Session #3 February 25th

Session #2 Photos

Session #2 Recipes

COLLARD GREENS SOUP (KARALAHANA CORBASI)

Ingredients
2 bunches collard greens
2 cup haricot beans
3 cups sweet corn
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
salt
corn flour
boiled water

Put haricot beans to the deep bowl with water the night before cooking day.
To cook the soup, boil beans till soften.
Take wide saucepan fill with water more than a half. Boil the water. Add finely chopped collard greens, haricot beans, corn, oil, butter and salt. And boil altogether. When it boils, add corn flour and stir finely. Cook for 10 more minutes. Afiyet olsun!

TURKISH GREEN BEAN (TAZE FASULYE)

Ingredients
1 pound of fresh green beans or
1 pack of frozen green beans (Italian cut)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 big fresh tomatoes, peeled, finely chopped, grated, or blended or 1 can of petite diced tomatoes
1/4 tsp sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
salt

If you’re using fresh green beans, clean and trim them to 1 to 1 1/2 inch pieces.
Put olive oil in a pan and add the beans, chopped onions and tomatoes.
Add the sugar and salt. Cover the pan and cook with low heat until the beans are soft (30 min. with frozen beans – 45 min. with fresh ones).
If you have a pressure cooker, after adding everything cook it for 15 minutes on medium.
This is traditionally served cold, but it’s good when it’s warm too.

CHICKEN KAPAMA (TAVUK KAPAMA)

Dough Ingredients
1+ 1/2 cup milk (warm)
1 egg
1/3 cup oil
1 cup chopped flat parsley
1 tbsp instant yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
3+3 1/2 cup flour
oil for frying

Stuffing Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
1 onion (chopped)
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
salt

Yogurt Dressing
500 gr (17.6 oz) yogurt
1 garlic clove (grinded)
salt

Dressing
2 tbsp oil
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp mint

Dissolve yeast with warm milk. Add egg, salt, oil, mint, finely chopped parsley, salt, sugar and 3+3 1/2 cups flour, mix and make inadhesive dough.
Take to 10 pieces and make rolls. Put wet towel on and let ferment.
Cut chicken breasts finely. Sauté onion with oil, add chicken breast and spices, sauté altogether till lightly redden. Put out and let to cool.
Roll out two glands of fermented dough sized as a serving plate (showed in the picture). Put some chicken stuffing to one pastry and close with other pastry.
Press pastry edges with fork. Take bigger oily pan, fry both sides till redden. Serve it. Make all dough glands as a previous one.
Mix yogurt, grinded garlic and salt.
To prepare the sauce, pour 2 tbsp oil to the pan. Heat. Add tomato paste and stir. Add mint, stir. Take from the stove.
Put chicken kapama to serving plates; place some yogurt mix to the center (equally to all plates). Pour some tomato dressing onto the yogurt.
And Afiyet Olsun!!!

GULLAC

Ingredients
10 gullac sheets
7 cups milk
2 cups sugar
Pistachio and pomegranate for garnish

Put milk and sugar (and 1 tbsp rosewater if you like) in a pot and heat it until the sugar melts. Stir it occasionally. It shouldn’t be too hot to touch, so let it cool a little. When it gets warm enough, we can start to make our dessert. If you use it hot, your dessert gets mushy.
Lay a gullac sheet on a big size pyrex tray. Wet it with the warm milk. Repeat this with five sheets. After the fifth one, spread the crumbled pistachio on it. Then lay the rest five sheets one by one and wet each of them with milk. When you finish with the tenth one, pour the rest of the milk on it. They don’t need to be very good in shape while arranging them in the tray. They will combine when they get wet with milk. After pouring the milk, you will see the sheets are rising, do not touch them. Cover it with stretch film and put it in refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Leave the garnishing part to the serving time, otherwise pomegranates and pistachio may change the color of gullac. After taking it from refrigerator, cut it in squares or rectangles, garnish and serve.

6th Annual Turkish Olympiad in Houston, this Saturday!

