Unfortunately, I’m not going to start this post with good news. I don’t even know how to start. Let me first tell you that the content of my blog is going to be a bit different than before. There will be no desserts, cakes or other sweet foods here anymore. You might guess why when you read the former  sentence. Yes, the unlucky one is my dear husband, he is suffering from diabetes. How much I would pray for being in his place! I don’t love sweet things as much as him, but he was chosen. I don’t want to sadden you, so I’m not going to tell the details. I had to take him to emergency service one night about 3 weeks ago and then learnt his illness. We weren’t aware of this before, so you can imagine how I was shocked. That night was like an endless nightmare. We stayed at hospital for more than 10 days and have started a new life these days with a healthy diet. We are still trying to learn more about diabetes and to get used to living with that. I’ve promised him not to eat what he shouldn’t eat and I will always be with him on this new life path. I bought a book yesterday named Happily I am Diabetic And I Have a Healthy Life. Doctors at hospital also said that diabetes makes people concern on their health more and they get healthier even than ‘healthy’ people in this way. So maybe I should thank to my husband as I’m going to have a healthy life thanks to him.

I have the photos of some sweet foods which I made before, so I will share them with you for the last time. Actually, I wasn’t sure about writing on them but my husband encouraged me to do. And the first one is this pear dessert which we loved so much as it was so easy to make and not heavy.

Fırında Armut Tatlısı
Ingredients
-    3 pears
-    3 tbsp butter, at room temperature
-    2 tbsp sugar
-    Pomegranate seeds for garnish

Preheat oven at 220C.

Wash pears and cut a bit from their bottoms to make them stand still. Oil an oven tray. Then coat pears with butter. Use your hands to do this.

Put sugar on a plate and coat pears with sugar by rolling them in sugar. Then place them in tray. Cover it with aluminuim foil. Bake it for 20 minutes. Then uncover and bake it for 15 minutes until tender.

Take a pear on a plate. Take a little of its juice from tray and drizzle it over pear. As a final touch, scatter pomegranate seeds on it and serve warm.

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I made these cute guys on my cast iron skillet. And there is absolutely a big difference between these and the ones cooked on a regular non stick skillet. These are perfect! This skillet is my first cast iron item in kitchen and it will not be the only one. But how did I decide to start using cast iron? Just after reading this article by Oysterculture, I was persuaded not to use teflon (non stick) pans that often and this was the starting point of my cast iron experience. When you read her article, you will see that there is an unbelieavable link between teflon and dead birds.Go read that article if you want to learn further on how chemicals harm nature and our body.

(Before seasoning)

Searching cast iron on the Internet, I learnt that it is the healtiest cookware material. I must admit that I was so excited when we brought this skillet to home. You have to look after cast iron cookware, which makes it special and different from other pans. And it needs a process at the beginning before starting to use it called seasoning. With the guidence of salesman’s advice, we washed it just with water (no detergent), dried, brushed all around it with olive oil (including its holder), and cooked it in oven at 200C for 1 ½ hours. Then it was ready to use!

We love to grill beef or chicken on this skillet. As heat distributes equally on cast iron, this is a perfect way of grilling. And the cleaning part is not difficult.  Just wash it under water, use salt instead of detergent to remove any remnants, dry, and oil it again before placing it on shelf. This method is like a natural seasoning and you will see how tasty your beef or chicken is each time you use it. So the more you use your cast iron skillet, the more scrumptious results you have. You can check this article out at Macheesmo to learn more reasons for using cast iron. Thank you Nick for listing these!

I generally marinade chicken or beef in a simple olive oil and tyme mixture, but I used a different one this time. I saw this great marinade here by dokuzuncubulut. Her sauce is much more flavorful, so it was a must for me to try. It is mainly a Turkish blog with many scrumptious recipes with helpful tips. Besides she shares not only her vacations but also her gardening and craft experience. It’s always fun to visit her blog and I always learn something from her blog. You know what? She also has some recipes in English, too. Go visit her blog! I’m sure you will find many things you like there.

