Turkish-Style Romano Beans in Olive Oil (Zeytinyağlı Taze Fasulye)

Now that summer's in full swing, the farmers' markets are bursting with fresh Romano beans--the broad, flat Italian kind. They're almost identical to Turkish çalı fasülye, the star of many summer lunches and dinners back home. You'll find them served cold as a meze, or as a light main dish alongside rice. 

The trick is to cook them as soon as you bring them home. If you must wait, they'll keep in the fridge for up to a week. After that, they start turning woody and lose their sweet green flavor, which is no good for this kind of dish. 

No Romano beans? No problem. French beans (haricots verts) will work just fine: see this recipe. 

• 1 lb fresh Romano beans, washed and trimmed (snap off the ends and strip any stringy sides), then sliced lengthwise and cut into 2-3 inch (about 5 cm) pieces. 
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, sliced or chopped
• 2 big or 4 medium fresh tomatoes, finely diced, grated, or blended--or just blend a can of diced tomatoes for a smoother shortcut
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/3 cup olive oil, plus 2 tbsp more for a final drizzle
• ~1 cup hot water
• salt, to taste

Cooking:

-Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot (or pressure cooker if you're in a hurry). Add the chopped onion and sauté over medium heat until soft and translucent, about 7 minutes. No browning!

-Stir in the garlic and cook for just a minute, until it smells amazing. Again, don't let it brown or burn.

-Add the green beans and cumin. Stir everything together and cook for 4-6 minutes, until the beans brighten and lose that raw green look.

-Add the grated/blended tomatoes, stir and cook for 3-5 minutes.

-Pour in enough hot water to just barely cover the beans, no bean soup here. Add salt to taste. 

-Cover and simmer gently on low to low medium heat for 25-30 minutes, until the beans are soft and silky. 

-If using a pressure cooker: Lock the lid and cook for 12-14 minutes after it reaches pressure.

Whatever pot you use, let the beans cool in it, don't rush them into another container while they're hot. These Turkish olive oil dishes are better as they sit and settle.

Serve at room temperature, drizzled with a little extra olive oil. 

This dish is great with buttery rice, a thick dollop of yogurt, or just a nice piece of crusty bread. In my family, it's rice and yogurt every time. 

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Cretan Style Zucchini Ribbons with Rice (Girit Usulü Kabak Sıyırma)

 

This Cretan style zucchini dish/meze is an absolute summer favorite. Cretans create magic with zucchinis and this one is no exception. 

3 medium sized zucchinis, peeled and ribboned. Do not ribbon the soft, seedy inside, just the firm flesh. Save the seedy cores for mucver  (we don't want the skin since it might have a different cooking time compared to the flesh of the zucchini)  

1/4 cup baldo, arborio, if not jasmine rice, soaked in hot water for at least 20 minutes

3-4 green onions, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

~1/4 cup fresh dill, finely chopped

~1/4 or less fresh mint, finely chopped

1/2 cup olive oil 

juice of one lemon

salt

 -Put 1/4 cup of rice i hot water to soak.

-Peel and ribbon the zucchini. Sprinkle some salt on top and leave to rest. 

-In a pot heat the half of the olive oil, ~1/4 cup, and add the green onions. Cook for 2-3 minutes.

-Rinse the rice after at least 20 minutes in hot water, and add to the pot. 

It is important to soak the rice in hot water, DO NOT skip this step. We need to cut the cooking time for rice so the zucchini doesn't melt away while rice is cooking. 

-Add garlic with the rice. 

-Cook for 3 minutes stirring constantly. 

-Add 1/2 cup of water and let cook covered on low to medium for ~10 minutes. Check every now and then for water. 

-After 10 minutes, the rice should be half way cooked. Add zucchini ribbons, lemon juice and some salt. Stir and cook for another 10 minutes covered. No extra water needed since the zucchini will release some of its own.

-After ten minutes the both the rice and zucchini will be cooked. We don't want zucchini to be too soft. 

-Turn it off, add half of dill and mint, stir and let it cool down to room temperature. 

