This month’s Daring Cooks’ challenge asked us to make some form of ‘patty’. I used it as an opportunity to dive back into my Turkish cookbook…
The end result is a mashup of a couple of different dishes – a great way for vegetarians to experience köfte. Most people know Turkish köfte as football-shaped meat balls, full of spices and a little bit crispy on the outside. This is my attempt at making them vegetarian.
Continue reading Daring Vegetarian Köfte (lentil and bulgur patties)
I finally tried to make the bulgur salad I was obsessed with on my trip to Turkey.
This salad is the reason I bought the cookbook I bought. There were a few different cookbooks in the tourist shops, and I found that this one was the only one that had the bulgur salad in it.
One problem – I couldn’t find it in English.
Continue reading Kısır – Bulgur Salad : Turkish Food Log Pt. 4
There weren’t many dishes I ate that contained bulgur. Until recently, the only thing I could think to make was tabbouleh. Fair enough – tabbouleh is tasty!
Eating my way through Turkey, I realized that you could get bulgur in different sizes, in many stages between fine and coarse. The coarser bulgur was used much like rice, and bulgur pilaf was a common side for many dishes.
I bought a bag of coarse bulgur, ready to make some delicious pilaf… and it sat in the cupboard for almost a month. J finally dug in, and used some in a bread, and I decided I couldn’t let him show me up.
The basic bulgur pilaf is fairly plain, since it’s meant to be a side dish for more flavourful main items, like kebab and kofte. I used the recipe from the cookbook I bought in Turkey as a jumping off point, adding some spinach and lots of yummy herbs and spices. I also had to change the cooking instructions a little bit — this will vary depending on the coarseness of the bulgur you buy. There are many variations, and I’m not sure there’s a standard way that all brands differentiate between the varieties.
This is a great alternative to a rice side dish – it has a nice chewiness to it, and is fantastically tangy from the mix of tomato, fresh mint and sumac.
It’s also amazing as leftovers.
I know it’s taken a while, but here is my first in a series of posts about my food exploration in Turkey. I thought the best place to start would be the best meal of the trip.
Continue reading Cappadocian Cave Lunch : Turkish Food Log Pt. 1
