Two More Celeriac Recipes

I hope you are in the mood for celeriac/kereviz because that's on the menu today!

I was going through my old 2010 diary the other day looking for a number when my glance fell upon a recipe for Spiced Celeriac with Lemon that I must have jotted down in extremis judging by the state of the scribble. I looked at it more closely and rather alarmingly had no recollection whatsoever of who had given it to me or when let alone where so if you recognize it as YOURS, do let me know because I’ve made it and am passing it on! That lemon tang and spicy flavour combine beautifully to make an unusual delicious meze.

Spiced Celeriac with Lemon

Ingredients

1 large celeriac/kereviz

Zest of 1 lemon

Juice of 1 ½ lemons

Paprika, pepper, and cinnamon

Olive oil for frying

100 ml/ half a cup water

Method

·         Peel and cut the celeriac into long, thin sticks (julienne).

·         Heat 3 tbsps olive oil in a pan and gently fry for about 15 minutes till slightly browned.

·         Sprinkle with paprika, pepper, and cinnamon. Stir in zest of 1 lemon, the juice of 1 ½ lemons and the water and simmer for about 10 minutes.

·         Arrange decoratively in a shallow dish and serve at room temperature.

 Lovely warming Celeriac Soup is my second recipe: I made it this morning.

This time I had been riffling through Refika’s book again when I saw a Celeriac Soup recipe. Ah, I thought but when I looked closer I saw that it was a ringer for My Colourful Winter Vegetable Soup with the addition of 2 kereviz.

The other ingredients are the usual winter ones ie 1 potato, 1 onion, 1 carrot, plus those 2 celeriacs which I simply  peeled and chopped up, put in a saucepan, covered with cold water and gently boiled for about 15 minutes. I added 1 chicken stock cube.  No oil or butter in this one.  In order to make it  a bit different, I thought I would change the consistency. Out came my trusty stick blender and I blitzed all the cooked vegetables in the saucepan. Without any additions of flour or other thickening agents, it is the perfect velvety consistency with an appealing creamy colour.

 I have just had it for lunch with a wedge of lemon on the side and a sprinkle of flaked red pepper. If this was a cookery book, it would say 'serve with crusty bread'. I didn't have any but I can show you a picture of great crusty bread:

warm and fragrant

I took these photos when I recently visited Şirince (pron: shi/rin/jay), an old village originally inhabited by Greeks very near to Selçuk.  Of course I couldn't resist buying one of these loaves! Note their unusual shape. The bread was actually much better toasted than fresh and survived the flight back to Istanbul, vying for space with my washbag in my case!



irresistible

If you like celeriac, you can also check  two of my previous posts: Celeriac Carpaccio  and  the more traditional Zeytinyağlı Kereviz/ Celeriac in Olive Oil .

Afiyet Olsun!

Ottolenghi-inspired: Carrot and Walnut Cake

carrot and walnut cake in all its glory

Mmmmm. Need I say more?

Who knows Ottolenghi? Last May when we stayed in Islington was the first time I came across this cafe, deli, patisserie and bakery known by this distinctive name. And there are cookbooks too! This one is called simply ‘Ottolenghi The Cookbook’. It contains recipes for exactly the kind of food I like: familiar ingredients but used in new and exciting ways. I can’t wait to buy it for myself as my dear physio who lent me this will want it back any day now!

After this post, I  promise to go back to my pulses and knobbly veggies.

But this is one of the other two cakes I made for my Book Club meeting last week and judging by the reactions, I think it’s probably an excellent recipe to share. 

These cakes that I bake, by the way, are not Turkish in the slightest but they go down well with both Turkish and foreign friends alike. Cakes per se are not a traditional part of the cuisine here: if you want something sweet – and for sure there is no shortage of items in this category – you would normally buy baklava, helva or any of the many Middle Eastern syrupy sugary desserts like the exotically-named Lady’s Navel or Nightingale’s Nest from speciality bakeries or patisseries. There are yet other shops that specialise in milk-based puddings and the selection is an eye-opener.

It took me a long time to get used to the idea of carrot cake. At first it seemed very ‘American’ to me and the thought of carrot in something sweet did not remotely appeal. But time moves on and it has now long been absorbed into my baking psyche and repertoire.

This cake is ‘light and fluffy’ as opposed to ‘dense and fruity’. I think it’s quite perfect.

