away.

  

But because they do not belong to me, I have decided to just walk by them as much as possible and maybe one day I will get the courage to cut away.

I Spy : Pumpkins!

Yesterday as I walking to the bus from the doctor's office I stumbled upon a garden full of pumpkins or a citrouille as they say in French.

There were also tomatoes in this garden. I was almost tempted to ring the doorbell and ask the woman if I could buy one of her pumpkins. As I was waiting for the bus, which turned out to be 10 minutes late, I thought about all the recipes I could use pumpkin : muffins, pie and cheesecake. Is it October / November yet?
I guess I will just have to find a pumpkin patch soon to fulfill all of my taste bud desires!

Spotted : Post-It War

A new trend has been declared in Paris, a post-it war in the windows of many buildings around the city.

Some of them have really cool designs, but personally it seems a little geeky.

Guess what this is ? : Answer

a burned car - Charlie was right

This is not the worst case, I have seen a small bunched up black car with black tar everywhere and the plants surronding the car burned as well.

Like in the first picture with black tar on the pavement, they are found every inch of the area. I joked to my husband once that it seemed that it was the place to burn your car or burn a car. So the picture of the car located above is from Paris with license plates from 75 not 93, Seine Saint Denis and the car was fairly new. It begs me to ask the question, did the owner intentionally bring their car to get "torched" on "accident" or did it really get torched by some kids who wanted to have some fun?

I hate to say it but it was probably the former, because the owner wanted a better car and he thought he prove to the insurance company that his car was torched. Maybe I'm being biais. But it seems like lots of people are bringing their cars to lots like these, backing in, clearing their junk out and letting it burn through the night.

Un Dîner Presque Parfait

One of my favorite French TV shows besides the reruns of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple en français, is Un Dîner Presque Parfait (translation : an Almost-perfect Dinner), which for those of you who live in France is on M6.

Basically, it is a game show with 5 contestants and all of the contestants come from the same city but they do not know each other. On Monday is the first contestant who cooks for the other 4 and on Tuesday is another one for 4 (etc.) each creates their own menus, their own activities and their own table settings. Each day the contestant who served an aperatif, appetizer, dinner and dessert is graded on the food, the atmosphere and the decorations and on Friday the winner is revealed.

Here is a sample video from La Rochelle en français :


Every single time I watch the show, I always think about my perfect menu. Will it be a Northern Kentucky menu (Skyline Chili, goetta, and Graeters)? or will it be a Turkish American inspired ( hamburgers, baklava, and lentil soup? I have decided that some day I am going to try out for the show and see if I have a chance at the 1000 euros prize!

Would you do Un Dîner Presque Parfait if you had the chance?

Thoughts : Vacation is flying way too fast

It has been a month and a few weeks since I have been back from Turkey and it feels like the summer is flying faster than the other months. Can you believe it is already August? The year is more than half-way over and Christmas is just around the corner.

It is kind of ironic that American children are already going back to school whereas French children are in the middle of their vacation. While the French are bathing on the Riveria, the little Americans are learning math and biology. I kind of miss school, I miss the learning not the homework or paper-writing.

Speaking of paper-writing, I have been working on my thesis and presentation for my final school exam in September. I am hoping to show off my talents for the jury as a foreigner able to understand the French system and fingers-crossed  get my masters!,  my creativity on the layout and technique on the format of the paper and my enthusiasm when I present.

Also, this month, I am catching up on all of my work that I have been meaning to get done since I moved to this apartment. Like actually cleaning out the closets and do some spring/summer cleaning and also reading books that I have been dying to read all year, plus those that I need to read for school.

Have a great day!

Just Hanging Out

Every Friday and Sunday morning when I go to the market (marché), I walk past what seems to me a strange phenomenon : snails on a fence. I am not just talking about one. I am talking about a dozen or so on each post.

I pointed it out the first time I saw them to my husband, but he didn't find it as cool as I did and he wouldn't let me take a picture. So last week, I decided to walk by the same place and saw the snails hanging out again. I got my camera out and took a picture just as a woman walked past and she had the same look on her face as my husband ded. Kind of like a "why is the girl taking a picture of a fence" and she walked away too fast for me to explain "Oh, je prends un photo de l'escargot!" (translation - I am taking a picture of the snails).

I found it odd, because I always thought that snails slept or hung out on trees or bushes, not attached to some fence.

Maybe they are on the fence because it's green?

Also, I have never found another snail hangout like this one. Maybe they are too afraid to be out in bird eyes view because they know that the French like to eat them, haha.

Have you ever ate snails? and what did you think?

Artist Watch : Hervé Hotier

Here is a video for one of the artists, a flutist, that I recently have started working for (still my plans to open my agency are put on hold because of the prefecture). His name is Hervé Hotier and is the professor of flute at the Clermont-Ferrand Conservatory.

As his impersario, as a contact from Canada called me, I am currently organizing an American tour for next june. He is interested in not only playing flute with his guitarist, but learning about the USA and discovering it's beauty. Basically,I am interested in networking with organizers and producers from cities with a good music reputation, if any of you, adventurers have an idea, don't hesitate to pass it along.

Enjoy the video, please comment if you like his music and would appreciate to hear more!


Maurice Emmanuel - Sonate pour clarinette, flûte et piano (2e mouvement) from ed on Vimeo.