Sigara Börek

I have not done these in years.

On one of my trips I found a Turkish supermarket and since I had time I went in to browse.

 

Since that time a triangle shaped package of Yufka dough was sitting in my fridge. Last night I thought about what to cook for Sunday. I had not bought anything special for that day.

The Yufka package came up and one look to an upper shelve in the fridge turned up Feta cheese.

The filling of the cigars (sigara) is simple. Lots of fresh flatleave parsley, feta, yogurt, lemon, garlic and seasoning.

Put together in 5 minutes and ready to place in the yufka leaves. The top of the triangle is brushed with some water and it closes the cigar perfectly.

Use a wide pan and cover the bottom with 0,5 cm oil and heat that up to medium high.

Bake in 2 batches and make sure to keep an eye on it, because the sigara tend to burn easily. Turn them a couple of times, then put them on kitchen paper to soak up the oil.

Eat warm with yogurt and or spicy sauce.

Ingredients:

Yufka triangle pastry

200 g sheep/goat feta

1 bunch flatleaf parsley

4 tbsp Turkish/Greek yogurt

3 tsp minced garlic

1/2 lemon juiced

A little salt, pepper, dried herbs

Chicken thighs Za' atar marinated in Tahini Levante style

It was the first time that I used a Tahini based marinate for boneless and skinless chicken.

I looked for an Arabic way to prepare chicken thighs and many different methods came up. Many used a coal grill to bake them. But the one with the marinade stood out. Since I was in Jordan a couple of years ago I love Za'atar. The earthy flavour mixed with sesame is great. 

I had all ingredients on hand because I first bought the chicken this week without knowing what to cook with it.

The best side to this dish is rice. But use Lavash bread if you can lay your hands on some.

Preparing the marinade does not take long. The chicken should be in it at least for an hour, but over night or a couple of hours would be better. Mine was in the marinate for 4 hours.

When the marinate is ready, before you toss the thighs in, fill two tablespoons in a bowl and set them aside for later. It will go on top of the baked chicken thighs.

Preheat the oven 180 C fan and use baking paper to lay the thighs flat on. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Check if they are done.

Serve with parsley Basmati rice.

Marinate for 3 boneless and skinless chicken thighs:

1/3 cup of Tahini

4 cloves of garlic crushed

1/2 lemon juiced

2 tbsp raspberry or red wine vinegar

5 tbsp water

2 tbsp Za'atar

Nectarine Clafoutis

Buy a punnet with 9 nectarines and you don't have fun eating them for a couple of days because they are rock hard.

Then all 9 of them are fully soft in one day. And then you can see them rot away when you do not eat them at once.

I ate some, threw 2 out do to mold and decided to use the other ones to bake something with.

Clafoutis is a French dessert, usually made with cherries. It is a pancake like batter, but you can easily improve it.

Recipe for a 23 cm dish:

5 nectarines

40 g melted butter + butter for the dish

Pinch of salt

50 g sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

120 g flour

80 g ground almonds

1/2 tsp baking powder

250 ml whole milk

Icing sugar to top later

Butter the baking dish and preheat the oven 

180 C fan.

In a bowl stir melted butter, sugar, salt, vanilla together. Add the eggs. In an other bowl stir flour, almonds and baking powder together and add it to the wet mix. Stir and loosen everything with milk. Let the batter rest while you take care of the fruits.

Wash and destone the nectarines and cut them in bite size chunks. Place them on the bottom of the dish.

Pour the batter on top and bake for 35 to 40 min

Serve at roomtemp with icing sugar on top.

 

 

 

Dutch Baby with Three Cheeses

The day after tomorrow I am going out on my next racetrack adventure. Some stuff in my fridge needs to be eaten before that trip.

A ball of mozzarella and 2 lonesome tomatoes were on the list of things to eat. For a Caprese too much mozz and not enough tomatoes, some open bags of cheese needed a purpose too.

