Borek-ing again!

A few months ago, I waxed on and on about Boreks - those awesome Anatolian stuffed breads that I could potentially live on forever (along with a plethora of fruits and wine and cheese and nuts and ...) :)

I have no idea why it took a few month to try make these boreks again - maybe because we indulge in other bread variants so often? These are pretty damn close to the more traditional indian stuffed naans and parathas, they even seem like distant cousins to the calzone. I poked around more trying to find variants of this bread/stuffing and found that the traditional Turkish borek recipe actually uses phyllo dough! Very different from the street food recipes that Anissa talks about in her books.


Borek Edition I used a simple feta-parsley-broccoli filling - somewhat traditional and quite delightful. This time around, I chose to go with an interesting olio of flavours - a slew of onions and leeks, olives, some tomatoes, cheese ... and nuts! I wandered by the delightful Vios Cafe a while ago and picked up some Kasseri cheese and greek olives. Seriously, their Kasseri is probably the best I've found in the seattle area and definitely more well-priced than Whole Foods or any other specialty store! Yay for local ethnic markets :)

I used the same dough recipe outlined in Borek I, just with a different filling.

Onions'n'Olives Borek
Bread is *good*! Stuffed bread is mo' bettah! :)

Servings: for 4 stuffed boreks

Filling:

1/4 red onion - chopped
2 cups leek greens - chopped
3 scallions - chopped (along with the stems)
12-15 olives (mix) - pitted and coarsely chopped
1/2 tomato - chopped
1 cup kasseri cheese - grated
1 T red pepper flakes
1 t salt
3 T - ground almonds
1 t olive oil

1-2 t olive oil for cooking the boreks

Saute the onions, scallions and leeks in the olive oil till lightly browned.
Mix these with the rest of the ingredients and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes.

How to work it

Flour the work surface and a rolling pin.
Take a ball of dough and roll it out as thinly as possible, flouring it all the time till a 12" diameter circle is formed.
Sprinkle a handful of the filling over the lower half of the dough.
Fold the plain side of the dough over the filling to make a half circle.

Heat a nonstick griddle over medium heat.
Place the filled dough on the hot griddle and cook for a couple of minutes on one side.
Brush the dough lightly with olive oil.
Flip the pastry over, brush with oil and cook the other side for another 1-2 minutes. Both side should end up crispy and somewhat golden.


Opinion?

About the same opinion as last time - these KICK ASS! They're so easy to make too! Kasseri rules. Adding the ground almonds lend a great consistency to the filling - that's a real winner. And the generous helping of red pepper flakes totally kicked up the heat - love it!

I think Borek III will be happening pretty soon, these things are addictive :)

Eating local and all that good stuff ...

Local ... sustainable ... organic ... earth-friendly ... call-it-what-you-want ... All the buzzwords making the rounds in the food world recently.

A handful of years ago, the air started teeming with the concept of organic foods. Horrendously expensive, but Oh! so right and healthier and tastier ... I can honestly say that with some fruits and vegetables, we could taste the difference - like tomatoes and peppers and most greens. And cherries for sure! But with others ... nah! Couldn't quite savour the difference. But we loved the idea of hitting the local farmers' markets and buying our produce and starters there. Especially after growing up in India where there are vendors trolling the streets selling their produce and it is so very common to walk to the little store at the end of the street to buy veggies for the evening's dinner, it felt so right to shop local, pick and feel the veggies before dropping them into our baskets. I still remember the first time I bought green beans at a local market -

K strides up confidently to this vendor at the Redmond farmers' market, picks up a green bean or 3 and snaps them between her fingers!
Vendor's jaw drops!
K looks up at him, wondering if he's having a seizure! Isn't that how folks check for good beans? That's how the mum did it, right?
Vendor recovers and starts laughing! And slowly asks with a smile "Do you HAVE to snap the beans before you buy them?"
K turns beet red, realizing her cool "snap-the-bean" tactic is not so cool here! And finally learns to just buy the damn green beans without obsessing about snapping them.

Ok, so what does this incident have to do with all that local, organic goodness? Umm ... nothing. I just felt like telling a story, that's all! :)

Today, it seems like we're way past organic, which I personally believe is a great thing. We're not just trying to live by some ostensibly vaguely defined standard of agriculture, but we're going several steps beyond. We're seeking out local foods, sustainable foods that are developed without monocyclic farming methods. We're looking to form bonds with the local farmers that bring those delicious beets and greens and turnips and garlic snapes to our plates.

