Artichokes Stuffed with Avocados

July 2, 2016 by Yasemin Ari 3 Comments

Here’s a perfect example of an Aegean-California fusion dish, if there is such a thing. Although the Mediterranean climate is perfect for growing avocados, they are fairly new in the Aegean region. As people get more familiar with avocados, they are creatively integrating them into their local cuisine. Artichokes, however are widely used in the Mediterranean as main courses, appetizers or salads. This is a fairly easy recipe that adds the creamy texture of the avocados to the tangy delicate flavor of the artichokes. The main thing that takes time in this recipe is the avocado filling which has to be marinated at least 2-3 hours.

Ingredients:

12-15 frozen artichoke bottoms
1 cup lemon juice, divided
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 table spoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
Salt to taste
3-4 medium avocados
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped, or sliced
3/4 cup olive oil, divided
2 cups boiling water
½ teaspoon sugar
Salt to taste
Fresh dill weed for garnish, finely chopped

Directions:

Fill a large bowl with tap water, add 1/2 cup lemon juice. Remove frozen artichoke bottoms from the package, place them in the lemon water, set aside to let them thaw.

To prepare the marinade sauce for the avocados, in a medium size bowl mix lemon juice, 1/4 cup olive oil, mashed garlic, mustard, honey and salt with a whisk until it slightly thickens. Peel the avocados, remove seeds, and cut them in small cubes (about ½ inch in size). Place avocados in the sauce. Gently stir with a spoon, making sure the sauce covers the avocado pieces well. Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and let it chill in the refrigerator overnight or at least for 2-3 hours.

Cut a small slice from the bottom of each artichoke to make sure the bottoms are flat, not pointy. This is needed to properly stuff them with avocados later. In a large sauce pan, place remaining olive oil and coarsely chopped onions. Spread the onions in an even layer. Place artichokes over the onions in the pan. Sprinkle with sugar and salt. Drizzle the remaining lemon juice ½ cup) evenly over the artichokes. Lemon juice will prevent the color of artichokes from darkening. Add the hot water to the pan and cover with a lid. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat to low, let it simmer until artichokes are tender, about 25-30 minutes. Remove from heat, let it cool to room temperature. Remove artichokes from the pan and place them on a serving plate. Discard the remaining onions. Using a spoon, carefully fill the artichokes with avocados. Sprinkle chopped fresh dill over the avocados. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Bon Appetit! Afiyet Olsun!

Artichokes in lemon water

Cut the bottom of the artichokes

Chopped dill

Olive oil and onions in pan

Artichokes cooking

Cooked Artichokes

Artichokes ready to be served

Weaved Puff Pastry Cheese Rolls – Örgülü Peynirli Puf Böreği

November 18, 2014 by Yasemin Ari 1 Comment

Weaved Puff Pastry Cheese Rolls

If you want a very easy recipe for borek, this is it!
You’ll use puff pastry right out of the freezer.
It’s not only easy to prepare, but it looks very appetizing.

Ingredients:

8 squares of puff pastry (mine measured 5″x5″ ea)
1/4 cup cheddar cheese, grated
1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
1/4 cup fresh dill, chopped
1 egg yolk
1 tea spoon water to thin the yolk
1 tea spoon black caraway seeds

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
For the filling, mix cheeses and chopped greens in a small bowl, set aside.
Place frozen puff pastry on a clean flat surface to allow it to thaw just for a few minutes. You don’t want it to thaw to room temperature since it gets sticky when as it gets warm, becoming hard to handle.
Leaving the middle 1/3 of the dough intact, cut 4 horizontal lines on both right and left sides of the dough as shown in the photo below. Place a spoonful of cheese filling in the middle of the square dough. Starting at the top right, fold down the first strip on the right hand side towards the middle of the dough at a 45 degree angle, covering the filling. Then, do the same with the top strip on the left hand side. Repeat these steps until you wrap the strips criss-cross over the filling. Place the pastry on parchment paper. Prepare the other pastry squares the same way, set aside.

In a small bowl, using a whisk, thin the egg yolk with a teaspoon of water. Brush it over the pastry rolls. Sprinkle caraway seeds on top. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown. First transfer to a plate lined with paper towel to absorb any excess grease, then transfer to a serving platter.
Serve hot or warm.

Afiyet Olsun! Bon Appetit!

Cheeses, parsley, dill and egg yolk

Make cuts on each side 1 inch apart

Start folding down the strips at an angle over the filling

Fold down all of the strips and secure the end by pressing

Brush egg yolk and sprinkle caraway seeds

Weaved Puff Pastry Rolls with Cheese filling

Roasted Bell Peppers in Lemon Garlic Sauce – Tarator Soslu Közlenmiş Biber

November 8, 2014 by Yasemin Ari 1 Comment

Tarator is a garlic-olive oil based sauce that is commonly used in summer salads in Western Turkey. Cooked long string beans (börülce), zucchini, peppers of all kinds are transformed into zesty salads simply by adding the tarator sauce to them. If you were to make it the old fashioned way, here’s what you do: First garlic and salt are made into a paste with a mortar and pestle. Then in a bowl, as you continuously twirl this garlic paste in the same direction, you ever so slowly add small amounts of olive oil. This mixture slowly starts to thicken and starts looking like a creamy mayonnaise. When it is “just the right consistency”, you add lemon juice and water to the sauce. Knowing when to stop adding olive oil is the tricky part. Because if you add more than you should, then the oil and garlic will separate and it will no longer look creamy. Back in the day, in our neck of the woods, this used to be a measure of how good a cook a woman is. Nowadays, one no longer has to master this craft thanks to blenders and food processors,

The sauce can be prepared in advance and can be stored in the refrigerator like any salad dressing.

