A Devilishly Good Devil's Food Cake

There is a definite end-of-term feeling in the air even though today like yesterday is surprisingly grey and overcast with a hint of rain. The seasons in Istanbul are very marked and holidays follow the school year: summer is now round the corner and the city will empty immediately schools finish in June. Turkish families will leave en masse for their seaside homes and expats will depart on annual home leave. Istanbul minus traffic then becomes the most wonderful summer city in which to be.



devil's food cake ready to serve



Last week a group of close friends met at my house for the last tea party of the season before such departures.  I especially wanted to hold it here before the imminent birth of Daughter No 2’s long-awaited baby! So I was looking for a special cake to offer my friends and found it in Nigella’s book Kitchen. It was the picture that drew me – I always go for recipes with pictures – and I thought it looked decadently delicious. Indeed it proved to be instant Death by Chocolate and was worth every calorie-filled mouthful!

with a few ripe strawberries alongside



Here is the very straightforward recipe for Nigella’s Devil’s Food Cake:

Ingredients

Serves 10-12

2 x 20cm sandwich tins

For the cake:

50g best-quality cocoa powder,sifted

100g dark muscovado sugar (I used light as that’s all I had)

250ml boiling water

125g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing

150g caster sugar (I used regular granulated sugar)

225g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs, at room temperature

For the frosting:

125ml water

30g dark muscovado sugar

175g unsalted butter, cubed

300g best-quality dark chocolate, broken into small pieces

Method

·         Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Line the bottoms of both sandwich tins with baking parchment and butter the sides.

lined with baking parchment

weighing the cocoa

·         Put the cocoa and 100g dark muscovado sugar into a bowl with a bit of space to spare and pour in the boiling water . Whisk to mix and then set aside.

·         Cream the butter and caster sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy.

·         In another bowl, stir the flour, baking powder and bicarb together and set aside.

·         Dribble the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar – mixing all the while – then drop in 1 egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg.

·         Keep mixing and incorporate the rest of the dried ingredients for the cake, then finally mix and fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping the bowl well with a spatula.

·         Divide this ‘fabulously chocolatey batter’ between the 2 prepared tins and put in the oven for about 30 mins or until a cake tester comes out clean. Take the tins out and leave them on a wire rack for 5-10 mins, before turning out to cool. Peel off the paper.

you can tell they are done because they are coming away from the sides of the tin

removing the paper

For the frosting:

2 bars nestles bitter + 1 bar lindt = 300g

1.       Put the water, 30g muscovado sugar and 175g butter in a pan over a low heat to melt.

2.       When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chocolate pieces, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.

3.       Leave for about 1 hour, whisking now and then, by which time the cakes will be cooled and ready for frosting.*

filled but uniced

4.       Set one of the cooled cakes, top side down, on a cake stand or plate, and spread with about a third of the frosting, then top that with the second cake, regular way up, and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides, swirling away with your spatula. This frosting ‘never quite dries to the touch but this is, in part, what makes the cake so darkly luscious. Goo here is good.’

Tips

*I actually had to wait 2 ½ hours before my chocolate frosting thickened and acquired a spreadable consistency. I’m not sure whether this was because of the chocolate or what but was quite worrying at the time! It looked fabulous, dark and glossy but refused to firm up. However, in the end it was perfect. Moral of the story: don’t panic, it'll all be fine.

The cake layers can be baked 1 day ahead and assembled before serving. This is what I did. Wrap each separately in cling film and leave on a plate or place in a tin. The iced cake will keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container in a cool place.

Uniced cakes can be frozen on day of baking, each wrapped in a double layer of clingfilm and a layer of foil, for up to 3 months. Defrost for 3-4 hrs on wire rack at room temperature.

Why don't you give this cake a try? I promise you'll love it!

Afiyet olsun!

