Spinach and potato gozleme ~ vegan

for the pastry but I cheated and used a rolled out pizza base we had - we are here on holiday with limited kitchen supplies. Filling is sauteed leek, frozen spinach heated to evaporate some water, dried dill weed and yesterday's boiled potatoes, peeled and smashed, salt. Served with squeeze of lemon. Simple but good thanks to good quality vegetables.

Turkish Rice and Lentil Soup

Good for cooking for oneself - we should try and treat ourselves to healthy, delicious food even in a hurry :)
Thanks to my old boss (also a vegetarian food fan) for this very easy and yum soup recipe. It's the kind of easy throw-together one that I've never had time to photograph, ...might one day....



Boil 2/3 cup red lentils in veg stock till mainly done
add bay leaves
add 1/3 c rice, almost cooked
Mix together:
tomato paste
turmeric
smoked paprika
chilli flakes

Add and cook another 5 min

Put baby spinach leaves in a bowl and pour over the soup.

Etsiz Turlu Rich Vegetable Stew

We've got slightly colder nights now and that, combined with a surprising lack of enthusiasm for cooking this past week had me turning to this stew from 'Vegetarian Dishes from Across the Middle East".

I've made it before so know how simple yet flavoursome and satisfying it is. Just a couple of spices and some butter serve to enrich, not suffocate, the flavours of the vegetables which, especially if they're organic, develop nicely with simmering. I didn't use the water he suggests in this recipe as I thought the tomatoes and zucchini provided sufficient liquid.


Etsiz Turlu Rich Vegetable Stew

The vegetables vary with the seasons and also with your own preferences. In this stew anything goes! It makes a filling meal on a cold winter's day when served with a pilaff of your choice.
This recipe makes a lot but I use it more as a reminder of the types of vegetables that suit stewing and the spices he suggests. I just looked in the fridge for what we had - a nice selection of seasonal veges from our organic delivery - apparently blue carrots are in season so this and lots of our recipes are a bit on the purplish-side at the moment. I made an easy pilaf in our rice cooker while this was simmering. Recipe for that below.



Serves 6-8.

2 large eggplants
1/2 c (4 oz) butter
1 green pepper, seeded and cut into 8 pieces
2 zucchini, sliced into 1 1/2 inch pieces crosswise
2 large potatoes, peeled and each cut into 8 pieces
2 large tomatoes, blanched, peeled and quartered.
2 large onions, quartered
4 oz okra, stems trimmed
4 oz french beans, trimmed and halved
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 T coarsely chopped fresh parsley
2 turnips, peeled and quartered
2 sticks of celery, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 bay leaves
1/4 t dried basil
1/4 t dried dill weed
1/2 t sumac (optional)
1/4 t ground cumin
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1 1/2 t salt
1/2 t or more of black pepper
2 T butter

Slice the eggplants crosswise, arrange on a large plate, sprinkle with salt and leave for 30 minutes.Meanwhile, prepare all the other vegetables as suggested.

Melt the butter in a very large saucepan or casserole, add all the vegetables apart from the eggplants, and stir well for a minute or two until coated with the butter. Add about 3 3/4 cups of water, the bay leaves and the remaining herbs and spices and stir thoroughly.

Rinse the eggplants under cold running water and dry on water towels.

In a frying pan, melt the 2 T butter, add the eggplant slices and fry for a few minutes, turning occasionally. Add them to the other vegetables, bring to a boil, cover the saucepan tightly and simmer about an hour - carefully turning the vegetables a few times - or until the vegetables are tender.



Rose's pilaf
Serves 4

In a rice cooker, melt 1-2 T butter and add 1-2 finely chopped spring onions. Saute, with a pinch of saffron threads. Thoroughly wash 1 c rice, add this into the rice cooker and stir to coat with butter and spring onion. Let this heat a little while you grind the spices: In a mortar and pestle/spice grinder, smash 4 cardamom pods to open. Shake seeds in mortar bowl and discard shells. Add 3 or 4 allspice nuts and 1 whole clove. Grind these three spices together and add to rice mix. Cover with water to about 1 inch above level of top of rice. Put lid back on rice cooker and go do something else while stew and rice cook! Even if you leave this a bit too long the rice cooker will have switched to 'keep warm' and if you leave it on that for a while the bottom can go a nice golden brown and a bit crispy - I love that!

Imam Bayildi

I made this for the first time for company (why can't I stick with the tried and true when cooking for friends?) but happily, it did work pretty well, it was certainly a morish treat at our pre-film picnic at the sommerville outdoor cinema among all those shady trees. A summer delight to do just that.