I adapted this marinade from her recipe with what I have in my kitchen. She used red and black peppercorns, but I used ground blak pepper only as I didn’t have peppercorns. Also, I used a bay leaf and dried thyme although she didn’t. And also I used ginger powder although she used grated fresh ginger.

Demir Dökümde Piliç Bonfile
Ingredients
-    10 chicken fillets
Marinade
-    ½ cup soy sauce
-    ½ cup sunflower oil
-    1 lemon zest, grated
-    4 cloves garlic, peels on, just broken gently with palm
-    ½ tsp turmeric powder
-    ½ tsp ginger powder
-    ½ tsp ground black pepper
-    ½ tsp dried thyme
-    1 bay leaf

Mix all ingredients of marinade in a bowl.

Put fillets in a plastic bag and pour the sauce on them. Make sure all fillets are coated with sauce. And tie the bag. Put it on a plate and wait it in refrigerator for about 5 hours.
Put your cast iron skillet on stove over high heat (I didn’t add oil in it as I already keep my skillet oily as explained above). When it’s heated enough, you see fumes rising up.

(After seasoning)

Bring it to low heat and place chicken fillets on skillet. Turn them over after about 5 minutes. And brown the other sides for another 5 minutes. When they reach the color you desire, take them on a plate. Repeat the same steps until you finish the fillets.

You can serve these well browned chicken fillets with a minced parsley topping. And a fresh green salad is a perfect companion for them.

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You may think it is not a good idea to cook meat in Summer as it is not light like vegetables. But I can tell you that if you cook it in this way, it is not heavy either. We cooked it not only because we love meat but also because we had guests for dinner yesterday. And in our culture if you have guests, you can not just serve a vegetable dish. Even if you cook vegetable, it must be accompanied by meat. Serving meat is a way of showing importance to guests. The reason may go back to our history, to our ancestors. Meat was the main source of food for them. Livestock production was very popular and a great source of income for people. So it was easy to find meat then, it wasn’t an expensive food as it is now. Moreover, it is said that people were as strong as giants as a result of consuming high amount of meat. Although we aren’t that strong now, almost all people here are meat fans. You hardly see a Turkish person who doesn’t like meat. I sometimes wonder if love of meat among Turkish people is hereditary?

Rice is one of the most common side dishes that we serve with meat. And  if there is no sauce on meat, if it’s plain, it is traditionally served on top of rice.
You can find the rice pilaf recipe here, just omit currants for this one.

Pilav Üstü Et
Meat Topping
Ingredients
-    500g beef, cut in cubes
-    ½ cup hot water
-    1 onion, chopped
-    2 tbsp olive oil
-    Salt
-    Black pepper to taste
-    ½ tsp thyme

Put beef cubes in a pot and cook it on medium heat until it releases its water and absorbs it back. Then add ½ cup hot water and cook on low heat until tender. Then add chopped onion, olive oil, salt, black pepper, thyme and stir. Saute it about 5 minutes stirring occasionally until onions are finely cooked.

To serve it in our traditional way, wet a small bowl. Fill it with rice pressing on the top, turn it upside down on a plate. Then put the well cooked beef cubes on it. A fresh shepherd’s salad goes perfect with this traditional dish.

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Purslane has become a popular herb since the start of summer. It is a great substitute for spinach. We use spinach in several ways in winter and when its season is over, purslane replaces it. We are so lucky that seasons of these two herbs are different. To be honest, I love sourish flavor of purslane more, so I gladly use it in the place of spinach. I’ve heard that people in some places throw this herb away as they think it’s a kind of weed harmful to their yard. It is absolutely not a weed. On the contrary, it has several benefits to our body. For one thing, it is a fiber rich herb, so it helps digestive system. Second, as it has very low calories, it is one of the best foods that diabetic people and people who are on diet can eat. It helps diabetics ease their thirst and helps people lose weight. It is also advisable to cardiac patients as it contains omega 3 oils, which is quite necessary to body.

