Lemon Jelly-nimbuls (Limonlu Pelte)

We're going through really hot and humid days here which made me remember a dessert mom used to make. When I came back home from a hot day on the beach, she would serve me a cold slice of this lemon jelly which was soooo refreshing after hours of burning with salt under the sun.

I called her to get the recipe. I had missed it a lot; it was already gone before I thought of taking a picture.

You can try this with lime, too. And if you cannot find petit beurres/tea biscuits, you can use lady fingers or a different kind of biscuits.

1 pack of tea biscuits, petit beurre (Le petit beurre is a thin, small, rectangle biscuit first made in France by the founder of LU company. They're great with tea: you have to dip it very fast, though! You can find them in the international food sections of big stores or in international markets)
2 cups of water
2 cups of milk
4 tsp corn starch
2 cups of sugar
1 tsp vanilla
juice of 2 lemons
zest of 1 lemon
finely shredded coconut

-Put water, milk, and starch in a pot and mix well.
-Add sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and zest.
-Stir on medium until the mixture thickens.
-Wet the bottom of a square or a rectangle dish with the boiling hot jelly.
-Place a layer of biscuits on top in an order. Cover biscuits with lemon jelly and the place another layer of biscuits.
-Repeat this layering until you run out of biscuits and jelly.
-Refrigerate for couple of hours, overnight if possible. The colder the better!
-Cut the frozen jelly in squares, rectangles, or triangles.
-Sprinkle a generous amount of shredded coconut on top before you
serve.

Stuffed Poblanos-nimbuls (Etli Poblano Dolması)

This is a classic "almost" Turkish recipe with the substitution of poblanos for small bell peppers. I've been craving stuffed peppers for a long time, but small green bell peppers haven't showed up at the farmers market yet. I hate flavorless huge bell peppers at the stores. A sensible Turk would not call them peppers. They don't smell or taste anything like peppers; their skin is really thick; and they hold almost half a kilo of rice. So I decided to stuff flavorsome poblanos and I did my best to choose not very big ones. This was my first stuffed poblano, and it was delicious!

To make this a "very" Turkish recipe, use small, thin-skin green bell peppers.

for 4 poblanos

4 reasonable size poblano peppers
1/3 lb ground beef (if you want, you can use 1/2 lb ground meet)
1/4 cup rice
2 medium size onions, finely chopped
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
1/2 dill, chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh mint
2-3 tomatoes, petite diced
1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
1-1 1/2 cups hot water
1 tomato, sliced
























-Wash peppers, cut the tops parts and clean inside.
-In a bowl mix well ground meat, rice, onion, parsley, dill, mint, black pepper, salt, and diced tomatoes (and tomato paste if you like). It'll be better mixed if you use your hand.
-Stuff poblanos with the mix. Seal the top with a slice of tomato.
-Place them in a broad pot.
-Pour hot water on (make sure water is 1/2 inch below the poblanos)
-Cut butter into small pieces and place on top of poblanos.
-Cook on medium for 45-50 minutes.
-Stuffed peppers are good when served with yogurt on the side. And soak that juice with fresh bread!

Baked Okra-nimbuls (Fırında Bamya)

Among the numerous delicious vegetables that I hated as a kid, okra is the only one that I still don't like. After college, I started to eat, cook, and deeply love leek, fava beans, artichokes, etc., yet even the idea of tasting okra gave me shivers. Okra is fuzzy. Okra is slimy, very slimy. Based on observation I can say people either love it or hate it. Also, okra lovers seriously believe that others would like okra if they eat a well cooked okra dish and that sliminess is due to bad cooking. What's a good way of cooking okra I don't know. The only okra dish I knew is some sort of stew. In Turkey in my house and in every other house I know okra is cooked with tomatoes, onion, and lemon juice in olive oil: nothing exciting and still slimy.
That's why I was really excited to find a new (to me) okra recipe in Sarah Woodward's book, The Ottoman Kitchen. I cannot say I liked the book. But in the end it won my favor with one recipe; for the first time in my life I ate 7 okras and really enjoyed it.









1 lb fresh okra (not the huge woody ones)
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
1 red bell pepper, cut in thin strips
1 green bell pepper, cut in thin strips
2 onions, chopped finely
3 tomatoes, sliced in rounds
1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
ground black pepper1/2 cup water
crushed red pepper flakes
-Wash okra and dry well. Trim off the end of the stems, but be careful not to cut into the pod.
-Put okra in a large flat dish and sprinkle vinegar with generous amount of salt. Make sure both sides are coated well. Let it marinate for at least half an hour.
-Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a skillet and cook onions until golden brown.
-Rinse okra well. Place them in rows in an oven dish; sprinkle onions.
-First put tomato slices on okras, and then crisscross pepper strips on tomatoes.
-Scatter the parsley over.
-Season with plenty of black pepper and pepper flakes. (Be careful with salt; remember okras were soaked in salt and vinegar)
-Finally pour the rest of the olive oil evenly and water.
-Bake at 375F for almost an hour. Pick one to taste; it should be soft but not very soft.
-Let it cool in its own juice and serve barely warm okras!

