Turkish Green Beans in Tomato Sauce

This is good old Turkish comfort food. I make this with lamb or chicken but vegetarians can easily substitute meat with potatoes and carrots. If I wasn't low carbing I would have made it with potatoes and meat.

Recipe:

Serves 4 with rice / bread or 2/3 on its own

1kg frozen sliced green beans
2 chicken breasts or 500g lamb chops or diced lamb
1 large potato cubed
1 large carrot sliced
1 heaped tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion
1 chicken stock cube

Brown your meat or chicken in the olive oil, remove then *add the onions to the pot and cook until onions are soft. Add potatoes and carrot and cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add tomato paste, green beans, cooked meat / chicken and (crumbled) stock cubes. Add enough hot water to cover all the ingredients. Bring to a boil and then simmer, partially covered for 45 minutes to an hour. Stir regularly and add more water if needed. Turkish stews like this one are tastiest the longer they are allowed to cook slowly. You'll know it's done when the beans, carrots and potatoes are soft.

*Start here if you're not using meat or chicken.

Serve with rice, bread to dip in the juices and plain yoghurt. Or if you're low carbing like me, just on its own is perfect.

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This Week's Meals #7

Back to meal planning. It is so much easier to eat well and save money when you meal plan. And it doesn't have to be time consuming, I save recipes using Pinterest so I always have lots to choose from. There's no harm in rotating recipes each week if that's your thing. Here's our plan for this week in no particular order

Mozzarella Stuffed, bacon Wrapped Chicken Thigh Caesar Salad with home made dressing

'Taze Fasulye' or Turkish Green Beans in tomato sauce with lamb (will add recipe in the week) 

Slow Cooker Pakistani Beef Curry and Cauliflower Rice

The Perfect Pantry

Spiced Slow Cooker Pork and Broccoli

Chilli Paneer and Cauliflower Rice 

Peppered Grill steaks and Salad 

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Turkish Pasta Bake - 'Firinda Makarna'

'Firinda Makarna' is translated as 'pasta in the oven' and is a really easy, tasty alternative to a usual pasta bake

Ingredients:
1 packet of pasta - you can find 'makarna' in Turkish / Greeks and looks just like spaghetti just thicker. If you can't get your hands on makarna I'm sure this would work with any sort of pasta
500g beef mince
1 onion, finely chopped
Dried mint
Parsley - handful, finely chopped
salt and pepper

For Cheese sauce topping:
1 pint milk (I used half full fat, half semi skimmed)
1 packet of halloumi cheese, grated
1 cup grated cheddar
1 egg
1 tsp mustard powder (optional)
3 tbsp plain flour/sauce flour

• Preheat oven to 200C.
• Get the pasta cooking according to packet instructions, I break them in half
• Whilst the pasta is cooking fry the onion until soft and add the mince, salt and pepper and sprinkle of dried mint. Once fried well throw in the parsley and stir.
• Drain pasta and create layers, starting with the pasta and then the mince mixture. You should get about two layers of each.
• To make the cheese sauce,, pour milk into a saucepan and before the heat goes on whisk in the egg. Put the heat on low and keep whisking gently. As the milk warms up - before boiling add the halloumi and half of the cheddar in handfuls at a time and keep whisking, don't allow to boil too much. Turn the heat up to medium and add the mustard powder and flour spoonful at a time, whisking in between. Keep stirring well with a whisk until the sauce is very thick and paste like.
• Once its very, thick take off the heat and pour all over the pasta and smooth over on top. Sprinkle with a bit of cheddar and put in the oven until browned on top, about 30-45 minutes
• Once its out allow to cool a bit then cut into squares.

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Dolma: Turkish Stuffed Peppers, Artichokes, Onions and Cabbage Leaves

This was the first meal on our plan this week. Dolma literally means "to stuff" in Turkish. The most common version of dolma is stuffed vine leaves.

A few weekends ago my mum came round with some artichokes that someone had sent her from Cyprus so I decided to make dolma with them and other veg we had. Artichokes are notoriously difficult to prep and also start to go brown if you don't rub them with lemon juice after you've prepared them. My mum is a bit of an expert at preparing artichokes, I never really appreciate how good a cook she was until I got in to cooking myself. Anyway, I found this helpful guide on how to prepare artichokes for stuffing.

The stuffing:
250g beef mince*
Handful chopped parsley
1 medium brown onion, finely chopped or grated
2 tbsp uncooked rice
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato or pepper paste
Juice of 1 lemon
1tsp cumin
Salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients together. *For a vegetarian version just leave out the mince and add more rice, or use cous cous or bulgar wheat.