If you like, you can roast fresh peppers and make it more authentic, however, roasted peppers that come in a jar work well since the sauce add plenty of flavor. Enjoy!

Roasted Bell Peppers with Walnuts in Garlic Lemon Sauce

Roasted Bell Peppers in Lemon Garlic Sauce – Taratorlu Kozlenmis Biber

Ingredients:

1 19oz jar or roasted bell peppers

Dressing:

6-7 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup olive oil
juice of 1-2 lemons
½ cup water
Salt to taste

Garnish:

¼ cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

Directions:

Rinse and drain the roasted bell peppers, pat dry with a paper towel, cut into bite-size pieces, arrange them in a serving dish.

To prepare the dressing, mince garlic with a garlic press. Place garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and salt into a food processor or a blender. Blend until it is smooth. It will thicken as it emulsifies. Taste to see if you need to add more lemon juice or salt. Add water and mix again.

Pour dressing over the roasted bell peppers. Garnish with chopped walnuts. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Afiyet Olsun! Bon Appetit!

Ingredients

Roasted bell peppers cut into pieces

Roasted Bell Peppers in Lemon-Garlic Sauce

Savory Dill and Cheese Pastry

March 2, 2014 by Yasemin Ari Leave a Comment

Savory Dill and Cheese pastry

Savory treats are my favorites for tea time. My friend Nur served these to us with coffee and they were an istant hit with everyone. They are very easy to make and freeze very well. If you freeze, when ready to serve, take them out of the freezer, put them in a preheated oven for 5 minutes. They will taste like they just came fresh out of the oven. You can use olive oil, as well as any other healthy oil like walnut or avocado oil.

Ingredients:

1 cup yogurt
½ cup oil
2 eggs (one yolk separated for glazing)
1 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1 cup fresh dill, finely chopped
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Black caraway seeds

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Separate one egg yolk, save it for glazing the top of the pastry later. In a large bowl, mix yogurt, oil, and eggs with a whisk. Add crumbled feta cheese and dill, mix with a spoon. Add flour and baking powder. Mix well with a spoon. Cover the dough and let it chill in the refrigerator for half an hour.

Grease a cookie sheet. Take a walnut size piece of the dough, roll it between your palms into a ball and place on the cookie sheet. Repeat until all dough is used. Dough will yield about 40 pieces. Add a table spoon of water into the egg yolk, mix well. Brush the egg yolk over the pastry balls. Sprinkle black caraway seeds over the pastry. Bake in the oven until golden brown (about 30-45 minutes). Serve hot or at room temperature.

Bon Appetit! Afiyet Olsun!

Yogurt, oil, feta cheese and fresh dill

Dough is ready to go in the refrigerator

Chilled dough

Pasty balls ready for glazing

Pastry balls glazed, ready for baking

Savory dill and cheese pastry fresh out of the oven

Savory dill and cheese pastry

Savory Kataifi Balls with Cheese

January 19, 2014 by Yasemin Ari Leave a Comment

Savory Kataifi Balls with Cheese – Peynirli Çıtır Kadayıf

Couple of years ago we were in the small Greek Island of Leros. We enjoyed many delicacies at Mylos restaurant by the windmill. Most of the appetizers were familiar tastes of the Aegean, however, this one was a pleasant surprise. Typically kataifi (shredded dough) is used for desserts in the Turkish cuisine, very few savory versions exist. This one was quick fried, very light, savory with a drizzle of honey on top. My award winning friend Oya (www.oyascuisine.com) has successfully deciphered the recipe when the owner refused to share his secret with her. She has the recipe on her blog. I’ve tried it at home in California with fresh mozzarella cheese and we loved it. Then, I tried a baked version. Although it was delicious, by the time the dough was baked to golden brown, some of the cheese oozed out of the dough and hardened on the tray. I decided to try it in a different format and came up with this recipe where I rolled the dough into a ball not allowing the cheese to melt and ooze out. It turned out great. Enjoy!

Variation: If you like kunefe, a kataifi dessert with cheese in the middle, you can place the cooked balls in a deep dish and pour over hot sugar syrup (1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, boiled for 5 minutes) over the balls and this will be a dessert very similar to kunefe.

Ingredients:

24 small balls of fresh mozzarella, drained
8 oz kataifi dough (shredded fillo), about half a box. You can buy this at Middle Eastern Markets where you can find regular fillo dough.
2 Table spoons butter, melted
1-2 table spoons honey to drizzle on top (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Melt butter. Using a brush, grease a mini muffin tray with melted butter.

Take out the kataifi dough. On a clean, flat surface, loosen the strand of dough. You may need to cut the strands in half. If the dough is very dry, you may need to sprinkle some water on it to soften it. This will make it easy to work with. Take a few strands, place 2 small balls of fresh mozzarella on one end of the dough. Start wrapping the dough around the cheese by rolling it. Form it into a ball in your palm. Wet your fingers to make sure the ends of the dough will stick to the ball. Place the ball in a mini muffin hole. Repeat making balls until you full the mini muffin tray.

Bake until golden brown. About 20 minutes. Remove from the muffin tray, place on a serving dish. Drizzle some honey on the balls (optional). Serve hot or warm.

Bon Appetit! Afiyet Olsun!