Ingredients

160g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon/tarçin

¼ tsp ground cloves/karanfil

1 large egg

1 egg yolk

200g sunflower oil

270g caster sugar (in Turkey just use the regular toz şeker)

50g walnuts/ceviz, chopped

50g desiccated coconut/hindistan cevizi

135g carrot, roughly grated

2 egg whites

Pinch of salt

Icing

175g cream cheese at room temperature

70g unsalted butter

35g icing sugar/pudra şekeri

25g honey/bal

30g walnuts/ceviz, chopped and lightly toasted

Method

• Preheat oven to 170C/Gas Mark 3. Grease a 20cm springform cake tin and line the base and sides with baking parchment.
•  Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarb of soda and spices. Lightly whisk the whole egg with the egg yolk.
•  Put the sunflower oil and caster sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for about a minute on medium speed. On a low speed, slowly add the beaten egg. Mix in the walnuts, coconut and carrot and then the sifted dry ingredients. Don’t over mix.

• Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Wash and dry the mixer bowl, making sure it is totally clean, then put the egg whites and salt in it and whisk on a high speed until firm peaks form.

like this

• Gently fold the egg whites into the carrot mixture in 3 additions, being careful not to over mix. Streaks of white in the mixture are okay.
• Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 1 hour; it could take longer. A skewer inserted in the centre should come out dry. If the cake starts getting dark before the centre is cooked through, cover it with foil. Let the cake cool completely and then remove from the tin.
• To make the icing, beat the cream cheese in a mixer till light and smooth. Remove from the mixer. Beat the butter, icing sugar and honey in the mixer until light and airy. Fold together the cheese and butter mixes. Spread waves of icing on top of the cake and sprinkle with the nuts.

good view of that nutty topping

I think my only complaint is that a lot of washing up of bowls is involved! But that’s minor when you think of the end result.

Afiyet olsun!

Chocolate Banana Muffins

chocolate banana muffins for tea

If you’re looking for something nice to make this weekend or if you just feel like making a little extra something for tea for the family on Sunday, I think these are a good bet: easy ingredients, easy instructions and yummy result.

Cupcakes by any other name, these two flavours are wonderful together: the one complements the other in one delightfully moist muffin.

Arriving back from my lovely weekend in Selçuk on Sunday evening, I rushed into the kitchen to take these and the two cakes I had made on Thursday out of the freezer.  All of them including these little beauties freeze beautifully.  Our monthly book club meeting  was the very next day here at my place so it was all systems go.

These muffins are actually a Nigella recipe. Now, I can’t say I am a great fan of hers normally – I find it hard to believe that she is really doing all that cooking -  but I was given her lovely book ‘Kitchen’ for Christmas and finally had the opportunity to look through it. The recipes are not difficult at all: it’s the photos that make it. And on p139 a very appetizing picture of these muffins caught my eye. Instead of regular muffin  cases, they were each in a swirl of shiny brown paper that made them look sophisticated and most delicious:  she calls them ‘tulip-skirted party frocks’ which is a wonderful description. Well, I didn’t have these, just my lovely muffin cases that I bought in LA last summer – BTW you can buy them at IKEA but the shape is different: seems Swedish cupcakes are tall and narrow: very fetching but then you have to buy the matching muffin tin .... I’ll probably end up doing that. But anyway, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

Makes 12

3 very ripe or overripe bananas

125ml vegetable oil

2 eggs

100g soft light brown sugar

225g plain flour

3 x 15ml tbsp best-quality cocoa powder, sifted

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

·         Preheat oven to 200C/gas mark 6 and line a muffin tin with papers.

·         Mash the bananas by hand or with a freestanding mixer and then add the oil followed by the eggs and sugar.

·         Mix the flour, cocoa powder and bicarb together and add this mixture, beating gently, to the banana mixture, then spoon it into the prepared papers.

adding, mixing, beating

·         Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, by which time the muffins should be dark, rounded and  ‘peeking proudly’ out of their cases. Allow to cool slightly in their tin before removing to a wire rack.

Tips

1.       Make the muffins up to one day ahead. Will keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container in a cool place.

