Babagannuş

Babagannuş, another traditional Turkish meal. Babagannuş from Arab language (and where this dish came from) Baba Ghanoush is mashed broiled eggplant mix with various seasonings.

in Turkey, where a similar meze is called patlıcan salatası (meaning "eggplant salad"). Patlıcan salatası is made with mashed eggplants while baba ghanoush is cut not mashed. The baba ghanoush can be found (with cut eggplants) in southern Turkey, especially in Antakya. Also as the name "Baba" means father in Turkish, in the regions where Arab population is large, it can be known as Abu-Gannoush

Servings 4.
Ingredients:
 4 eggplant medium size.
 4 ~ 5 leeks (only white part). Chop roughly.
 ½ bunch celery (about 15 stems),chop finely.
 Approximately 100 grams of white cheese.
 2 ~ 3 cloves garlic. Crushed and finely chopped.
 olive oil (I use ½ cup)
 Salt and pepper to taste.
 Enough cheddar cheese for topping, shaved/ grated.

How to make:
1) Broil Eggplant over the fire or roasted in the oven until the meat is completely tender. Peel the skin off and chop eggplant's meat finely.
2) Combine the eggplant with all other ingredients (except grated cheddar cheese.)Taste the flavor.
3) Put in a baking dish, sprinkle with cheddar cheese. Bake in oven at 160⁰ C to melt the cheese. Cover dish with aluminum foil so it will not burn on surface. Continue bake for about 15 minutes more.

Serve while warm with bread and other meat menu.

Roti Isi Abon (Floss Bread)

This is my favorite breakfast (brunch) menu, soft bread with beef (or chicken) floss as filling. Light sweet taste combine with light savory is just perfect also for my hubby lunch box. After taste it once, hubby (who never try beef floss before), now become fan of it d(^_^)b

You can add bread improver in this recipe to improve the softness of the bread, but since I couldn't find bread improver here in Turkey, so.. voallaaa... it's just as delicate as original from famous bakery in my hometown @(^_^)@

Make about 7 pieces.

Ingredients:

Material I:

¾ cup warm milk
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
10 g dry yeast
3 tablespoons flour

Material II:

3 cups flour (plus 3 ~ 4 tablespoons if necessary)
1 teaspoon salt
100 gr margarine.
3 egg yolks.
Enough water if necessary.

Materials III:

Enough Beef floss or chicken floss.
5 tbsp evaporated milk
5 tbsp mayonnaise.

>> Mix evaporated milk and mayonnaise, set aside.

Few tablespoon whole milk for spread over.

Method:

1) Mix all ingredients I, cover with plastic wrap or kitchen towel and let stand until fluffy in warm place about 30 ~ 40 minutes.

2) Combine all ingredients II (except water) with material I, knead until smooth and not sticky at your hand. At this stage it may need additional water or flour as needed. You can use electric mixer or manually by hand to do this knead job.

3) Round the dough, cover with towel or plastic wrap and rest in warm place until dough become double in size (I took about 60 minutes).

4) After dough doubled, hit and flat the dough. Divide it into 5 ~ 7 small ball. Cover them with kitchen towel and let them rest for about 30 minutes more. Take one ball, flatten it and fill with Mayonnaise+milk mixture and floss. Shape it oval or round form according to your taste. Do same thing to other small ball, cover them with kithcen towel and let them rest again ± 15 minutes.

5) Preheat oven to 170 ⁰ C. Brush the bread surface with milk, give some shallow scratches/ cut and bake until golden brown (about 15 ~ 20 minutes).

::Note

Recognize your own oven's condition is recommended. Different size and condition gives

different heat result.

Mantı (Turkish Ravioli with Garlic yoghurt sauce)

Here it is.... My Homemade Turkish ravioli I made before. Today I serve it with Sarımsağı yoğurt or Garlic yogurt sauce, melted butter, and sprinkle with red pepper flakes. Just a perfect dish for early spring like these days... @(^_^)@

Serves 6
Ingredients:

1 Mantı recipe. For making Mantı see the recipe here

2 ~ 3 cloves garlic

2 cups plain yogurt.

Salt to taste

3~ 5 tablespoon water

150 gr butter

½ tsp tomato paste, dissolve it with small amount of water.

Red pepper Flakes.

Ev Yapımı Mantı (Homemade Turkish Ravioli)

Mantı is one of the traditional Turkish dishes you must try. It's a "dumpling-like" dish consist of a spiced meat mixture, usually lamb or ground beef, in a dough wrapper. The dough is made of water, egg, flour, and salt.

There are two ways to cook this Mantı , either you can cook in plain boiling water or you can cook them in tomato sauce.

Here I post my homemade Mantı with some step by step pictures so you can make them easily and experience one of the traditional Turkish meals :D

Ingredients:
Dough İngredients:

2 cups flour (plus a few tablespoons if necessary)
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
½ cup olive oil (or other vegetable oil)
½ to ¾ cup of water at room temperature.

