Artichokes Stuffed with Fresh Fava Beans (Zeytinyağlı İç Baklalı Enginar)

Usually fava beans and stuffed artichokes are cooked separately. They're both famous dishes of the Aegean cuisine. Fava beans can be found throughout Turkey, but it's hard to find fresh artichokes outside the Turkish Aegean coast. Tasty artichokes grow close to coastal lines in iodine-rich soil. Artichokes stuffed with fresh fava beans is one of the unique dishes of the Aegean cuisine. Their union is a feast that I first tasted in Izmir.

You can find both artichokes and fava beans frozen at big supermarkets or international markets.

1 lb peeled artichokes (7-8 pieces)
1 lb fresh fava beans.
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 bunch green onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp dried mint flakes or 1/2 bunch fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
juice of 2 lemons
1/3 cup olive oil
1 bunch dill, chopped
1 tsp sugar
salt
1 cup hot water


























-Heat oil in a broad pot. Stir in onion and green onion. Let them soften.
-Add fava beans, mint, and half of dill. Stir for 3-4 minutes.
-Add lemon juice, sugar, and hot water. Place artichokes in the pot: pointy sides facing up.
-Seal the pot with aluminum foil and place the lid. Cook on medium for 25-30 minutes or until beans are cooked.
-Once you turn it off, sprinkle salt. Let artichokes cool in the pot.
-When they're not hot anymore place artichokes on a serving plate and with a spoon stuff them with fava beans.
-Sprinkle the rest of dill on top.










This is a Turkish olive oil dish which is always served and eaten cold. It's great with yogurt or garlicy yogurt sauce on the side.

This recipe is for WHB is back at home at Kalyn's this weekend.

Lemon Jelly (Limonlu Pelte)

We're going through really hot and humid days here which made me remember a dessert mom used to make. When I came back home from a hot day on the beach, she would serve me a cold slice of this lemon jelly which was soooo refreshing after hours of burning with salt under the sun.

I called her to get the recipe. I had missed it a lot; it was already gone before I thought of taking a picture.

You can try this with lime, too. And if you cannot find petit beurres/tea biscuits, you can use lady fingers or a different kind of biscuits.

1 pack of tea biscuits, petit beurre (Le petit beurre is a thin, small, rectangle biscuit first made in France by the founder of LU company. They're great with tea: you have to dip it very fast, though! You can find them in the international food sections of big stores or in international markets)
2 cups of water
2 cups of milk
4 tsp corn starch
2 cups of sugar
1 tsp vanilla
juice of 2 lemons
zest of 1 lemon
finely shredded coconut

-Put water, milk, and starch in a pot and mix well.
-Add sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and zest.
-Stir on medium until the mixture thickens.
-Wet the bottom of a square or a rectangle dish with the boiling hot jelly.
-Place a layer of biscuits on top in an order. Cover biscuits with lemon jelly and the place another layer of biscuits.
-Repeat this layering until you run out of biscuits and jelly.
-Refrigerate for couple of hours, overnight if possible. The colder the better!
-Cut the frozen jelly in squares, rectangles, or triangles.
-Sprinkle a generous amount of shredded coconut on top before you
serve.

Stuffed Poblanos (Etli Poblano Dolması)

This is a classic "almost" Turkish recipe with the substitution of poblanos for small bell peppers. I've been craving stuffed peppers for a long time, but small green bell peppers haven't showed up at the farmers market yet. I hate flavorless huge bell peppers at the stores. A sensible Turk would not call them peppers. They don't smell or taste anything like peppers; their skin is really thick; and they hold almost half a kilo of rice. So I decided to stuff flavorsome poblanos and I did my best to choose not very big ones. This was my first stuffed poblano, and it was delicious!

To make this a "very" Turkish recipe, use small, thin-skin green bell peppers.

for 4 poblanos

4 reasonable size poblano peppers
1/3 lb ground beef (if you want, you can use 1/2 lb ground meet)
1/4 cup rice
2 medium size onions, finely chopped
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
1/2 dill, chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh mint
2-3 tomatoes, petite diced
1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
1-1 1/2 cups hot water
1 tomato, sliced
























-Wash peppers, cut the tops parts and clean inside.
-In a bowl mix well ground meat, rice, onion, parsley, dill, mint, black pepper, salt, and diced tomatoes (and tomato paste if you like). It'll be better mixed if you use your hand.
-Stuff poblanos with the mix. Seal the top with a slice of tomato.
-Place them in a broad pot.
-Pour hot water on (make sure water is 1/2 inch below the poblanos)
-Cut butter into small pieces and place on top of poblanos.
-Cook on medium for 45-50 minutes.
-Stuffed peppers are good when served with yogurt on the side. And soak that juice with fresh bread!



