Elderflower Cordial: a Very Special English Thing

I say this because in Turkey it is virtually unknown.  I would go even further to say that the whole concept of a cordial  - something to which you add water – is not familiar. Here, you  tend to have the pure fruit juice or not at all.

 the main ingredients for elderflower cordial

 Apparently the elder tree from whence the elderflowers spring is called mürver ağacı. I checked with TT about this and he was a bit dubious. Seems it’s not common. To be fair,  I have to say that I couldn’t recognise an elder tree at twenty paces myself. Realistically I don’t think this is a recipe that  I will ever make - it’s just that the ingredients are so attractive and I enjoyed watching the process. Also it is incredibly seasonal. If you want to make it, go and find your elderflowers now! They are so pretty, so floaty, so bridal.

What happened was that this past weekend in Assos, our friends the Grahams were there. Peter is the quintessential Englishman so I expect he knows elderflowers from his childhood.  I don’t because I  wasn’t there. In England, I mean. As a child. Despite this, this recipe to me is evocative of sweetsmelling summer hedgerows and all things English. Peter picked these from a tree that he spotted on the drive down from Istanbul.  He says there aren’t many. I have just seen a similar recipe in the latest BBC Good Food magazine so it is obviously something close to the English heartbeat. Anyway Elaine rang me and said would you like to come over: we're making elderflower cordial! So off I sped...

served with ice and a slice of peach - taken by elaine in şirince (pron: shi-rin-jay)

Elaine’s recipe for Elderflower Cordial

Makes a jugful or so

20 clean and insect-free heads of elderflower

1 orange, sliced

1 lemon, sliced

1oz/28g tartaric acid/tartarik asit:available from chemists/eczane here

1 ½ pts/0.85l boiling water

1 ½ lb/680g sugar

Method

Measure out sugar and pour the boiling water over it. Stir.  Place the elderflowers on top and arrange the orange and lemon slices over this.  Stir well , cover and leave for 24 hours in a cool place to infuse. Strain through muslin and pour into sterilised bottles. Once open, refrigerate.

click on these pictures and they will magically get bigger

The BBC Good Food recipe (makes approx 1.5 litres)  is as follows:

Dissolve  1.8kg sugar in 1.2 litres water over a gentle heat, and bring to a simmer.  Then proceed as above. This recipe uses 2 lemons instead of 1 lemon and 1 orange. I like the latter, probably because of the colour contrast! This recipe also uses 75g citric acid instead of the tartaric.

the cordial served with meze in şirince

Dilute with sparkling water or regular still water, add ice if desired, a sprig of mint or maybe a slice of peach as in the picture, and enjoy a delightfully refreshing alternative to an alcoholic beverage or indeed just plain water.

PS Last year elderflower cordial was available at IKEA so I expect it is this year too - just in case you can't find those elderflowers!

Enjoy!

Purslane with Chopped Walnuts and Sumac

The last time I wrote about purslane/semizotu was way back in September  and now it’s back in all its leafy glory! If I had to give Ayvacık market a colour on Friday, it would have been green: everything was a vibrant spring emerald punctuated with the brilliant red of the piles of sweet-smelling strawberries.

What to buy, that was the question! One can so easily get carried away by the sheer abundance of it all plus of course, one’s tastebuds are tingling after their hibernation over the winter months that it’s easy to go crazy.

I couldn’t resist this semizotu, my sister’s favourite salad green when she is here. Look how firm and sprightly it looks simply bursting with freshness:

It was Daughter No 1 who was with us this weekend in Assos and who reminded me of this salad that I was taught a long time ago by a Turkish friend İpek.

semizotu salad with walnuts and sumac

It was her contribution to our annual potluck that about 30 of us were having on board a Lüfer boat on the Bosphorus sailing gently down towards the Black Sea. Everbody is always very generous with these potlucks and the great thing is that you get to try things that you yourself may not know.  

 At home I duplicated this salad immediately - it wasn't difficult - and it has remained a firm summer favourite ever since. The combination of ingredients is unusual and the finished dish looks great with the purple sumac scattered over it all. And personally I always think nuts jazz up a salad!

