Sautéed Spinach with Garlicky Yogurt

December 05, 2020 by Gizem in Meze, Salads

2020 has been a year where I had a love hate relationship with food. Some days I’d have an insatiable motivation to cook the most elaborate dishes and try complicated, five pages long, bread recipes and on some days, I didn’t even want to open the fridge. Lately I found the balance by finding comfort in simplicity. Cooking simpler food that I love, I know how to cook and that doesn’t require 15 obscure ingredients that I would normally enjoy searching in crowded shelves of specialty stores, seems to do the trick.

So here is a fancy looking yet simple salad (or side dish, meze) recipe that needs only 5 ingredients plus salt. You can serve it as a salad or a side dish, it goes really well with rice and meats, or you can spread large dollops on a slice of bread and call it lunch on a day you don’t feel like cooking.

As 2020 is coming to a close, I am starting to enjoy cooking again. It is a slow process but sticking to simpler and familiar food has been helpful. How is your relationship with cooking this year? Comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Yields: 6 servings Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

2 cups plain yogurt (or Greek yogurt diluted with 2-3 tbsp water)

1 garlic clove, grated

Pinch of salt

2 bunches fresh spinach (not baby spinach)

1 tbsp tomato paste

2 tbsp olive oil

Preparation

1. Throughly wash the spinach. Most spinach leaves have some residue soil on the stems, so the best way to wash them is to submerge in water for 5 minutes and let the soil, if there is any, fall to the bottom. You can also wash them in a colander in small batches, rubbing with your hands until all the residue is washed away.

2. Place the yogurt in a serving platter like a wide pasta bowl. If you are using Greek yogurt, add 2-3 tablespoons of water to make the yogurt runnier. Mix until the yogurt is smooth

3. Add the salt and grated garlic into the yogurt and stir until evenly distributed. Spread the garlicky yougurt evenly inside the platter.

4. Over medium heat, cook down the spinach until they are wilted but still in bright green colors, 2-3 minutes. Transfer to the serving platter and distribute evenly over the yogurt.

5. Add the olive oil and tomato paste into a small pot (I use a Turkish coffee pot). Over medium-high heat, while stirring, warm up the olive oil and the tomato paste. When the oil turns into red and starts to bubble a bit, take off of the heat. With the help of a spoon distribute dollops of the tomato sauce over the spinach and drizzle any leftover oil all over the dish.

6. Serve warm. This dish is still delicious chilled as well.

Enjoy!

Fall Salad with Squash and Pomegranates

November 13, 2019 by Gizem in Salads

Last two weeks I was busy moving this blog to Squarespace mainly because I like how streamlined their user experience is. It took me a while but after a couple days of work I got all my content transferred and now, you are looking at the brand new mintandsumac.com! I am excited to continue blogging and I plan on making it a regular effort in 2020. Maybe this will be my first “new year resolution”.

But before I start talking about next year, there are still holidays to celebrate and lots of eating to be done this year. I find most holiday food to be heavy (but I guess that is part of the point!) so I like to lighten it up by serving a seasonal salad (and if I am not the host I offer bringing salad). For me, salads are all about flavor and texture. I generally use very simple dressings like lemon juice, olive oil and vinegar so it is important to me to layer various flavors for taste satisfaction and layer textures for what I’d call mouthfeel satisfaction. This fall salad mixes tangy, sweet and bitter flavors and layers crunchy, creamy and juicy textures. It is very simple to put together if you are short on time and also adds a pop of color to your dinner table.

Yields: 4 servings Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

1/2 kabocha squash (or acorn or delicata)

4 cups of arugula

3 tablespoons feta cheese, crumbled

1/4 cup pomegranate seeds

1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (or to taste)

2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (or to taste)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425F.

2. Clean the seeds of the kabocha squash and cut in large, 1 1/2 inch chunks. I prefer to leave them unpeeled so they keep their shape.

3. Place the kabocha squash on a baking sheet and toss with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil.

4. Roast for about 20-25 mins until the squash is soft.

5. In a bowl or a serving platter toss the arugula, roasted squash, feta cheese and pomegranate seeds.

6. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar before serving.

Enjoy!

Chickpea Salad with Feta Cheese

November 08, 2019 by Gizem in Salads

This week I have definitely experienced a writing block. It was potentially because we ran out of coffee at home (disaster!) but probably because I am still exercising this muscle called writing. Blogging is completely out of my comfort zone and I am still very much learning about it. Cooking and photographing the recipes come a lot more naturally to me than writing about them. I haven’t been writing with my own voice, about my experiences and myself since I the diaries I kept until I was 15. On the positive side, writing this blog has already been super rewarding. I love getting text messages from friends who tried my recipes, showing me their creations. It makes me the happiest person on the planet. So with a little delay this week, I am back to writing and I have an amazing chickpea salad to share with you.

This chickpea salad is adapted from Sevtap Yuce’s cookbook Turkish Meze. The book was a gift from my mom for that I can make the recipes whenever I crave a meze spread. I modified Sevtap’s chickpea salad recipe and added some other ingredients I had in the fridge. It is an extremely easy salad to fix up and it makes the perfect lunch or a light dinner.

I feel like chickpeas don’t get much attention unless they are turned into hummus. Once someone asked to me, when they heard that I am from Turkey, “you must eat hummus almost everyday in Turkey, right?” Ummm no. I actually think hummus is so much more popular in the US than it is in Turkey because it is marketed as a healthy snack option. In Turkey, chickpeas are used in so many different dishes in addition to hummus. Don’t get me wrong, I love a well made hummus but chickpeas are so versatile, it is sad to limit their use to just hummus.

Roasted chickpeas, also known as leblebi, is probably a more popular way to consume chickpeas in Turkey. Leblebi has a smoky taste and a crunchy texture. You can get them hulled or dehulled and you enjoy them just like nuts. Instead of buying packaged trail mixes, people go to nut shops and buy nuts by the pound. My mom always used to have a jar of nut mix at home for snacking. She kept it in a cupboard right above the stove and we would snack on the nuts whenever we are drinking a glass of wine or just looking for something healthy to munch on. I would cherry-pick the chickpeas (and the hazelnuts) from the mix all the time.

I can never find leblebi in the United States so I try to incorporate chickpeas into different dishes all the time. They work amazingly well in salads, curries and stews. Whenever I am in a time crunch I use canned chickpeas (my mom would shake her head) but, obviously using dried chickpeas is the best. For this recipe, I used dried chickpeas and soaked them overnight. If you use canned chickpeas you can reduce the time of this recipe by 45 minutes.

Yields: 4-6 servings Time: 1 hour (15 minute if you use canned chickpeas)

Recipe adapted from: Turkish Meze by Sevtap Yuce

Ingredients

1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight (or 1 15 oz can chickpeas)

1 heirloom tomato, diced

1 cucumber, diced

6 scallions

16 black olives (I used cured black olives)

1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled

1/2 cup fresh mint, chopped

1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley, chopped

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Preparation

1. Start by cooking the soaked chickpeas. Put the soaked chickpeas in a pot and fill the pot with water. Bring the water to a boil and simmer the chickpeas until tender, for about 45 minutes. If you are using canned chickpeas, rinse them well, under cold water.

2. Chop off the root bit of the scallions and slice the rest. Dice the tomato and the cucumber. I use the cucumber without peeling it.

3. Combine chickpeas, scallions, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, feta cheese, and the fresh herbs.

4. Pour in the apple cider vinegar and the extra virgin olive oil and gently toss the salad.

5. Serve with freshly ground black pepper sprinkled on top.