Burghul Kofte and Pistachio Semolina Cake

Kofte

Sauce

Yogurt

The Turkish food we made yesterday we made was delicious, but we didn't quite get to everything we wanted to make.  Since we had the ingredients for the Burghul Kofte with tomato and mint sauce and garlic yogurt, as well as the the pistachio semolina cake, and we really wanted to make them....we went ahead and got cooking. 

The full spread of ingredients.

The first step was to make some more delicious garlic yogurt. 

The kofte themselves were make like gnocci, but we had to tweak the proportion of flour to get them to stay together while we boiled them.  They came out as delicious, satisfying nuggets of grainy goodness. The tomato sauce cooked up to a brilliant red.  We were less careful than we might have been with the pepper, and, although beautiful, the sauce was slightly spicier than we were really comfortable with and the yogurt turned out to be key to enjoying the dish. 

Look how well this recipe packed up into our nifty new bento boxes that we got as Christmas gifts.

There was just enough of the leftover tomato pomegranate mint salad to make a refreshing accompaniment to the kofte.  As I polished off the salad I thought that this salad would be really wonderful to have on a hot day because the yogurt and the pomegranate are so refreshing together, like a yogurt/fruit soup and gazpacho combined.

Todd's caption: Way yummier than gazpacho.

The major hurdle to making the cake was shelling 3/4 cup of pistachios that really would rather have stayed in their shells. 

The pistachios were then combined with the sugar in the food processor and ground to powder.

And that was added to the other ingredients to make a surprisingly stiff and tasty batter.

This batter was all kinds of delicious all on its own.

Other than the pistachios the cake was pretty straightforward and baked up quickly while we enjoyed the kofte.

The finishing touch was cinnamon syrup that soaked into the dense, rich cake. 

The syrup was almost unnecessary because the cake was moist and flavorful with a pleasant texture all on its own.  However, it was fun to watch the cake absorb the syrup because you could actually watch it suck the syrup down and release tiny bubbles.

The book advised cutting the cake into diamonds which turned out to be harder than it looked and I'm pretty sure that squares would have tasted just as good. 

Todd's best effort at diamond-cutting. Luckily he was sated into oblivion at this point or he would have been very angry with the results.

Everything we made from the cookbook came out so well I can hardly wait to try another recipe.  The only caveat is that while the recipes are delicious, they would benefit from additional description if they are really intended for the amateur or home kitchen as they seem to be.  The kofte could have benefited from additional instructions about how to achieve the proper dumpling consistency.  This is particularly true because the recipes use ingredients that are unusual and that we therefor were not entirely comfortable with or sure to expect of. 

Final verdicts:

• Burghul Kofte: 8/10 Hearty and flavorful. Slightly less spicy sauce would have been preferred. Garlic yoghurt is a great accompaniment. We will make this again.  
• Pistachio Cake: 10/10 Marvelous. Will definitely make again, but this time with less or no syrup. Todd actually thinks a thin frosting (a la the cardamom lemon pound cake we tried last year) would be preferable. Or a honey-based syrup instead, that would add more flavor than simple sweetness. The cake itself is a sure winner.

Oat Soda Bread

Todd once mentioned that it would be great if there were an email or newsletter that told you what local produce was in season and gave suggestions for what you could do with it.  Turns out just such a thing exists.  It is the Edible Jersey Newsletter.  The most recent edition included a recipe for Oat Soda Bread that just called out to me.  I'd wanted to make it even before we got excited about the Turkish cook book, but yesterday turned out to be all Turkish recipes.  So when I got up early again today - despite yesterday's long and exciting day - I knew what I wanted to make.

Bob's helped quite a bit with this recipe.

The buttermilk and the oats made this smell wonderful even before it was in the oven. I made just one small adjustment to the recipe; I added about three tablespoons of mixed seeds to the batter in addition to the seeds on the top.

The recipe called for buttering and parchment paper in the loaf pan, but as advertised the bread slid right out when it was done.

The resulting bread was dense and fragrant with a lovely crunchy seed covered crust that went perfectly with salted butter and tea.

Turkish Feast

This weekend we made a Turkish feast.  Sofia snagged a sample copy of this wonderful book of recipes and stories from Turkey and lent it to us to peruse.  We got up early (despite enjoying a late night in NYC seeing Patrick's latest play) and poured over it, choosing eight recipes to make:

1) Smokey eggplant, and beetroot and yogurt dips (p14)
2) Warm pumpkin hummus (p29)
3) Tomato pomegranate mint salad (p116)
4) Burghul Kofte with tomato and mint sauce and garlic yogurt (p126) [not attempted due to time constraints]
5) Bulgar pilaf (p140)
6) Slow roasted lamb with apples poached in pomegranate (p215)
7) Pistachio semolina cake (p233) [sadly, not attempted due to time constraints]
8) Coffee custard (p265)

I also wanted to make Simit (sesame seed bread rings) (p73) but decided that would be too much to even shoot for with everything else on the list.
Overall we did quite well in the amount of time we had once we got all our other chores done!  We made six out of eight and they were all beautiful and delicious.  Turkish food is wonderfully different from many other cuisines, featuring lots of yogurt and inverting the usual flavors of ingredients: fruits in savory or meat dishes, tomatoes in a dessert, pomegranate in a salad, cinnamon with grains. 

