Bruschetta with Tomato and Basil

Here are a few things you can do by just getting up early.  By that I mean really early.  You can have a cup of tea in piece.  No kids running around.  You can also write in silence.  Not that I can write when the kids are around.  This really should be a habit for me.  So here is me writing about Bruschetta, which I really should when we have the opportunity to buy some fresh summer tomatoes and basil.  I've seen them made with a lot of different ingredients but for me the simple version is the best.  In some recipes they put onions in them too, which I don't prefer.  Garlic brings out the flavors of tomato and basil and goes really well with olive oil. In some recipes they skin the tomatoes and take the seeds out before making the bruschetta but I prefer the tomatoes unpeeled and with a lot of juice.  The juice moistens the bread with the garlic and olive oil very nicely.

Bruschetta with Tomato and Basil

(Makes about 6-8)

6-8 slices of baguette or Italian bread

3-4 tomatoes - diced

2 cloves of garlic - crushed

2-3 tablespoon of olive oil

1/2 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste

fresh basil leaves to garnish 

1. First chop the tomatoes and put them in a bowl.  Add in the crushed garlic, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  You can also add some chopped basil leaves if you prefer. Put some salt and pepper to taste and move on to next step to prepare your bread.  If you prepare the topping with tomatoes a little earlier than serving time, the flavors will blend a little bit better.

2. Now to prepare the bread, you have few options.  Just chose whatever suits you.  

You can simply toast the bread in a toaster, you can toast them in the oven with some olive oil brushed over the slices or you can toast them on a non-stick pan with a little bit of olive oil brushed on both sides.  I've certainly tried all and they all result very good, however if you're in a hurry then I suggest toasting them on a pan.  This way you get them done quickly but be careful not to burn the bread. 

3. Last part is to put the tomato topping on the bread slices.  Garnish them with fresh basil leaves and serve them slightly warm.  This is really a nice taste of summer.

Fava Beans with Artichoke Hearts

You know those type of dishes that your mother makes but you don't really like, then you still have to eat it because you have to.  Fava beans (or broad beans) were one of those things I didn't enjoy as a child.  Lucky for me that the season for fava beans were very short.  I came to appreciate them long after I left home. Maybe, because there was nobody to cook them for me and they turned into something that reminds me home.  I also probably realized that they are actually very tasty.  This is a slightly modified recipe from my mother's one, because she actually fills the artichokes with the fava beans.  I bought some already prepared and cooked artichokes at the market.  Alternatively you can use tinned ones, but if you do then pick the ones without olive oil.  This dish is served cold and it's originally a meze, but can be served as a salad or starter as well. 

Fava Beans with Artichoke Hearts
 (Makes 4 portions as a starter)

900 g fava bean pods - shelled (beans makes about 300 g when shelled)

1 medium size onion - finely chopped

20 small artichoke hearts - prepared and cooked (or about 2 cans of artichoke hearts)

1 teaspoon salt

3-4 tablespoons of olive oil

a handful of fresh dill to garnish

If you have shelled your beans and ready to go, first you need to boil the beans in water for about 5 minutes.  This is apparently to get rid of the slightly bitter taste.  After boiling is finished, drain the water and set the beans aside.  Put about 1 tablespoon of olive oil on a non-stick pan and saute the onions for about 2-3 minutes over medium-high heat.  Next add the fava beans and a cup of water.  Cover the pan with a lid and let the beans cook over medium heat for about 15-20 minutes until they are tender but not too soft.  Keep checking regularly if there is still a bit water in the pan to prevent the beans sticking to the bottom. If necessary add in some hot water, but not too much as you don't want it to look like a soup in the end.  Next, add in the artichoke hearts and let it simmer over low heat for about 5 minutes. When it's done, set it aside and let it cool.  When it is cold enough, add in the rest of the olive oil, as this will bring out the flavors of the beans and artichokes.  Garnish with dill leaves before serving. 

It's vacation time for me soon, therefore, the posts will be a little less for a while, but I'll keep you all posted with my culinary adventures from Turkey (and mainly my mom's food).

Vegetable Samosa with Puff Pastry

Celeriac is really something I don't know how else to cook, other than the usual Turkish dishes I learned from my mother and as soup.  I really wanted to do something a little different this time and I thought to try it as a samosa, which is an Indian dish, very similar to the typical Turkish borek but has a spicy curry touch.  It's one of my favorite starters when I go to an Indian restaurant.  I absolutely love them.  I didn't want to make these too hot for the usual reason.  I wanted the kids to enjoy this little snack.  I generally make a dish with celeriac adding in potatoes, peas, carrots, onions and of course olive oil.  These little samosas have all of those except the carrots.  I preferred to use the puff pastry to give it a lighter taste.  They turned out really good.  In fact, I am going to make this one of my repetitive recipes and try it with other vegetables as well.  