I thought with all the fresh herbs in it, this recipe is perfect for Weekend Herb Blogging which was founded by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen and is hosted by Astrid this week.

Baked Okra (Fırında Bamya)

Among the numerous delicious vegetables that I hated as a kid, okra is the only one that I still don't like. After college, I started to eat, cook, and deeply love leek, fava beans, artichokes, etc., yet even the idea of tasting okra gave me shivers. Okra is fuzzy. Okra is slimy, very slimy. Based on observation I can say people either love it or hate it. Also, okra lovers seriously believe that others would like okra if they eat a well cooked okra dish and that sliminess is due to bad cooking. What's a good way of cooking okra I don't know. The only okra dish I knew is some sort of stew. In Turkey in my house and in every other house I know okra is cooked with tomatoes, onion, and lemon juice in olive oil: nothing exciting and still slimy.
That's why I was really excited to find a new (to me) okra recipe in Sarah Woodward's book, The Ottoman Kitchen. I cannot say I liked the book. But in the end it won my favor with one recipe; for the first time in my life I ate 7 okras and really enjoyed it.









1 lb fresh okra (not the huge woody ones)
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
1 red bell pepper, cut in thin strips
1 green bell pepper, cut in thin strips
2 onions, chopped finely
3 tomatoes, sliced in rounds
1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
ground black pepper1/2 cup water
crushed red pepper flakes
-Wash okra and dry well. Trim off the end of the stems, but be careful not to cut into the pod.
-Put okra in a large flat dish and sprinkle vinegar with generous amount of salt. Make sure both sides are coated well. Let it marinate for at least half an hour.
-Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a skillet and cook onions until golden brown.
-Rinse okra well. Place them in rows in an oven dish; sprinkle onions.
-First put tomato slices on okras, and then crisscross pepper strips on tomatoes.
-Scatter the parsley over.
-Season with plenty of black pepper and pepper flakes. (Be careful with salt; remember okras were soaked in salt and vinegar)
-Finally pour the rest of the olive oil evenly and water.
-Bake at 375F for almost an hour. Pick one to taste; it should be soft but not very soft.
-Let it cool in its own juice and serve barely warm.7 okras! Pretty amazing for someone who hasn't eaten even one until now. With every single bite, I wondered why I could eat okra now. The answer is the combination of vinegar and parsley. For the sake of parsley, this recipe is for Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging which is hosted by Rachel's Bite this week.

Sunchokes with Orange Juice (Portakal Sulu Zeytinyağlı Yerelması)

This weird looking vegetable is north American; it's in the sunflower family. It was called "sun roots" by Native Americans, but for some unknown reason was named "Jerusalem artichoke" by a French man sometime around 1600s. It's nothing like an artichoke and it is not from or related to Jerusalem. In Turkish, we call it yerelması, which literally means "earth apple"; the same term that French use for potato, pomme de terre. In Italian, I learned, it is called girasole articiocco, sunflower artichoke, which through mispronunciation ended up as "sunchoke" in English.

As I said before, it tastes nothing like artichokes. I might say something between apples and potatoes with a slight touch of celery root; its taste is as complicated as its etymological history. Sunchoke cooked with olive oil and served cold is a specialty of the cuisine of the Turkish Aegean coast. I don't want to start listing all the health benefits of sunchoke; just know that it's really good for you in many ways.



























Although this is a traditional Turkish recipe, I twisted it a little by adding orange juice. To make it "really Turkish" instead of "almost Turkish" just replace orange juice with water.

1 lb sunchokes, peeled and cut into strips
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 medium potatoes, cut into strips
2 medium carrots, cut into jullien strips
2 tbsp rice
1/3 cup olive oil
3/4 cup juice of an orange
1 tsp sugar
1/4 bunch dill, chopped
salt

-Fill a bowl with water and squeeze half of a lemon. Put sunchokes and potatoes in water after chopping. Lemon juice will prevent darkening.
-In a broad pot, heat the oil. Stir onion and garlic until cooked.
-Add in first carrots, then potatoes, and last sunchokes. Cook for a couple of minutes stirring gently.
-Pour in orange juice, sugar, and salt.
-When it starts boiling, add rice.
-Cover and cook on low-medium until rice and vegetables are cooked--approximately 30 minutes.
-Let it cool down with the lid on.
-Sprinkle dill on top before you serve. You can also sprinkle orange zest.