-Serve it on a wide round or oval dish. Pour the rest of the olive oil on top and sprinkle the rest of the fresh herbes. Salt to your taste. It is good at room temperature or cold. It is a great dish for hot summer days but also an excellent meze/side. You can enjoy it with a slice o f good bread or with cold yogurt. Bon appétit! 

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Oven-Baked Vegetarian Stuffed Red Bell Peppers (Fırında Zeytinyağlı Kırmızı Biber Dolması)

Dolmas, stuffed bell peppers, in Turkey are almost exclusively green; however, the green bell peppers there are tiny and beautifully thin, that's perfect for stuffing. I never even attempt to stuff green bell peppers in US. Now and again I come across at farmers' markets and at grocery stores smaller bell peppers, usually red or purple, and I immediately jump over them with joy. I especially like the red ones, because the sweetness from the red bell pepper comes out beeautıfully when baked. These peppers are approximately as big as my fist.  

This recipe is for 8 bell peppers

8 bell peppers
1 big onion, ~1 1/2 cups finely chopped (you can use a food processor)

1 1/2 cups white rice
1 big or two medium tomatoes, grated
1 tomato (this one is for covering the tops of bell peppers after stuffing)
1/4 - 1/3 cup pine nuts (I love them so I go for 1/3) 
1/4 cup currants (most people who are not fond of sweet in their food skip this ingredient) 

1 tbsp allspice

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tbsp mint flakes or ¼ cup fresh mint, chopped finely

1 tsp white sugar

salt

juice of 1/2 lemon

2 cups boiling water

-Wash all the bell peppers. Take out the top part and the seeds. With a tip of a sharp knife pierce them at the bottom once or twice. (Save the tops if you want to cover your dolmas as the one in the picture. If you prefer to have tomato covers as in the first picture, discard the tops. Tomato covers keep the dolmas more juicy and the pepper tops look very cute) 

-Mix all the ingredients except for peppers, one tomato that we will use as a cover, and water. 

-Stuff the peppers with the stuffing rice. Don’t go all the way up to the top, leave almost 3/4 inch to an inch, because the rice will cook and rise. 

-Cut big enough rounds from the tomato the cover the tops. Press the tomato slice down a bit to ensure that it'll stay there. (If you opt to use the tops, do the same)

-Place the dolmas in a stove and oven safe dish or pot as high as them. 

-Pour 2 cups of boiling hot water. 

-First bring to a boil on the stove and cook for 5 minutes and then bake in the oven uncovered at 390-400 F for 35-40 minutes, until rice is cooked. (If you're not sure, check the rice with a fork). I really like my oven-baked dolmas to be charred on top just a bit so I make sure they do. They're delicious that way. 

-Take them out and let them cool down to room temperature. Oven-baked vegetarian dolmas, just like all other Turkish olive oil dishes, are best when eaten at room temperature and the day after they're made. 

Enjoy with yogurt on the side!    

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Purslane with Rice (Pirinçli Semizotu)

Long before Dr Mehmet Öz, aka Dr. Oz, started to appear on morning shows on Turkish TV channels and regularly on Oprah to talk about healthy eating habits with a great emphasis on purslane (surprisingly rich in Omega 3 fatty acids), the weed frequented Turkish tables in dishes and salads all summer long. If Dr. Oz's advice on healthy food triggered interest in purslane in Turkey, it also caused inflation in purslane prices. A couple of summers ago on questioning a sudden increase of purslane prices, just out of pure curiosity not by any reluctance to pay, I was almost scolded by a vendor at my hometown's farmer's market back in Turkey: "Mam, even Dr. Mehmet Öz appreciates purslane, why don't you?" I always have and especially do now here in the States, where it's relatively harder to find it. We're lucky here in Northern California that purslane is available at farmer's markets.   Sometimes it is called purslane and sometimes it is called in its Spanish name "verdolaga."  Purslane is a weed and can easily grow anywhere under any condition. If you can get our hands on purslane seeds, do plant them and you won't regret. 


