Vegetable Samosa with Puff Pastry

(Makes 16)

1 rectangular puff pastry (42x26 cm) (16"x10")

1 small celeriac - chopped into little cubes

2 medium potatoes - chopped into little cubes

1 small onion - chopped

1 cup of frozen or fresh peas

1 teaspoon of curry powder

1/2 teaspoon of mild chili powder

1/2 teaspoon of cumin ground

1/2 tablespoon of fresh dill leaves

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 egg- beaten

salt and pepper to taste

First of all, you need to saute the vegetables in a non-stick pan.  Heat the pan with the olive oil and put the onions first.  Saute them until they are cooked and then add in the celeriac, potatoes and the peas.  Add in the spices, with some salt and pepper.  Make sure the vegetables are cooked but they shouldn't be over-cooked, otherwise they will get mushy.  When they are done take them off the heat, add in the dill and set it aside to cool.  Preheat your oven to 180° C(356° F) degrees.  Lay the puff pastry on a baking tray over a baking sheet.  I used the big puff pastry and sliced it into 16 little squares as in the photo, but if you can find the little square shaped puff pastries then don't bother to buy the big one for this recipe.  Once you are ready, put about a spoonful of the vegetables on the pastry and fold it into a triangle shape.  Spread some egg onto the edges with a brush, so that the ends of the pastry can stick together.  I used a fork to press the ends together and folded the corners to give it a more samosa looking shape.  When it is all ready brush them over with the rest of the egg and put them in the oven for about 20 minutes until they are done.  These are best when they are eaten warm.  If you want to make a meal out of them, I recommend to serve them with a nice green salad. 

Green Lentil Salad

I grew up eating a lot of lentils and I probably ate every type of lentil dish there is.  Later on when I got to know the Indian dal I loved it.  It was a little bit different than the dal type of dish my grandmother used to make, but it was just a little bit more spicy.  My favorite lentil dish is the red lentil soup that my mother makes, however, I will put that recipe here some other time.  The green lentil salad is something I have tried in a restaurant and I have made it probably only once before this time.  Lentils are very nutritious and very healthy legumes and I always want to cook more lentil dishes for my family but I always end up making the soup.  I had some sun dried tomatoes in my kitchen, which inspired me to make this salad.  It's a very light salad but it's filling.  Perfect for spring and summer meals. 
I will for sure put more lentil recipes here in the future because I just bought loads of lentils again.

Green Lentil Salad

200-300 g green lentils

1 spring onion - chopped

1/2 leek - chopped

7-8 pieces of sun dried tomatoes - soaked in warm water for about 10 minutes (alternatively you can use sun dried tomatoes that are soaked in olive oil)

1 tablespoon of chives - chopped

For the dressing:

1 cup yogurt

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 tablespoon of mayonnaise

1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

chili powder - optional

Start with putting your lentils in a pan, cover them with water and bring to boil.  After they start boiling, reduce the heat and simmer the lentils for about 20-25 minutes.  If you overcook them, they will get mushy so check regularly.  After lentils are done, drain them and leave them to cool.  While you are waiting, chop the soaked sun dried tomatoes into small bits.  Start making your salad dressing by mixing all your ingredients listed above and set it aside.  When lentils are cool enough, mix them with the other ingredients and finally add your salad dressing.  You can garnish with some more chives.   The salad tastes even better if you leave it few hours in a cool place, so feel free to prepare it a little bit in advance.

Tomato and Red Onion Salad

I had this in London many many years ago.  It was the first time I was visiting the city during my first travel to Europe and it was the first time I've been outside my home country.  Too many first times of everything, I have been on the road for about 10 days and have eaten in various hotels and restaurants in Europe.  I have never eaten outside my own country before so I wasn't very used to all European food.  By the time I was in London, I have already started craving for something fresh, something Mediterranean, something that had olives or tomatoes or feta cheese or fresh onions in it.  We found a restaurant that looked very good and I saw a tomato salad in the menu.  I instantly thought it was "the tomato salad", the Turkish kind.  In the end how many kinds of tomato salads could there be? How wrong was I?  There was a plate of sliced tomatoes, then couple of red onion rings that were randomly placed on top.  I was slightly disappointed, because there were no cucumbers, no peppers, nothing else in it.  Then they brought some balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  That made that salad divine, which made it worth in the end.  I never forgot this salad and made different versions since.  When I saw some fresh basil in the market last week, I thought of making the classic mozzarella salad with fresh tomatoes and basil, but then I remembered this salad.  It goes really well with a spring or summer BBQ and takes about 5 minutes to make.  You only have to have very nice and tasty tomatoes to make it with.  This one here is enough to serve 2.

Tomato and Red Onion Salad

2-3 fresh tomatoes - sliced

1 medium red onion - sliced

a handful of fresh basil leaves

1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons of olive oil

salt to taste

Prepare your salad sauce first, by mixing the olive oil and balsamic in a small bowl.  Add some salt and taste.  You can add some chopped basil leaves to the sauce if you'd like.  Put your tomatoes and onions in a salad bowl then mix it with the salad sauce.  Leave the salad like that for about 5 minutes before you serve.  Put your portions in flat salad plates and garnish with the fresh basil leaves. 