Dear Friends,
We would like to invite you to the 6th Annual Turkish Olympiad in Houston this Saturday February 18th, 2012.
One part of this Olympiad is the Turkish Cuisine Classes Competition in the morning (11:00am)
in the Turkish Cultural Center in Houston. (9301 W. Bellfort Ave, Houston, TX (713) 974-1412)
The award ceremony and competition for Turkish Language talent show will be in the Hobby Center (800 Bagby St. Houston, TX 77002)

We offer to carpool with those of you who are interested in going and support our team.
We will be leaving on Friday at 4:00pm from Chef Nevin’s house (1105 Fairhaven Dr. Garland TX)
We will be staying there in a hotel Friday night.
Then we will go to the Turkish Cultural Center for the competition and to the Hobby Center for the award ceremony afterwards.

Please let us know if you are interested latest by (tomorrow) Thursday. Your husbands are also welcome to join us.
The details (including cost of travel and stay) will be announced to those RSVP.
Thank you very much!
PS: Here you can find more details about the program.

Session #1 Photos

Meatball Soup

Zucchini Fritters

Walnut Rolls

Tahini Cake

Session #1 Recipes

MEATBALL SOUP (CILLI KOFTE)

Ingredients
1 lb. ground beef
1 small onion
1/2 cup rice
1 cup flour
black pepper
salt
1/2 lemon juice
1 egg
2 carrots
2 medium potatoes
butter
dried mint

Add washed and drained rice, ground beef, shredded onion, egg white, salt, ground black pepper and knead them all. Take marble size balls and round them.
Sprinkle flour on a tray and roll meatballs on the flour all over. Fill pot with water in half and place it on the stove.
Add some salt and let it boil. Cut peeled carrots as the size of meatballs and add to the pot with boiling water.10 minutes later shake out the extra flour from meatballs and add to the carrots. Once the rice in meatballs gets longer and softer add cubed potatoes.
In a small bowl, whisk lemon juice and egg yolk. With 1-2 tbsp soup juice, lighten up this mixture.  Add lemon and egg yolk mixture to the soup and let it boiled 2 more minutes. Heat butter in a pan. Once it sizzles, add mint flakes and stir for 20-30 seconds (don’t let it burn). Then, pour it into soup. The soup is ready to serve

ZUCCHINI FRITTERS (KABAK MUCVER)

Ingredients
5-6 small firm zucchinis, (makes ~4 cups)
3 eggs
1/3 of cup chopped fresh dill
3-4 green onions (finely chopped)
1 cup feta cheese
salt
black pepper
~1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup olive oil for frying

Put grated zucchini in a colander. Sprinkle salt and let it drain for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes squeeze it and place in a bowl.
Mix well all the ingredients except flour and oil.
Add flour in slowly and mix well.
Heat oil in a frying pan. Over medium heat, drop 1 ladle of batter into hot oil, a total of 6-7 mounds in the pan. Fry, turning once, until golden-browned on each side for 4-5 minutes.
Drain excessive oil by placing fritters on paper towels. The fritters are ready to serve

WALNUT ROLLS (CEVIZLI LOKUM)

Ingredients for dough
1+3/4 cups water
1+1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp butter or margarine
4 cups flour
1 tbsp. yeast

Stuffing ingredients

Chopped walnuts
1 tsp. allspices
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tbsp. sugar

1 egg yolk
Sesame seeds

Put dough ingredients to the bread machine and make firm bread dough.
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Mix chopped walnuts, allspices, cinnamon and sugar. Divide the dough into two pieces. Press out the dough with oily hand (like pizza).
Sprinkle half of walnut onto it, make a roll and cut into ~ 3 inches pieces. Place them vertically on a greased tray. Spread egg yolk and sprinkle sesame seeds on top of rolls.
Place to the oven and bake until golden-browned.

TAHINI CAKE (TAHINLI KEK)

Ingredients
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
1 cup yogurt
2+1/2 cups flour
3 eggs
6 Tbsp of tahini ( divided)
1 packet baking powder

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Mix eggs and sugar. Add 3 tbsp of tahini and all the rest of the ingredients, and mix them together.
Spray the cake pan (mold) with oil and sprinkle some sesame seeds. Pour cake mix into the pan, pour 3 tbsp of tahini and sprinkle sesame seeds again.
Bake for about an hour.

AFIYET OLSUN