We try to take the highest advantage of purslane by eating it in several ways. We make borek filling from purslane, purslane salad, mezze (purslane with yogurt) or a hot dish like this one. If you can find purslane in the place where you live, please try one of these. I’m sure you will love it.

Semizotu Yemeği
Ingredients
-    1 bunch of purslane
-    1 small potato, chopped in small cubes
-    1 carrot, chopped in small cubes
-    2 tomatoes, chopped
-    1 onion, chopped
-    1 tbsp olive oil
-    2 tbsp rice
-    1 ½ cup hot water
-    ½ tbsp pepper paste
-    Salt
-    Black pepper to taste

Clean and wash purslane. It’s better to wait it in water with vinegar drops so that you can clean it up from bacteria. I do the same for all herbs. Chop them randomly. Do not chop them thin. You can even do this with your hands without using a knife. And do not throw their stalk unless they are too thick.

Heat olive oil in a pot. Saute onion. Add pepper paste and tomatoes, stir. Toss potatoes and carrots into the pot. Stir. Cover the pot and cook it a few minutes. Then add water and rice. Cook until potatoes and carrots almost tender. Add more water if necessary. Finally add purslane and cook until everything is tender. Do not overcook purslane as they are already so fragile and cook easily. Add salt and black pepper in the end.

Serve it warm with yogurt topping.

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If you’re following this blog for some time, you know how much I love to have breakfast. When I say breakfast, it’s absolutely not a bowl of cornflakes or a sandwich. Our typical breakfast has mainly cheeses of various kinds, black and green olives, jams, honey, butter, egg, tomato and cucumber. We generally try to prepare something special when we have enough time to spend time at breakfast table enjoying the food and talking on how we spend the week or planning what to do on that day.

Crepes is one of these special foods that we have at Sunday breakfasts. I didn’t know the difference between pancake and crepes before starting to this blog and getting more interested in food blogs. I thought they are the same, but no I was wrong. Pancake is much thicker than crepes. I don’t know it’s origin, but crepes is very common in Turkish cuisine. We make it thin, so we don’t have pancake here.

I learnt how to make crepes with the help of a friend and my experiments. When we were with some friends one day, I asked what special food they prepare for breakfast. One of them said that crepes is on top of her breakfast list. Although I had eaten crepes several times at different places, I had never tried to make it. My friend was surprised as she said it is so easy to make it. She just gave the ingredients (no measurement), told me to mix them well and take some with a ladle and fry it on both side. Mix milk, flour and egg and fry. Ok it is a piece of cake for me! I can handle it. But my first try was a complete frustration. As I didn’t have exact mesurements of ingredients, I couldn’t decide how thick the batter should be. It wasn’t thick enough, so it was more like an omelette. After one more experiment, I decided on the amounts.

To enjoy it more, we fill it with various fillings and roll it up. Some of these fillings may be nutella,  jams, honey or cheese. My husband’s favorite is nutella while mine is cheese. And we both love it with black mulberry jam.

Krep
Ingredients
-    1 cup milk
-    1 egg
-    8 tbsp flour
-    Sunflower oil to fry (1/2 tsp for each time)

These ingredients make 7 crepes.

Beat egg and milk. Add flour little by little until smooth. It will be a bit less thicker than a basic cake batter.

Heat a nonstick pan. Coat it with ½ tsp oil and heat it. Make sure the oil spreads everywhere in the pan. The amount of oil shouldn’t be more than this, otherwise your crepes may not have a shape you desire.

Take some batter with a small ladle and pour it in the center of the pan. It must be a thin crepes, so just pour one ladle each time and turn the pan around itself to spread the batter and fry it over low heat. You must be quick while doing these steps.

Flip it up after about 1 minute with a wooden spatula and fry the other side about 1 minute. Take it on a plate and oil the pan again and repeat the same steps. Don’t forget to put ½ tsp oil in the pan each time.