Yes, I very much like to have a personal stake in what I'm writing about.
~ Michael Pollan

So, talking about eating local ... we love it! Truly, madly, deeply! Pretty much all our veggies come from the veggie patch or a local market, except for the occasional indulgence in something that has been on a plane. Honestly, we don't know if it helps with all that carbon footprint stuff that is making the rounds everywhere, but it sure makes us feel good. Plus, we have a connection with several local vendors, the tomato guy even asks me how the plants are doing - they're quite happy, thankfully! I would feel terrible to tell him that I did the plant in!!!


So, this meal was one of those mostly local ones. Took all of 15 minutes to throw it together and tasted so blissful, I'm still talking about it! All that it took to make this meal:

Local:

* A slew of garlic and vidalia sweet onions from the market
* Spinach and Roasted Garlic Ravioli from the pasta guy (La Pasta?) at the Madrona farmers' market
* A fabulous sourdough loaf from La Panzanella
* Roasted Red Pepper tapenade from La Buona Tavola
* Yummy Cirrus Camembert from Mt.Townsend Creamery
* Gouda from Golden Glen Creamery

Not so local:

* A really tasty bottle of Tinta de Toro that Abbie heartily recommended - super fruity and luscious!
* And the rest of the glue (spices, oils, etc) We're not obsessively local about our ingredients, but we definitely keep an eye out for fresh local produce and wines as much as we can. Yes, there is definitely a feel-good factor there :) But the biggest kicks (for us) are the insanely awesome quality of the foods and the whole community-bonding thing.

As for this meal, what more could we ask for - fabulous ingredients, perfect company, warm summer evening. Sheer bliss!



And yes, substandard pictures, but whatever! :)

Eat a cheesecake pop, will you?

When I first read about cheesecake pops being the DB challenge for April, it took me a while to figure out what these crazy things were. I had to read and re-read the recipe before understanding how these pops got done. They're made of cheesecake, but there's more to them. They look like lollipops, but that isn't what they are. They need to be frozen, but they are not icecream. They're a crazy olio of dessert techniques leading up to these really fun looking finger foods! Crazy, eh? There's a DB challenge for you :)

This month's challenge was organized by Elle (Feeding My Enthusiasm) and Deborah (Taste and Tell)- they picked these funky cheesecake pops from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O'Connor. Seriously, this is the perfect title for a book that has a recipe for cheesecake pops! They're gooey all right, was quite a bit messy assembling them, sticky - a bit ... chewy - somewhat :) I've never baked anything from this book before, now I'm totally intrigued about what other quirky recipes it contains!

These cheesecake pops make for the perfect party food. And given that tomorrow is Vodka's b'day, I decided to tailor these for him. A few pops got the prescribed chocolate dunk, but a few others were set aside for Vodka - they got a yummy crust of sliced almonds in a vodka-honey sauce. That's the tradition - for the 9th year running - the pooch gets a Vodka-based dessert on his birthday :)

This was actually a really simple and straightforward recipe - a basic cheesecake baked using a water bath. There is plenty of flexibility in the dipping flavours and colours which was fun! I ended up going for the traditional cheesecake balls instead of any fancy geometric shapes, but the fun started with the dipping and decorations. The first few got dunked in semisweet chocolate and topped with sprinkles - very festive! And then Vodka's preferences took over - which made for a big hit!

****

Cheesecake Pops
(based on Jill O'Connor's recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey)

Makes 30 – 40 Pops

5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature
2 cups sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ cup heavy cream
Boiling water as needed
Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks
1 pound chocolate, finely chopped – you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white (Alternately, you can use 1 pound of flavored coatings, also known as summer coating, confectionary coating or wafer chocolate – candy supply stores carry colors, as well as the three kinds of chocolate.)
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
(Note: White chocolate is harder to use this way, but not impossible)
Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees) - Optional

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

****

Allowed Variations

Yes you can make some changes to this cheesecake as long as you promise to use the basic cheesecake recipe (although you can add a flavor to it if you like) and do keep it white (sorry, no chocolate or coffee or mocha), and keep the pops to the 2 ounce size.

The dipping flavors and colors are completely up to you.

If you want to use decorations, go for it. Same with drizzles and ribbons on the sticks. Or leave them plain after dipping them. You can even dip them in graham cracker crumbs and then the chocolate – to get more of the cheesecake feel to them.

You can cut the cheesecake into geometric shapes instead of making balls…triangles or squares or diamonds…just keep them about 2 ounces each. We can't wait to see what combinations our Daring Baker come up with…just make sure to use the basic cheesecake recipe, to make the pops 2 ounces or close to that in size, and to dip each pop in chocolate or confectionary coating and have it on a lollipop stick.

Opinion?