Sunchokes with Orange Juice-nimbuls (Portakal Sulu Zeytinyağlı Yerelması)

This weird looking vegetable is north American; it's in the sunflower family. It was called "sun roots" by Native Americans, but for some unknown reason was named "Jerusalem artichoke" by a French man sometime around 1600s. It's nothing like an artichoke and it is not from or related to Jerusalem. In Turkish, we call it yerelması, which literally means "earth apple"; the same term that French use for potato, pomme de terre. In Italian, I learned, it is called girasole articiocco, sunflower artichoke, which through mispronunciation ended up as "sunchoke" in English.

As I said before, it tastes nothing like artichokes. I might say something between apples and potatoes with a slight touch of celery root; its taste is as complicated as its etymological history. Sunchoke cooked with olive oil and served cold is a specialty of the cuisine of the Turkish Aegean coast. I don't want to start listing all the health benefits of sunchoke; just know that it's really good for you in many ways.














Although this is a traditional Turkish recipe, I twisted it a little by adding orange juice. To make it "really Turkish" instead of "almost Turkish" just replace orange juice with water.

1 lb sunchokes, peeled and cut into strips
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 medium potatoes, cut into strips
2 medium carrots, cut into jullien strips
2 tbsp rice
1/3 cup olive oil
3/4 cup juice of an orange
1 tsp sugar
1/4 bunch dill, chopped
salt

-Fill a bowl with water and squeeze half of a lemon. Put sunchokes and potatoes in water after chopping. Lemon juice will prevent darkening.
-In a broad pot, heat the oil. Stir onion and garlic until cooked.
-Add in first carrots, then potatoes, and last sunchokes. Cook for a couple of minutes stirring gently.
-Pour in orange juice, sugar, and salt.
-When it starts boiling, add rice.
-Cover and cook on low-medium until rice and vegetables are cooked--approximately 30 minutes.
-Let it cool down with the lid on.
-Sprinkle dill on top before you serve. You can also sprinkle orange zest.

This is a Turkish olive oil recipe which means it should be served cold. Try and you'll see; it's tastier when it's cold.

Turkish Tabbouleh-nimbuls (Kısır)

Kısır is the Turkish and different version of a Mediterranean/Arabic dish called tabbouleh. Although there are many differences between these two dishes, the main one is that the Turkish tabbouleh has tomato and pepper paste. In Turkey the recipe for kısır varies from region to region. In Adana they use more water than anywhere else or in Antakya (Hatay) they don't use water at all; they knead bulgur with tomato and pepper paste until it gets soft. However it's made, kısır is made everywhere in Turkey and is loved dearly. It is served sometimes with the afternoon tea, sometimes as a meze, and sometimes as a great summer dish you can enjoy when it's boiling hot outside.

2 cups of fıne bulgur
2 cups of hot water
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp pepper paste (preferably spicy, if you cannot find pepper paste, double the tomato paste)
1/4 -1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 bunch green onions, finely chopped
1 small onion, cut in thin half rounds
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 cucumber, finely chopped
2 sweet green peppers, finely chopped (closest thing to sweet green peppers here is shishito pepper or sweet Italians)
juice of 1 or 1/2 lemon (you have to taste and add less or more lemon juice)
2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
2 tsp sumac
1 tsp mint flakes or 1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
a pinch of ground cumin
romain lettuce leaves
tomatoes

Although it's undeniably non-Turkish, I love the crunchiness of endives in my kısır. 

optional
Some people add finely sliced or minced garlic to their kısır and some use pomegranate syrup for sourness.




















-Put tomato and pepper paste in a big bowl and melt them with boiling hot water. Add bulgur and 1 tsp salt into this mix. Stir once. Cover with a thick kitchen towel and let it soak the water for 10 minutes.
-Cut the onion in half first, then into very thin half-moon shapes. In a little bowl, knead onion with 1 tsp salt. Rinse salt and squeeze excessive water.
-Fluff bulgur with a fork. Add pepper flakes, sumac, cumin, mint flakes, oil, lemon juice, and kneaded onion. Add garlic and pomegranate syrup at this stage if you will use any. Mix well. At this point taste to see if it needs more lemon juice. Kısır should be a little bit sour.
-Add banana peppers, spring onions, cucumber, and parsley. Mix well.
-If served with sliced tomatoes and lettuce leaves Kısır is delicious. We don't add tomatoes to kısır, because tomatoes make it mushy. So kısır is usually served on a lettuce bed (you can wrap some kısır in a lettuce leaf and eat like that) with slices of tomato on the side.