Pub Style Bulgur Pilaf-nimbuls (Meyhane Usûlü Bulgur Pilavı)

Bulgur pilaf, a highly traditional central Anatolian dish, can be pretty boring, at least for me, when cooked regular way: with only tomato paste, oil, and maybe onions. However, pub style bulgur (my mom calls this recipe pub style, but I have no idea why) is rich in flavor + vegetables, is fun and a wholesome meal on its own.

I don't know how many different kinds of bulgur there are elsewhere, but in Turkey we have two types: fine and coarse. Fine bulgur is usually for desserts and salads like kısır (tabbouleh); and coarse bulgur is perfect for rice.

1 cup coarse bulgur
1 small onion, diced
1/2 bunch green onions, chopped (optional)
2-3 banana peppers or any fresh pepper, chopped
1 tbsp tomato or pepper paste
2 tomatoes, diced
1 potato, diced
1 tsp pepper flakes
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp mint flakes (if you have fresh mint, even better!)
3 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 cups water
salt
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped

optional:
1-2 cloves of garlic, sliced and added with the onion
carrot, chopped in rounds or half-rounds
corn

-Heat the oil in a pot and add the onion. Stir for a couple of minutes and add pepper. When they are soft add first the paste, stir for a minute, and then diced tomato.
-When tomatoes are cooked, add the water, bulgur, potatoes, pepper flakes, ground black pepper, mint flakes, and salt.
-Wait until the water boils. Then turn the heat down all the way to very low and cook until the water is absorbed and bulgur is tender.
-Since parsley doesn't really need to be cooked, add it with green onions after you turn off the heat and mix well.
-Bulgur can be sticky, so you better stir it every now and then. Once it's cooked, cover the pot by putting a paper towel or a clean kitchen cloth between the pot and the lid to absorb the moisture. Let it sit for at least 5-10 minutes like that before you serve.

You can serve this delicious pilaf with yogurt, cold beer, meat, or with anything you want. I like it warm, but since it's cooked with olive oil it can be served cold as well. A lot of people I know eat it cold, actually.

Turkish Pumpkin Dessert-nimbuls (Kabak Tatlısı)

Pumpkin dessert is a very easy-to-make popular and traditional recipe. If you don't have a big company, you can use butternut squash in stead of pumpkin.
pumpkin or butternut squash
sugar
4-5 cloves
crushed walnuts
The ratio of pumpkin to sugar is 1 to 1/2. I used 3 cups of squash and 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Peel the pumpkin, cut it into big chunks, and put in a pot. Put sugar on and let it sit over night. It will release water, so you don't need to add water when you're cooking it. The next day, add 4-5 cloves in to the pot and cook on medium until the pumpkin is soft, approximately 30 minutes. Let it cool and garnish with walnuts or grated coconut.

For an Irish touch, serve with Guinness.

Barbunya Beans-nimbuls (Barbunya Pilaki)

Barbunya is a very common and popular olive oil dish (which is cooked always/only with olive oil and served cold) in Turkey. Delicious fresh barbunya beans appear in farmer's markets in midsummer. What people usually do is to buy large amounts of barbunyas, pod them, and then keep them in the freezer for the winter. Fresh barbunyas are always preferred to dried ones. However, since it's impossible to find fresh barbunyas here in the States, I learned to love dried barbunyas. After years of uncertainty and confusion I am finally positive that barbunyas are roman / red beans.


If you cannot find barbunya (roman) beans, you can try the same recipe with pinto beans, which look exactly like barbunyas. Pintos taste different than barbunyas, but still may surprise you with this recipe.

2 cups of dried barbunya beans

2 big fresh tomatoes diced or 1 can petite diced tomato
2 medium onions, diced
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 green (preferably banana) peppers, seeded and chopped
2 carrots, cut in rounds or half rounds
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tsp sugar
2 cups hot water
1/2 bunch parsley, leaves coarsely chopped.
salt

-Soak barbunyas in water over night and before cooking boil until soft, approximately for an hour. If you have a pressure cooker you don't need to soak them overnight; pressure-cook dried barbunyas for 35 minutes. Drain and rinse
-Heat oil in a big pot. Add onions, garlic, and green peppers. Stir for 4-5 minutes
-Add the carrots and cook until carrots get kind of soft.
-Add the tomatoes and cook until they turn darker red (basically until they're cooked).
-Add barbunyas and stir for 5 mins. Add salt, sugar, and water. Turn down the heat. Cover and cook for 30 minutes
-Garnish with parsley and lemon slices


















You can try it warm, but Barbunya like all Turkish olive oil dishes is served and best when it's cold.
Squeeze lemon juice on barbunyas before you eat.

PS: Most people use potato (one, peeled and diced added with carrots) when they cook barbunyas, but I prefer not to.

Red Lentil Soup-nimbuls (Kırmızı Mercimek Çorbası)

for the soup:
1 cup red lentils
1 medium size onion
1 carrot
1 tbsp tomato or pepper paste (or you can do half&half)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp crushed pepper or red peppercorns
6 cups of water

for the sauce:
2 tbsp olive oil or butter
1 tbsp sweet or spicy paprika

-With a pressure cooker: Put everything (onion and carrot coarsley chopped) for the soup in the pressure cooker and cook on medium for 15 minutes and then smoothen the soup with a blender
-With a regular pot: Put everything for the soup in a big pot and cook on medium heat until the lentils are soft and mushy, for about 20-25 minutes. Smoothen it with a blender.
-If you don't have a hand blender or if you want to have a chunky soup, chop the onion finely and grate the carrot before you cook them.
-Previous two are, in a way, healthier ways of making this soup. If you want to try the tastier way, sautee the onion with 1 tbsp oil for 3-4 minutes. Add the paste and cook for a couple of minutes, and add the rest of the soup ingredients. From this point on, everything will be the same. Sauteed onion and paste will make quite a difference, though.
-Before serving the soup, heat the oil in a skillet and when it's hot add the paprika. Stir for 5-10 seconds. Pour a couple of scoops of the oil+paprika sauce on the soup bowl.
-Squeeze a little bit of lemon juice on top.