Ingredients

Serves 6

1 bunch purslane/semizotu

1-2 ripe tomatoes

A handful coarsely chopped walnuts

Sumac/sumak*

Olive oil

Salt

Method

·         Trim the bunch of purslane, discarding the thicker stalks, and put the leaves in a colander. Wash and then drain carefully. Place on a tea towel to catch the remaining moisture.

·         Wash the tomatoes and halve. Roughly grate each half onto a plate.

·         Arrange the purslane on a serving plate and chop roughly so that the leaves aren’t too big.  Scatter the tomato pieces over it and drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle with salt to taste. Follow by adding the chopped walnuts down the centre and then sprinkle the sumac on top.

grating, chopping and finally assembling

Tips

1. *Sumac is a Middle Eastern spice with a sourish taste so is often used instead of lemon. I love its purple colour. I read in Ottolenghi that amazingly it is now available in Waitrose in the UK in the spice section. Otherwise you will find it in Middle Eastern shops. Here we have no problem!
2. When you add the chopped tomatoes, be careful how much of the juice you add as you don’t want to make the salad too soggy.

Afiyet olsun!

Strawberry Cream Tart

 Last week we had friends round for dinner two nights in a row. To make life easier I decided to make tarts for dessert for both nights: the first one our favourite bakewell and the second a beautiful seasonal strawberry cream.



mounds of sweet-smelling strawberries

I had just received the latest copy of Cornucopia magazine, the exceptional publication for Turkey lovers, pricey but worth it, which had a beautiful section on strawberries: hence the inspiration. Some of the descriptions are so wonderfully evocative: İffet Evin wrote in Yaşadığım Boğazici/ The Bosphorus That I lived On, published in 1987 wrote ‘Oh, those Arnavutköy strawberries ...their scent used to waft to the other shore, as far as Vaniköy’.

‘She recalls as a child waking early in the morning to the scent of strawberries and the cry of strawberry sellers as they rowed across the Bosphorus to sell their fruit on the Asian side, where she lived.’

Can’t you just imagine it, see it, smell it?

These strawberries are still available, unremarkable in colour but unmistakable with their sweet fragrance  and sold by roadsides not from boats. A completely different species to their supermarket sisters of the bright red, perfectly-shaped variety which over the past few years have become available all year round. Being the purist that I am, I never buy those as honestly they are tasteless but wait for the local seasonal ones. They are red too because they are cultivated  and cross-bred to be ever-hardier but at least they taste!

The following recipe is for Strawberry Cream or Çilekli Krem, and can be used as a filling as I used it for a pre-cooked tart shell*.

strawberry cream tart

Ingredients for Çilekli Krem (pron: chi-lek-li krem)

A handful of ripe strawberries

3 egg yolks

7 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp plain flour

2 cups (50 cl) milk

Butter

Method

·         Rinse the strawberries and reserve a few of the best-looking ones for decoration. Hull the rest. Dry the fruit with a paper towel without bruising and set aside. If the strawberries are large, halve or quarter them.

·         In a deep pan whisk the egg yolks with the sugar. Add the sifted flour and mix. Pour the cold milk into the pan, whisking continuously to obtain a smooth texture.

·         Cook the mixture over a gentle heat, stirring until it begins to bubble and thicken. Simmer a little longer to allow the flour to cook completely.

·         Add the strawberries and a few knobs of butter to the hot cream, stir and leave to cool, covered, to allow the cream to absorb the intense flavour of the fruit.

·         Pour into the tart shell and smooth evenly. Decorate with the remaining stawberries. I added some toasted almonds as in the picture.

toasting a few flaked almonds in a pan

Tips

1.      Make your usual pastry or follow my earlier recipe, and use to line an 8in/20 cm tart dish . I am in love with my rectangular shape which I got from John Lewis last year. Easier to cut and serve from. Pastry keeps well in the fridge so long as it well covered. It also freezes brilliantly.