This is a Turkish olive oil recipe which means it should be served cold. Try and you'll see; it's tastier when it's cold.

For Weekend Herb Blogging, in stead of posting about an herb I like to post about a dish that would lose its essence and reputation without a particular herb. Sunchoke in olive oil is one of those dishes; it owes a lot to fresh dill.

86th WHB, founded by Kalyn's, is hosted by Ulrike of Kuchenlatein.

Meatball Casserole (Sahan Köfte)

When I was a kid, I thought meatball casserole was a way to ruin delicious meatballs. So, rather than being excited, I was always disappointed to see meatballs cooked that way: juicy with mushy tomatoes and peppers. But years have passed, and now I agree with Aaron; meatball casserole is the best way to have meatballs--except for grilled meatballs.


























2 potatoes, cut in rounds
1 belle pepper or 4-6 banana peppers, cut in big pieces
2 tomatoes, cut in rounds
2 tomatoes, grated
1 cup hot water
2 tbsp olive oil or butter
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

for meatball
1 lb ground meat
1-2 slices of stale bread
2 eggs
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp oregano leaves
1/2 tsp salt
1 big clove of garlic, minced
1 onion, grated or finely chopped
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley



























-Put all the ingredients for meatball in a bowl and mix well. Make round meatballs.
-In an oven dish, place meatballs, potatoes, and peppers one after the other. Put tomato slices on top and sprinkle sliced garlic. Pour grated tomatoes, hot water, and oil or butter. (Or you can put the potato slice. Place meatball on potato slice, tomato slice on meatball, and piece of green pepper on tomato. You'll have a great tower. Pour grated tomatoes, garlic, and hot water.)
-Sprinkle red pepper flakes or black pepper on top.
-First let it boil on the stove for a couple of minutes, then bake it at 400F for 25-30 minutes.
-Meatball casserole goes well with rice and bread.

Turkish Tabbouleh (Kısır)

Kısır is the Turkish and different version of a Mediterranean/Arabic dish called tabbouleh. Although there are many differences between these two dishes, the main one is that the Turkish tabbouleh has tomato and pepper paste. In Turkey the recipe for kısır varies from region to region. In Adana they use more water than anywhere else or in Antakya (Hatay) they don't use water at all; they knead bulgur with tomato and pepper paste until it gets soft. However it's made, kısır is made everywhere in Turkey and is loved dearly. It is served sometimes with the afternoon tea, sometimes as a meze, and sometimes as a great summer dish you can enjoy when it's boiling hot outside.

2 cups of fıne bulgur
2 cups of hot water
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp pepper paste (preferably hot)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 bunch green onions, finely chopped
1 small onion, cut in thin half rounds
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 cucumber, finely chopped
2 banana peppers, finely choped
2 tbsp pomegranate syrup
juice of 1 or 1/2 lemon (you have to taste and add less or more lemon juice)
2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp mint flakes
1 tsp cumin
romain lettuce leaves
tomatoes




















-Put tomato and pepper paste in a big bowl and melt them with boiling hot water. Add bulgur and 1 tsp salt into this mix. Stir once. Cover with a thick kitchen towel and let it soak the water for 10 minutes.
-Cut the onion in half first, then into very thin half-moon shapes. In a little bowl, knead onion with 1 tsp salt. Rinse salt and squeeze excessive water.
-Fluff bulgur with a fork. Add pepper flakes, ground pepper, cumin, mint flakes, oil, pomegranate syrup, lemon juice, and kneaded onion. Mix well. At this point taste to see if it needs more lemon juice. Kısır should be a little bit sour.
-Add banana peppers, spring onions, cucumber, and parsley. Mix well.
-Kısır is served and eaten with lettuce leaves and tomatoes. We don't add tomatoes to kısır, because tomatoes make it mushy. So kısır is usually served on a lettuce bed (you can wrap some kısır in a lettuce leaf and eat like that) with slices of tomato on the side.

Although tabbouleh and kısır are different they have one ingredient that unites them: parsley. Parsley is a must-have both for tabbouleh and kısır. Don't even think about making tabbouleh/kısır without fresh parsley (parsley flakes would not work either) or substituting it with something else. That's why I thought this is a good recipe for WHB with its emphasis on my favorite herb parsley. WHB is back at home at Kalyn's this weekend.