Turkish dinner, with doma and raki

  A nice Turkish dinner

Often times i think Turkish people are one of the most friendly kinds in the world, behind Taiwanese of course ;P Yesterday the Wangs and I had a wonderful Turkish dinner with our lovely friends, Ebru, Cagatay and Deniz and guest Pascal in their kitchen. The best thing was that it was the first time Ebru made the traditional Dolma (click the link to see recipe) by herself.

Dolma (pl. dolmas or dolmades or "(stuffed) grape leaves) is a family of stuffed vegetable dishes in the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire and surrounding regions such as Russia, Iran and the Caucasus and Central and South Asia. Perhaps the best-known is the grape-leaf dolma. Common vegetables to stuff include zucchini, eggplant, tomato and pepper. The stuffing may or may not include meat. Meat dolma are generally served warm, often with sauce; meatless ones are generally served cold, though meatless dolma are eaten both ways in Iran. Both are often eaten with yoghurt.

Ebru said that it was her first time to make such complicated thing, dolma is a common food in Turkey but mostly in lokanta(Turkish: restaurant). It takes a lot of time to wait and they usually use a big pot to cook the food. So for Ebru, it is such a challenging work. She called her mom for recipe and then prepare materials later. We could not find the proper “Paprika” as containers since they were way too big to cook!

The Chef, Ebru Aslan

The first assistant, Cagatay Ata
(Ebru: WTH you put your hands in the pocket!)

The thing is that Ebru called her mother for help some times, it reminds me that everytime I had a hard time in cooking I just try to copy how my mom cook and do the same thing, intend to get the hang of cooking. I guess everyone child can not live without parents.

The taster, Deniz Sehen

The culture of Turkey is similiar to ours, which is “Men don’t cook.” So that most of time the jobs of Cagatay and Deniz were washing dishes or picking up leaves foe salad. Ebru was the one ran back and forth the kitchen.

In order to payback, I’ve also prepared 3 dishes for them, sea shells, boiled broccoli and french frites(for that, I bought 2 KG of frozen frites) and cooked in simple way.

The table with foods.

And here came the drink. Raki is a conventionally liquird in Turkey with 45% of alcohol. Lan brought the thing from Turkey and from a friend of his. They’ve stored the bottle for over 9 years, it was even produced bt the Turkish government. Raki should pronounce like “roke” just like a rocker.

Wine promoter, Joey Hsu

The best way to have raki was having some cheese, yogurt salad and mixed raki with water (became white turbid). Accompanied with traditional raki music. After a sip of raki, drink some water to wash the flavor last in your mouth.

The eater, Lang Wang

We had the dinner for 5 hours including preparation time. Everyone helped a little with the food. Except Pascal. During the Turkish music playing, we chitchatted a lot about life experiences and gossips. It’s quite a pleasure to talk with the guys.

Old raki.

Serefe! Cheers! Ho-da-la!

 

Here’s the living recipe of making of dolma:

1. Find paprika and clean the middle part

2. Prepared rice, put some olive oil to mix’em.

3. Seasoning: put tabak sauce and pepper on the rice and mix properly.

4. Fill the paprika with rice. Don’t put too much inside!

5. Just like this one, depends on experience.

6. Boil them with sauce and water.

7. Wait until the paprika shaded yellow color and the rice’s ready.

 

=== THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL ===

 

Call your mother if you’re not sure of any process.