This isn't my typical kind of dessert, I'm not even a big cheesecake fan, but these things turned out pretty good! I was afraid the cheesecake was going to be super dense, but it was actually pretty light - probably courtesy of a couple of changes I made to the recipe - I used neufchatel cheese instead of regular cream cheese, I skipped the egg yolk and heavy cream in favour of a couple of tablespoons of silken tofu - these made for a much lighter cheesecake! Dipping the pops in chocolate was a cinch, rolling them in sprinkles and nuts was ... a piece of cake! :)


The best part of it all was that Vodka absolutely loved his treats and then sat around licking his chops for a while after! :)



Thanks, Elle & Deborah for this really really fun challenge. I had a blast and Vodka is thrilled to bits - nothing like making a pooch happy on his birthday!

And now it is time for me to stay up all night checking out all the other awesome DB posts!

'Boreking' some bread :)

"Mediterranean Street Food" - how can one not fall in love with this book? *sigh* As I turn the pages, I'm totally mired in nostalgia as I'm taken back to the souks of Fez, the bustling streets of Cairo, Monastiraki Square in Athens ... *sigh*. And then I start dreaming of wandering around Istanbul, sitting on a beach in Sicily and visiting the multitude of mediterranean destinations that I haven't been to yet! Damn this travel bug.

Anissa Helou is a master of weaving stories around street food - and who can resist that? Her book is a treasure trove of travel encounters, local foods, interactions with berbers and irresistable recipes of local foods that she samples as she hops from tea cart to sandwich stand to candy stall. Sure sounds like a good life, doesn't it?

I flipped the pages of this book, sighing as I read the blurbs, I could almost smell the foods that she was talking about!

*growl*

That was my belly! Guess it was time to find something to cook instead of dreaming of all the fabulous street food I could be noshing on.


Saj Borek.

That's where my eyes landed. Hmm ... this sounded like a cross between a calzone and a stuffed paratha. Saj Boreks are a specialty of Anatolia - the Asiatic area of what is modern Turkey (called Asia Minor in ancient times).

The traditional dough for saj borek uses a variety of flours - bread flour, all-purpose and whole wheat. The pastries work with a plethora of fillings - ground meat, potatoes, spinach and feta.
I didn't feel like a plain cheese filling or something as heavy as potatoes, so I went with a broccoli filling instead. That might just be one of the best things I've done all week!

:)

Saj Borek with Broccoli and Cheese
Yummy savoury street food

Servings: 8-10

For the dough:

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 t salt
1 t chilli powder
1/2 cup buttermilk
warm water for kneading

For the filling:

1 cup crumbled feta cheese
3 T flat-leaf parsley
2 medium heads of broccoli - chopped
1 T harissa

To finish:

1-2 T butter - melted

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl, add the salt, chilli powder and buttermilk.
Start kneading the dough, adding warm water as needed.
Knead for 5-10 minutes till a smooth, firm dough is formed.
Cover with a damp paper towel or cloth and let the dough sit for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, run the broccoli and parsley through a food processor to make a coarse crumble.
Add the crumbled feta cheese along with the harissa (you could use hot sauce or red pepper flakes if you don't have harissa).

Flour the work surface and a rolling pin.
Take a ball of dough and roll it out as thinly as possible, flouring it all the time till a 12" diameter circle is formed.
Sprinkle a handful of the broccoli-cheese mixture over the lower half of the dough.
Fold the plain side of the dough over the filling to make a half circle.

Heat a nonstick griddle over medium heat.
Place the filled dough on the hot griddle and cook for a couple of minutes on one side.
Flip the pastry over and cook the other side for another 1-2 minutes.
Both side should end up crispy and somewhat golden.

Transfer the pastry to a plate, brush with melted butter and serve.

***

Borek + Raita = bliss.

Opinion?

O.M.G.! I love Anissa Helou. I love her recipes. I love her books. I *just* ordered one more. More than anything, I love boreks. Is that plural version even right? Do I even care? All I know is that I want many a borek in my life :)

And this broccoli filling rocks! As much as I want to try out other fillings, I could just eat this forever and be satisfied!

Seriously, how can something so simple taste so fabulous?

Mélange - Appetizers

Over the last couple of weeks, we made a variety of appetizers that turned out to be insanely simple and totally delightful. Delicious enough that every time I looked at the pictures, I went "Ahhh!" and then balked at the idea of writing a post about each of these :)



So, the idea of this Mélange series was born. We often end up making an assortment of nibbles/dips/desserts, usually for a party, but these usually don't get written about. This consolidated post seems like a good idea for bunching together some of these long overdue posts.

So, without much further ado, I'll start babbling about several nibbles that were insanely easy to assemble and totally kicked ass!