I've heard this dish is probably the most famous of Middle Eastern cuisine so it shows how much I still need to travel that I'd never heard of this dish until we went to a Turkish restaurant in Subiaco one sunny day and I fell in love with what was no doubt not the best imam bayildi ever produced (judging from the mediocre quality of the other dishes we tried). It wasn't hard to win me over with this one, though - for someone with an obsession for anything involving slow-cooked onions and tomatoes, how was I not going to love a dish that also involved lashings of delicious olive oil, green capsicum, spices and of course, one of my most beloved vegetables, that great fan of olive oil, the aubergine.

Now the name, Imam Bayildi, means 'the Imam fainted' - and various stories account for the name. some say the imam swooned with delight at being served it, others that he fainted with shock at the amount of olive oil used. Whatever the reason, you are likely to have a swoony moment yourself trying this divine dish.

I consulted two recipes to make mine and was pleased with the results. I greedily took everything from both recipes and left nothing out - it's all about indulgence this dish. The books I used were one of my favourites, Arto der Haroutunian's Vegetarian Dishes from Across the Middle East and a new one Veggiestan by Sally Butcher which takes, you guessed it, vegetarian dishes from the Middle East and imagines they all come from a country called Veggiestan! A flight of fancy and it has fancy pictures to go with it, something missing in Arto's (hence me making a few of his recipes so you can get some idea and then go get your own copy!)

Imam Bayildi

Choose your eggplants - either 2 of the large pear-shaped variety or 4-6 of the baby or long, finger-shaped varieties.
Choose fim, glossy 'pert' eggplants - ie, ripe and fresh ones.
6 T olive oil
2 onions (red or white) finely chopped
2 green peppers (capsicums) finely chopped (I had to use green and red, was ok)
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3-4 ripe tomatoes
2 T tomato puree
1 t paprika
1 t allspice
1 T pekmez or lemon juice (I had no idea what pekmez was so used lemon juice)
3 T chopped flatleaf parsley
salt, pepper and brown sugar as needed to balance flavours (add only a pinch at a time as you don't want to ruin all your hard work!)
I cup olive oil (for cooking eggplants)
1/2 c - 2 1/2 c water for cooking, depending on consistency of mixture



Wash and dry the eggplants, leaving on the stalks. Score through the skin and peel away in stripes lengthways down the eggplant. Cut an incision along the length of each one, sprinkle the insides with salt and turn upside down on kitchen paper to drain for 30 minutes. This will remove any bitter juices and also make it easier to scrape out seeds later.

While they are draining prepare the ingredients for the filling: Chop the other vegetables then heat the 6 T olive oil in a large frying pan or wide saucepan. When oil is heated, add onions, green peppers and garlic and fry gently for 10 minutes.



Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, paprika, allspice and salt, pepper to taste. Stir well and cook for a further five minutes. Taste and, if needed, add a tiny bit of brown sugar to balance any bitterness from cooked tomatoes. Stir in half the parsley, the pekmez/lemon juice and remove from heat. (turn off element).

Rinse out eggplants, scrape out soft seed part from middle (being careful that you don't scrape too close to the walls) and with paper towels, pat the eggplants dry, inside and out. Discard seeds. If you also scraped out some flesh, this may be finely chopped and added to the tomato filling - during cooking time even, if the eggplants were drained already then.

Heat the cooking oil (yep, the whole cupful!) in a frying pan and fry the eggplants, turning a few times until the flesh begins to soften. Remember that if the oil temperature is too low they will just sit there soaking up the oil and stay uncooked. I recommend using a 'splatter guard' (looks like a flat sieve,) if you have one, to protect yourself from burns - though you will have to turn the eggplants so be careful. When eggplants have softened and the white stripes may be goldenish (about 7 minutes), remove them from heat and drain on paper towels before placing in an ovenproof dish, split sides uppermost. Choose a dish that fits the amount of eggplant you have so you have room to spread them open enough but not so much room that they only take up half the dish. Carefully prise open the slits and spoon the tomato/onion mixture into each slit - try to get as much in there as possible. If there is any remaining tomato/onion mixture, add it to dish and then pour in the boiling water (use less water if your sauce is already very watery). Lastly, pour over 3-5 T extra olive oil (that hasn't already been used for cooking). Place in the centre of an oven preheated to 200 Celsius / 400 Fahrenheit and cook for 1 hour.

Remove from the oven, let cool and then refrigerate. Serve sprinkled with remaining parsley or fresh mint and accompany with lots of mopping up bread like pita or lavash bread. They will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days. The flavour does improve after 24 hours, so you can cook ahead.



Note about my photos - Yes, the version I made I didn't add all the extra water, oil and tomato sauce to the oven dish as I though it was all pretty cooked already. But I should next time, just to see if it's possible that this exceptional dish could be improved upon if I actually followed the recipe (or recipes!)