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.

Recipe of Mathias: Light meal

Mathis spend so much tim on cooking, so he’s almost the last one in the kitchen,
but one thing for sure, he knows how to make food!

 

One day, Joey and I went back from Carrefour and saw someone boiling potatoes,
it was Mathias to make his light meal, potatoes, chicken and salad,
which cost him 2 hours to prepare (estimated).
Now you can see how serious german people on everything!
Tidy, punctual and serious!

“Light meal”

Ingredients:
1. For salad: Any kinds vegetables
2. For salad sauce: olive, white cheese, honey (syrup is better), herbs, garlic, mustard
3.Chicken chest
4. Potatoes, red one

Procedure:
Salad:
1. Prepare your vesetables, cut’em or peal’em. And put’em all in a big bowl.
 Carrots and cheese
Let lettuce cover all of them

2. Prepare for the sauce, we’re going to make Greek style of sauce.

Cut garlic in small pieces

then put mustard inside

then put some vinegar of redwine

mix them up

then some Oregano (some kind of herb :P)

and add quite amout of Olive oil

mix’em

The success of the sauce depends on the ingredients, if you used great olive oil and good vinegar, the sauce will be delicious. -- Mathias

And the next step is quite easy, pour the sauce in the salad and stir them

Potatos:
1.Boiled the potatos until they’re well cooked.
2. Cut them in slide and put them in a hot, well-heated skillet.
3. Of course you should add some oil to prevent it from being burnt.
4. Wait, and wait until the potatos turned brown, then add some rosemary.
5. Wait until the potatos’ brown and look crispy.

Do the same thing as potatos to the chicken chest.

There you go, the light meal’s ready!

These kids are waiting for the food :D

In order to repay he’s food, we’ve prepare the scallion and radish soup for Mathi,
it’s a traditional soup in Taiwan.

Hope he like the soup and forgive us sharing his food :P

Recipe of Jose: Rum banana!

Jose made a easy dessert tonight,
and it taste great!

“Rum Banana!”
or you can call it “Caramelized banana with rum sauce”

Ingredients:
1. Banana 2~3, peal them first and cut’em in half
2. Rum not too much
3. Sugar not too much

Procedure:
1. Heat the pot on the stove, wait until the pot’s heated enough.
2. Put bananas into the pot.
3. The banana’s getting hotter and hotter, then pour sugar and rum separately.
4. The most important part! Turn on the lighter and let the rum burn.
5. It is almost ready when the sugar turns brown with rum
(the caramel), covered the bananas.
6. Done

It is easy to make, the taste of caramel and banana are delicate!
Can put some ice cream aside if you like.

Or, you can find the specific recipe on http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Caramelized-Banana-with-Rum-Sauce-107764