You can serve them as they are and leave the filling to your guests. Or you can fill them with various fillings, roll them up and cut in rolls.

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My husband has been complaining about his eyes for a few days. He has to look at computer screen for long hours for work and most probably radiation is the cause of his eye pain. I read an article on reducing the effects of radiation spreading from computers yesterday. It advises those using computer for long hours to eat banana. It says that the potassium in banana is a great remedy for eye disorders. I told him about this magic of banana and we decided to eat banana more often. We love juicy fruits more and we find banana a bit dry, that’s why we either put it in cakes or mix it with milk and honey, which is not often enough. However, we changed our mind after this article and thought on different ways of using banana. As it’s summer here, can you think of a better way of eating banana than a yummy cold banana split?

We didn’t want to use whipped cream not to make it heavy. And you see there is little nigella sativa on it. It was a bright idea of my husband. He wanted to make it healthier by adding this miraculous spice. We’ve learnt that it has numerous benefits to our body as it is antioxidant and anticancer and as we love its bitter flavor, we use it in small amounts in several dishes. You can find more information about nigella sativa here.

As we were talking about these, I learnt that Foodbuzz is sponsoring a posting challenge and Top 9 takeover (The theme is Banana Split) to help raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. So I thought we shouldn’t wait any longer to make this awesome summer dessert. We will be so happy to be involved in such a great cause. If you also want to feel part of it, visit http://www.kelly-confidential.com/foodbuzz and create your own banana split to help Electrolux and Kelly Ripa raise money for this cause.

Dondurmalı Muz
Ingredients
-    1 banana
-    3 scoops vanilla ice cream
-    1 tbsp honey
-    1 tbsp caramel sauce
-    1 tsp pistachio
-    1 tsp crumbled hazelnut
-    ½ tsp nigella sativa
-    3 sour cherries (We took cherries from the cherry jam we made a while ago)
Place ice cream scoops next to each other in an oval dish.
Peel the banana and cut it lengthwise. Put each half on each side of ice cream line.
Drizzle honey and caramel sauce over ice cream and banana slices.
Top each scoop first with pistachio then with cherries.
Finally sprinkle crumbled nuts and nigella sativa randomly.
You can wait it in freezer for 3 minutes before serving if you want your bananas as cold as ice cream.
Mom II wanted to contribute to this post with a drawing. Look at this cool artist with his pipe! And who can show a more beautiful banana than the model here.

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One of my students brought me some corn flour as a gift in the last school week. She’s from Black Sea Region (Karadeniz) of Turkey, which is famous for its corn and corn flour. She knows I have a food blog and she said she wanted to have a little contribution to it with this corn flour made by her family in their village. She said, “I bet you haven’t had anything like this before. This is not like the corn flour you can find at markets. This corn flour is very special as it is the real one.” Don’t you think these words sound like local advertisements? But no, she was just trying to explain how valuable and tasty this corn flour is. I was completely unaware what she was talking about as I knew nothing about the difference between market corn flour and original corn flour from Black Sea Region.  I asked myself “How different could it be?”, I put it in my pantry and forgot it there until this morning.

When I felt a very tempting smell coming from the kitchen this morning, I couldn’t linger in the bed  lying and reading more although it was Sunday. Mom II (husband’s mom) is here and “she must have done something scrumptious for breakfast”, I thought but couldn’t guess what it was. When I entered the kitchen, she was taking this yellowish yummy thing out of the oven. I thought it was a cake, but mom corrected me saying it was corn flour bread. It definititely smellled irresistible and when I took a very small bite just to taste, I understood what my dear student meant.

Mom said that when she was in the kitchen to prepare smething for breakfast, she saw a package of corn flour in our pantry. And tasting it, she understood it was of good quality. “I couldn’t miss this opprtunity of making fresh corn bread with this great flour”, she said. If she hadn’t made this yummy bread, the corn flour package might still be waiting. Many thanks to mom and my lovely student!
There is still some corn flour left and I know I will use it making another bread very soon.

