Kakaolu muhallebi (Turkish style chocolate milk dessert)

Of all the varieties of muhallebi available, kakaolu muhallebi (cocoa / chocolate muhallebi) is probably one of my favourites. Because after all, who doesn’t love chocolate?!

The recipe couldn’t be any simpler, and the whole process takes maybe 10 minutes maximum, you do need to give it a few hours (or ideally overnight) to cool and set, but apart from that, it’s something that can be knocked up at a moments notice. The amounts of ingredients are an estimation, when I made this I prepared it by eye, using enough milk to fill the size of containers I had plus a little extra. Add more or less sugar depending on your personal taste, I wanted the dessert to be a little bittersweet...

Ingredients

500ml milk

50g sugar

3 heaped tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder

3 heaped tablespoons cornflour

Dash of orange blossom/rose water (optional)

1. Add the milk (reserving a little) to a pan with the sugar and bring to the boil

2. Mix the reserved milk and the cornflour, stir well until you have a smooth paste

3. To the cocoa powder add some boiling water and mix until smooth, then add this to the cornflour mixture

4. By now the milk will probably be boiling, to create silky smooth muhallebi you need to take care when pouring in the cornflour mixture as it will start to thicken immediately*. I whisk the milk using a hand whisk and slowly pour in the cornflour, whisking all the time. Once it’s all incorporated lower the heat and cook the muhallebi for another minute or so and then take off the heat. Now add the orange blossom or rose water (if using)

5. Pour into small containers and allow to cool, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours (or overnight)

6. Eat!

*As an aside, if you are distracted and horror of horrors your wonderfully silky smooth muhallebi turns into a lumpy fright, all is not lost. Using a hand blender will remove the lumps and no one need ever know

Çiğ köfte (Bulgar wheat and ground walnut kofte)

In addition to bean cuisine, Turkey is a land of the kofte or meatball. Obviously for a vegetarian, meatballs are possibly not something that one shows much interest in, however çiğ köfte (or raw meatballs) are something quite special. Yes, you did read that correctly, 'raw meatballs' and vegetarian in the same sentence. Traditionally, çiğ köfte were made with raw meat (either lamb or beef) finely pounded with soaked bulgar wheat and ground chillies, however due to food and hygiene laws in Turkey (or at least in Istanbul) it has not been possible to serve raw meat in restaurants for the last ten years or so. Hmm... what can a creative person do? Well, a vegetarian/vegan version came into being, and amazingly delicious it is too. The 'meatiness' comes from the soaked bulgar wheat and ground walnuts. It reminds me a little of some of the Georgian walnut-based pastes such as pkhali. The recipe itself is so simple, yet utterly delicious and rewarding. The only time consuming bit is the kneading of the mixture, but slip a box set in the DVD player, take your kofte mixture into the living room and knead away  :)

Ingredients

1 cup fine bulgar

1 cup ground walnuts

Boiling water (to soak the bulgar)

1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses

1 onion (grated)

2 cloves of garlic (crushed)

1 tsp dried mint

1 tsp cumin

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 large ancho chillies (soaked in water for 30 minutes, deseeded and pureed)

Fresh coriander and parsley

1. Pour the boiling water over the bulgar wheat and soak for around 30 minutes

2. Pour into a muslin square (or clean dish towel) and squeeze out the excess water

3. Mix in the ground walnuts

4. To this, add the grated onion, tomato paste, herbs, spices and chillie puree and mix well. If it’s too crumbly then add a little olive oil. Texture wise you want a doughy like consistency. As an aside, if you can’t find the fine bulgar wheat needed to make this recipe, using a stick blender to ‘mush’ up the standard bulgar wheat works just as well. Don’t overdo it though as you want a little bit of texture in the mix

5. Knead this mixture for at least 10 minutes (ideally 30 minutes)

6. Pinch off golf ball sized pieces and roll into sausages, squeeze hard to create indentations

7. To eat serve in lettuce leaves with a squeeze of lemon. Delicious!

Kuru fasulye (Turkish white bean stew)

I've been a bit lax in putting up recipes recently, in my defence I was in the middle of moving house and for most of the time internet-less or in the midst of craziness. I've now settled in my new home, made myself familiar with the kitchen and as I have not long returned from a holiday in Turkey, I think a Turkish recipe is appropriate! Turkey is a bean lovers paradise and there are a multitude of delicious bean-based recipes to choose from. This is perhaps my favourite, kuru fasulye or white bean stew. I have eaten it on numerous occasions, but it was one of those dishes that I had never actually cooked at home. A food related discussion with a Turkish friend led to some recipe swapping, and this is his recipe – give or take a few tweaks. It's the sort of recipe I love, one that gives no amounts or specific directions but assumes you know the basics and can figure out the rest. More a list of ingredients and suggestions than a regimented mehod. Really, all you need for this are the beans (cannelini ideally, though I only had butter beans which I have to say I probably prefer as they have such a smooth and creamy flavour), dried tomatoes, tomato paste and a green pepper. As with a lot of Turkish food, the flavour comes from the fresh ingredients and the cooking process. This is a classic dish and you really don't need to mess with it.