~1 lb purslane (aka verdolaga)
1 medium onion, finely chopped (
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbsp rice or bulgur or quinoa 
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
juice of half lemon
1/3 cup water

optional

1 jalapeno, finely chopped

or 2 tsp crushed spicy peppers 



-Wash purslane well and chop it into 1-1 1/2 inch pieces. You don't need to discard the stems.
-Heat olive oil in a wide pot. Stir in onion and garlic. Cook until soft, 3-4 minutes.

-If you're spicing your purslane up with mighty jalapenos or some other hot peppers add them now and cook for 1-2 minutes. 
-Add purslane/verdolaga. Stir a couple of times until wilted.
-Add lemon juice, salt, pepper, and water.
-When it starts boiling, add rice (or whatever grain you're using but make sure it's something that wouldn't take too long to cook such as brown rice) and turn the heat down to low.
-Cover and simmer until rice is cooked.
-Serve warm or cold with garlicy yogurt (for garlicy yogurt mix 1 clove of minced garlic per 1 cup of yogurt with a dash of salt) on the side.


ps: if you are not very enthusiastic about green leafy vegetables, there's big chance you won't like purslane with its crunchy stems and tangy taste.

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Turkish Style Fresh Borlotti (Cranberry) Beans (Barbunya Pilaki)

It is barbunya beans season, again! These delicious nutty beans with red or dark purple speckles packed with a long list of health benefits (google it!) are also called borlotti, cranberry, roman (not the Italian green ones), or October beans. In Turkey these reddish delicious beans are named after yet another red deliciousness: the Mediterranean red mullet, aka barbunya, from the Greek barbounia. 

Barbunya beans arrive at the farmer's markets in Turkey in midsummer, in pods, and when they do arrive they immediately become the most expensive item on the carts. Since people wait for their arrival for so long, at the time of their arrival they’re ready to pay whatever—it’s definitely a seller’s market. By the end of the summer and end of the barbunya season, however, barbunya stocks start to go down and barbunya lovers invest in kilos and kilos of barbunyas. They pod them and keep them in the freezer for the long barbunya deprived winter. Although you can find dry barbunyas year around, fresh barbunyas are always, and I cannot emphasize this enough, always preferred to dried ones.

Barbunyas are always cooked the same way in Turkish cuisine, i.e. vegetarian, in generous amount of olive oil with tomatoes. Cooked in any other way, it’s considered a pity, a total waste. “The” barbunya dish, the Istanbul style, is called barbunya pilaki. The word pilaki also comes from Greek (remember “gigantes plaki”?) and in its Turkish form, the word is a generic name for a dish of vegetables or seafood slowly braised with onion, garlic, and tomatoes in olive oil and served cold or at room temperature. However, although there are scrumptious seafood pilakis, the name in time happened to be associated only with bean pilakis, cannellini and barbunya, to be specific. This is my recipe for barbunya pilaki.

Barbunya pilaki is traditionally made with potatoes and carrots; however, I really do not like potatoes in this dish; I strongly believe that potatoes cloud the flavor of barbunyas. I replace potatoes for green sweet peppers, or in their absence, with sweat Italian peppers.

I usually cook barbunyas in pressure cooker, since it’s faster. You can use this recipe with regular or instant pots as well.

serves ~4

2 lb of fresh barbunyas in pod, pod them. Sometimes when they are very fresh, the pods are firm and hard to pod. If that's the case, leave them in a fabric bag for a day or two to breathe and loosen up. 

1 medium onion, finely diced

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or thinly sliced

1 potato, peeled and diced

OR, if you want to try my version 3-4 sweet green peppers, chopped in small pieces

1 carrot, cut in half or quarter moons

2 big tomatoes, grated or crushed in a food processor

1/3 cup olive oil, for starters and if you’re ready for it add a heaping tbsp more (we do believe in olive oil)

1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)

1 cup hot water

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp or more salt

-Pod all the beans. Your 2 lb fresh barbunya beans will diminish to ~1 lb once podded. They might come in different sizes and colors, all fine. Don’t be alarmed; they will loose their bright colors and turn brownish once cooked. Still, all good.

