cook-food

It is time to post a traditionally not Turkish recipe, but with a little Turkish twist. As most Texans are aware, the annual ‘2009 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’ is currently going on and ending this Sunday March 22, 2009. So, you will see the rodeo theme or something related to it almost everywhere in Houston. When I was doing my grocery shopping a couple weeks back, I noticed the ‘cowboy steaks’ that were on weekly special. I purchased one (Each one was huge!). While waiting at the check out line, I randomly grabbed a food magazine and just randomly opened it. The magazine turned out to be “Eat Smart with Ellie Krieger” and the page I opened had a recipe for cowboy steak! The most interesting part is this steak was with a coffee and chili rub. I had read about traditional cowboy steaks being cooked with coffee in the past, so it seemed very appealing. I skimmed through the ingredients and the recipe and a light went up in my head as to how to cook the steak. The coffee sounded to...

Have you ever had dried eggplants? Dried eggplants are very evocative of my childhood. My regular readers, may think that I have numerous foods that bring back my childhood memories. That is because I had not had most these foods since I was a young girl. Now that I am exploring cooking (especially Turkish cooking), I am recalling many foods that I have missed all these years. The first 10 years I had been in the U.S., I was almost completely removed from Turkish language, culture, people and hence the wonderful traditional food. A time comes when one does feel the reconnection with ones past; sooner or later. To me, this started when I started running into some very familiar Mediterranean ingredients in stores and got excited. Yes, I used to get excited when I saw Mediterranean foods or ingredients and was ecstatic when I saw Turkish brands. It was so rare or non-existent in most of the places I had lived. Before I get off the subject, last summer when I visited home and was getting r...

Since vegetables in the cabbage family are in season now, I am making an effort to post my recipes that involves cabbage or its cousins before the season is over. I am a believer of eating vegetables that are in season, although I do occasionally make exceptions. Stuffed cabbage was another dish that I strongly disliked when I was a kid, especially, the kind with bulgur stuffing. Obviously, similar to many children, I did not understand good food. Instead of cabbage, I used collard greens in this recipe which are mostly popular in the Black Sea region of Turkey. You may also use cabbage with this stuffing. Since I also had a cabbage on hand, I did roll a few of the sarmas using cabbage as you can see in the picture. For Stuffing: 2 cups bulgur (medium grain) 1 tbsp fresh mint (chopped) 1 tbsp tomato paste 1 tbsp red pepper paste 4 cloves of garlic Juice of 1 lemon ½ tsp ground black pepper ½ tsp cumin ½ cup olive oil 2 tsp salt 1 ½ cup hot water (for soaking bulgur) For Rolling and Coo...

It was one of those days when I had cabbage and leeks on hand and just did not know what to do with them. It was a little cold that day, so I thought “Why not make a soup out of them?” I added whatever vegetables I had in the fridge to the soup. Cabbage soup is common in Turkey, but I do not recall eating leek soups often. Now that I think about it, I do not recall eating much of cabbage soup either. Maybe it is because I hated cabbage when I was growing up. Nowadays, cabbage soup is more popular than ever back home, since many ladies believe eating cabbage soup will help them lose weight. I am not arguing with that, however I think if you eat only soup (any kind) every day, you will definitely lose weight! In my opinion, it is not the cabbage that allows you to lose weight; it is the reduced amount of food. If one had only tomato or lentil soup everyday, I bet that person will lose weight. Actually, I may have read in some health magazine about cabbage and weight loss here in the Stat...