Recipes Cooking

The apartment that I lived in Ankara was on the first floor of one of those old 4 story buildings with just two apartments on each floor and a back yard that the residents didnt care about. A month after the move I remembered there was a back yard and looked over to check it out. Among the things that you can find in the back yards of apartment buildings in Turkey are gazebos, junk, flower beds, people playing "okey," a tile-based game similar to Rumikub, or people drinking tea and eating sunflower seeds. Therefore, I was quite surprised when I saw collard greens in my buildings back yard. And I am not talking about two or three plants here; I am talking about endless rows and rows of collard greens. Collard greens is an indispensable component of the Black Sea cuisine in Turkey, and it is difficult to find them outside that province. So I immediately knew there was a homesick Karadenizli (a person from Black Sea) in the building who apparently had a big craving for collard greens. I was right; our concierge Pakize was from Trabzon and capable of consuming a back yard worth of collard greens with her husband in 2-3 months.

The discovery of garden of collard greens intrigued me to cook with them. The next winter I borrowed a bunch of collard greens time to time from Pakize and made collard greens soup based on her instructions. Later, I had this soup a couple of times at different seafood restaurants, but they were not even close to Pakizes recipe. This soup, a specialty of Black Sea, is just perfect for cold winter nights. It has greens, beans, and corn in it; what else can you ask for?        


1 large bunch collard greens
1/2 cup dry white beans (cannellini or northern beans)
1/2 cup cracked corn (you can find cracked corn at Middle Eastern or organic food stores or feeder stores) OR 1/2 cup coarse grits if you cannot find cracked corn
1/4 cup corn flour
7-9 cups of water
3-4 tbsp butter
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp red hot pepper flakes (in traditional recipes you cannot find spice for this soup, but I think hot peppers, hot pepper flakes, or sauces makes this soup even better)

-A night before, put beans in a pot with 3 cups of water. First bring to a boil, then turn it off. Cover and soak overnight.
-The next day cook the beans until soft. (Or use 1 can of beans)
-Wash collard greens well, discard bad leaves and leaf tops. Chop the stems finely. Cut the leaves first into stripes, then into edible-size squarish pieces.
-Boil 7-8 cups of water in a big pot.
-Add collard greens and cracked corn into the boiling water. Cook until soft: ~20-25 minutes.
-Add beans.
-Add corn flour and keep stirring constantly while adding it to prevent lumping.
-Turn the heat to low-medium and cook for almost half an hour to let the soup thicken stirring every 3-45 minutes.
-Heat butter in a small pan. When its hot but nit burning, add paprika. Let sizzle for a couple of seconds.
-Serve the soup with a spoon or two of butter and paprika on top.

This aint yo Mommas  Split Pea and Ham Soup...

Servings: (8 to 10)
Prep: 10 mins.
Cook: Appx. 2 hrs.

INGREDIENTS

-1 (16 oz. pkg.) dried green split peas
-4 cups water
-4 to 6 cups loww-sodium chicken broth
-1 tablespoon cider vinegar
-2 heaping teaspoons brown sugar
-2 cups cooked ham, cubed
--(or 2 *smoked ham hocks, or *ham bone with meat on it, or a ring of smoked sausage)
-1 lg. carrot, scrubbed, and chopped
-2 ribs celery, chopped
-½ yellow onion, diced
-1 russet potato (or sweet potato), peeled and chopped
-1 large garlic clove, minced
-1 bay leaf
-1/8 teaspoon each: dried oregano, basil, and thyme
-1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
--(I do not add any salt due to the saltiness of the ham)
-Dash of hot sauce

METHOD

Spread the dried split peas out on a baking sheet and pick through them; toss any unwanted matter, then rinse in a colander.

In a large dutch oven (or heavy-bottom soup pot), bring split peas, water, broth, cider vinegar, and brown sugar to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 1-1/2 hours; stirring occasionally.

Add remaining ingredients, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Remove bay leaf, and toss. Taste for seasoning, and add more broth or water if a thinner consistency is desired.