Ingredients

250g dried white beans (butter beans or cannellini)
Water
2 garlic cloves
50g Margarine or butter
Olive oil
A few sun dried tomatoes (chopped)
1 tablespoon dried mixed herbs
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tsp Aleppo pepper (ideally, or chilli flakes if you don't have)
1 large onion thinly sliced
2 green peppers (cut into rough chunks)

1. Soak the beans overnight
2. Drain the beans and add to a pan of fresh water and boil for 20 minutes
3. While the beans are boiling, fry the onions and garlic in the olive oil/margarine (or butter) mixture until softened
4. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for a couple of minutes
5. Drain the beans, reserving the boiling water and add to the pan with the onions
6. Add around 500ml of the boiling liquid, I’ve left the amount vague. The finished consistency of the cooked beans can vary, some people like their kuru fasulye to be almost soupy, others with very little cooking liquid. I’ve gone for the happy medium
7. To the pan add the spices, chopped dried tomato and peppers, bring back up to the boil and then simmer covered for around 2 hours
8. Halfway through cooking check on the liquid, if you feel it needs more top up. If you want your beans to be more ‘stew-y’ leave the lid off slightly to allow the water to evaporate
9. After around an hour and a half check one of the beans to ensure that they're cooked. For a bit of extra luxuriousness, once the beans were cooked and the sauce the desired consistency stir in a knob of butter or margarine
10. Serve with crusty bread, or delicious with a rice and vermicelli pilaf

Moussaka (Middle Eastern style)

I love aubergines, probably one of the finest and versatile vegetables that there is. I have to say though, thanks to various cookery programs and articles the British* seem to have some strange ideas about this vegetable. 

Even as recently as 10 years ago I remember watching Delia Smith salt the poor creature and then wring it out in a kitchen towel “to remove the bitter juices”. I am not sure where the fallacy that aubergines are bitter came from, quite possibly some early semi-feral variety. In my decades of aubergine eating I have only once come across one bitter little bugger and that was some teeny tiny baby aubergines I bought from an Asian grocery store.
So I say for the sake of the poor wee veggies, unless you are frying them in which case you want as much moisture drawn out of them as possible to stop them being a little fat-soaking-up sponge – don’t salt your aubergines, they really don’t need it!!!

This recipe is a halfway house between Lebanese style moussaka and Egyptian style moussaka (or mesakaa / messa’aa depending on the transliteration). Both sharing a name and perhaps a few similarities to the more widely known Greek dish. The Lebanese moussaka is vegetarian and contains chickpeas. It’s also usually a stew cooked on a stove top. The Egyptian moussaka may be vegetarian, though more often than not it contains lamb, especially when cooked at home. It also may or may not have a béchamel sauce like the Greek variety, and like the Greek variety it’s baked.

Ingredients
1 large aubergine
1 large tomato
200ml passata
1 large can of chickpeas
1 onion (thinly sliced)
4 cloves of garlic (crush 2 cloves, chop the remainder finely)
Bunch of coriander
Handful of ground walnuts (optional)
Handful of chopped black olives (optional)
Handful of grated halloumi
A splash of pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried mixed herbs
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp ras el hanout (optional)
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tablespoon of harissa (or to taste)

1 Slice the aubergine into 1cm rounds and grill
2. While the aubergine is cooking, fry the sliced onion and crushed garlic in olive oil until softened
3. To the onion, add the spices, passata, chickpeas, pomegranate molasses, olives and ground walnuts (if using, I was clearing out the fridge and had a few odds and ends knocking around)
4. To assemble, get a large oven proof dish, spoon a little of the tomato mixture in the bottom and then layer on the aubergines. Sprinkle with some of the chopped garlic and halloumi and then add more sauce. Repeat until you run out of aubergine reserving a little sauce to add on top. Decorate with the sliced tomato, some chopped coriander and the remaining grated halloumi
5. Bake in a 250C oven for around 30 minutes or until bubbling. I’m not overly fond of over browned cheese so I covered the dish with tinfoil for the first 20 minutes
6. Eat! Delicious served with a salad and topped with a yoghurt tahini dressing, or if you want something a little more filling, a vermicelli rice pilaf

*Not just the British, at least half the recipes I see online that contain aubergine will somewhere mention in the article that salting is required to draw out the bitterness. Don’t believe me?! Have a nibble of a raw slice, go on – it wont kill ya! Sure it may not taste of much, but I guarantee it’s not going to taste bitter!!!