2.       It is important that the filling is cold when you pour it in otherwise the pastry will go soggy.

3.       This recipe by Berrin Torolsan in Cornucopia is just for a cream - the classic crème patissière  - which she suggests serving in an elegant bowl.  Be warned though, the amount here would only serve 2-4 max. However it is ideal for filling a tart.

BTW if you click on the pictures, they will enlarge!

Afiyet olsun!

removing pastry case from tin without it breaking!

Pastırma: the Ultimate Spicy Turkish Bacon Lookalike

Today we had a perfectly lovely day: we were invited to a lunchtime BBQ with old friends including my very special old friend who has now moved to the UK and whom I don't see very often. The sun shone and it was beautifully warm as we sat out on her son's beautiful terrace in one of the new suburbs of Istanbul.

But this evening is the big match – or so I gather – between local teams Fenerbahçe and  Ankara Gücü. Apparently it is critical: Fenerbahçe, our team, must win! What do I know?

pastırma ready to be popped in the oven

It is obviously a rakı evening so just a little something was required: you don’t just drink rakı by itself. What we had that lent itself to the occasion was some pastırma which is a kind of cured beef. This is sometimes mistakenly called the Turkish bacon. Why I am not quite sure as it isn’t pork.  I suppose because it looks like rashers. But there the resemblance ends.

Actually I have to confess it smells divine especially once it is in the oven.  Nothing like bacon which I also adore. This has a spicy zing to it. You buy it either by the gram from a delicatessen or in a packet from a supermarket. There is a further choice: do you want it with an extra spicy edge or without?  Personally, I think, with. This is called çemen: a cumin-based paste including not only cumin but fenugreek, garlic, and hot paprika. Mmmmm.

slices of juicy lemon add to the taste as well as tomato and green pepper



you wrap it up like this

 Anyway, I opened up the packet and laid out all the slices on a large sheet of foil.  On top I put slices of lemon, tomato, and a few green peppers. I then folded the edges over so the contents were totally enclosed and then into the oven preheated at 180C/350F for about 25 mins. I must admit the smell that all those flavours together emitted was positively mouthwatering.

after cooking: all those juices and spices have mingled

Finally I served it to TT who was well installed in front of the TV and he was delighted! He especially enjoyed the presentation on a wooden board with a couple of slices of brown bread.

I guess he liked it!

The match has just finished with a resounding win for Fenerbahçe: 6:0!!!

A Truly Turkish Taste

these are called çağla (pron: char-lar)

In other words, unripened almonds. I think you have to be born Turkish in order to like these!

They are viewed here as an early harbinger of spring not necessarily a delicacy but even so, quite popular.  I find it hard to understand the attraction in the land of baklava and sweet syrupy desserts.

I am almost late posting about these as spring is marching on and of course the almonds are getting riper by the day . But when you see these in the markets, you should be aware  of what they are – and don’t buy them!

çağla on the branch right now in our garden in assos



This what they look like: pale green and furry. You bite into them and split the case with your teeth to find the kernel inside.  At the market on Monday I had one just to have another try, but no, not for me. Most definitely not.  The guys on the stall obviously thought I was mad as I spat it out!

beautifully peeled and chilled fresh almonds

However in the restaurants it’s another story. Don’t be surprised if suddenly a vendor from the street appears at your table bearing a tray like this laden with peeled almonds. This seems to be perfectly acceptable to the establishment and if you so desire, you order a plateful like the one above.

It's a sublime combination of freshness and texture.  And only available now!  

Green Bean Salad with Mustard Seeds and Tarragon

Last night I made a most splendid  fresh green salad but not with lettuce as you might think. The ingredients are so seasonal that you have to buy them NOW. Don’t wait, this is the moment!

preparing the ingredients: mangetout, fresh peas, green beans

It was a big hit.

Not only were the colours attractive but the many tastes worked  well together and of course it was so fresh. Our sort of salad basically:

does this appeal to you like it does to me?

