Citra's Home Diary

Cooking OKRA

I like vegetable, any kind of vegetables. Mostly I eat them raw and as salad.

Talking about favorite vegetable, Okra is in season now days. We can find them everywhere in cheap price.

If you like this Okra too just follow my tips: find fresh okra with firm (not soft) pod, it's good one.

Then try my okra recipe for good menu on your dinner table (^,^).

Ingredients:
 ± 300 g okra pods
 ± 100 g beef, sliced lengthwise (can be skipped if you want vegetarian version)
 1 medium onion, finely chopped
 2 ~ 3 cloves garlic, smashed and finely chopped
 1 medium tomato, peeled and finely chopped
 1 teaspoon ground red pepper / chilli powder
 2 ~ 3 tablespoons lemon juice of ½ medium lemon
 ½ tsp sugar
 2 tsp salt or to taste
 ¾~1 cup hot water (or broth)
 Enough Corn/ canola oil for sauteing

method:
1) Leave the okra whole without cut. If you cut them the mucilage will be out from them and make it slime. Wash the okra with salt water and rinse with clean water. Drain.
2) Heat enough cooking oil in a pan, saute the meat until cooked and tender. Stir in onion and garlic, saute until fragrant and transparent. Combine tomatoes and paprika powder, mix well. Mix in okra, sugar and salt, stir well.
3) Pour with ¾~1 cup water (broth) and lemon juice, stir and continue cooking over medium heat about 20 minutes or until okra is rather soft.

Serve warm.

Damatesli Pilavı (Tomato rice)

I love eating pilaf. As Asian, it's main dish for me every time, everywhere. I feel "not full" whatever I eat without eating rice. ^,^

In Turkey, people cook pilaf different way from I usually do(which is always steamed and plain-Cause we usually eat our meal over that steamed plain rice)

Damatesli Pilavı means Rice cooked with tomato. The final taste is "almost" like our Indonesian Fried rice... "Almost" ^,^ .....I like it though.

Here I share how to make this Damatesli Pilavı

Materials and how to make it:
 1 ½ cups long grain rice, wash and soak ± 30 minutes, drained
 2 ½ tablespoons margarine
 ½ medium size onion, finely chopped
 2 medium tomatoes, peeled and finely chopped
 2 tsp salt or to taste
 1 ½ ~ 1 ¾ cup chicken broth / beef (or hot water)

Heat margarine in medium pan, saute onion until fragrant and wilted, put in rice and stir well. Combine tomatoes and stir for few minutes. Pour in chicken broth /beef (or hot water), salt then stir well. Cover pan with lid and reduce heat (at lowest heat). Cook up to± 20 minutes until broth is absorbed in rice. Turn off heat and let stand for several minutes without opening the lid.

Serve warm with some other dish you like or just as it and salad.

Afiyet Olsun.

Sweet and Sour Roasted Chicken

I was surprisingly love this one. Simple but great meal for dinner or lunch. You must try it and tell me if you are agree with me ^,^

Serve it with simple warm steamed rice or you can see some of my pilaf recipe here to get a long with this sweet and sour roasted chicken.

Served 4.
Ingredients and how to make
 1 kg chicken or 4 pcs of chicken thighs, wash and stab some places with fork

Ingredients for chicken marinade:
 5 cloves garlic, finely grated
 1 medium lemon, take the zest and juiced
 5 tablespoons molasses (I use grape molasses)
 3 tablespoons hot chili sauce ( ABC chili sauce/ shriraca)

 3 tablespoons canola/ corn/ coconut oil
 2 tsp salt or to taste
 2 tsp brown sugar

Mix well all marinade ingredients. Soak chicken with it and let stand at least 3 hours (or overnight) in refrigerator.
Roasted over coals or in oven 200 ⁰C until cooked

Serve warm with salad and rice/ pilaf or potatoes.

Yogurt Panna Cotta with Cherry Compote

This is my perfect dessert for my family iftar. Light but really entertained us after all heavy meal on previous fast breaking.

served 2

Red Cabbage Mix salad

Another Salad mix with Pomegranate sour sauce as dressing. Great side dish that will go along with any meal/dishes you have.