2.       Can be frozen in an airtight container for up to 2 months.

3.       I think this is a really easy recipe and I  truly wasn’t expecting such wonderful muffins as these!

Our book this month was ‘Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand’ by Helen Simonson. Overall we gave it a grade of 3.5 out of 5. Personally, I gave it a 2 so you can tell it wasn’t my favourite read.

a bouquet of oya

I can't resist showing you these fantastic oya which I used instead of flowers in the middle of the table. Oya refers to the lace that village women make with a very very fine hook/tığ and use to edge headscarfs, like the one I am wearing in my profile picture at the top. I bought these last weekend  from a market in  the Selçuk area. They're amazing, aren't they?

Lunch at the Seven Sleepers/Yedi Uyanlar Cafe

View through peach trees of the Grand Fortress of Selçuk on Ayasoluk Hill

I was  invited to Selçuk for the weekend and a sixty minute flight on Friday took me from Istanbul to Izmir down on Turkey's Aegean coast. From there a car ride to the small town of Selçuk where my old friend lives more or less in the shadow of the landmark 6th Century Basilica of St John the Apostle while the town itself is dominated by the Grand Fortress on top of Ayasoluk Hill. Selçuk is very popular because of its proximity to the ancient city of Ephesus or Efes, the House of the Virgin Mary/Meryem Ana which attracts thousands of pilgrims annually, as well as glorious sandy beaches and a wealth of interesting places to see and visit. It’s a fabulous area. The remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, are there! Imagine!

Temple of Hadrianus at Ephesus

And all this with hardly any traffic, fresh air, and a blue blue sky!

First stop was lunch and here's the tale:

Have you ever heard of the Yedi Uyanlar or the Seven Sleepers, commonly referred to as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus? I’m afraid I have to confess ignorance here yet it seems that the story is widely believed by both Christians and Moslems. Seven young men refusing to recant their Christian beliefs during the persecutions of Roman Emperor Decius, in 250 AD retired to a cave to pray and fell asleep. Decius had the cave sealed and there they slept undisturbed for about 200 years. A landowner opened up the cave planning on using it for his cows, and found them whereupon they woke up. Everbody was astounded. The bishop was summoned to interview them and they died praising God. A miracle indeed.

This is the story!

Meanwhile:

local women making mantı at the  Seven Sleepers cafe

Nearby the ruins of the church and grotto under some trees is a small pleasant outdoor cafe. Nothing fancy:  rustic wooden tables and chairs outside and local women inside preparing the food in the traditional way.

the woman on the right is waiting to cook our gözleme over her hot fire

We found a sunny table as it was a bit nippy in the shade. Friend Frances recommended the gözleme, typical rural fare.  The village women in Assos make them too but I have to admit, these were in a class of their own. Whereas ours are filled with white cheese and parsley, these were either patlıcan/aubergine or potato.

believe me, these were mouthwatering: light and flaky with just the right amount of filling

In the first picture the women are making mantı, often referred to as Turkish ravioli. The preparation is very time-consuming as you can imagine but if home-made, can be a feast if a bit fattening! But I doubt very much that today's young Turkish women make it. It can be bought so easily.  It is served  in bowls with tomato sauce and garlic yogurt then sprinkled with dried mint and sumac. Here, the blue plastic is to stop the mantı from drying out.

the fiddly task of making mantı

Very often in a Turkish family, there will be a teyze or auntie whose speciality it is to make mantı. Our own  Auntie Ümit  was the one with the magic touch re mantı and an invitation from her was not to be turned down!

All About Aşure or Noah's Pudding

Sooner or later the doorbell will ring or somebody will tap on your door. You open it and there will be your neighbour.

This is especially true if you live in an apartment block, even more likely if you live in a more traditional area of Istanbul.  I am not sure about those new complexes with independent villas. I'm guessing it doesn’t happen there.

But you open the door and for sure there she'll be, beaming at you and offering you some wonderful Turkish delight.  I love this custom because it hails back to old times, old neighbourhoods and old patterns when sharing was a way of life.

Aşure or Noah's Pudding

This happened to me two evenings ago. There was Müjgan (her name means Gift) and she had made aşure that afternoon. Not only for us but for the entire building.  Now this is one of Turkey’s oldest and most traditional of desserts, known as it is as Noah’s Pudding or Noah’s Dessert. It will contain at least 15 ingredients reflecting those items that were left when the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat after the Great Flood. However their supplies were exhausted so whatever they could find went into the making of this dessert. They were so overjoyed at having survived that they wanted to celebrate with a very special pudding. As a result, it includes different grains, dried fruits, and nuts. The consistency is porridge-like but the presentation is beautiful, decorated as it is with nuts and pomegranate seeds. Traditionally it is made in large quantities to be distributed amongst family and neighbours during the month following Kurban Bayramı, the Sacrifice Holiday, which is a moveable feast.  This past year it occurred in November.