***

Lavash topped with Brie and Pear Chutney

Lavash is a soft thin yeast bread of Armenian origin - really simple flavours derived from a combination of flour, water and salt. It makes for fabulous wraps and rolls, and even with dips. And last week, we discovered that it makes for a crispy baked base with a variety of toppings.



Servings: 12 pieces

1 sheet of lavash bread
Several thin slices of brie
Pear preserve (recipe follows)

Fire up the oven to 350 F.
Cut up the lavash sheet into 12 pieces - these can often be torn by hand into small pieces.
Top each piece of bread with a slice of brie and a dollop of pear preserve.
Bake for 3-4 minutes till the brie is melted and the edges of the bread are crispy.

Pear Preserve

Servings: fills a pint-sized canning jar

2 pears - peeled, cored and sliced
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup water
1/2 lemon - sliced
1 stick of cinnamon
3 cloves
1 green cardamom

Heat the water in a saucepan and melt the sugar in it.
Add the pears and lemon slices along with the spices.
Simmer till the pears just start to get tender and the syrup thickens around the pear slices.
Pour the pears and the syrup into a canning jar, let it cool before sealing the jar.



Opinion?

The first time we made this snack, we used our friend Daria's pear chutney and some pepper jack cheese over lavash bread. The pear chutney was fabulous, but the jack cheese wasn't quite right. The next time around, we went with some brie and my version of the pear preserve. The combination worked much better, but I still like Daria's version of the pear chutney better - especially because it had sat around enough for the flavours to totally blend - insanely delicious!

***

This goes to Raaga at Chef At Work for AFAM-March (brainchild of Maheshwari from Beyond the Usual) - the current theme is Pears. Thanks, Raaga - for organizing this edition.

***

Eggplant Bruschetta with marinated vegetables

This recipe was born when we wanted to make some bruschetta-style nibbles, but had no bread to work with! But we did have a giant eggplant - obviously we often mistake one of these for a giant loaf of bread, right? :) Weeellll, not really, but we could go for a lo-cal bruschetta if we found a way to use these!

Servings: 15-20 pieces

1 large eggplant
8 oz Reduced fat feta cheese - crumbled
10 stalks of pickled asparagus
1 marinated red bell pepper
1 marinated yellow bell pepper
freshly ground pepper
2 T apple cider vinegar
1 T olive oil

Fire up the oven to 400 F.

Slice the eggplant into 1/3" thick slices and place then on a greased baking tray.
Brush the eggplant slices with a mixture of the olive oil and vinegar.
Cut the asparagus into 1/2" pieces and mix it with the crumbled feta cheese in a bowl.
Chop the bell peppers into small pieces and throw them into the mixing bowl.
Season with the pepper (and salt if needed).
Top each of the eggplant slices with a generous dollop of the veggie mixture.
Bake for 6-8 minutes till the eggplant is cooked (but still firm) and the cheese is melted.



Opinion?

Eggplants rock. Seriously. I'm often leery of Mr.Big Eggplant, but this was a perfect use for it. The tartness of the marinated vegetables and the juices of the eggplant blended quite nicely with the cheese flavour. And these slices disappeared in *no* time at all :)

***

Nombu Adais

We do not celebrate nombu (another of those days where the guys get all the attention while the girls slave their asses off), but that does not stop us from working any recipes associated with nombu. Especially the salty nombu adai kind :) We attempted a variation here by skipping the coconut and garnish, instead adding some curly parsley. And we topped each adai with a few drops of thick european yogurt.


Servings: 16

1 cup rice flour
1 cup water
1/2 t ghee (clarified butter)
3 green chillies
1" ginger
1/2 cup packed curly parsley
1 t hing (asafoetida)
salt for seasoning

Roast the rice flour for 5-6 minutes till it start smelling, but before it starts turning brown.
Add water, 1 T at a time to the flour, mixing thoroughly to avoid any lumps.
Grind the green chillies, ginger and parsley into a coarse paste.
Add this paste along with the hing, salt and ghee to the flour mixture, gently kneading the dough till the seasonings are all mixed in.
Grease a set of idli plates with oil spray.
Take a small handful of the dough and flatten it to fit into one of the idli moulds.
Repeat this till all the plates are filled with adais.
Steam for 6-8 minutes till the adais are cooked.
Serve topped with some yogurt and a sprig of parsley.


Opinion?

These rocked! They were way better than we expected them to turn out. And we're becoming more obsessed with parsley by the day! Guess we added more green chillies than we realized, these adais had some serious zing to them. And given that we haven't really done much with rice lately, we were a bit worried that these adais might feel heavy on the palate. Nope! Surprisingly, they seemed light and flavourful - a happy healthy snack.