We realized that we needed to get a jump on things when we read the details of the lamb recipe and the first few steps involved slow-roasting for seven hours.  Our local butcher provided us with a lovely leg of lamb that we slathered in spiced butter and got right into the oven.

A serious leg of lamb, pre-deliciousifying.

Then we got the rest of our ingredients together for the other dishes and got to work.

We started on dessert because the coffee custard needed to be baked and then chilled for several hours.  Todd had fun making a cup and a half of espresso  and Sofia assembled everything easily so we could get it right into the oven.

6 cups of espresso = 1 1/2 cups, plus one sip for the barrista

They have you strain the milk-sugar-coffee mixture, which is a little silly because you really just need to fish out the cardamom pods.

Once we'd gotten the two most important parts of the meal going (the dessert and the main course) we hopped around chopping tomatoes, peeling the butternut squash, charring eggplants, seeding a pomegranate, coring apples.

Butternut squash before sauteeing

These, dear reader, are called tomatoes.

Eggplant charred over high head on a closed grill for 20 minutes. They pop and steam like guysers when you cut into them. It deserves to be on YouTube.

The salad was a beautiful and flavorful combination of tomatoes, pomegranate and mint topped with saffron yogurt. 

The eggplant dip was fun to make because it involved charring the eggplant on the grill to give it a smokey flavor. [Note to anyone who attempts this recipe: don't follow the instructions and try to mush the eggplant with a fork. Just get out a chef's knife and chop it as best you can. Chopping eggplant is easier if you don't make it into stringy mush before chopping.]

The finished eggplant dip.

The lamb recipe included apples cooked in pomegranate juice and stuffed with raisins and walnuts. It was a close second to the coffee custard among our tasters. The apples cooked nearly to apple sauce, but were delicious and well-balanced with the other ingredients. They had us use granny smith apples for a little tang, and this receipt was not as sweet as the ingredients would indicate.

Rounding out the meal we made the bulgar pilaf, which had onions, garlic and cinnamon—a subtle and savory accompaniment to the apples and the lamb.

We never quite got to the burghul kofte with tomato and mint sauce and garlic yogurt, or to the pistachio semolina cake.  But since everything else came out so well and we already bought the ingredients we will have to try them soon.

The hands-down best dish was the coffee custard. The flavor of the espresso accented by cardamom was amazing. It was silky, smooth, aromatic, and it came out a lovely chestnut color inside and out. I hope this book gets printed in the US, because I want to try all its other desserts.

Here we are with our tasty feast, which was not only an adventure in Turkish cuisine, but a dinner celebrating all the hard work my dad has put into recementing and finishing our basement. Thanks Dad!

A Cement Mixer Visits

Home ownership is a mixed bag. On the one hand you own the place you live and you can decide if you want to have pets, when to turn on the heat, if you can have a washer and dryer. On the other hand you have to shovel snow and light the furnace and when things break, or there is no hot water, people call you.

Recently we needed to fix a sewer line in our basement and we decided that it would really make sense to re-cement the floor and finish the basement. My father has been wonderful in helping us and we now have a beautiful new basement floor and the walls are nearly completely finished.

Instead of mixing hundreds of bags of cement by hand or with a small mixer we opted to have a company provide cement in a cement mixer. It was every bit as much fun to have a cement mixing truck come to the house as you'd imagine. For starters the trucks are gigantic.  Then, the drivers really know their stuff so even on a residential street like ours they just nipped into the driveway and right up to the basement window.  They got the chute right through the window and into the basement to the waiting wheelbarrows.  When everything is all set they kick the truck up and the cement flows right down the cute - usually they only allot six minutes per cubic yard of concrete.  Needless to say I definitely sat at the window for a bit mesmerized by the whole thing.

What the Christmas Tree Left Behind

Our tree left this as it's parting gift:

But our tree started like this:

This year we got a jump on things and got our tree up nice and early - the weekend after Thanksgiving - but didn't get a chance to take it down until this weekend.  By the time we got to it, the poor tree hadn't been watered in over a week.  As payback for the neglect the tree seems to have just exploded when I tried to wrestle the ornaments and lights off and pry off the stand.  The bit on the carpet was the tip of the iceberg and by the time I got it out the door the were barely any needles on the branches.  After struggling with the tree I barely got through cleaning half the needles off the carpet before I needed a break so when Todd got home from running errands he found bits of pine tree all over the front steps, in the entry way, in the hallway and allover the carpet.  As he came in from the car he could hardly believe that there were more pine needles each time he opened a door.  Phew.  Good thing there are 11 months before we need to wrangle with another tree.  (Don't get me wrong - I love real trees, but I forget that bad things happen when you forget to water them.)

