Yufka Katmer with Mozzarella

Do you like sweet things like Baklava? Do you like the tang of Mozzarella cheese?
Then this is the right recipe for you.

I had 6 sheets of Yufka leaves in the fridge. Leftover from my spinach rolls 2 days ago. The problem with this thin sheets of dough is, they dry out pretty quickly and brake apart. When the package is open, you have to use them in a very short time.

Looking through Pinterest and Google I found mostly savoury recipes. It took a bit of narrowing down my search request to find this recipe. "Turkish pastry out of the pan"

It is easy and ready to serve under 20 minutes.

I used a mix of chopped pistachios and walnuts and only less then halve of the sugar that was in the recipe. I know that the Turkish bakes are very very sweet. Not for my middle European taste buds.

recipe for 3 pastries:
6 sheets of yufka
30 g butter
125 g Mozzarella di Buffalo
70 g Kaymak or Mascarpone cheese
25 g chopped pistachios
25 g chopped walnuts
2 tsp brown sugar mixed with dark brown sugar
oil for frying

Melt the butter and use a pastry brush.
Brush one sheet of yufka and set the second one on top.
Spread a blob of  Kaymak in the middle and set a slice of Mozzarella on top.
Sprinkle with mixed nuts and some sugar.
Fold the yufka over like a package and brush with butter to close all sides.
Heat up a pan and pour in enough oil to coat the whole pan and shallow fry the packages golden brown on medium heat.
Drain on kitchen paper and serve immediately.

After one package you will be full, grins.

Spinach Rolls with Lentil Dip

This is a Turkish method to serve filled pastry. The dough is Yufka or Filo pastry. You can buy it here at the large Supermarkets or at the Turkish grocery stores.

It is a recipe from German Chef Hans Gerlach that was released in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (newspaper) .

It is a bit of work to prepare everything. I needed 1 1/2 hours for it. I cooked the lentils first. I had blonde lentils from France and they needed 30 min cooking time. Then they need to cool down, so spread them out on a plate.

I bought a huge bag of fresh spinach, not the baby spinach version but the strong leaves. Here you have to rip off all the stalks and that takes a bit of time. Then you have to wash the leaves at least twice. Who wants sand in the dish?

I used my widest pan and a big clove of garlic and 1 tbsp olive oil and wilted the spinach down, first minute with a lid on, then without the lid. Seasoned it with salt, pepper and a lot of nutmeg and squeezed half a lemon over it. When the spinach was properly wilted, I put it into a colander and squeezed as much liquid out as possible. No one wants a soggy roll.

Next came the rest of the filling. I chopped the walnuts and the dates and took a teaspoon of marinated red peppercorns out of the jar. The original recipe calls for green peppercorns, but I don´t like them. A heaped teaspoon of white Miso paste came next. It is not easy to mix the Miso paste with the other stuff and it takes a while until everything is smooth and combined.
I chopped the spinach and added it to the mix and formed some kind of sausage rolls with 2 cm diameter and 10 cm length.

Next came the yufka. Take one leaf and spray it with olive oil or brush it. Sprinkle it lightly with breadcrumbs. Set a second one on top and repeat.
Take a knife or pizza cutter and make 3 strips about 10 cm wide. You get 3 out of regular dough.
One spinach roll on the bottom of the strip and tightly rolled and at the end with wet fingers close the dough.

Put enough oil into a large pan to shallow fry the rolls until golden brown and crispy all over. Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Takes about 5 - 6 min.

Take the cooled lentils and mix them with Greek yogurt, bunch of chopped dill and Zataar and Sumac and salt and pepper. When you do not use full fat (10%) yogurt, add 1 tbsp of olive oil.

Ingredients:
500 g coarse spinach leaves
1 large garlic clove
100 ml olive oil
1/2 lemon juiced
1 heaped tsp white Miso
50 g walnuts
50 g dates pitted
1 tsp rose peppercorns
salt and pepper
nutmeg
4 Yufka dough leaves
3 tbsp breadcrumbs
Fleur de Sel

Dip:
100 g cooked blonde lentils ( about 65 g dried)
200 g Greek full fat yogurt
bunch of dill
1 tsp Zataar
1/4 tsp Sumac
salt and pepper

Japanese Chicken stir fried Rice

TABIEATS Recipes is the newest channel from my favourite Japanese You Tubers. They cook easy dishes that are tasty and quick to prepare.
Shinichi cooked his childhood classic that his Mom made for him.

I prepared a lot of the recipes and all turned out well. I often change things a bit. I did that in the following recipe too. I had some fresh ingredients that needed to be used up. I added them and an egg to the rice.
To the ketchup sauce I put 2 tbsp of Okonomiaki sauce to have a bit more saltiness and tangyness in the dish. But if you are a great fan of ketchup, do it like the Japanese people and only use that.

Ingredients for 2:
1 chicken breast
1 medium white onion
100 g sugar snap peas
2 red radishes
1/2 cup mixed veggies (corn, peas, bell peppers, carrots)
1 tbsp oil
salt and pepper
1 1/2 cup cooked cold short grain rice
1 egg
3 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp Okonomiaki sauce

Chop everything in small pieces.
Start with oil and onion, then add the chicken and let that get colour all around. Add all the veggies and give them 3 minutes.
Next comes the rice. With a spatula seperate the rice grains and get them mixed in.
Make a hole in the middle and drop in the egg, start to scramble it and then mix it with the other ingredients.

Season with salt and pepper and stir in the ketchup. The rice get a nice colour. Now add the Okonomiaki sauce.