Üzümlü Mısır Ekmeği
Ingredients
-    1 ½ cup milk
-    2 cups all purpose flour
-    1 cup corn flour
-    1 egg white
-    1 ½ tsp sugar
-    2 ½ tsp salt
-    1 tbsp dry instant yeast
-    1 tbsp olive oil
-    ¼ cup raisin
-    ½ tbsp olive oil (for topping)
-    1 tbsp nigella sativa (for topping)
-    1 yolk (for topping)

Mix all ingredients except raisin and the ones for topping. Knead it and cover. Wait it at room temperature for 2 hours so that it rises.

Preheat the oven at 180C.

After 2 hours, add raisin and mix it with your hand. Grease a rectangular cake mold (pyrex). Place the dough in it.

Whisk egg yolk and mix it with olive oil. Brush the dough with this mixture and sprinkle nigella sativa. Bake it for 40 minutes until it gets golden.

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This is another eggplant dish I have been planning to share with you for a long time. It is one of five star dishes in Turkish cuisine and it is almost a must for a Turkish restaurant to serve it. Karnıyarık is loved all around Turkey and that’s why I have to write about it before it’s too late. Karnıyarık can be translated as split belly. Another funny name of a Turkish dish. Do you remember imam fainted (imambayıldı)? I don’t know if there is a story behind this one, but the name still sounds as funny as imam fainted. Their funny names are not the only similarity between these two classical Turkish dishes. They are almost the same except the addition of mince in the filling of karniyarik. As all meat dishes in Turkish cuisine, it is served hot unlike imambayildi. Imambayildi can be served cold as it is in the category of olive oil dishes, which means it is meatless. By looking at its picture, you can understand why karniyarik has such an odd name. The eggplant belly is split and stuffed with a mince filling. It is split in imambayildi as well, but this one owns the name. Imambayildi must have been invented first. And most probably, someone who was a meat fan must have suggested adding mince into the filling of imambayildi and named it as karniyarik. Now we love both versions!

Karniyarik is generally served with cacik to give a refreshing feeling with this hot meat dish.

Ingredients
-    4 eggplants (I cut one of them crosswise as it was so big)
-    150g minced beef
-    4 green peppers (2 for filling, 2 for topping)
-    2 big tomatoes (1 ½ for filling, ½ for topping)
-    1 onion, diced
-    7 tbsp olive oil  (5 for eggplants, 2 for the filling)
-    Salt
-    Ground black pepper
-    ½ bunch parsley, finely chopped
-    1 cup water
-    1 tbsp pepper or tomato paste
Preheat the oven to 200C.

Wash and peel eggplants lengthwise with strips. Cut them crosswise if they are too long. Leave its stem as in picture. If you want to remove the bitterness of eggplants, wait them in salted water for 15 minutes, squeeze gently and pat with paper towel. Poke holes on each eggplant to make them cook quicker.

Lay a baking sheet in an oven tray and place the eggplants here. Then oil the eggplants (1tbsp oil for each). Cook until tender (about 30 min).
Take the eggplants out. Split their bellies gently with a knife. Give a boat shape with a spoon. (See the pictures of these steps in imambayildi post).
You can prepare the filling when you put the eggplants in oven.

Heat 2tbsp olive oil in a pan and saute the onion. Add minced beef, salt, black pepper and stir. Dice 1 tomato and add it to the pan when minced beef gets light brown. Continue stirring until there is very little water left and take it from heat. Add parsley and mix well.

Now stuff the eggplant bellies with this filling mixture and place them in an oven tray.

Slice 1 tomato and 2 peppers and place them on stuffed eggplant bellies as in picture.

Mix 1 tbsp pepper or tomato paste with 1 cup water and get a reddish water. Pour it directly in the oven tray. I didn’t pour it on eggplants not to color them. Drizzle little olive oil on each and bake them at 200C until tomatoes and green peppers are baked (about 20 min).