Ingredients for filling:

± 200 g minced beef
1 large onion, finely chopped.
2 cloves garlic (optional), crushed and finely chopped.
Salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon ground red pepper
1 tablespoon butter for sauteing.

Method:

1) Make the shell dough: On a clean working desk, place the flour, make a "pit" in the middle, give salt, olive oil and eggs. Slowly stir the mixture while gradually pouring water.If the dough is already fairly wet, not need to add water again. Knead until smooth and not sticky at your hand. Cover with a towel or plastic wrap and rest for 30 ~ 40 minutes.

2) Meantime we can make filling: Heat the butter, stir-fry garlic and onion, saute until wilted and fragrant, turn off heat.
in medium bowl mix all ingredients: minced beef, onion+garlic, season with pepper and salt. Add paprika powder, stir and test the taste. Set a side.
3) Finishing: halved the dough, cover one part with a napkin so as not dry. Using a rolling pin (or rolling machine) flat the dough very thin. Using a sharp knife or pizza cutter, make cuts about 5 x 5 cm wide (such as figure 2). Give filling mixture and close up to form a triangular shape (figure 3 and 4). Fold the ravioli as figure 5, 6 and 7. Or you can fold (shape) this ravioli according to your taste, this time I made one simple nice shape that you can try.

4) Boil water ± 1.5 Lt, give small amount of vegetable oil, cook the ravioli in boiling water for approximately 10 ~ 15 minutes. Mantı or ravioli is ready to served with a variety of recipes and sauces.

Have a try (^_^)

Pizza Stuffed

Inspired by Chicago style pizza, this I made as my friend's request for her family.. and they liked it! @(^_^)@

For Pizza dough:

- 1 packet (5 g) dry instant yeast
- ½ tbsp caster sugar

- about 2 ½ cup flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoon olive oil
- about 1 cup warm milk

Mix the flour,salt, sugar and dry yeast. Make a hole in the middle, add olive oil and warm milk, knead until soft smooth and not sticky at your hand (there may be additional flour/ warm milk at this stage). Cover with plastic film or towel and let stand about 1 hour until the dough become double.

For filling.

- about 150 gr beef sausage. cut into small cubes (1x1cm)
- about 150 gr sucuk. cut into small cubes (1x1 cm)
- about 150 gr bonless chicken breast. Cut small cubes
- 2 medium green peppers. seeded and cut into small cubes.
- 2 medium red bell pepper. Seeded and cut into small cubes.

- Some Olive, cut into pieces.
- About 100 grams of fresh mushrooms. cut into cubes.
- about 250 grams of cheddar cheese. Cut into cubes or grated harshly.
- 1 large onion. finely chopped.
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped / grated fine.
- 2 tbsp homemade tomato paste (I mixed with chilly paste). Dilute with a little water.

- Enough Thyme and basil.
- Salt and black pepper to taste.
- 1 tablespoon butter for sauteing
For spread on top.
- 1 egg yolk beaten with 2 teaspoons water
- enough black and white sesame seed.

Method:
Heat the butter in a sauce pan. Saute onion and garlic until fragrant and transparent. Stir in chicken and mushrooms, cook until chicken done. Stir in tomato paste solution. Season with salt and pepper. Then mix in sausage and sucuk, all parika , olives. Thyme and basil. Stir until all well blended. Cook for few minutes. Remove from heat. Set aside.

Prepare 9" springform pan, grease with butter.

Using rolling pin Roll widely pizza dough approximately 1 cm thin. Put the dough in baking pan, set up to cover the entire base and sides of pan (leave the remaining dough to cover the top) . Fill with stuffing mixture alternately with with cheese. Cover with remaining dough. Brush with egg yolk and sprinkle with sesame.

Bake in preheated oven, 160 deg C for approximately 25 minutes or until pizza bread well cooked.

Enjoy while warm with tomato sauce or chilly sauce and mayonnaise.

Winter drink, Hot Chocolate with Marshmallow enough to comfort me from annoying problem

5th March .. Still can not open Blogspot from Turkey. I don't know until when.. Any body can help me? Please send me email and help me to get out of this annoying problem... :((

How to calm down my stress about this blogspot problem... it's winter and I miss summer...

I remember I have marshmallow stay in my rack for a week..so why not Hot chocolate and marshmallow?? hmmm.... Both I believe are everbody's favorite. And when those two fave combined, just be careful you will be addicted of it @(^_^)@

Like this comfort and hot drink..Very much great beverage during winter

Make 2 Cup.
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 1 ¼ cup whole milk
- 3 sweet spoon cocoa powder ( I use dutch process cocoa powder)
- 3 sweet spoon sugar (or as your taste)
- Mini marshmallows

Mix together heavy cream, milk, cocoa powder and sugar. Stir slowly over low heat to produce a light foam. Remove from heat before really boiling. Pour into serving cup and sprinkle with mini marshmallow. Let marshmallow slightly melt.

