Turkish Flatbread (Lahmacun)

November 08, 2019 by Gizem in Dinner

When it hit me that it is August already, I paused for a moment and thought how great of a month July has been. We started the month pretty strong with a 4th of July BBQ surrounded with friends and family at our new home. We got to see Mt. Rainier and marmots up close when my brother-in-law visited from Chicago. I spent a bachelorette weekend in Santa Cruz, kayaking alongside otters and sea lions, making flower crowns and baking everything bagel biscuits. Then, it was our second wedding anniversary which we celebrated with an amazing meal at Canlis. A couple days later we were at a mountain cabin for a friend’s 30th birthday and glow sticks and costumes were involved. When we got back, I dragged my butt out of its comfort zone and met some amazing new people which ended up in coffee shop explorations, picnics and Turkish coffee gatherings. To top it off, we got our hands dirty and learned how to bake sourdough bread. I am looking at you August, you better deliver!

With my newest knowledge of bread making fresh in my mind, I wanted to keep the ball rolling and make a Turkish style bread. If my oven could talk it would be whining non-stop about how tired it is from baking one thing after the other. I chose to make a traditional Turkish flatbread with ground beef topping, also called lahmacun because it is a classic and I missed it having it so much. The last time I had lahmacun was probably in 2015, in New York at a tiny Lebanese place on MacDougal Street called Manousheh. It has been so long!

Some recipes and books also call this flatbread Turkish pizza but to me, that just feels wrong. We don’t eat lahmacun by cutting it into slices and most importantly, it doesn’t have any cheese on it. We squeeze fresh lemon juice all over it, stuff it with herbs, tomatoes and peppers and roll it up like a wrap. So it definitely doesn’t fall into the pizza category for me (I am dangerously close to starting another version of “is burger a sandwich?” dilemma here).

Depending on the region, lahmacun recipes and ingredients vary. Some recipes use peppers, garlic, pepper paste and pistachios. The kind of meat used can vary from region to region as well. In this recipe, I used ground beef, but you can also use ground lamb or a 50/50 mix of both. I recommend using slightly fattier meat so try not to use 90% or above lean ground meat.

An authentic lahmacun is cooked in a brick oven which is essential for the crispy texture of the flatbread. A hot oven is also key to make sure the meat is cooked through. If you are going to make this recipe, I highly recommend a pizza or bread stone. It makes a big difference in the texture of this flatbread. If you don’t have one then, use a baking tray but it would be best if you heat the baking tray while the oven is preheating.

Yields: 8 lahmacuns, 3-4 servings Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Ingredients

For the dough:

300 grams all purpose flour (about 2 cups)

200 ml warm water (a little less than 1 cup)

1/2 tablespoon dry yeast

Sprinkle of salt

For the ground beef topping:

1 pound 80% ground beef

2 tomatoes

1 yellow onion

8-10 sprigs of flat leaf parsley, minced

1 teaspoon Marash or Aleppo pepper (or red pepper flakes)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Preparation

Make the dough:

1. Mix the yeast with warm water and set aside for 10-15 minutes for the yeast to activate.

2. Add the yeast-water mixture and a sprinkle of salt to the flour and start mixing with your hand until all the wet and the dry ingredients are incorporated. The dough is going to be very sticky at first. After a couple minutes of mixing, the dough is going to stick together.

3. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface. Knead your dough by stretching and pushing the dough away from yourself with the bottom of your palm, then folding it over the middle. Give the dough a little turn and repeat. Continue kneading for about 10 minutes.

4. Put the dough in a lightly floured bowl, cover it with a kitchen towel and let it rest for 1 hour, at room temperature, until the dough doubles in size.

Make the ground beef topping:

5. Using either a kitchen robot or a grater, grate the tomatoes and the onion.

6. In a bowl, mix the ground beef, grated tomatoes and onions, minced parsley, Marash pepper, salt and pepper. I use my hands to mix to make sure everything is well incorporated. The resulting mixture is going to be pretty wet and loose.

Assemble:

7. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with the bread/pizza stone in the middle-rack of the oven.

8. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces. Fold each corner of the dough onto the middle of itself to create a ball.

9. On a lightly floured work surface, roll each ball of dough to a 10-inch circle. (To save time, I roll all balls of dough before the next step and let them sit with flour sprinkled between them.)

10. Spread generous amounts of ground beef mixture all across the surface of the dough, leaving very little space near the edges.

11. Transfer the flatbread onto the hot bread stone and bake for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown around the edges. (I don’t have a pizza peel to transfer the flatbreads directly into the oven so I take the stone out momentarily, transfer the flatbreads onto the stone and stick it back into the oven.)

12. Serve with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, slices of tomatoes and fresh herbs.

Baked Rainbow Trout and Onion Salad with Sumac

November 04, 2019 by Gizem in Dinner, Fish

Summer has finally arrived in Seattle and the hot weather is making me choose lighter meals. That mostly means salads, fruits and lots of seafood. During the summer months, cooking seafood is the only way I can mentally teleport myself to the blue waters of the Mediterranean coast. This baked rainbow trout recipe is super easy and quick which makes it perfect for a weeknight dinner. The onion salad is a perfect complement to the taste of the fish and all the sumac makes it extremely refreshing. Being one of my favorite spices (guess which one is the other favorite), sumac adds a tangy taste that balances the spicy sweetness of red onions.

