Çanakkale Style Vegetable Stew-nimbuls (Şaraşura)

This summer stew is a specialty of Çanakkale. Çanakkale, the northern Aegean/ half Thracian city, has a rich cuisine, but once you taste its famous peynir helvası (cheese halva) and fresh fish from Dardanelles you forget to ask for more.

1 lb green beans, trimmed and cut into two
1 eggplant, peeled in stripes and largely diced
1 zucchini, largely diced
2 potatoes, largely diced
3 banana peppers, chopped in big rounds
1 big onion, roughly chopped
2 tomatoes, cubed
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 -2 cups of water
1 tbsp tomato paste
salt



















-Heat oil in a big pot. Add onions. Stir until cooked.
-Add in peppers and tomatoes. Cook for 10 minutes.
-Melt tomato paste in with a little bit of warm water and stir in.
-Add all the vegetables, salt and water. Mix well.
-Cover and cook on medium for 45 minutes or until vegetables are cooked.
-Serve luke warm or hot. It goes well with rice, bulgur, or couscous.

Baked Ratatouille-nimbuls (Fırında Ratatouille)

After watching Ratatouille: Rat-a-too-ee last weekend, I was intrigued to replicate Remy's ratatouille recipe, not ingredients-wise, but by following his cooking style. The result was baked ratatouille with vegetables put together in a fancy order. Preparing the dish was fun, and the dish was delicious.





































2 yellow squashes, cut in thin rounds
3 zucchinis, cut in thin rounds
4-5 small tomatoes, cut in thin rounds
1 big or two medium tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp fresh basil
2 tbsp dill
3 tbsp parsley
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp red pepper flakes
salt





































-Put olive oil, vinegar, 2 medium tomatoes, tomato paste, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp fresh basil, dill, oregano, black pepper, pepper flakes, and salt in a food processor and blend. You'll have nice smelling tomato + herby sauce.
-Wet the bottom of an oven dish with this sauce.
-Place thin rounds of zucchini, yellow squash, and tomato one after the other in an order you like.
-Pour the rest of the tomato sauce on top. (Don't add extra water; the vegetables will release more than necessary) Scatter finely chopped parsley.
-Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake in a preheated oven at 375 for approximately an hour.
Serve as a side dish with meat or serve as a main dish with any kind of rice.

Vegeterian Eggplant Stew-nimbuls (Etsiz Patlican Güveç)

If there's a hierarchy among vegetables, for me eggplant's place is secured at the top. Given the number of different eggplant dishes in Turkish cuisine, I think I'm not alone in my admiration of eggplant. In Turkish cuisine eggplant is used in various ways; we bake it, fry it, grill it, roast it, stuff it, paste it, puree it, use it as filling for pastries, wrap it around kebaps, and even make jam with it. There are a couple things to be careful about when cooking with eggplants. Buy eggplants right before you cook and pick the firmer ones. Eggplants tend to get soft in the refrigerator. Even though its skin is thick and sometimes bitter, do not peel it all the way; peel it lengthwise in 1/2 inch stripes. Once peeled eggplants darken fast. To prevent this you can take out the spongy middle part with seeds and keep eggplants in salty water until you cook them.

This is a perfect Mediterranean summer recipe with olive oil, garlic, and eggplant.


























1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 big eggplant or two medium ones, peeled lengthwise in stripes
1 zucchini, diced
1 potato, diced
2 tbsp pepper paste or tomato paste
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tomatoes, grated or 1 can of diced tomato processed in a blender
1/3 cup water or vegetable stock
1/3 cup parsley, chopped
salt
black pepper
pepper flakes

-Saute onions, garlic, and eggplant with olive oil on medium heat for 15 minutes.
-Add tomato/pepper paste, stir for 1-2 minutes.
-Add the rest of the ingredients except parsley. Cover and cook on low for 40-45 minutes.
-Sprinkle parsley on top a minute or two before you turn it off.

Serve with rice and bread.

White Beans-nimbuls (Kuru Fasulye)

White beans with rice is the traditional Turkish dish. It is to us what pasta is to Italians. If you have pickled vegetables, especially cabbage, with it, you cannot expect more. There are variations of this recipe based on what kind of meat you want to use, or you may completely skip the meat part as I do. You can cook white beans with stew beef or lamb, with ground meat, pastrami (pastirma), and/or soujuk (sucuk, Turkish sausage). My favorite kuru fasülye is with pastrami.

Very traditioanl version of Turkish white beans would definitely have stew meat, beef or lamb, and would probably not have green pepper. Since I wanted to make a vegeterian dish, I replaced meat with peppers.

2 cups of cooked cannellini: white kidney: fazolia
beans
or
even better dermason/whit beans(it's always tastier to use dried beans, but if you'll use canned beans do not forget to rinse them well) or 2 cans of those beans
3 tbsp olive oil or butter
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 onions, chopped
2 banana or red peppers, chopped
2 tomatoes, diced (If you want to use canned tomato, prefer petite diced one)
1-2 cup of water
1 tsp pepper flakes
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp salt
dried chili peppers (only if you like spicy food)


























-Soak beans in water over night and then the next day, boil them until soft OR pressure cook dried beans for 35-40 minutes OR use canned beans.
-Heat oil in a pot and sauté onion and pepper until soft: 7-8 minutes. Add tomato paste and stir for another 2 minutes.
-Pour in first beans, then tomatoes, and then water until the water level is 1/2 inch above the beans. Add salt, black pepper, and pepper flakes. Stir once or twice very gently (do not forget the beans are tender now and we don't want to smash them). If you will use dried chili peppers, place them on top. Cover and simmer on low for 25-30 minutes.
-Serve with rice, especially on top of rice. Turkish style white beans are awesome with pickled vegetables like white cabbage, cornichons, carrots, etc.

Garbanzo Beans with Vegetables-nimbuls (Sebzeli Nohut)

1 cup dry garbanzo beans or 1 can of organic garbanzo beans
1 big onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 cup fineley chopped cabbage
1 carrot, garted
1 potato, grated
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp pepper paste (optional)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp pepper flakes
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup vegetable stock
salt and pepper

-If you want to use dry beans, either soak them over night and then boil them until soft or use a pressure cooker. I pressure cooked 1 cup of garbanzo beans with 6-7 cups of water for 40 minutes. If you're using canned ones, just open the can.
-Sautee onions and peppers with olive oil in a pot until soft. Stir in cabbage, carrot, potato, and cumin seeds. Cook for 4-5 minutes.
-Add tomato / pepper paste and stir for another minute.
-Add garbanzo beans, salt, blackpepper, pepper flakes, and stock. Add water just to cover the beans. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes.
-Serve with any kind of rice.

I usually cook garbanzo beans Turkish style, but this time I tried something different. I had a small amount of cabbage in the fridge from a pickling experiment that I couldn't throw away, and I was trying to find a way to use it. Since I had cooked garbanzo beans with grated celery root once, I thought they might be good with cabbage as well. I was right; it turned out to be delicious. However, you don't have to cook with cabbage. You can make variations. Vegetables to be experimented on might be zucchini, squash, celery root, celery, turnips, etc.