What I liked about Müjgan was that she said apologetically that she got confused about the right time to make it but she just felt like making it, so here it was.

Actually aşure is not my favourite. It tastes all right but is more of a curiosity than a true gourmet offering in my opinion. But the point is that the custom doesn’t stop here: when a neighbour gives you something on a plate, you must never return that plate empty. That would be ayıp or just not done. I have lived here so long that I feel this acutely. You have to put something back on that plate and then return it.

Yesterday I went to a coffee morning where we had fun decorating cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. Our wonderful resourceful American hostess wrapped several in cellophane for each of us and tied them up with ribbon to take home. So this lovely-looking packet is what I put in the 2 clean dishes that I returned to Müjgan. I told her that we had made them that day for Sevgiler Günü and she valiantly declared that she would give them to her own sevgili or darling!  I can only hope that he liked them!

Meat-Stuffed Chard Rolls or Etli Pazı Sarması

Sarma or Dolma?

These are not quite the same although the names are sometimes used interchangeably. These made from Swiss Chard leaves are called sarma because they are rolled. Cabbage and vine leaves can be used in the same way and strictly speaking are also sarma but you do hear them being called dolma.  The term dolma  really refers to vegetables eg courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes, and peppers which can be hollowed out and stuffed. I associate  these with summer when those vegetables are plentiful.

I have stuffed a good many vegetables in my time and rolled a great many sigara böreği, those little cigarette-shaped börek made with white cheese and parsley, so making these was not the challenge it might have been. As with much of Turkish cooking, the preparation can be time-consuming  but the end result is always tasty!

this is how it's sold

Confession time: pazı is a new vegetable for me!  Spinach has always been my winter vegetable of choice but the attractive bright green of these leaves finally persuaded me to buy a bunch.   I was inordinately proud of myself as these sarma worked out beautifully. My husband polished off the lot leaving me wondering if he had been missing them all these years!

Ingredients for Meat-Stuffed Chard Rolls/Etli Pazı Sarması

Serves 6

2 bunches large leaf chard/pazı

300 gr minced lamb (I actually used beef)

½  cup rice

3 onions, finely chopped

4 tbsp cooking oil

4 tomatoes (2 for the stuffing, 2 for cooking in the pan)

small handful each of chopped parsley and dill

½  tsp pepper

½  tsp flaked red pepper

1 ½ tsp salt

2 cups hot water

Method

·         Cut and discard the stems of the chard leaves and then wash the leaves. In order to soften them in preparation for rolling, boil up a pan of water and put them in, a few at a time, and immediately remove and plunge into a basin of cold water. This way the bright green colour is preserved.

·         Take the chopped onion and cook gently in the cooking oil till soft.

·         For the stuffing:  wash and drain the rice and put into a large bowl. Add the cooked onion, mince, salt, pepper, flaked red pepper, chopped parsley and dill, plus grated tomatoes and mix together with your hands.

·         Take one chard leaf and spread it out on a hard surface. Cut out the tough central vein with a sharp knife so you have 2 halves.  Make sure the shiny side of the leaf is face-down. Place a small amount of the stuffing  on one half and roll up, folding over the ends first.  Use your fingers to roll it up tightly. 

·         Take your pan and first spread one or two more battered leaves on the bottom. Place the remaining 2 tomatoes in the middle and then arrange the sarma next to each other in layers. Pour the hot water over them and then cover with a plate (see picture).

·         Bring to the boil then lower the heat and cook for about 30 minutes.  When time is up, they can rest quite happily and be reheated if necessary. Serve with garlic yogurt and a sprinkle of flaked red pepper.

Tips

1.    If the leaf is small, cut out the vein and then overlap one half with the other half. This will make it easier to roll.

2.    There is a tendency to put too much stuffing on each half which then makes it impossible to roll. Some of the rolls will be very small but that’s fine!

3.    A friend of mine says her mother-in-law always mixed a little tomato paste/salça in the hot water at the end which sounds like a good idea.

4.    If you have a little bit of stuffing left over, roll it into walnut-sized balls and place them in the pan. They will swell up and be tiny hedgehog meatballs.