 I went to my weekly market in Selami Çeşme yesterday afternoon looking for mangetout or snowpeas as I think they are known in the US. Here they are known as sultaniye bezelye. But before I went, I had a little look in my fab new Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty to see if he had any inspiring ideas of how to use these and of course he did! So I had a recipe in mind before I set out. This always helps as you take note of what other ingredients you need to buy and most importantly the amounts.  So here it is:

Green Bean Salad with Mustard Seeds and Tarragon

Serves 4

250g/8oz French beans, trimmed

250g/8oz mangetout, trimmed/sultaniye bezelye

250g/8oz green peas (fresh or frozen)

2 tsp coriander seeds/kişniş tohumu, roughly crushed with a pestle and mortar

1 tsp mustard seeds/hardal tohumu

1 tsp nigella seeds/çörekotu

½  small red onion, finely chopped

1 mild fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely diced

1 garlic clove, crushed

Grated zest of 1 lemon

2 tbsp chopped tarragon/tarhun (hard to find here: I omitted it)

30g/1-2oz baby chard leaves/pazı (optional)

Coarse sea salt

trimming the mangetout and podding the peas

Method

·         Fill a medium saucepan with cold water and bring to the boil. Blanch* the French beans for 4 mins, then immediately lift them out of the pan and into iced water to refresh*. Drain and dry.

·         Bring a fresh pan of water to the boil and blanch the mangetout for 1 min only. Refresh, drain and dry. Use the same boiling water to blanch the peas for 20 seconds. Refresh, drain and dry. Combine the beans, mangetout and peas in a large mixing bowl.

·         Put the coriander seeds, mustard seeds and oil in a small saucepan and heat up. When the seeds begin to pop, pour the contents of the pan over the beans and peas. Toss together, then add the nigella seeds, red onion, chilli, garlic, lemon zest and tarragon. Mix well and season with salt to taste.

coriander seeds and nigella

zesting the lemon

·         Just before serving, gently fold the chard leaves, if using, with the beans and peas, and spoon the salad onto plates or into bowls.

Tips

1.       I do realize that Ottolenghi recipes are so fabulous because they use all manner of herbs and spices. They also use a lot of pans! But don’t be put off as the results really are worth it.

2.       *Blanching and *refreshing are two culinary terms that go together: they refer to cooking quickly and then stopping the cooking process quickly. The idea is that the vegetables retain their bite and their colour. Make sure the water is really boiling before you throw them in.  Put some ice cubes in your water when you refresh but only keep the vegetables in there a max of 2 mins otherwise they will lose some of their flavour. Drain on a paper towel.

3.       The spices mentioned here are all available either in the supermarkets in little packets or, if you feel like a fun outing, in the Spice Bazaar/Mısır Çarşısı in Eminönü (Istanbul). Other little shops will have some of them but probably not all.

4.       I was surprised that the mangetout needed ‘trimming’ seeing how new and fresh they were. But they did – very easy to do though.  You just need a good knife!

5.       We don’t get French beans per se – those elegant long slender ones – so I used regular green beans. These just needed topping and tailing at this time of year and I cut them in half.

6.       Peas are everywhere right now, great heaps of them in all the outdoor markets and manav or greengrocers.  They are very easy and quick to pod so don’t be disheartened! While still in their pods, by the way, they keep very well in the fridge for 6-7 days.

7.       Finally, the baby chard mentioned here: I haven’t seen any that can be described as ‘baby’ so I just used the regular pazı. Don't forget to cut out the middle stem if necessary.

Afiyet olsun!

Istanbul Mother's Day

spring flowers in abundance on my street corner

Anneler Gününüz Kutlu Olsun!  

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today is the day here in Turkey and warm and sunny it is too.

The gypsies are out in force on every street corner, their tins bursting with fresh spring flowers. They’re doing a roaring trade.

Mother’s Day arrived late on the scene here but the commercial aspect has been well and truly exploited and it seems as if we have always had it.  Turks are a people with profound respect for their elders  especially their mothers so it didn’t take much for this to become a tradition.

