Cheese and Olive Cake with Sesame Seeds (Susamlı, Peynirli ve Zeytinli Kek)

 

This is my new homesickness and feel-good cake!

1 cup yogurt

3/4 cup olive or sunflower oil

3 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup feta/white cheese

1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1 cup pitted and chopped black olives 

1/2 or more chopped parsley

2-3 tbsp sesame seeds

2-3 tbsp nigella seeds 

 

-Whisk eggs, oil and yogurt together.

-Add in 2 or 3 parts flour along with salt and baking powder. Mix and make sure there are no lumps left.

-Fold in feta/white cheese, parsley, olives, and half of mozzarella cheese. 

-Pour the batter in a greased or lined 9 inch cake pan or a square one. 

-Sprinkle the rest of the mozzarella on top. Generously sprinkle sesame and/or nigella seeds. 

-Bake in a preheated oven at 380-390F for 50-60 minutes or until a knife poked in the middle comes out clean. 

-Rest for 15 minutes on a rack to cool down and then gobble up. 

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Oven Baked Zucchini Fritters (Fırında Kabak Mücver)

Mücver, if you ask me, is "the" zucchini dish. It is usually fried and served with yogurt, especially garlicy yogurt on hot summer days (here is a link to  the fried version: recipe.) However, my mom always bakes mücver, because it is healthier and lighter. I devour them either way; however, baked mucver is also great the next day as a left over served cold. We have oven baked zucchini fritter as a snack for afternoon tea-time or sometimes for post-beach lunch with yogurt and dinner with salad on the side. The recipe is my mom's.



2-3 medium size zucchinis, grated (3 cups approximately), excessive water squeezed 
3 eggs
1/2 cup crumbled white cheese/ feta
1/3 or 1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped or 3 tbsp dried mint flakes
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
1/3 cup dill, chopped
2-3 green onions, chopped
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup oil (sunflower, canola, corn, olive oil, etc)
~1 -  1 1/2 cups of flour
1 tbsp ground pepper or less
1 tbsp crushed pepper flakes (I think it adds a nice kick if you like spicy food)
salt (how much salt you need depends on how salty your white cheese is)

-Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
-Pour the mix in a well greased or parchment paper lined oven pan. It should be thin-ish layer, max 1- 1 1/4 inch. 
-Bake in a preheated oven at 380F for approximately an hour, until golden brown on top and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
-Have I mentioned it's good with yogurt on the side.

optional: sprinkle 1/2 to 1 cup of grated cheese (mozzarella, cheddar, etc) on top 5 minutes before it's done. This is great if you will finish it all that day. Cheese tends to get really hard when you have them as left overs.

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Savory Leek Cake (Pırasalı Kek)

This recipe is perfect for overcast winter-ish (We're in Palo Alto, cloudy sky is as winter as it gets!) Sunday afternoons. In Turkey, afternoons like this would be incomplete without a brewing teapot on the stove. And tea, of course, requires a companion. My favorite tea companions are not the sweet ones like cookies and sweet cakes, but savory ones such as boreks, poğaças, or savory cakes (I'm dreaming about a whole new category for the blog on savory cakes). This recipe is a flexible one in terms of ingredients. You can replace mozzarella with white cheese or feta, or cheddar; you canskip the cornmeal and do all flour; you can add herbs; etc. You get the idea. In Turkey this cake is usually vegetarian or sometimes made with beef franks, but I love making this savory cake with Middle Eastern pastrami or pastırma. I think leeks and ME pastrami are a perfect couple. Yet, you can skip that completely or use crispy bacon bits, smoked ham, or whatever kind of meat you like.
(You can fortunately find Middle Eastern pastrami made in America, right here in California from Ohanyan's --If you're following this blog for a while you know that I don't do product endorsement, at all!)   






