Karkade (Hibiscus) syrup

Karkade (sometimes referred to as ‘red tea’) is a drink made from hibiscus flowers (Hibiscus sabdariffa) popular in Egypt and the Middle East. Often served chilled it is also delicious hot on a winter’s day. The astringent flavour of the hibiscus flowers is counterbalanced by the addition of sugar making a delightfully refreshing brew. Drinks made from hibiscus are popular wherever the hibiscus grows, and anyone who’s been to Mexico will surely be familiar with the aguas fresca ‘agua de Jamaica’.
Anyway, I had originally intended on making my usual rose syrup to serve with mahalabiya, but decided on something slightly different. The tart cranberry-like flavour of the karkade would complement the sweetness of the mahalabiya perfectly, and the jewel-bright redness complements the green pistachios beautifully.
It’s a simple sugar syrup based on 1 part sugar to 1 part water, and it’s equally delicious over yoghurt, porridge or drizzled on some pancakes. Whatever takes your fancy!
Ingredients
1 handful of dried hibiscus flowers
150g sugar
150ml boiling water
1 tablespoon rose water
Squeeze of lemon

1. Put the hibiscus flowers in a bowl and pour over the boiling water. Allow to steep for 30 minutes or so (you want the water to be a rich deep red colour), and then strain – don’t throw away the soaked flowers, you can reuse them
2. Add the hibiscus water to a pan and stir in the sugar, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the lemon (this will stop the sugar from crystalising)
3. Take off the heat and stir in the rose water 
4. Allow to cool and then refrigerate. Delicious on desserts, yoghurt, ice cream...

Mahalabiya cheesecake with a pistachio base

It probably says something about the excitement of my life, but the other night whilst falling asleep an idea struck me -  Mahalabiya cheesecake...

Or more correctly, mahalabiya in the style of a cheesecake, with the malahabiya resting on a crunchy base. I know, sounds amazing doesn’t it?! I was sure that someone had made something like this before, but a quick search of Google didn’t seem to bring up any recipes. Had I invented something new? 

I am sure I haven’t and it’s already a ‘thing’ being made clandestinely and shared secretly... Anyway, some kitchen experimentation resulted and the initial results were rather good. I only had a large loose bottomed cake tin so had to use that. I had wondered if by using a large cake tin the mahalabiya would set, but it firmed up okay (I used a bit more cornflour that I usually would) and the finished dessert could be cut into slices, but as the tin was fairly shallow I felt that the ratio of mahalabiya to base wasn’t quite right, so after finding some mini deep cake tins I tried again. Wowsers!
The quantities below fill either one standard cake tin (with some base mixture left over for another day) or 2 10cm cake tins. 

For the base
100g pistachios
50g ground almonds
50g sugar
2 tablespoons orange blossom water
50g margarine or butter

For the mahalabiya
500ml milk
50g sugar
1 tsp ground mastic (optional)
5 tablespoons cornflour
3 tablespoons orange blossom water

1. Preheat the oven to 150C
2. Grind the pistachios and mix with the almonds and sugar.
3. Melt the margarine or butter and stir in, along with the orange blossom water and knead into a ball
4. Press the mixture into an oiled cake tin/s (for ease of removal one of the fancy ones with a removable bottom is ideal), you want it to be around 0.5cm thick.
5. Bake for around 10-15 minutes until it just starts to colour lightly, take out and allow to cool totally. It will seem quite soft when you take it out the oven, but will harden on standing
6. When the base is cool make the mahalabiya, when I made the test recipe I was impatient and added the hot mahalabiya to the hot base. Nothing bad happened, but the base stays a little crisper if you wait for it to cool
7. Pour a little milk into the cornflour and mix well until smooth, add the remainder of the milk to a pan with the sugar and bring to the boil
8. Once boiling whisk in the cornflour and milk mixture and the ground mastic (if using). At this point the milk will start to thicken, turn down the heat and keep stirring so no lumps form
9. Cook on a low heat for a few minutes and then take off the heat. Allow to cool slightly and stir in the orange blossom water. I didn’t want the mahalabiya to be too hot when I poured it onto the base, so I left it for a few minutes or so. It will thicken and start to set on standing so keep an eye on it as you want it to be pourable
10. Pour the mixture onto the base and allow to cool completely before refrigerating for a few hours
11. Serve sprinkled with chopped pistachios and rose syrup