In Turkish there is a saying (we have a ton of sayings!) we use when we want to say we love seafood. The saying is “I will eat whatever that comes out of the sea, even if it is my dad.” I know it sounds weird but it is also genius. It is the only way I know how to express my love of seafood.

I love cooking and eating whole fish so much so that I once made a three part video teaching my closest friend how to cook a whole fish. I know that some people don’t like to see a whole fish on their plate “staring” back at them or they don’t want to deal with the bones. I believe that cooking whole fish just gives more flavorful results. If it is the bones you worry about, this recipe makes the meat so moist that it falls off the bone. Cooking whole fish is also less wasteful. When you buy whole fish at the market and ask them to fillet it, you are still paying for the weight of the whole fish but not getting the good bits. You can always turn the head, tail and the bones into a yummy fish stock.

As much as possible, I try to buy fresh fish that is in season. I generally pick smaller fish like trout because they are easier to portion, easier to cook and they have a stronger fishy flavor that I love. Trout also has very high content of omega-3 fatty acids so all good things. When I buy fish, I always ask them to leave the fish whole but clean it and scale it. Scaling is the messiest thing ever and you should get it done at the market if they offer to do so.

What is your favorite seafood and how do you cook it, let me know in the comments below!

A hot tip: After eating fish and onion salad, the best way to top it off is with a small bite of halva. It cleans your palate and you will end your meal on a sweet note.

Yields: 3 servings Time: 30 mins

Ingredients

For the baked rainbow trout:

3 whole rainbow trouts

1 lemon, sliced

6-8 sprigs of parsley

1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

Olive oil to drizzle

For the onion salad:

1 red onion

1 tablespoon white vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 teaspoons of sumac

Fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

Preparation

For the baked rainbow trout:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Line a baking tray with aluminum foil and drizzle with some olive oil.

3. Place the fish on the baking tray. Rub the fish with sea salt inside and out.

4. Place 2-3 parsley sprigs and a couple slices of lemon inside each fish. Drizzle the tops of fish with olive oil.

5. Place the tray in the middle rack of the oven and bake for 15 minutes. If you want the fish to have crispier skin, you can move the baking tray up a level, turn on the broiler at 400 F and broil for 5 additional minutes.

For the onion salad:

1. Cut the onion in half and slice the red onion in half moons.

2. Add the sliced onion in a large bowl filled with water. Let sit for 5-10 mins and drain. This helps remove the bitter, spicy taste of the onion. Feel free to skip this step if you like the strong taste of onions.

3. Add in the vinegar and the sumac. Stir until the layers of onion are separated and sumac is all over the salad.

4. Serve on the side with the rainbow trout

Zucchini Latkes (Mücver)

November 04, 2019 by Gizem in Dinner, Meze

Last two weeks have been quite busy so I have been falling behind on all the recipes I want to post (excuses, excuses). We had multiple guests staying with us, a super fun 4th of July BBQ on our roof and I was out of town for a bachelorette in Santa Cruz. We also found some time to finally explore Mt. Rainier. It has been teasing us with spectacular views from our roof and it was just as majestic up close. The next day, I was in Santa Cruz, kayaking in the ocean with otters and sea lions. I made and photographed this recipe in a quiet moment in between all the activities but just found time to sit down and write it up.

I am still learning the farmers markets of Seattle. We try to go to one each week to see what is new and explore different neighborhoods. But if I am honest, there is nothing comparable to my first love, Union Square Greenmarket (in nyc). Last week, when I started seeing the summer squash popping up all over Seattle’s farmers markets, the first recipe that came to my mind was zucchini latkes or as we say in Turkish, mücver. Latke is originally a potato pancake which has variations in many cuisines like Jewish, Polish, German and Korean. I also just found out that it is the national dish of Belarus (thanks Wikipedia!). In Turkey, zucchini latkes are more popular than potato ones and they are enjoyed as an appetizer during hot summer months.

This recipe is pretty easy to modify. You can use monterey jack or pepper jack instead of cheddar cheese. You can omit the cheese completely. Adding spices like paprika and cayenne work very well too. I prefer dill in this recipe but you can’t go wrong with any fresh herb. I even made it gluten-free once using gluten-free flour and it tasted just as good. Let me know in the comments below if you modified the recipe and how. Happy cooking!

Yields: 6 servings Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

3 zucchinis (about 1lbs)

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

3 tablespoons dill or parsley, chopped

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1/2 cup vegetable oil for frying

For serving:

2 garlic cloves

1 cup plain yogurt

Preparation

1. Peel and grate the zucchinis using the coarse grating surface of a grater.

2. Transfer into a strainer sitting on top of a bowl. Let the zucchini sit for 10-15 minutes to drain its excess juices. You can squeeze the zucchini with your hands or press and pat dry with a paper towel to speed up the process. Discard the excess liquid. If there is too much excess liquid in your latke mixture, they don’t hold as well, so don’t skip this step.

3. Transfer the grated zucchinis into a bowl. Add in grated cheese, chopped herbs, flour, baking powder, eggs, salt and pepper. Mix until all the ingredients are incorporated.

4. Heat 1/4 cup of the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. I add the rest of the oil if skillet is running low on oil.

5. Add 4 separate tablespoonfuls of latke mixture into the skillet. Fry the latkes until golden brown on both sides, flipping midway using a spatula, 3-4 minutes total.

6. Transfer the latkes to a plate lined with paper towel to absorb the excess oil.

7. To make garlicky yogurt, mince the garlic cloves and add into the yogurt. Stir the yogurt until smooth.

8. Serve warm or cold with garlicky yogurt on the side.