Fried Cauliflower

Beginning of the week starts with an empty fridge in our household.  I'm never sure why, because we are buying food at least once a week and yet the fridge is almost empty on every Monday.  I had to figure out what to make for lunch as usual and all I had in the fridge was a cauliflower and some carrots.  Normally carrots are the default option that I go for, but instead I decided to take on the cauliflower.  I didn't want to just steam or boil it, then end up making a cauliflower salad like I do most of the time.  I wanted to try another Turkish recipe, the fried version.  I haven't had this dish for a very long time, so I got some tips from my mother and I also looked through my cookbooks.  Tess Mallos has a version of this in The Complete Middle East Cookbook, but I made my mother's version.  In the end, that would always the best version for me.  This is very good as a starter, appetizer or as a vegetarian dish, especially when it's combined with garlic yogurt.  I made some steaks with tomato sauce and saffron noodles for the main dish.   In the end it was a delicious meal.

Fried Cauliflower

About 500 g cauliflower, broken to its pieces and washed

2 tablespoon of flour

4 tablespoon dry breadcrumbs

2 eggs

oil for frying

salt

Garlic Yogurt

Plain yogurt

a clove of garlic

To start with fill up a deep pan with water and bring it to boil.  Add some water in it then put in your cauliflower that's already broken to its pieces. Boil it for about 10 minutes until it's tender but not soft.  Don't overcook it.  If it's too soft, it would be hard to boil them.   When they are done, put them in a colander and drain the water.  Leave them to cool for about 10-15 minutes.

In a plate or bowl, beat your eggs and mix them with the flour.  Add some salt and pepper to the egg-flour mixture.  In another plate put your breadcrumbs.  Put some oil in a frying pan and heat it up.  You can use a non-stick pan to fry but in the end you are going to need a generous amount of oil to properly fry the cauliflowers so don't be stingy with the oil.  When your pan is ready and hot enough,

dip your cauliflowers first into the egg-flour mixture.  Once they are covered with it, dip them into the breadcrumbs, then put them in the pan.  Fry them until they are golden and a little bit crispy.  

For the garlic yogurt, crush the garlic and mix it into the yogurt.  Dip your fried cauliflowers into the garlic yogurt and enjoy the taste. 

Easy Hollandaise Sauce with Steamed Asparagus

When you go to the supermarkets to buy your groceries at this time of the year, the first thing you will see are probably the strawberries.  A week or so after strawberries, the asparagus starts showing up. They put them in the displays with those fancy vegetable peeling gadgets and with ready made hollandaise sauces out of the box or out of a pack, full fat, low fat, all different versions you can imagine.
I remember, the first time I tried to cook asparagus I had no idea about how to get started. Forget cooking it, I didn't even have a clue about how to peel the funny looking things. I haven't seen them in my life before I came to this country.  It wasn't something we used to eat at home.  It was my husband who encouraged me to give them a go.  As a new wife who wanted to learn more about how to cook in Switzerland, I wanted to try and see if could pull it off. The result was a total disappointment. The asparagus was not peeled right and wasn't cooked enough. The whole thing was terrible, however there was one achievement; the hollandaise sauce I made from scratch.  Even then I wasn't so into these ready made sauces so I found a recipe on the internet and made it myself.  I remember that it was so yummy and I could just eat it without anything.
This time however, I felt like I had a bit more experience in cooking asparagus so I was quite confident when I saw the first bunch in our local supermarket this week. I decided to make the sauce at home.  I started looking on the internet for a very good recipe, but I wasn't able to find one that looked easy and practical. Some looked really complicated even though they said that it's a really easy sauce. In the end I came up with below recipe for this sauce.  It tasted very good and it wasn't complicated at all. The trick was to whisk it constantly and to use low heat.
For the asparagus, I used my pressure cooker to steam them, but they ended up a little too soft. Therefore below is my recommended timing for a medium size pressure cooker.

Makes about 3-4 servings as a starter.

1 kg green asparagus
2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of water
3 egg yolks (slightly beaten)
100 grams of butter
juice of half a lemon
some salt and pepper
a little bit of hot chili powder or cayenne pepper

Start with peeling the asparagus and don't forget to cut the rough end bits. Put them in your pressure cooker and steam them with a bit water for about 5 minutes. Cooking time can vary according to the type of pressure cooker you have. Alternatively you can use a steamer, but then you need to check the instructions to cook the asparagus for the model you have.
For the sauce, start by putting the vinegar and water in a small sauce pan and bring it to simmer. Do not boil it. Keep the heat at low temperature and start whisking the eggs in very slowly. After the eggs are in, keep whisking it for about a minute.  Slowly add the butter to the mixture bit by bit and continue to whisk. Once you have all the butter in, add some salt and pepper, then the chili powder. Give it a good stir and that is all.
Serve it on warm asparagus as displayed in the photo and enjoy.