Serve with hot rolls or slices of French bread. - Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Tip: If using smoked ham hocks or ham bone with meat on it, add at the beginning of the cooking process, and remove after 1-1/2 hours to pull meat from hocks or bone, cube, and return to pot when adding vegetables.

This soup is among the oldest recorded Icelandic recipes. Its sweet-sour taste is unusual for fish-based soups.

Traditionally, the recipe is given for halibut, but you can also use salmon, trout, wolf-fish or lumpfish, or other fatty fish.

1 1/2 kg fresh fish with bones, cut into pieces to fit in the pan
1 1/2 litre water
2 tbs white vinegar
2 tsp salt
2 bay leaves

50 g flour
100 ml cold water

1/2 lemon
20 prunes
1-2 tbs sugar
200 ml water

potatoes
parsley

If the prunes are dry, soak them in water for an hour or so, or cook them in a little sugar-water with the zest of the 1/2 lemon until soft. Keep them whole.

Put water, salt, vinegar and bay leaves in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the fish. skim off the scum when the liquid boils again. cook the fish until it loosens from the bones. Strain the cooking liquid into another saucepan, leaving a little in the pan with the fish to keep it moist.

Mix together the flour and cold water into a smooth paste. Bring the strained cooking liquid to the boil and pour in the flour paste in a thin stream, stirring constantly. Cook for 5-10 minutes.

When the soup is fully cooked, add the lemon juice and prunes, and if they were cooked, the prune cooking liquid with them.

Arrange the fish on a serving dish and surround with boiled potatoes, sprinkled with chopped parsley. Serve on the side with the soup.

And do you know why it isnt pumpkin soup?

I nurtured these pumpkins all year; first planting them as seeds in little peat pots so their roots would not be disturbed when we planted them out, then keeping them under lights, then planting them in a compost-enriched bed with a little aluminum foil collar around the stem to keep the cut-worms away, then hours spent weeding and watering, then finally collecting them and storing them carefully in the furnace room to keep them coolish and dry. A lot of effort went into those pumpkins.

And then today I trudged out into the snow to buy the other ingredients I needed to make soup. I washed my pumpkins, and cut them in half. I was a little surprised at how narrow the band of flesh was, and it seemed pale. I put this down to our summer drought though, and proceeded. I pulled out all the seeds and gunk, I rubbed them with a little oil, I roasted them until tender. Then, once they had cooled, I went to peel off the skins and put the flesh into the food-processor to purée it.

EEEEK!

The flesh was stringy; stringy like spaghetti squash. I tasted some. It had practically no flavour beyond a slight bitterness.

SOMEBODY SOLD ME IMPURE* SEEDS!

I am not going to name names here. Mainly because this is the 4th batch of impure seed from this summer, from 4 different suppliers ranging from the very large to the very small, from the long-established to the very new. But you can bet I will be sending this post to all 4 companies. We got 2 batches of bad peas and my favourite slicing tomato was not my favourite slicing tomato. And thats just the stuff I can tell. I wonder how many other things that we were growing for the first time were not actually what they were supposed to be? (There were a few other tomatoes that had crossed, but this was seed we saved ourselves, and we have no-one to blame but our own inexperienced selves for those.)

Its been a while since Ive done much gardening, but I just dont remember having anything like this many problems when we were gardening in an allotment garden. True; we didnt grow as many different vegetables. Still, we did have a garden for 4 or 5 years and I just dont remember anything turning out not as advertised. Possibly we were lucky. But possibly with the surge of interest in home gardening seed suppliers are getting careless.

So, all you gardeners out there: what has been your experience - in the past and this year - with your vegetable seeds? Ive been hearing rumours of other gardeners who have been having problems with unexpected and undesirable crosses in their purchased seeds. Lets hear about it. What seed, and if you dont mind, where you got it.



*Or, if you want to get technical, hybrid seeds. But in this case the phrase that comes to mind is not "hybrid vigour". Its "mongrel". BAH HUMBUG!

This is the quickest, easiest carrot and coriander soup recipe you will ever make.

It tastes so very delicious and you will love it too !

It is very low in fat and dairy free which means it is a real guilt free treat.