5.    These sarma are truly delicious and so authentically Turkish! But you wouldn’t want to make them for a large family unless you had a trusty helper to assist with the rolling!

afiyet olsun!

A little aside about the spelling: you may have noticed that sometimes there is a dot on the Turkish letter i and sometimes not, it’s not just me! They are two different letters and produce different sounds. İ with a dot is pronounced like the i in ‘bit’ while the dotless ı is pronounced  like the er in water (English pron). Their usage depends on vowel harmony but we won’t go into that here!  The final ‘si’  or ‘sı’ that you may have noticed on the end of some of the names of these Turkish recipes, indeed like the one above, is a kind of genitive. Just in case you were wondering!

My Foodie Stroll Through Beyoğlu

Anyone for intestines? Sheep’s head? Then follow me!

Quaint old streets, crumbling facades, and  ancient courtyards on the one hand, colourful cafes, bars, and meyhanes or drinking places of all descriptions,  little shops both traditional and upbeat which come and go with a regularity that is bewildering on the other. This is today’s Beyoğlu in the heart of Istanbul.  It’s a fun area and as such this is how it is defined today: pedestrianized now and constantly busy with seething masses mostly young especially at the weekends.  

My mission yesterday was to share with my friends some of the foodie delights of the area.  Despite the fact it was pretty cold,  five of us coming from all four corners of the city by car, bus and ferry, met promptly at 11.15 yesterday morning at Tünel which lies at the end of İstiklal Caddesi. It was so cold that of one acccord we dived  into the nearest cafe for a coffee! So much for the foodie tour!



But we soon revived. We each put 20 TL (about 8 GBP)  into the kitty so that I could handle payments on behalf of everybody more easily as we went and off we set. 

Here are some of the foodie highlights of our stroll through Beyoğlu:

First stop was at the Vitamin Shop just down from Tünel with its colourful display of fruits and carrots. Pomegranates are in abundance here but they weren't always appreciated as they are today.

3 TL for a small glass of the freshest of natural fruit juices

fabulous jewel-like colours



Then we followed the little winding street full of shops selling mostly musical instruments down the hill towards the famous Galata Tower built in 1348-1349 by the Genoese.

Nazmi is just out of sight here, to the right

 There is Nazmi, the kokoreç vendor who has been selling his wares from his little mobile stall on exactly the same spot for decades. Indeed, he is well-known. and does a brisk business around lunchtime with his intestines. I think the way he prepares them  is delicious myself but two of my friends declined to even try!  He chops them fine, adds a hearty sprinkling of thyme and flaked red pepper and puts it all in either half or quarter of a nice fresh loaf of bread!

it's really good,  I promise you!

After paying, eating, chatting and dawdling, we were cold so decided to take a small break and have a look at the newly-renovated Pera Palas Hotel at the same time. It is a historical landmark in the city and now with its new look, a great place to meet friends for a drink or tea.  We missed it for the two years it was under wraps. It is all very gracious as befits the old Istanbul.

entrance to the pera palas: they're standing on the red carpet!

Leaving the warmth of the hotel, we briskly strode out in the direction of the Balık Pazarı/ Fish Market near the British Consulate. There is one little alleyway there that all the old hands will know that is full of enticing foodie-type shops and we thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Here is the pickle shop, a vibrant display of colour that never fails to please:

everything that can be pickled is here!

Lovely though it is, none of us actually bought anything: we just admired. Pickles are very popular here as you can see but just not our taste.

More or less opposite is the shop where we bought our Christmas turkey this year on the advice of Lesley, one of my friends in the picture, who always gets hers here. This shop is run by the friendly Şerif Bey who was siting at his desk so I introduced myself as I had only spoken to him on the phone before. We looked at his other wares with great interest as they are a rare sight here: rabbit and quail, for example. Lesley bought half a kilo of oxtail and will report on the soup she plans to make! And no, we didn't buy the below!

koç yumurtası: rams'  unmentionables

We wandered into this next Aladdin's Cave and I think we all ended up buying at least something. I bought soft juicy prunes that had been de-stoned. They look perfect for a luscious chocolate cake that I made from a Delia recipe except last time I used Migros prunes and they weren't the best. I'll make it again and let you know.

