Ekmek Kadayifi From Crumpets

turkce

A recipe from my experimental kitchen, born out of longing for my countries beautiful sweets and a bit of luck. Ekmek kadayifi is one of the well-known very syrupy sweet in Turkish cuisine. What makes it so special are two ingredients : The bread with unknown recipe and the cream filling called kaymak. People buy this breads from specialist shops, take them home, cook and with larger ones they get 18 kg sweet. Or you can eat a slice of this in a patisserie with a turkish coffee, but usually in winter. It can sound simple as it is made from bread, but lots of Turkish people outside the country searching for the recipe of this famous bread, unfortunately nobody is succesful. Strangers can not imagine and believe a bread soaked in syrup can taste so special. But when you go Turkiye try this sweet and with your first bite you will understand what I mean..
This recipe is not the original one, but the texture inside crumpets remembered me this sweet, when I give it a try as a substitute it was so succesful I decided to post about it. Here is a my "east meet west" recipe:

Ekmek Kadayifi From Crumpets



4 *crumpets
syrup : 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, 1 tbsp vanilin
caramel : 3 tbsp sugar

- Lay crumpets in a tray, put 3-4 tbsp of boiled water every one of them. Then cover the tray and let them soak the water.When you do this they will enlarge, so choose suitable size of tray.
- In the mean time prepare the syrup.
- Take them carefully ona thick kitchen paper with a spatula and with gently pressing take out all the excess water.
- Rinse inside a suitable size of a saucepan with water, cover the bottom with 3 tbsp sugar and caramelize it. Again with a spatula, very carefully arrange crumpets inside, their holey side down and let them soak the caramel for a few minutes when the heat is on.
- Add the boiling syrup in three steps, and in every step let crumpets soak the syrup completely. Shake the saucepan time to time to prevent them sticking. Then turn the heat off.
- Never remove them from saucepan until they are compeletely cold.
- When they are cold, take them on a plate turning holey side up, cut with a bread knife like victoria sponge cake, fill with whipped extra-thick cream, garnish with pistaschios.



* crumpets : I used extra thick, shop bought ones which containes sour dough pieces. Crumpets are different then English muffins. For more information check out here and here.

Sour Dough No-Knead Bread

If you saw my post about Turkish rose petal jam you could easily recognize that I was struggling to described the bread to eat with that jam saying crusty, ciabatta like.. After seeing and trying this bread I was sure it was this bread that I remembered from my childhood. I first followed the original recipe, then I changed flour type, at last I did give it a twist with the homemade yeast, and it was my favourite one. For the sour dough recipe I followed guidelines that June of Bread-Water-Salt-Oil gave here and here, but instead of rye flour, I used plain flour. Original recipe in no-knead bread calls for 1/4 tsp yeast. I used 100 g sour dough starter, the texture and taste was lovely as before. So strongly recommended...




If you still did not see the full recipe this post is one of the useful, and this one.

When I Feel Snackish...

I prepared this bread with feta cheese spread as a light summer dinner long ago, but it is suitable for all kinds of weather and any time of the day. When we were school-age, my mother used to prepare them usually for sunday nights, because me and my brothers suffered some kind of monday syndrome and refused to eat proper meal, so she had to discover this kind of snacks to attract us to the dining table. With the help of hot Turkish tea from babe-belly turkish tea glasses -my granny's words- this breakfast-like dinner strategy always worked...Nowadays I usually make them when I have a lot of leftover breads.

200 g feta cheese
1 tbsp butter
2 eggs
1 small onion (chopped- or some spring onion, but my favourite is chives))
1 tomato (diced, drained)
handful of flat leaf parsley (chopped- essential, please don't skip on it)
1 green chilli (optional)
handful of fresh mint (optional)
a french baguette (sliced, lightly toasted under grill on two sides, you can use every type of crusty bread with full body)

- Mash feta cheese and butter with a fork, mix with eggs very well and add chopped ingredients.
- Spread evenly on lightly toasted bread slices, cook under grill watching carefuly. Enjoy with your tea or your favourite fruit juice.

note: Makes excellent pizzas on ready-made pizza bases.




This recipe is for WEEKEND HERB BLOGGING#60 created by Kalyn and hosted by Haalo of Cook Almost Anything At Least Once.

Rose Petal Jam

When Orchidea of Viaggi&Sapori and Ivonne of Cream Puffs In Venice announced their one-off blog-event about DISHES OF COMFORT I knew what I was going to present you. I thought what can be more comforting for me is to dip my crusty bread into jewel-looking, divine-smelling, superb-tasting rose petal jam. After getting married and coming to England I couldn't eat it for a long time and longed for it until last summer. Actually my journey with rose started a year before at the end of the summer with rosehip jam. Then last summer I made rose petal jam and syrup and I don't think this rosy journey will end here.