Don’t forget to serve it with cacik.

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We had some black mulberry jam left from last summer. You can find its recipe here. As mulberries are in season now, and as it’s time to make new jams, I wanted to finish the leftover jam. But how could I use it? Although it’s not originally Turkish, cheesecake was the first thing that came to my mind as it has become a very common type of dessert in Turkey, too. So I made this basic cheesecake and served it just with a little black mulberry jam topping. You can use any kind of jam for topping. It is absolutely easier and quicker than separately preparing a topping.

Ingredients
-    200g oatmeal biscuits (or graham crackers) (I used this one)
-    50g butter
-    400g cream cheese (mascarpone cheese or labne)
-    4 eggs
-    ½ cup strained (Greek) yogurt
-    1 cup sugar
-    3 tbsp flour
-    ½ tbsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 170C.
Crumble the biscuits and put them in a food processor and crush until it becomes like flour.
Melt butter and when it’s cold, combine it with biscuit flour. Place it in a springform pan and wait it in freezer for 15 minutes.
Separate egg whites from yolks. Beat the yolks, add cream cheese and yogurt and continue to beat until creamy.
Beat the whites in a separate bowl until stiff. Add vanilla and flour and mix well. Add this mixture to the cheese and yogurt mixture and mix with a wooden spoon.
Spread the mixture on the crust and bake it 40 minutes.
Drizzle the jam (I used black mulberry jam) when serving and enjoy it with a cup of coffee.

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Mom and dad went a few days ago. We went to the bus depot to send them off. We remembered an old tradition while waiting for their bus and I decided to share it with you. We were chatting and watching people who were leaving and who were saying goodbye to each other. I had a bottle of water in my hand and dad suggested that I could pour that water behind their bus.  Do you have any idea what this means? It is an old tradition to pour some water (generally with a jug or a small bucket) behind someone who is going to somewhere far. When that person goes out of his home, the relatives or parents go out, too and one of them pours some water behind him while he is leaving. If that person is leaving with his car, water is poured towards the car from behind. If he is walking, it is poured behind him just after he walks about 2 meters or so. And the person who pours water doesn’t go to bus station or airport to say him goodbye. But what is the meaning behind this? You know if you pour water, it meets the floor very fast. So pouring water behind someone leaving means wishing that person go and turn back as fast as that water. It is also applied our guests coming from far cities as in our case. Dad’s suggestion was funny as we all knew this should have been done just when they were leaving our home. As it is an old tradition, many people are forgetting it today and we haven’t been doing it for years. But it was nice to remember it, at least I have something to share with you. Guess what? Of course I poured a little water behind their bus when it was leaving and waved goodbye.

And this great summer dish was our last dinner together. Green beans are the most popular vegetbale when it’s summer here. It is used for some various dishes, but commonly cooked as in this recipe. However, I wanted to make something different this time. I sauteed it in a wok, stirring occasionaly and never letting it wait long over fire. Some other changes in this dish are corn, garlic, red bell pepper, a few mint leaves and everyone loved this beans dish different from the regular one.

Mısırlı Taze Fasulye
Ingredients
-    500g green beans, cleaned and cut crosswise
-    1 onion, chopped in sticks
-    2 tomatoes, chopped in sticks
-    4 cloves garlic, minced
-    1 red bell pepper, chopped in sticks
-    3 tbsp canned corn
-    A few fresh mint leaves, minced
-    3 tbsp olive oil
-    Salt
-    Black pepper and Red pepper flakes
-    1/4 cup water

Heat oil in a wok. Saute the onion first. Add the beans and cook it over medium heat for a few minutes. Add red pepper sticks and cook for some more minutes. Then add tomatoes and garlic. Mix them and cook until the beans get tender. Add water when there is no water left in the wok. Then toss corns and mint into the wok and season your dish with salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes. Cook for 2 more minutes. It’s ready to serve. A cup of yogurt is a great refreshing companion for these beans.

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