What you need are:

- 1 cup shredded red cabbage

- 1 medium red onion, sliced half ring

- 1 medium cucumber, core, and slice lengthwise about 5 cm

- 1 medium tomato, thinly slice, crescent shape

Dressing:

- 2 tbsp pomegranate sour sauce

- 1 tbsp lemon juice

- 5~7 tbsp olive oil

- 1 tsp sugar

- salt to taste

*Mix well all dressing ingredients.

Making it:
Mix red cabbage and onion, toss with some salt and knead before rinse. Drain them well. Mix with other vegetable and salad dressing. keep in refrigerator before serving.

Served cold.

Gözleme

Gözleme is a savoury traditional Turkish hand made and hand rolled pastry. Fresh pastry is rolled out, filled and sealed, then cooked over a griddle. The name derives from the Turkish word göz meaning eye. Traditionally, this is done on a sac.

Gözleme varieties include:

Spinach and Feta Cheese

Spinach and Feta and Minced meat

Spinach and Feta and Egg

Seafood

Egg

Minced Meat

Cheese

Potatoes

Mushroom

Lavaş cheese

The unique of this meal can be eaten anytime, anywhere. Sometimes some people like it as a snack or just a brunch with hot tea. Among those variety, today I made combination of feta cheese and parsley. You might try other filling variation to get different taste of this gözleme

Repeatable menu... Karnıyarık (Turkish stuffed eggplant)

One from many traditional Turkish meal. Served in almost every family dinner table and also one of repeatable menu. Eggplant with minced meat stuffing, spice with some seasoning topping with green banana pepper then wet roasted in oven.

Some variation, we can roasted them in tomato sauce gravy to get rich flavor. Serve them warm sprinkle with some parsley or coriander.

Ingredients:

4 pcs medium size eggplant, peeled in stripes lengthwise
200 gr ground meat
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
2 onions, small cubed
1/2 bunch (about 25 stalks) parsley, finely chopped the leaves
1 big tomato, small diced
salt to taste
2 tbs olive oil
Enough frying oil for deep fry
olive oil for sauteing
about 1 cup hot water (or you can add tomato pasta in it)

For topping:

1 tomato, slice crescent shape
green banana peppers, as many as eggplants
parsley or coriander leaves for serving

Cara Membuat Tahu sendiri/ Homemade tofu

Have you eat tofu?- it's healthy.

Have you ever think to make your own tofu?- beside it's easy, it's also healthy because anything we make by our self, we can control what and how the ingredients we use.

Tofu was my daily food back when I was in Indonesia. I ate it almost everyday on my menu. You can eat it as a snack or as side dish. So, when I'm living here I can not find ready tofu here in Turkey.. maybe nobody eat tofu here :))

Then I feel something missing from my menu... so here I am.. making my own tofu... Try it once and you will like it too.. ^,^

Things to Prepare:
1) a large pot at least 6 liters capacity
2) Sieve/ strainer
3) Cheese cloth to filter or can use a clean cloth thin cotton.
4) Blender/ food processor
5) Tofu mould-anything you have with holes.
6) Weight or press tools

Ingredients:

• 500 grams of soybean
• Warm water
• ± 200 ml lemon / lime juice

How to make:

A) Rinse soybeans. Soak in plenty of water (see Figure 1). Soak overnight untill double its volume because absorbed water (Fig. 2). Rinse and drain (Fig. 3).

B) Blend soy bean with warm water, the ratio 1: 4 in volume = 1 for soybeans: 4 for water (Figure 4). Prepare a strainer and cheese cloth. Strain and wring out the blender yield (figure 5). You may keep the dregs and used to make tempeh gembus.

C) Put all soy milk in big pan, heat until almost boiling (Fig. 6). You can cover with lid, but let it open a bit so it won't boil overt. After almost boiling, let stand briefly until lukewarm. Then slowly add lemon juice while stirring very slow until the soy agglomerate such as figure 7, Leave it up to room temperature and precipitation settled.

D) Prepare tofu mold like a figure 8, Cover with cheese cloth (cotton filtre). Slowly, pour the soy precipitation/ sediment into the mold (Figure 9) and cover with the rest of the filter cloth (Fig. 10). Give ballast like the picture 11. As you can see at Fig. 12, residu fluid drop down from the mold. This process for about 3 ~ 5 hours.

E) If you want more dense tofu, Steamed after being pressed.
The process of making yellow tofu, add a little salt, turmeric powder and garlic powder in the cooking process No. 6.

Have a try.

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