Ris Salé Sü from Graubunden - Switzerland

I saw a food and travel report from Switzerland. The story of a mountain farmer and his family in Bergell, Graubunden.
They grow a lot of chestnut trees on their farm and have cows and goats. The farmer likes to grow lots of different vegetables and they make their own cheese.

He collected lots of different veggies and herbs in his garden and brought that to his wife to cook his favourite dish - Ris Salé Sü.
The dish is very seasonal, because each month, other veggies are harvested. The staple in this dish is always the rice, potatoes, cheese and butter. All other things vary. That makes this recipe a very diversified.

recipe for 3:
2 medium potatoes
3 spring onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
150 g long grain rice
150 g strong mountain cheese
50 g Emmenthal cheese
50 g butter
fresh sage
salt and pepper

seasonal veggies:
small head cauliflower
small head romanesco
1 carrot
white of a small leek
1/4 head celeriac
1 parsnip
2 mini bell peppers
3 cherry tomatoes
3 red radishes
fresh herbs like Japanese spinach leaves, celery greens, lovage

Start with peeling and chopping all veggies, grate the cheese.
put all veggies, rice and salt and pepper in a large pot and pour enough hot water on top until everything is covered. maybe add a veg stock cube.

Cook for 12 minutes until the rice and veggies are done.
Brown the butter with the sage in a pan.
Take  a slotted spoon and transfer veggies and rice into a serving dish.
Sprinkle the cheese on top and pour over the sage butter.

This is an amazing tasting dish.

Buchteln - or the European sweet version of Baozi

Every country has some kind of dumplings. I started this blog 4 years ago with a lot of dumpling recipes and several more followed over the years.

Buchteln can be found from Bavaria, Austria, Slovakia down to Bosnia. They are made with an enriched yeasty dough. Mostly sweet and often filled with fruits or jam. Other times just served with vanilla custard and unfilled.
They are often eaten as a main course following a bit of soup. They are best eaten fresh and slightly warm.

I watched a YT video from Food Ranger yesterday and he was in a Chinese province famous for their Baozi. I was tempted to make a savoury filling with either pork or mushrooms and cabbage, but I wanted to start traditional European. The other dumplings will follow one day.  For them I will need a bigger steamer first.
The Buchteln are made in the oven, that is a lot easier this way.

recipe for 12 Buchteln:
500 g AP flour
40 g fresh yeast
250 ml tepid milk
80 g melted butter cooled
zest of one lemon
60 g sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
pinch of salt

extra flour for your work surface
4 tsp plum jam (homemade)
4 tsp fig jam (homemade)
4 tsp lemon Marmalade (bought)

Butter for a 20x30 cm baking dish
50 g melted butter to brush on
icing sugar

Bake at 200 C for 22 - 25 min.

In a standmixer combine the upper ingredients and knead the dough for 6 min.
Put a dish cloth on top and store the bowl in a warm place for 35 min.
Flour your work station and pull the dough out and knead it a little. Form a long sausage and cut that into 12 pieces.
Roll each into a ball. Flatten and fill with Jam and close it into a ball again.
Set in the dish and do not crowd it. When all balls are in, let them rise 5 min.
Put them in the oven.

When they come out, place them on a wire rack to cool, sprinkle with icing sugar.

Serve with some vanilla custard

Pumpkin Risotto with smoked Ham

One of my favourite You Tubers made something like this. Donal Skehan. I love the non fuss cooking style. Many recipes are very structured and not overpowered with ingredients.

His easy 15 minute meals are inspiring. When you get home, he makes it easy to get some tasty food on the table in a very short time.
Well, this recipe is not one of the quickest ones. Risotto takes time and peeling and preparing a pumpkin in the oven is a bit of work too.

With a little spare broth you can take the leftovers with you for your lunch break.

Recipe:
650 ml good quality homemade chicken stock
160 g Carneroli risotto rice
1 white onion
2 cloves of garlic
Pinch of saffron
50 ml Noilly Prat
3 tbsp butter
40 g grated gryêre cheese
1/2 butternut squash
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Cut the butternut squash in two halves and peel the skin down with a sharp knife.
Take a spoon and get the seeds out. Cut in 1 inch slices and put on a baking tray, season and sprinkle with olive oil. Bake at 180 C fan for 30 - 40 min.

Peel and chop onion and garlic. Heat up 1 tbsp of butter and saute them.
Get the rice in and coat it well.
Splash in the Vermouth and cook it down. Sprinkle in the saffron.
Heat up the chicken stock and pour it in ladle by ladle.

When the rice is done, add butter and gryêre.
Take 3 slices of pumpkin and mash them with a fork.
Mix that into the rice.

Serve on a plate, top with slices of pumpkin and some ham.

Avocado and Beetroot Tower

In my last French cooking magazine issue were 70 recipes without meat.

There are some for parties and buffets in too.

I bought 2 avocados and some precooked beetroot yesterday. They sold the avocados ready to eat. One was, the other one was so tough the stick blender was not able to get it mashed up.

Beetroots come in different sizes. The problem is to get some that a large enough to have a decent base of the tower.

Ingredients for 4 towers:
2 large beetroots
2 ripe avocado
1 lemon
100 ml double cream
Salt and pepper

Use a piping bag mit a star nozzle.
In a high bowl mix avocado with lemon, cream and salt and pepper.
Fill the piping bag.

Start to construct with the beetroot base. Pipe avocado around the edge and in the middle. Set the next beetroot slice on top and build more.