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.