Preparing vegetables for stuffing;
Peppers - just cut the tops off and remove flesh and seeds
Cabbage leaves - add leaves to boiling water until soft, about 3-4 minutes
Artichokes - once prepared the artichokes need to be cooked in boiling water for a few minutes before stuffing
Onion - cook in boiling water until layers come away easily without breaking

Once the vegetables are prepared all you need to do is fill them with the stuffing mixture and place them in a pot. I then made up 250ml of vegetable stock, to which I added 1 more tablespoon of pepper paste (could use tomato paste too) and poured this around the stuffed vegetables. Make sure the stock doesn't go over the top of peppers or artichokes, so full just half way. Cover and cook for approx. 30-40 minutes.

Once cooked, the dolma goes really well with plain yoghurt, tzatziki or hummus (or salad, or home made chips!)

Hope you try this recipe, would love to hear from you if you do!!

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Turkish Pea Stew ('Bezelye')

Tonight's dinner was this pea stew. Like most Turkish dishes, the base of this is gently fried onions and either chopped tomatoes or tomato paste (or even pepper paste). You could serve it with it plain rice but its fine on its own with just a dollop of yoghurt. Turkish people tend to eat bread with absolutely everything and I like this with soft buttered bread dipped in the juices, yum! If you're veggie or just want a meat free dish you can easily leave out the chicken without effecting the taste too much.

Ingredients;
2 tbsp olive oil
1 heaped tbsp pepper paste
3 medium chicken breasts, cubed (optional)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 large carrot, cut into small chunks
1 medium potato, cut into small chunks
400g frozen garden peas
1ltr vegetable or chicken stock
Salt and pepper

Fry onions for 2-3 minutes without letting them brown, add pepper paste and fry for another few minutes. Add chicken breast and stir fry until they turn a pale colour, add carrots and potatoe and fry for a further 5-6 minutes. Add peas, give it a good stir and add stock, salt and pepper. Simmer gently until cooked, about 40 minutes.

Hope you enjoy! Would love to hear from anyone that has tried this!!

I'm also submitting this recipe into 'Made with love Mondays' which is a weekly series hosted by Javelin Warrior's website 'Cookin' with Lov'  to "promote, share and celebrate foods made entirely from scratch. Always Fresh, Always from Scratch", my kind of cooking! 

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This Week's Meals #1

Because of my recent uncontrollable hunger, unless I pre plan and prepare weekday meals I can quite easily eat whatever is easiest or closest. This usually ends up being a take away or junk food so I'm trying to make an effort to plan mid week meals that's are quick, easy and nutritious. Here are this week's meals, I'll blog about how I get on with them too! The other thing about this weeks meals is that they are all made from ingredients we already had in the house!

Monday - Turkish Pea, Chicken, Potato and Carrot Stew ('Bezelye') from my mum

Tuesday - Eating at Mums

Wednesday: Chicken Wings with cumin, lemon and garlic from BBC Good Food with side of grilled corn on the cob 

Thursday: Sweet Onions and Lentils from BBC Food

Friday: Spicy Falafels from Flourishing Foodie with salad, pickles and tahini sauce.

Saturday: Jerk Chicken with Rice n Peas from BBC Good Food

Sunday: "Tidy Friday Pan Fry" from Nigel Slater on BBC Food

I'll be entering my weekly meals in to 'Meal Planning Mondays' over at Mrs M's blog from now on!

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Turkish Style Leek Stew

One of the questions you’re asked regularly when you’re expecting is whether you have any cravings. All I seem to be craving is food 24 hours a day 7 days a week! But recently I've been craving my mum’s food... that is Turkish food. I think this is because its usually really comforting and good for you because its heavily based on vegetables. I don’t normally cook Turkish food since mum is in the country at the moment and I could never cook like she does. I've started to cook more recently but no matter what you do, it never quite tastes like mums! 

Recently I tried ‘prasa’, which is leeks, stewed. Mum explained how to do it and I found a few versions online here and here. This is mum’s version;

2 large leeks cut into rings

4 carrots cut into half rings

3 tablespoons of uncooked rice

400ml chicken stock

1 tbsp tomato paste

Salt

Olive oil

Dash of vinegar

Saute the carrots and leeks in olive oil until almost soft, add rice stirring occasionally for a few minutes. Add salt, stock and tomato paste and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally, adding more water if necessary. Add vinegar just before the end. Afiyet olsun! (bon appetit in Turkish)

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