It took some time and I thought savouy pancake could be a solution. Until now I only had Dutch Baby Pancakes in the sweet variety, not with cheese. But I found an Austrian recipe that gave me the idea to use up some cheeses. " tasteoftravel.at"

Recipe for 1 pan with a 22cm diameter:

3 eggs

100 g flour

160 ml whole milk

1/3 tsp salt

1/4 tsp white pepper

25 g grated Parmesan

1 tbsp fresh chives

1/2 tbsp fresh oregano

1 tbsp fresh parsley

30 g butter for the ovenproof pan

Topping:

125 g fresh Mozzarella

30 g Emmenthal cheese

2 smaller tomatoes

Small leaf Greek basil

Herbsalt

Preheat the oven 200 C fan.

Make the pancake batter and let it rest 10 minutes.

Put the pan on the hob and let it get hot. Melt the butter and brush it up the sides well. Pour in the batter and let it sit on the hob for 2 minutes, then get it in the oven.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. DO NOT OPEN IT WHILE IT BAKES!

Prepare the topping while it is in the oven, it has to go on top immediatly, because the pancake will deflate.

Serve hot.

Asparagus in Honey Mustard Sauce with Atlantic Wolffish

The asparagus in honey and mustard sauce is from the cooking magazine from Istambul.

Pretty easy to prepare and goes over the green asparagus that was only cooked in salted and buttered water for 6 minutes. It can be served at room tempetature with the sauce.

I served it with a piece of Atlantic wolffish I bought this morning at the fishmonger. The fish was only seasoned and panfried.

The honey and mustard sauce starts with a little roux. Butter and flour, a little milk but mostly cooking water from the asparagus. Then lemon juice, whole grain mustard and runny honey. Seasoned only with some salt and pepper.

The mustards seeds gave a nice texture to the sauce and went well with the fish too.

Sauce:

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp flour

50 ml milk

150 ml asparagus cooking water

1/2 lemon juiced

3 tsp whole grain mustard

3 tsp runny honey

Salt and pepper

 

Sweet Potato Vermicelli with Bacon and Mushrooms

What is the best way to use cold leftover sweet potato vermicelli ?  I've tried them in a stir fry.

Until yesterday I never had some of the crazy noodles left over. But a package of bacon and half a punnet of Japanese mushrooms wanted to be eaten. Best way to get all of them together for a stir fry.

Everything started with chopping a large spring onion and some garlic while the bacon took the first turn in the pan. The mushrooms just needed the stem cut off and then they were ready to join the bacon and the onion garlic mix. Just seasoned everything with some pepper. 

No salt needed because of the bacon and later the soy sauce.

When the mushrooms were done I added the glob of starchy noodles. But 2 tbsp of dark soy sauce, 2 tbsp water and 2 tbsp of oyster sauce loosened them up pretty much instantly.

A bit of chili flavoured sesame oil and togarashi pepper as a finish and the stir fry was done.

Ingredients:

Sweet potato vermicelli cooked and cold  aprox. 1 cereal bowl full

1 large spring onion 

2 garlic cloves

75 g smoked bacon bits

40 g fresh Japanese small mushrooms

Pepper

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

2 tbsp oyster sauce

2 tbsp water or Mirin

5 drops chili sesame oil

Togarashi pepper

2 tbsp oyster sauce

Soupe froide aux petit pois, broccoli et noix

Cold vegetable soup with broccoli and other greens with nuts, seeds and sprouts. In French it sounds a lot more appealing.

I added some cold Korean sweet potato vermicelli to bulk out the soup. 

It is not really a soup with only raw veggies put through a blender, but a lot more prepwork has to be done.

The broccoli florets and the peeled stem and the sugar snap peas were steamed for 8 minutes.

The green onions and garlic spend some time in a pan with olive oil.

I only added the washed raw micro sprouts to the blender together with the pecan nuts and the cream cheese. 

But it only came together with 400 ml veg stock from homemade paste.

The vermicelli were cooked in a pan for 8 minutes with a little dark soysauce added to the cooking water.

Radish slices and more sprouts and some sunflower seeds on top of the soup that was sitting on top of the cold noodles

Ingredients:

500 g broccoli

200 g sugar snap peas

80 g bacon bits

1 tsp oil

2 green onions

50 g pecans

25 g sunflower seeds

75g micro sprouts

125 g cream cheese

400 ml veg stock

Chilisalt, pepper, piment d'Espelette

Radishes for garnish

100 g sweet potato vermicelli