Avocado Salad with Sumac (Sumakli Avokado Salatasi)

We were having our usual salad the other day, when I decided to sprinkle some sumac onto the salad. A little sumac goes a long way — it added a nice tangy zesty flavour to the salad. You can use whatever vegetables you like for your salad.

Ingredients

• tomatoes
• lettuce
• red bell pepper/capsicum
• red onions
• avocado

Dressing:

• Lemon Juice
• Oil
• Salt
• Sumac (I just sprinkled it on my salad, you can always add it to dressing as well)

Banana Date Chocolate Chip Streusel Coffee Cake

Firstly, I should apologise for not blogging lately. I have realised it has been one year since my last post!!!

Thanks to some special guests that came to visit from London today, and some very ripe bananas crying out to be eaten in my fruit bowl...the result was this super yummy banana, date, choc chip struesel cake. Oh and of course, what brought it all together was the recipe - I should thank Elizabeth from FreeFoodBoston who originally found and adapted Megan's who found it at Epicurious. I should add, I did deviate from Elizabeth's and Megan's adaptation.

The original recipe uses walnuts in the struesel, however as I did not have any walnuts in my usually well stocked pantry, I did by great chance have some fresh dates in my fridge — Totally lucky! Perhaps one day I'll try the walnut version, but for the time being this cake is a keeper!

I also used less chocolate chips and self-raising flour instead of the whole wheat flour.

However, I should note that this recipe is quite sweet — the natural sweetness of the dates combined with sugar makes it quite rich. If you are wanting to use dates, but don't have such a sweet tooth, I would suggest you reduce the quantity of sugar used to 1/2 cup where it says 2/3 cup.

Banana Coffee Cake with Chocolate Chip Streusel
adapted from Elizabeth at FreeFoodBoston
Makes 12 servings

• 1 1/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips - (I used 1 cup)
  
• 2/3 cup (packed) brown sugar (use 1/2 cup if making with dates)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts - (I used about 4 large fresh dates instead)
  
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour - (I used self-raising flour)
  
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda - (I didn't use this)
  
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup (packed) brown sugar (use 1/2 cup if making with dates)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/3 cups mashed very ripe bananas (about 3 large)
• 3 tablespoons milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Butter and flour 8x8x2-inch metal baking pan.
   
2. Stir chocolate chips, 2/3 c. brown sugar, walnuts, and cinnamon in small bowl until well blended; set streusel aside.
3. Combine flour, baking soda (if using Self Raising flour I guess you can leave this out), baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat 2/3 c. brown sugar, room temperature butter, and egg in large bowl until fluffy.
   
4. Beat in mashed bananas and milk. Add dry ingredients and blend well.
5. Spread half of batter (about 2 cups) in prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with half of streusel. Repeat with remaining batter and streusel.
   
6. Bake coffee cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool coffee cake in pan on rack.
   

Mushroom Saute (Mantar Sote)

Finally, I have updated the photo for this recipe! Looks much more appetizing. I would eat this as a main, but in our household it ends up becoming a side dish.


Ingredients

• 400g mushrooms, diced
• 1/2 red capsicum, diced
• 2 tomatoes, skinned and grated/crushed
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons oil
• salt and pepper
  
• 1/2 cup chicken stock (optional) or 1/2 cup water
  

Method

1. Wash and dice mushrooms. Set aside
2. Fry up the onions and garlic in the oil, then add in the capsicums.
   
3. Mix in the mushrooms and fry until brown.
   
4. Make a well in the centre of the pan, and add in the tomato paste. Once you have mixed the paste through, in goes the crushed tomatoes.
5. Season with salt and pepper
6. If you have some chicken stock or stock powder on hand you can add it now, otherwise add a little water.
   
7. Saute until tender. About 20 mins or so.

Guacamole - Avocado Dip (Avokado Sos)

Hmm, so I was updating the photo for this post (today Jan 16, 2011) — when somehow deleted the whole post! You think that I would actually have a back up of my blog entry...well, unfortunately I didn't. 

Fortunately, I did remember I found this recipe off the SBS website, so here it is:

Ingredients

3 ripe avocados
½ fresh jalapeno chilli (optional)
2 tsp chopped coriander (I didn't use this)
Spanish onion, chopped
1 tomato, diced
Juice of ½ lime (I think I used lemon)
1 tsp salt

Preparation

1. Halve the avocados, remove the seed and using a spoon scoop the flesh into a bowl. Add chilli, coriander and a little onion.
2. Mash together with a fork. Add tomato and lime juice and season with salt. Gently fold through.

Note:

Guacamole should be made just before serving. Returning the seed of the avocado to the mixture will help keep the guacamole green.

Sweet Coconut Pastry Dessert (Hindistan Cevizli Tatli)

Post to follow soon...

Yoğurtlu Şehriye Çorbası (Yoghurt Soup with Risoni)

Turks love anything to do with yoghurt and that means even yoghurt soup! Really, why not, yoghurt is healthy after all. This is a great soup for when you just want to have a light dinner. Also it's a good soup to have when you feel like a cold or flu coming on and you need a little help with your appetite. It has a slightly sour taste, which actually is very appetizing and not to mention EASY to make...that's always very important!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup risoni pasta or any other small pasta shape. I use a soup mix.
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon plain flour
• 4 cups Ayran (which is just a yoghurt turkish yoghurt drink made from yoghurt and water, I just used approx 2 cups yoghurt and 2 cups water blended together)
• salt
• dried mint
• paprika
• butter

Method

1. Melt butter in a saucepan and fry the risoni and flour together until the risoni changes colour to a soft brown.
2. Mix in the blended yoghurt and water or Ayran Drink, keep stirring as you do this
3. Simmer on low heat until the risoni is cooked
4. Just before serving add in the salt
5. In a seperate pan, melt butter until it starts to bubble, add in the mint and paprika to create the sauce for the soup. Use this sauce to dress the soup just before serving.

Source: Lezzetler.com

TURKCE

Nefis ve kolay bir cobra. Hastalar icin cok faydali.

Malzeme

• 1 çay bardağı şehriye (tel veya arpa)
• 2 çorba kaşığı tereyağı veya margarin
• 1 çorba kaşığı un
• 4 su bardağı ayran
• Tuz
• Kuru nane
• Kırmızı pul biber
• Tereyag

Yapılışı

1. Yağda unu ve şehriyeleri kavurun.
   
2. Ayranı karıştıra karıştıra ilâve edin.
   
3. Kısık ateşte şehriyeler pişene kadar kaynatın.
   
4. Tuzunu ateşten almadan önce ilâve edin.
   
5. Çorbayı kâselere döktükten sonra naneyi ve pul biberi biraz tereyagda kizartip üzerine serpin.

Kaynak : Lezzetler.com