Aubergine, halloumi and sweet pepper stacks

I’ll come right out and admit it, I have an inability to follow recipes. Whether it's down to impatience or a touch of kitchen-related ADHD I have no idea. When I cook it’s usually based on something I am familiar with, or something I have eaten and want to try to recreate, or maybe I’ve found some ingredients in the kitchen cupboard and wonder how they'll go together (as an aside, in my student days out of desperation I made a pizza topped with harissa, sweetcorn, cheese triangles and peanuts as I had nothing else in the house. It was edible but not one of my finest moments…). To me it seems an anathema to read a book and follow directions. Having said that, I do own an extensive library of cookery books, and there's no better way to spend a cold rainy afternoon than curled up on the sofa with a book pouring over the recipes. Or indeed sitting in the shade on a sunny day, book on lap. But follow a recipe? It’s not that I think I can improve on the original, more that I end up fine tuning it to my own taste. The recipe calls for walnuts? Eh… I’ll use that quarter bag of chopped hazelnuts languishing in the back of the cupboard. Everything’s fried? I wonder whether I could bake it… The end result is probably more ‘inspired’ by the original than a facsimile. For that reason I never took to conventional baking, if I’m given precise quantities to measure out then I lose interest. I function much better with vague instructions such as “half a packet of this and a few handfuls of that…”

My current cook book obsession is the Comptoir Libanais Express book that I picked up last time I was in London, an instant favourite for the food and also for the glorious photographs and graphics. And that leads me on to the aubergine stacks, I love aubergines. They are probably one of my favourite vegetables, and I love tomatoes as well, however decent flavoured large tomatoes are pretty much scarce at this time of year (at least in my local stores) and if you do find anything larger than a cherry tomato then it’ll taste of nothing and be as tough as old boots. However sweet peppers are abundant and always tasty especially when oven roasted de-skinned and tossed in a balsamic vinegar and herby marinade overnight, and so the recipe metamorphoses…

This recipe is very much a 'prepare the bits and pieces ahead' type of affair, and other than the initial grilling of the aubergines, halloumi and peppers the actual preparation takes minutes. The original recipe (which can be found here) showcases the vegetables in their natural form, I had some leftover muhammara in the fridge and decided to spread that on the aubergine slices as I stacked them up, acting as a flavoured adhesive. The quantities below make 4 stacks (with some leftover halloumi to nibble on...)

Ingredients

1 large aubergine

2 red sweet peppers

1 block of halloumi

3 tablespoons of muhammara (optional)

1 bunch of coriander

A few sprigs of tarragon (optional, but gives a nice aniseedy twang to the sauce)

1 tablespoon of zaatar

Olive oil

Lemon juice 

Salt to taste

1. Cut the aubergines into rounds, brush with olive oil and gril until soft. 

2. Cut the sweet peppers into large wedges and roast in the oven until the skin starts to blacken, allow to cool and then remove the skins. Ideally this should be done the day before, I tossed the skinned peppers in a bag with some dried mixed herbs, olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar

3. Slice three quarters of the halloumi and grill until golden brown. Grate the remaining halloumi, the Comptoir Libanais recipe suggests rinsing to remove some of the salt, however I tasted the cheese I had and it wasn't particulary salty. As I wasn't adding any seasoning to the aubergines I decided to omit the rinsing step

4. Preheat the oven to 200C, while the oven is heating prepare the aubergine stacks using 3 aubergine slices per stack. Place an aubergine slice on a baking tray, top with some of the muhammara (if using) then a piece of red pepper. Add another aubergine slice, some more muhammara and then top with the grilled halloumi. Finally place the remaining aubergine slice on top and sprinkle over a little of the grated halloumi

5. Bake for 25-30 minutes until sizzling

6. While the aubergine stacks are baking prepare the zaatar sauce. In a blender add the coriander, tarragon, zaatar, lemon juice and a glug of olive oil. Blend and adjust seasoning to your taste 

6. Drizzle some of the sauce on top of the stacks and eat!