2 leeks, washed well and chopped as thinly as possible
2 tbsp butter or olive oil (this we will use to cook the leeks)
1/3 cup olive oil or sunflower etc (this one is for the cake batter)
1 cup corn meal or flour, they both work
1 cup flour
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese (you can use a different kind as well)
3 eggs
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp aleppo pepper flakes or any spicy pepper flakes (this is optional, but leeks love spice)
1 tsp or more salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup pastrami, chopped in however way/size you prefer

-Preheat the oven to 375F.
-Heat butter in a frying pan and add the leeks and cook ~10 minutes on medium. Leeks will first sweat, then wilt, and they will finally surrender. If you like browned veggie taste, you can brown them as well but I find the taste to be overwhelming for baking. Take them off the stove and let cool aside.
-Beat eggs well with olive oil and yogurt. Add cheese and pastrami then mix.
-In a separate bowl, mix flour, corn meal/flour, baking powder, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes.
-Add the eggy mixture to the dry one, and mix well.
-Pour the batter in an oven dish (I used a 10 inch round baking pan)
-Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes clean.

Set aside to cool for 5 minutes then enjoy with tea or an ice cold pilsner! 

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Savory Cornmeal Bread (Mısır Ekmeği)

Savory corn meal or corn flour bread was something my mom used to bake for breakfast on cozy/lazy weekends. And hers is a special one because corn bread is usually quite plain. However, to make it into a wholesome breakfast mom added white cheese, olives, parsley, etc. It was always a special treat not only because it was delicious but also because my aunt would bring the corn flour from my dad's hometown, a small town in the Black Sea Region. 

No worries, though, the recipe is so delicious that it works with any corn flour or meal. 

Corn flour can easily get bitter. Store 'it in the fridge or freezer, in an airtight container, or better, buy fresh in small quantities.   

2 cups of corn flour
1 cup flour
3 eggs
1 cup yogurt
3/4 cup oil (corn, sun flower, or light olive oil-if you use olive oil it might make the cake bitter)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt (depending on your feta cheese)
1 cup of feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup black olives, pitted and sliced (you can use canned olives but the flavor will not be the same)
1 tsp pepper flakes
1/2 bunch parsley or dill, chopped finely (if you don't have parsley or dill, you can use thyme)

-Beat eggs in a bowl and add all the ingredients. Mix well.
-If the dough seems too dense, lighten it up by adding one table spoon of milk, buttermilk, or yogurt at a time until you have soft dough. This shouldn't be a dense cake.
-Grease the owen dish (I used a 2 inch deep 8.5 x 11.5 inch one)
-Put the dough in the owen dish. Sprinkle black nigella seeds, or sesame seeds on it if you wish.
-Bake approximately for an hour in a preheated owen at 375ºF. After 45 minutes, start checking with a knife every 10 minutes. When the knife comes out clean, the cake is baked.

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Baked Vegetable Fritters (Fırında Sebzeli Mücver)

Mücver is usually made with zucchini and then fried, however it is way lighter to bake it in these hot and humid summer days. This is a modified recipe that uses not only zucchini but also potato and carrot. If you have other vegetables in mind like spinach, leek, etc., you can add them, too.




























1 zucchini, grated
1 potato, grated
1 carrot, grated
3 spring green onions, chopped
1 green or red pepper, finely chopped
1/3 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
1/3 cup fresh dill, chopped
1/4 cup fresh mint or basil, chopped
2 eggs
1/2 or 1/3 cup white cheese or feta, crumbled
1/3 cup, pitted 'real' black olives, chopped
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1/3 - 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
sesame or nigella seeds




























-Heat oil in a pan. Add first pepper, then carrot, then potato, and finally zucchini. Sautee until wilted, but not totally cooked.
-Transfer this mix in a bowl and let it cool down.
-Add green onion, parsley, dill, mint, eggs, cheese, olives, baking powder, and flour.
-Pour the mixture in a greased oven safe dish. Make sure the mix is not thicker than 1.5 inches in the dish.
-Sprinkle sesame or nigella seeds on top. You can also decorate it with sliced canned olives.
-Bake in a preheated oven at 400F for ~1 hour or until it gets golden brown on top or on the sides. Check with a clean knife or a wooden toothpick/skewer.