optional: sprinkle parsley on top

Potato Salad à la Turque-nimbuls (Patates Salatası)

Another parsley recipe for this week's Weekend Herb Blogging which is hosted by Sher of What Did You Eat? Although parsley seems to be the dominant herb in this salad, the recipe shows the friendship of herbes

4 medium potatoes--in Turkey this is made with yellow potatoes since we don't have red ones over there; however, I love it with red potatoes,too--peeled and diced (actually the number of potatoes depends on how big a salad you want)
1 small onion
1/2 bunch green onions, chopped
1 cucumber, cut in quarter rounds
2 banana peppers (or any other green/red pepper), chopped finely
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
1/4 cup dill, chopped
1/3 cup fresh mint, chopped or 2 tsp dried mint flakes
1/2 tsp red crushed pepper
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp sumack
1/2 tsp black pepper
juice of one and a half lemons
1/3 cup olive oil
salt

-Peel, dice, and then boil the potatoes in salted water for approximately 10 minutes. Drain and let cool
-Cut the onion in half lengthwise and then chop it into very thin half moons. Put the chopped onion in a bowl and knead it with 1 tsp salt until the onion is soft. Rinse the salt off the onion
-Mix all the ingredients in a big bowl

Serve as an appetizer, salad, or as a side dish for meat

Adana Style Stuffed Eggplants and Zucchinis-nimbuls (Adana Usulü Patlıcan ve Kabak Dolması)

Years ago, my mom went to Adana--one of the "kebap" capitals of Turkey--to visit her cousins. In stead of kebap, she brought back this eggplant + zucchini dolma recipe. In Adana, they usually use sundried eggplants and zucchinis; however, in the northwestern part of Turkey it's not easy to sundry vegetables as it is in the southeastern part, so we modified the recipe by replacing sundried vegetables with fresh ones.

With the following ingredients I stuffed 12 big dolmas (6 eggplants + 6 zucchinis). If you're not planning to stuff so many of them, use half of it.

6 small eggplants (as seen in the picture)
2 huge zucchinis (I cut each in three equal pieces)

for stuffing:
1/2 pound ground meat
2 cups of white rice (never use basmati rice)
3 onions, chopped
2-3 tomatoes, grated or 1 can of diced tomato
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 bunch dill, chopped
1/2 cup fresh mint, chopped or 1/3 cup dried mint flakes
1 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp salt

for the sauce:
8 cloves of garlic, minced
6 tbsp olive oil or butter
2 tbsp dried mint flakes2 tbsp hot pepper paste
1 tsp or more pepper flakes
juice of two lemons









-In a big bowl mix well all the ingredients for the stuffing
-For the eggplants: cut the tops off, peel them in striped pattern, and carve them with a potato peeler or a spoon. After carving, put the eggplants in a bowl filled with salty water to prevent darkening. Make a little cut at the bottom or on the side of eggplants and zucchinis with a knife so that they can cook thoroughly
-For the zucchinis: I picked 2 huge zucchinis to make carving easier. The zucchinis were from farmer's market and organic, so I did not peel them. I cut them into three equal pieces and carved them with a potato peeler and it was very easy. In the end they looked like weird coffee mugs
-Stuff the eggplants and zucchinis with the stuffing and place them in a big wide pot facing up. Add water to the pot. It shouldn't cover the dolmas; the water level should be 1 or 1 1/2 inches below the top












-Cover and cook on low to medium heat (boiling vigorously would crack the dolmas) for 40 -45 minutes
-In a skillet heat the oil and stir in garlic. After a a couple of minutes add the paste and mint flakes. Stir for another 1-2 minutes. Pour in lemon juice, stir, and turn offthe heat
-Pour the sauce on dolmas with a spoon at the end of 45-minute cooking and cook for another 10-15 minutes.

Turkish Bruschetta-nimbuls (Fırında Domates ve Maydanozlu Ekmek)

When I was a kid, the biggest torture for me was to have stale bread for breakfast, and this recipe was my mom's genius invention to market stale bread to us. It worked well; it is still my favorite breakfast. Everything you expect from a Turkish breakfast is here on a slice of bread: tomatoes, feta cheese, olives, parsley, banana peppers, and eggs. Those little slices loaded with deliciousness go well with (Turkish) tea at both breakfast and afternoon-tea time.

Must-haves of this recipe are stale "real" bread (never ever use any kind of toast bread or freshly baked "real" bread, since they both get really soaky with tomato juice), fresh tomatoes, banana peppers, feta cheese, parsley, and an egg. The rest is up to you; you can add, remove, or modify the ingredients.

1 French baguette, sliced (I use French bread, because it tastes more Turkish to me than any other bread; however, you can also use sourdough, whole wheat, whole grain, etc.)
2 fresh tomatoes, petite diced
1 banana peppers, chopped
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/3 cup black olives, pitted and chopped
1 egg
1/3 bunch parsley, finely chopped
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp crushed pepper
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tbsp olive oil
salt (how much salt you will use depends on what kind of feta cheese you have; if it's a really salty one you may not even need salt)

With these ingredients, I could top 18 slices of French baguette.












-Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Place the tomato mixture on bread slices with a spoon. If the bread is "really" stale, use the juice from the bottom of the bowl to wet the top of the bread slice. Place the bread slices on a broiler tray
-There will be some juice left in the bowl. Put some on top of each slice
-Broil 6-7 inches below heat until slightly brown. Approximately 8-10 minutes