the narrow dried herb and spice shop


A little further on still in the same alleyway is Muzaffer, the midye dolması vendor, whose stall is just what you see here: a tiny outdoor table arrangement displaying his wares.  These are mussels from the Bosphorus, he told us, and they are stuffed with a rice mixture. 1 TL for one. Or you can have them fried on a stick. Generally speaking, I never buy these when I am out and about as it is really important to know where they are coming from in terms of freshness and cleanliness.  I was personally recommended this stall by a reliable source so felt comfortable recommending it to my friends.

we enjoyed these

And from here, we walked along and turned left into the Fish Market itself, the main alley of this picturesque little area. Down, and there opposite was the kelle vendor! What is kelle, you ask? Well, this was the piece de resistance in my opinion: the sheep's head! This vendor is also very well known and he represents the third generation of his family making his living like this. They originally came from Kayseri where there were a lot of Rum - Greeks born in Turkey - and they taught them all there was to know about this trade. Apparently it is quite a Greek delicacy! But my friends were not convinced and I found myself alone in buying a portion. It's really tasty: after all, it's lamb and he adds freshly sliced onion, parsely, herbs, salt and the inevitable red pepper flakes. He could have put it in bread like the kokoreç seller but I thought I would take it home since the others were not going to join me! Also it was really cold and he operates from a tiny platform jutting out from a little lokanta ie outside. My paket cost 10 TL and I demolished  the contents with relish when I got home.

my portion being wrapped up

 We finished the day with  a visit to a fantastic bakery down a little sidestreet that Lesley knew.  You will never find it unless you have Lesley with you. With the last of the kitty, we each bought a crusty freshly-baked round loaf full of sunflower seeds which Mr T adored.

I had it in mind that we could round things off with profiteroles from the long-established İnci back on İstiklal and then one coffee for the road at  popular Ara Cafe but we decided to call it a day. Our kitty was exhausted and so were we!

Ezo Gelin or Daughter-in-law's Soup

ezo gelin: hearty and satisfying

Gelinimiz. What a lovely term of endearment. This is what I am here to my Turkish family: our bride, our daughter-in-law.  Even though years have passed since we tied the knot,  this is what they call me.

Now, this soup, Ezo Gelin, must be one of the two most common soups in the entire country, the other being of course mercimek/lentil.  It is served everywhere usually for lunch in those little lokantas which specialise in home-style cooking.

 But I never thought twice about the name, one reason being that  Ezo doesn’t sound like a Turkish name  so I never thought it was. A little bit of research on the net however has uncovered quite a tragic story: poor old Ezo was a real person born in 1909 in the village of Dokuzyol  in SE Turkey down near the Syrian border. Apparently she was a  stunning beauty but made two miserable marriages. Her second one took her over the border into Syria where her life was plagued by a mother-in-law who was never pleased. So the story goes, Ezo tried to sweeten her by creating this soup just for her. I gather it didn’t work, the mother remained a misery and poor homesick Ezo died  in Syria of TB in 1952. But on a happier note, I  can highly recommend her soup. It has all the qualities:  warming, tasty, and nutritious, not to mention easy to make with store cupboard ingredients and very typically Turkish. This one really hits the spot! You will find many recipes for it but I have used Angie Mitchell's in Secrets of the Turkish Kitchen.

Now you may be thinking that there is quite a lot of focus on soups in my blog and you would probably be right!  Turkish meals regularly start with a soup and at home we love them.  I make one every two or three days during the winter. This last weekend we were out a lot and when my husband said as he left for work yesterday morning ‘let’s have something light for supper’, soup was the obvious answer. Anyway, I was invited to lunch which I knew would be a  Turkish feast so light was perfectly fine by me!

Ingredients for Ezo Gelin Çorbası

Serves 4 – 6

½  cup red lentils, rinsed and drained

1 onion, finely chopped

4 cups/1 litre meat stock ( Stock cubes are fine)

2 tbsp rice/bulgur wheat, rinsed and drained

2 tbsp tomato paste

4 tbsp butter

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp dried mint

1 tsp red pepper/paprika flakes

 Method

• Put the lentils, onion, stock, rice, tomato paste and butter together in a large pan. Bring to the boil and then simmer on a low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes until the lentils and rice are tender and the soup has a creamy consistency. Add more water if needed and season to taste.

what could be easier?

• Add the paprika and mint and simmer for a further 5 minutes.

why didn't ezo's mother-in-law like it?

Delicious!

Afiyet Olsun!