Soups do not need cream, milk and unlimited herbs to make them taste nice, the great thing about home made soup is that at the most, with a pinch of salt, spice maybe and the odd herb, soup can taste wonderful and be so very healthy.

The best flavour comes from the vegetable itself, if you get yourself a good blender you will not believe how you can turn a cooked vegetable into such a fantastic dish.

I use few ingredients in this recipe and the taste is wonderful.

I use dried coriander instead of fresh because as much as I love fresh coriander the whole point of it being carrot and coriander soup is that you can taste the carrots.

Using fresh coriander leaves over powers it too much, So I use dried which is a nice balance of the flavours.

I am sure you will love this soup recipe as much as we did and it is a great winter warmer and so very healthy.

Heres a recipe inspired by Bardstown, KY Bourbon Festival.

1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 carrots, cut in rounds
1/2 cup green split peas
1/2 cup red lentils (or yellow split peas)
2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped (or dried)
1 tsp crushed red pepper/ pepper flakes
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp paprika or red chili powder
salt
2 tbsp olive oil or butter
6 cups of vegetable stock or beef broth or just water
and THE most important ingredient 1/2 cup bourbon

If you will use a pressure cooker, you dont need to precook anything, but if youll use a regular pot, boil peas and lentils for an hour or soak in water overnight.

-Heat the oil in a big pot and add onion, garlic, and pepper. Stir until onions are cooked
-Add carrots and 1 tsp rosemary, and cook for 4-5 minutes
-Add paprika and stir for a minute
-Put in split peas, lentils, bourbon, water, black pepper, crushed pepper, and salt
-With pressure cooker: Cook first on high then low heat for 20 minutes
With a regular pot, cook for 45 minutes on medium heat
-I used a hand blender to smoothen the soup and garnished it with the rest of the rosemary. If you want to have it chunky, you may want to cut everything in smaller pieces, especially the carrots.



























I used "Old Bardstown" 10 year old 101 proof bourbon, since the recipe was inspired by Bardstown; however, Im sure itll be good with any bourbon, especially with "Makers Mark".
Cheers!

Recipe for French Onion Soup

The key to cooking the most perfect tasting french onion soup is to cook the onions slowly and gently. This allows the natural sugars in the onions to caramelize which gives French onion soup is characteristic colour and flavour.

Ingredients for French Onion Soup
2 Tbsp Butter
2 Tbsp Oil
500g Onions (sliced thin)
1-2 Garlic Cloves (crushed/minced)
1 Litre or 4 Cups Beef or Vegetable Stock
2 Bay Leaves
1 Tbsp Brown Sugar
1 Tbsp White Wine Vinegar
Pinch Ground All Spice
8 Slices French Bread (thin sliced)
Salt and Pepper
1/2 Cup Emmental or Cheddar Cheese (grated)
Fresh Parsely (optional)


Warm the butter and oil in a pan. Add the onions and garlic and gently fry for 10-15 minutes.

Heat the pan up more and continue to cook the onions until the onions become golden brown and caramelized. Stir the French onion soup often.

Add the bay leaves , vinegar, sugar , salt , pepper and all spice. Add the stock to the French onion soup and bring to the boil. Simmer with the lid on for 30 minutes.

Discard the bay leaves from the soup and check seasoning.

Toast your french bread pieces and melt the cheese onto the toast.

Serve the finished French onion soup in a bowl and place the cheese toast on top of the soup. You can sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley if desired.

Chefs butternut squash soup recipe is very easy to cook and tastes fantastic.

With very few ingredients and no cream or butter used this is one healthy soup recipe that tastes wonderful.

The sweetness of the butternut squash with its rich flavour is perfect for Autumn and winter to warm you up on a cold day.

The butternut squash is packed with nutrients including being high in vitamin C, vitamin B6 and of course vitamin A due to the bright orange colour of the squash.

Chef uses a pressure cooker to make this butternut squash soup recipe, you can use a normal pan, follows Chefs instructions only cook for longer.

You can eat Chefs butternut squash soup for a starter, light snack or for lunch.