I know it is now November but keeping up with all the winter preparations that Turkish women cover in the last moments of summer is actually really tricky. At last, I am able to cover another very important activity that makes the Turkish winter dishes so delicious. Drying aubergines or eggplants, whichever you like to…
Chickpeas, also known as Garbanzo Beans are one of the earliest cultivated legumes. Over 7,000 year old remains of chickpeas have been found in the Middle East. They are very versatile and hundreds of incredibly tasty dishes have been created using them. Often they are served as a vegetarian dish but go equally well with meat. TIPS…
When celeriac is in season, housewives go crazy making all kinds of dishes with this extremely tasty vegetable. It lifts a dish magnificently and compliments many other flavours so well. One of my absolute favourite recipes using celeriac would have to be Celeriac with Quince in Orange and Lemon Juice. When quinces are in season, this recipe is a Must-Try.
However if it's not the right season for the recipe above, try this wonderful root veggie out using another method - this recipe is known all over Turkey and is a national favourite - Seasonal Celeriac in Olive Oil/Zeytinyağlı Kereviz
Celeriac Root
Samphire is a delicious green that grows on marshes and near the sea. It has a lovely saltiness about it and it goes well with fish or lamb as well as being used as a salad in its own right. It is sometimes known as Poor Mans Asparagus but it is cooked a little differently. It needs to be boiled until tender, then once cooled stripped off its stem. It is a little labour intensive but well worth the effort. A delicious Turkish take on this vegetable is Samphire Dressed in Olive Oil, Lemon and Garlic
Samphire
Imam Bayıldı is a stuffed eggplant dish, baked in the oven in halves. It is to die for. (Well, it is believed the Imam fainted when he tasted it, hence the name.)
Turks do love to stuff vegetables and anything stuffed is called a 'Dolma' coming from the word Doldurmak - to stuff. Some people know that the minibuses that travel all over the country in every city are called 'Dolmuş' meaning 'apparently stuffed' which is exactly why they take off when they do when another person cannot be squeezed on board! Or you might be lucky and be in one of those dolmuşes that take off with space to spare and drive around under 5kph ready to pick people up, without hardly having to stop! Maddeningly infuriating when you are in a hurry.
Dolma
Not only peppers are stuffed, eggplants and other dried vegetables can be used out of season and end up just as tasty as when fresh. Also zucchini, marrows, artichokes and tomatoes are popular props for a super 'dolma' recipe.
Dried eggplants and Peppers
Another type of stuffed recipe is called 'Sarma' in Turkish, meaning wrapped rather than stuffed but still it is nearly the same method. Sarmas can be a bit more fiddly but are well worth the effort. The most well-known ones are grape vine leaves, picked when they first shoot and are young and tender.
Stuffed Grape Vine Leaves
These cabbage leaves are also highly popular and are considered to be 'sarma'.
Stuffed Cabbage Leaves
And then there are the hundreds of dishes where they mix many vegetables together with the most delicious combination of spices. It's hard to know what to choose and this is a just a little portion of what this market side lokanta had to offer.
Hot Vegetable Dishes