Enjoy while it's hot

Panna Cotta with Kiwi and Pom Jam

Until today,3rd March 2011 I still couldn't access blogspot from Turkey (read my previous post about it). Sometimes I can open/ access my dashboard page only (so I can write/ edit new post), sometimes I can not access at all. Hope Google Turkey can solve the problem with Turkish court & "Digiturk" soon regarding Digiturk's objection on Turkish league football streaming on some Blog.

Now, we'll talk about our favorite matter, Food ! d(^_^)b

I'm a little bit adventurer including in food. Feel so glad that I'm be able to taste a variety of food from various places (countries). For satisfy my Asian taste, Japanese and Thai Food is my number one choice. Turkish and Arabic coffee are my choice for beverage, but I always got one hot cup of Starbucks' latte a long with me to office when I was in Jakarta. Yes, I'm coffee lover. For dessert, creamy, light and d'lish are my fave... Frankly speaking I never made that kind of dessert before when I was single. obvious reason was: I was living alone, so get them in ready was always easy.... @(^_^)@

And this Panna cotta is my 1st attempt. After googling and find out what Panna cotta is and how to make it... voalla... here it is.. My First Panna Cotta !

Ingredients:
- 3 tablespoons cold water
- 3 tsp gelatin powder
- 1 cup (200 ml) heavy cream
- 1 cup (250 ml) milk
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup plain yogurt
Garnish:
- Kiwi
- Pomegranate (I use pomegranate jam)

HOT NEWS: I can not open "Blogspot" from Turkey

Today, 1 March 2011 at 20.00 Istanbul time, I can not access all the pages based blogspot,including my page. I felt very much Upset , every time I tried to access, always appears the words in Turkish:

Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir.

which means more or less: "This site has disabled access to the court decision"

So I try to search and tried to find out what had happend, so I found this:

http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=70494

General

17:36, 01 March 2011 Tuesday

Turkish court blocks Google's blogging site

Google's famous blog hosting service has been banned following complaints by digital satellite platform Digiturk in Turkey, dipnot.tv reported.

World Bulletin / News Desk

Google's famous blog hosting service, blogspot.com/blogger.com, has been banned following complaints by digital satellite platform Digiturk in Turkey, dipnot.tv reported.

Serhat Özeren, chairman of the Telecommunications and Energy Services Consumer Rights and Industry Research Association (TEDER) and head of the Internet Council at the Ministry of Transportation, said a Diyarbakır court has issued an order to block blogspot.com after Digiturk filed a complaint against the website on the grounds that it violated the company's broadcasting rights of Turkey's top football division.

Speaking in Germany while attending a CeBIT trade show, Özeren said the decision is a legal process between Google and Digiturk and only Google can solve the problem. "Google experiences the same problem in other countries as well. Only Google can appeal this decision," he said.

Explaining why not all blogspot.com pages had yet been blocked following the court order, Özeren said: "The decision has not reached all Internet providers at the same time. Providers receiving the decision will shut down the web pages while others may still be continuing. But within the two days at most, we expect the decision to have reached all providers. If the situation leading to the decision to ban the website is eliminated and Google appeals to the court, then the process may end."

Özeren added that there is an attempt to end similar court orders in the future with a new bill that has been submitted to Parliament. "If the bill is passed, we will be able to avoid these prohibition decisions which victimize everybody. [In the future] the penalties and rulings will specifically address the offending web pages that broadcast such videos as matches and TV series that are subject to copyright," he said.

Other Source: http://www.falconhive.com/2011/03/blogger-banned-in-turkey-blogumadokunma.html/comment-page-1#comment-37324

Blogger Banned in Turkey – #blogumadokunma

Posted In Social Media - By Falcon On Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 With 4 Comments

Turkish Blogger users reported that Digiturk caused ban of Blogger again. As we know Digiturk, the leading satellite TV provider, sued some blogspot adressses for streaming live football matches online and Turkish courts decided to block the entire blogspot blogs including Blogger.com three years ago, in 2008. Recently some webmasters have used Blogger to stream live football matches again and as a result Digiturk has caused the ban of Blogger in Turkey.

After many Blogger users used social media to make Digiturk and Google hear their voice, Digiturk published a written press release which stated that Google Turkey was irresponsive to their requests of banning the given blogspot links which were about twenty. Turkish Blogger users are determined to unblock the access to Blogspot links and they keep protesting both Google and Digiturk using#blogumadokunma hash-tag.

Since it is not possible to stream something live through Blogger, the decision taken by Turkish court can be considered as wrong decision. Actually webmasters get an embed code from some live streaming websites and use the code in their blogs to drive traffic and monetize their short-term blogs easily. So both Digiturk and the Turkish courts should deal with those live streaming sites instead of free blog providers. Feel free to tweet this post to support Turkish Bloggers’ effort.

However,I still can access my blog from my "dashboard" page only, so I still can write and share this to you.
So forgive me if I can not active to access and follow your page with"blogspot" based.
Hopefully this is only temporary, meanwhile me and hubby look for some other way how can I -whether-built other page or something...

Hope this post I still can share to you and you can read it, you can write (post comment) me feed back as my notification that you can read this message.

Thank you.

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