Even I can remember myself dipping my crusty bread into this jam and watching soaking it and turn into some kind of jewel just made up for me...
Or its smell easily can take me to my university years. I studied Turkish linguistic and literature. During the Ottoman era, Turkish literature is all about rose. It usually symbolises our prophet or our saints full of secret on the path to heaven which we have to earn, so just simply symbolises loved ones. Our anchestors were very fond of it and it's said that one of our very famous caligraphs knows 100 names for rose .
For me it symbolises my homeland, its history and most importantly someone whom I loved very much and lost recently, so very mixed feelings but definitely happy memories..




It's very easy to make only if you find suitable rose petals for making jam. I am very lucky that England is full of roses even at this time of year.

Take 100 g rosa rugosa type rose petals ( preferably red, pink and without any chemicals! ) Wash them, drain well. Remove their white pits with your hands( you will never regret it). In a glass bowl, using your finger tips mix them with 1 cup sugar and bruise very well. Then cover with cling-film and leave it overnight.

Next day boil a syrup with using 2 cups of water and 3 cups of sugar. When sugar dissolved well and turned into thickish syrup add sugar- rose petal mix with 1 tsp citric acid , simmer for 10 minutes. Without citric acid you can not have that lovely colour, so don't hesitate to use it. Add again 2,5 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup rose water, simmer a little bit more for about 20 minutes till it thickens, that's it. When it is cool down and still runny you should simmer a little bit more. Store as usual as a jam. Eat it like me dipping your ciabatta like bread into it or serve them on top of your milky puddings like panna cotta or rice pudding with ice cream. It is simply divine.

Fennel Fritters - Mucver With A Twist

Another version of very famous Turkish courgette fritters called mucver with a vegetable I adore. I always heard from my Grandfather how he used to eat fennel bulbs raw under the shade of the olive trees when he was young. But I never tasted it until I came here. Of course we have lots of dishes with fennel especially in our traditional cuisine, but not the bulbs with the shoots which has stronger flavour than the root itself.

recipe :
1 whole fennel bulb ( finely chopped )
1 small onion ( finely chopped )
4 tbsp chopped dill
4 tbsp feta cheese crumble ( or cheddar grated )
3 eggs
3-4 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder
salt ( you don' t need much because of the feta )

- Mix all ingredients together, drizzle some olive oil in a nonstick frying pan, pour in the mixture 2 tbsp for each fritters, cook on both sides. Drain on kitchen paper.

- Best when it is warm and served with yogurt. Enjoy !

note : Don' t throw away outer leaves of fennel, they are fine with this recipe.

This week' s Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Meeta of What' s For Lunch Honey.

Zerde ( Sholezard )

turkce

Zerde means yellow pudding made with water-rice-sugar, flavoured with saffron-turmeric-rose water. I know it is hard to imagine that pudding with such simple ingredients can taste delicious, but believe me it is a pure, delicate sweet.

Every time I eat I feel some kind of holiness. (So I call it in semi-holy category in classic sweets after ashura). Maybe because it contains rose water (rose is holy in our belief, symbolizes our Prophet), or we usually consume it on special religious days like Ramadhan or cook for religious gatherings, maybe... maybe we became too modern too quickly. Even rose water is becoming a nostalgic ingredient, unfortunately it lost the battle with modern day' s vanilin. Nowadays you can see synthetic yellow coloured and vanilin flavoured version of this pudding, but it is nowhere near the original one.

Another unusual ingredient I used in this pudding which you might find interesting is MUSK. I learned that palatial cooks in Ottoman era used it in sweets in 15th-18th century. So you can imagine my cheer, when my brother gave this as a present from Konya - whirling dervishes land. It did add a divine aroma and I don' t think my fridge ever smelled like that before.




ingredients :
- 1 cup rice ( basmati, long grain are fine)
- 8 cup water
- 1 tsp saffron
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1/2 cup rose water
- 4 tbsp arrowroot or wheat starch, if you cant find any of these cornflour
- 1/2 cup water
- 2,5 cup sugar
- size of a pin-head musk
- almonds, pine nuts, pistachios to garnish

- Mix saffron, turmeric and rose water , set aside.

- Cook soaked, washed rice with water till they are really soft, but they should keep their shape.

- Add the spice mix you prepared earlier to the rice while stirring.

- Mix arrowroot with water, add with sugar to the rice while stirring. Add musk if you have, it's done.

- Contribute it to the cups, garnish with nuts, don't skip on it- they are essential.




* Recipe is from Marianna Yerasimos' s book "Osmanli Mutfagi" (The Ottoman Cuisine)- 15th century sweet section with some little changes.

Hello, I have made it again...

I've been to the land of sun, sea, figs and olives;


breathing the freshest air,


then to the people who live simple,


eat organic,


and homemade,


share generously,


and purely authentic.


So it was a body, soul and mind cleansing, perfect holiday...