Blogging Backlog

Q: When is a blog not a blog?
A: When you've got million things to post about but haven't had the time to actually write any posts.  It looks something like this: 

There are so many things I want to post about that my drafts list is out of control.  I like to create a place holder draft whenever I think of something I want to write a post about, but I am much better at adding things to the list than actually finishing the posts.  I also sometimes get carried away and want to write a novel accompanied by a million pictures.  Unfortunately the two have combined to create a drafts list that overwhelms me every time I log in to blogger.  It's time to face the list and start checking things off; my new year's resolution is to post in a timely fashion.

Coulda Been a Contender

This is Ginger soaking up the attention after we got back from London.  This frisky kitty started her life as a barn cat in Upstate New York and is actually part Siamese.  Ginger has been keeping me company for nine years so far, including my last two years of college; longer than I've known Todd.  This picture captures her personality so well I had to do something with it.  This is the face and spunky attitude that I fell in love with when she was a tiny prickly wild kitten.  I was in college, I couldn't really have a cat, my parents already had two cats, she was practically feral, but I had to have her.  In addition to the pretty face and the spunk, she is polydactyl.  On Ginger this manifests as six toes on her front paws that make her look like she has boxing gloves or oven mitts.  She definitely uses them like the former: she is the boss of the dogs, no question.  She's allowed on the bed and they aren't so she lures them over to the edge of the bed and then rewards them with a double smack to the nose.  Or when the dogs come in from a walk she smells them all over and if they try to smell her back too enthusiastically she whacks them - always a double.  They always fall for it.  It's sort of bad for them because they don't expect other cats to have clawed paws and aren't as wary as they should be resulting in some pointy unpleasant surprises.  Ginger also sometimes decides that she should have some of the dog food and will help herself from their bowls while they patiently lie on the kitchen floor waiting. 

Now that I think about it all of our pets have polydactylism because Pyrs have double dew claws on their back paws.  Ginger's extra digit is sorta nestled in between her "thumb" and the rest of her digits.  Ginger uses her thumb just like other animals with opposable thumbs - "to flick rubber bands" - well actually to pick up hair ties and other things.  Ginger is our hair tie gnome because she likes to have people flick them so she can chase them down and retrieve them, but sometimes she drops them places where they are nearly impossible to get back.

More than the normal "on my terms" cat attention seeking MO, Ginger is peculiarly standoffish and sends mixed signals.  The longer I've had her the more friendly she has become.  She used to completely hide from strangers and even now with us she likes to have her ears and back scratched, but even if she is making love to your ankles that may not actually mean she wants to be picked up and despite not having any front claws, her teeth and back claws are quite pointy enough.  I think she's like this because she was a barn cat and had not actually spent any time indoors before she came to live with me.  When I was in college Ginger was a wild young cat and at some point I had to decide between having her destroy my room, including a gaping hole in the box-spring of my bed, and being able to keep her so I made the tough/touchy decision to have her declawed when I got her fixed.  The nice people at the Cornell vet school did a very good job and she's never seemed to have any problems without the claws.  However since she has no front claws I don't really like her to be outside.  Despite this, Ginger has had a number of extraordinary adventures that I worry have eaten up some of her nine lives, including a six week stint outside our house in NJ that I was really sure she was never coming back from.  Ginger has her own ideas about whether she should be able to be outside and will run the dogs over to get to the back yard.  We feel kind of bad because she obviously loves to be outside and seems to be able to take care of herself.  So we compromise and she can be outside if she stays in the yard and we are outside too. 

According to wikipedia polydactyl cats are good mousers and were prized as ships cats.   I'm not sure if it is the polydactylism or the wild beginnings, but Ginger is an amazing mouser.  When I came home from college my family wasn't really excited to have a third cat in the house and a wild cat at that.  But things changed when, even without claws, Ginger killed an enormous rat in the basement.  Cats are considered human-subsidized predators, which means that they kill even if they are not hungry and there are more predators than the prey population could actually support - this has been particularly devastating to song birds in many places.  We try to be conscientious and not let Ginger kill off the wildlife and except for one year when, despite our best efforts, she killed off a whole family of garter snakes mostly she just keeps us mouse free.  I don't think that she's ever brought a bird in, but the mice tend to turn up in weird places (like the dog's food bowl).  Occasionally the dogs thwart her mousing efforts.  Ginger likes to bring her prizes over to where we can see her and yowl loudly, then smack them around a little to show off.  Unfortunately this often attracts the dogs who blunder by and are big enough to provide cover for the poor critter to nip over to a nearby piece of furniture, then Ginger needs to recapture it.  Maybe she does it to torture her victims further...  Mice and garter snakes aren't her only victims, she is happy to attack blanket covered toes and fingers, using her thumbs to hold her prey in place and then alternately smack and bite them.  If you're not careful and don't take your role of escapee as seriously as Ginger takes her role as attacker she'll bite you no-holds-barred.  Ginger is also peculiar in that she likes to chase cars and trains.  When she is in the back yard she watches the trains intensely and then chases them from one side of the yard to the other.  And when I had her in college I used to drive home with Ginger and she loved to break out of her crate (she destroyed two) and then watch the cars whiz by racing from the back passenger window to the rear window. What a personality.