This morning when I opened the front door to get the newspaper, I found this beautifully presented single red rose wishing me a happy mother’s day tucked inside: it is from the yönetici or manager of the building no less! A truly sweet gesture that I feel rightly or wrongly could only happen here.

Lucky me:  thanks to Daughter No 2 and husband, I have just come back from breakfast with the family beside the Bosphorus in Yeniköy on the other side. 20 minutes to get there, an hour and a half to get back! That’s Istanbul traffic for you. But the sun shone, the water rushed along beside us, huge ships passed within metres on their way to the Black Sea  while we had our breakfast sitting on the terrace and basked in the pleasure of being together.

A Spicy Red Pepper Spread with Toasted Walnuts and Pomegranate Molasses

acuka - a spicy red pepper spread

This really pushes all my buttons. Give me this and leave me to die.

In Western Turkey  it is known as  acuka  (pron: a-joo-ka) but the further south you go, especially to the southeast, it becomes muhammara. I love the sound of that. It originates from Aleppo in Syria.

 Forget sweet jams or weetabix or cheerios for this is a typical Turkish breakfast spread that you put on bread.  It is delicious beyond belief. But interestingly enough, TT doesn’t know it and today I was with my English friends all of whom have been here a long time, and they didn’t know about it either. I really can’t explain why we don’t know.

acuka: serve with bread, crackers or indeed as a dip

I have been on the track of acuka for a few weeks now, ever since discovering a little pot of it at a local supermarket, albeit an upmarket one, Nezih Gürme Market, here in Selami Çeşme in Istanbul.  It was called Ev Acukası/home acuka.  I bought it unhesitatingly and it was devoured within days. It is fabulous but the thought crossed my mind that I could probably make it myself as I read what the ingredients were.  So I sat down at the computer and discovered that yes, there are lots of recipes out there.  I carefully deliberated, compared, and finally chose to try this one from the blog New York's Delight as it sounded very authentic. I wasn’t disappointed. Try it and I think you will agree.

I am thrilled with the result! It is one of the best tastes that I have enjoyed for a very long time!

Ingredients

Fills 2-3 jars

½ cup pepper paste (tatlı or acı – sweet or hot)

½ cup tomato paste

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

¼ cup bread crumbs OR ¼ cup fine bulgur soaked in ¼ cup boiling water till soft

this is what we use in Turkey

3-4 garlic cloves, crushed

Juice of ½ lemon

¼ cup olive oil

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses /nar ekşisi

1 tsp salt

Spices as follows:

1 tsp paprika/tatlı kırmızı biber

2 tsp hot Maraş pepper/crushed red hot pepper (optional)

1 tsp oregano/kekik

½  tsp black pepper

½  tsp dried mint/nane

½  tsp allspice/yenibahar

½  tsp cumin/kimyon

Pinch cinnamon/tarçin

Method

·         Put pepper and tomato pastes, bread crumbs or bulgur, crushed garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt into a mixing bowl.

·         Heat frying pan and gently toast chopped walnuts for a few minutes. This releases their natural oils and gives the dish additional flavour. Add to mixture.

toasting the walnuts



·         In the same frying pan, heat and toast the spices for a few minutes. Add to to the mixture. Mix well.

all those spices added with the bulgur

·         If you need a little more salt, add a bit more. If you want the dish to be a bit more garlicky, add another clove of garlic. The garlic is what really adds to the taste of this dish.

·         Mix everything well together and serve either with bread as a spread or with crackers as a dip. I must say, in Turkey it would be with bread as the idea of dips is not common.

mixing it all together



Tips

      Consistency is up to you. TT and I prefer chunky but you may like it smoother. In that case,     blitz those walnuts till they are finer.

1.       I don’t know how easy it is to find pepper paste outside Turkey. If you can’t, I would suggest making up the amount with the very best tomato paste that you can find.

2.       All the spices are also arbitrary. I made my acuka today using exactly the measurements specified above and we found the result absolutely scrumptious!

 Afiyet Olsun!