Barley Pilaw with Drumsticks Turkish style

I did not know eating barley as a pilaw was a thing in Istambul.

Barley for me is a typical middle and north European thing to eat. It grows in the north and is even used for making whisky in Scotland and Ireland.

When I saw the recipe in SOFRA, the Turkish food magazine, I thought it was large boulgour. Translating the the titel and the ingredients and found out it was barley, I was surprised.

I used drumsticks instead of the whole chicken legs and it was fine. The barley was so good, I could have eaten it on its own.

I used barley in a sachets to cook. These are sold in packs for 3 or 4 in Eastern European supermarkets. One sachet is enough for 2 people. It needs to cook in 1 liter of salted water for 40 to 45 minutes.

The drumsticks were seasoned and floured and went with a spritz of oil in the airfryer for 25 min at 200 C.

The sauce was easy, just sautee some onion snd garlic in a pan and add paprika paste. Loosen it with lemon juice and a bit of water and a dash of date syrup. Season with lots of black pepper andva bit of salt. Some olives go in the sauce as well.

Finish with fresh chopped parsley and dump the cooked barley in and stir well.

Serve with the chicken and some sesame seeds.

Ingredients:

1 sachet of barley

1 medium onion, 2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp paprika paste

1 lemon

60 ml water

Salt, pepper

Parsley

6 drumsticks

Seasoning

Flour

Oil to sprizz on top

Easter Bunny Cake

Easter time is baking time and not all bunnies are made with chocolate.

My BFF baked the bunny for me

This is a very old tradition to either bake a bunny or a lamb. The old tins were tricky and often the batter was sticking to them. The newer ones are better, but still need a lot of butter and dusting before the batter goes in.

If you do not like rum, use a little milk instead.

This recipe is for a 500 ml bunny cake tin.

130 g unsalted butter

120 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

1 1/2 tbsp rum

1 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

100 g flour

Breadcrumbs and butter for the tin

Preheat the oven 160 C fan and prepare the bunny tin.

Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy and add the other ingredients. Carefully fill in the batter. Knocking it on the table a couple of times to prevent bubbles.

Put it on a baking sheet and bake it 45 - 50 min. Take a wooden skewer to check. Take the tin out and let it cool 20 minutes, then carefully open it to release the bunny.

When it is cold, dust it with powdered sugar.

 

Turkish Snack Plate

A bowl with a kind of hummus and some veggies, a perfect plate for a healthy snack.

The idea was from my newest cooking magazine issue Sofra. In Turkish language, but in this case the photo was enough to inspire me. No Google translater needed.

I bought green asparagus and some carrots. They were the veggies in the original recipe. But they had the usual hummus to dip in the middle.

But my trip to the Turkish supermarket brought me a can of fava beans with chickpeas in a balance of 2/3 to 1/3. With the ingredients for a standart hummus it came out very tasty, but a lot darker in color.

I cooked the carrots with an onion in olive oil and a little water with a lid on the pot.

The green asparagus went in the pan with olive oil too.

I found some green almonds and served some with the hummus too.

Almonds - green and unripe

Shopping at a Turkish supermarket often brings interesting new food items to the table. 

My BFF was on holiday in Istambul 4 weeks ago and as gift she brought me coffee, sweets and a Turkish food magazine issue -SOFRA - with Ramadan specials.

With the help of Google translater, I worked my way through half of the magazine. Recipes that sounded good, the ingredients were translated as well.

But a lot of these ingredients were missing in my cupboards. That ment a trip to a Turkish supermarket. 

Outside were the veggies and fruits presented. In the middle of it punnets with small green stuff. The sign above them said Almonds.

I had to get one punnet just to learn what they are, how they taste and what I can do with them. I asked the lady cashier what to do with them, and she told me to eat them as a snack with some salt.

Well, they taste like a mix of cucumber, unripe plum and nut. 

Eating them as they are is not to my liking. Chewing on a piece of one, it gets more and more in my mouth.

 

Wild Garlic Spaghetti with Endive

I still call endive  -  chicory.

My wild garlic butter needs some dishes to get eaten. Buttered pasta is a good way to do so. But only these two together sounded a bit lame to me. One look in my veggie drawer of my fridge and one small head of chicory and a bunch of parsley and some lonesome green onion were found.

A good way for tasty spaghetti. I started with melting some of the wild garlic butter in a pan and tossing onion and chicory in. They needed a couple of minutes and a little salt and pepper.

The spaghetti started to cook now. Starchy pasta water is essential for the sauce. Since this pasta is a fast kind, I dropped it directly from the pot in the pan. Stirring a lot helps with the emulsion of the sauce.

I cut off the best parts of my bunch of parsley and let it refresh in some cold water for 3 min utes before patting it dry and chopping it.

Stirred in the pasta with a knob of cold wild garlic butter. Topping it with grated Parmesan.

Ingredients:

180 g quick cook spaghetti

50 g wild garlic butter

Salt and pepper

1 spring onion

1 small head of endive/chiory

Lots of fresh parsley

Grated Parmesan

Asparagus Gorgonzola Pasta

I often watch YT Pizzaiolo Luigi, an Italian from Napoli living in Vienna. Most of his recipes are hands on easy to replicate, but I did my own way.

He prepared this green asparagus pasta dish. I went out to a very small Italian market in my former hometowm. The owners are from Sicily, a Mother and son team. The tiny shop has a good section of meat and cheeses, but you need to bring time.

I remembered the video from the day before and bought salsiccia and Gorgonzola and a couple of other goodies.

The green asparagus was from a hut a couple of minutes around the corner.

Ingredients:

400 g green asparagus

1 Tropea onion on white onion

4 tbsp olive oil

250 g salsiccia with fennel

75 g Gorgonzola

175 g penne pasta

Salt and pepper

Strip the sausage meat of of the casing. Chop the onion very fine and take the tops of the aspatagus and cut the stems down to the woody part in 1 cm pieces.

The penne needed 14 minutes to al dente. I staeted the water first. Then heated the olive oil in the pan and sauteed the onion. Add the broken up sausage and brown it on all sides. Season it.

Next in with the asparagus tops and a small ladle of pasta water. You will need more the moment the Gorgonzola needs to melt.

The asparagus pieces go in the pasta water the last 5 minutes of cooking time. Then both are drained together and with a little water add to the sauce. Stir well, check seasoning and serve.

 

Wild Garlic Butter with Potato Mash and Asparagus

Spring time is not only white asparagus time here in Germany, but wild garlic is the sent you often smell when you walk through our forests.

But luckily the fields in the wild do not get too much depleted, wild garlic is grown commercialy here too. I bought a bag with 50 g.

The butter recipe is on the blog (May 23). I used the butter in this dish twice. On the steamed asparagus as the seasoning and a good part of it in the potato mash.

The mash turns lightly green and the flavour is herby, but not too intense garlicky. I was busy that Saturday watching NLS 3 endurance race from the Green Hell, I unloaded most of the cooking to my thermomix. The potatoes in a basket inside and the asparagus in the steamer on top.

The mash itself was done in 4 minutes.

The whole lunch contained Chorizo and boiled eggs to add some protein.