You can serve baked vegetable fritters as a side dish with dinner, with afternoon tea, or for breakfast.

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Savory Spinach and Feta Cake (Ispanaklı ve Beyaz Peynirli Kek)

In several previous posts I have mentioned the importance of afternoon tea time in Turkey and the snacks that we would have with our tea. This cake is a total green deliciousness that my mom used to make for our lazy afternoon tea hours. Years later during another tea gathering with her friends she learned a recipe for sweet spinach cake (I know it sounds weird, but it doesn't taste anything like spinach. Spinach is there just to make it green and distract the ladies from gossip by causing curiosity for the source of its color), and unfortunately stopped making this one. I never cared much about sweet cakes, so this one is definitely my most favorite green cake.

As you can see from the ingredients, it is a very flexible cake. You can add more herbs or take out the ones you don't like; use feta or grated mozzarella or cheddar; use crushed pepper flakes and make it spicy or very spicy. It's all up to you. Because of the spinach puree and the amount of flour this is a moist, spongy cake, not a dry one.



























serves 6-8 people

1 lb spinach
2 cups flour
1 cup oil (olive, canola, or vegetable; I used half olive and half canola)
3 eggs
1/3 cup Turkish white cheese or feta cheese, crumbled
1/3 cup black olives, sliced (you can use canned olives but they won't bring any flavor to your cake)
1 green bell pepper or 2 green chili peppers, fınely chopped
2-3 green onions, finely chopped
1/2 cup fresh dill, chopped
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 tsp oregano leaves
1-2 tsp salt (depending on how salt the cheese is)
2 tsp baking powder


























-Put washed spinach in a food processor with a couple of tbsp of olive oil and make into a puree. You should have approximately 2 cups of spinach puree.
-Beat 3 eggs with salt in a mixing bowl until it doubles in volume.
-Add remaining oil, spinach puree, dill, parsley, peppers, green onion, sliced olives, and cheese to eggs and mix with a spoon.
-Add flour and baking powder to this mixture and mix.
-Grease a baking pan, any shape you prefer, with butter. Pour the mixture and bake in a preheated oven at 350-360F for 45-50 minutes. Baking time might vary with different shapes and ovens. Check with a knife or wooden skewer/toothpick.

Wıth all its greenness this is my contribution to Weekend Herb Blogging that was started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen and is now organized by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything At Least Once, and is hosted this week by Katie of Eat This.

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Black Olive Cake (Zeytinli Kek)

It's a gloomy, cloudy, rainy, and miserable Sunday. The best to do seemed like baking a cake, making Turkish tea, and watching a movie. I found this recipe from a very popular Turkish foodblog: Portakal Ağacı. Except for a couple of additions, I followed the recipe.

2 cups of chopped and pitted black olives (I was going low with my delicious Turkish olives, so I used canned olives)
3/4 cup sun flower, canola, or olive oil
1 cup plain yogurt
2 cups of flour
3 eggs
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint or 1 1/2 tbsp dried mint flakes
1 bunch green onions, chopped finely
1 tbsp red pepper flakes (if you want your cake to be a spicy one)
1 tbsp black seeds
1 1/2 tsp salt (depends on what kind of olives you use)
1 tsp baking powder



























-Beat the eggs and add yogurt and oil. Mix well.
-Add olives, green onion, mint, red pepper flakes, salt, and black seeds to the mixture and mix.
-Add baking powder and flour. You'll have a runny mixture.
-Pour in a greased oven dish. I used a 12 x 8 inches oval oven dish.
-Bake in for 40-50 minutes in a preheated oven at 375F.
-Let it sit for at least 15 minutes before you cut and serve.


This recipe which brings out the perfect harmony between mint and green onions has turned out so delicious that it'll go straight to Weekend Herb Blogging of Kalyn which is hosted by Anna of Anna's Cool Finds.

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