-Add olive oil in your pot and once warmed up add onions. Cook for 4-5 minutes on medium to high heat until softened.

-Add sugar, garlic, peppers or potatoes, and carrots, and cook for 2-3 minutes.

-If you think your tomatoes won’t give a vibrant red color, which happens a lot, you can use tomato paste. If so, add it now and cook for a minute.

-Add barbunyas and tomatoes, and stir for a minute or two.

-Add water and salt.

-If you’re using a pressure cooker, cover and cook on low after the steam comes out for 16-18 minutes. (I have a young clientele who like soft food, so I go for 18 minutes). If you’re using a regular pot, cover and simmer for 30-35 minutes on low until beans are cooked. Check now and then to make sure it doesn’t run out of water. If it does, boil some water before adding more.  

-Once it is cooked, let it cool down to room temperature in its pot with the lid on.

Barbunya pilaki is a traditional olive oil dish and like all olive oil dishes it is served at room temperature or cold, with lemon slices. A splash of lemon juice brightens up barbunyas in unimaginable ways. Serve with grilled meat, with rice on the side or with crusty bread. It’ll keep in the fridge for a week.

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Leeks in Olive Oil (Zeytinyağlı Pırasa)

In Turkish cuisine, most "pırasa" dishes, originally praso from Greek, are attributed to Albanian Turks. Not only leeks feature predominantly in Albanian immigrants' dishes, but also they make, hands down, the best leek dishes. The Albanian börek (phyllo pastry) with leeks is just to die for. Although leeks have a milder flavor with a sweet touch than its relatives onions and garlic, for some it is still quite overwhelming. So in Turkey you either love them or not at all, a well known fact that seems to have inspired Baba Zula, a Turkish alternative music band, to compose a song called pırasa the lyrics of which goes: "There are two different kinds of people in this world: those who love leeks, and those who don't.... those who don't know how to love leeks and then those who can love them" This is the recipe that turned me into one of those who know how to enjoy leeks!


for 4 people
4 regular leeks or 2 King leeks, really hard top dark green parts discarded, washed well and chopped in 1/3 inch rounds
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, chopped in rounds or half moons
1/4 cup or a handful of rice
1/3 cup olive oil
Juice of one lemon
2/3 - 1 cup hot water, to cover the leeks
1 tsp sugar
Salt

-Heat olive oil in a pot on medium and add onions, cook until soft but NOT brown. This is an olive oil dish and having browned onions in olive oil dishes changes the taste completely.
-Add carrots and sugar, stir for 3 more minutes
-Add leeks and stir for a couple of minutes until wilted
-Add rice and cook for a minute.
-Add lemon juice, salt and water to barely cover the leeks.
-Cover and cook on low heat until rice is cooked, approximately 20-25 minutes.
-Let the leeks cool down to room temperature in its own pot, lid closed.
-Transfer to a serving plate and serve at room temperature or cold.
-In Turkey 1=2 tbsp olive oils is scattered on top of the leeks on the serving plate to have a shinier look.

Usually when leeks are served, sliced lemons would be available on the table for extra drops of fresh lemon juice on top. It brings up the flavors beautifully. Eat with a nice loaf of bread. I love eating them mostly for lunch with yogurt on the side.

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Fava Beans à la Turque (Zeytinyağlı İç Bakla)

Fava beans, also known as faba, broad, Windsor, or horse beans, are among the oldest cultivated plants. They've been grown and eaten across the Middle East, Europe, and South America for millennia, yet they took their sweet time reaching American markets. I didn't eat a single fava bean for the first 25 years of my life, which, in resrospect, was a real loss! In my defense, my mom cooked them in pod, in those slightly fuzzy pods that, to a child, looked alarmingly like caterpillars. I'm still not convinced about the pods. The shelled beans, however, are a different story. 

Fava beans are slightly sweet with a mild, grassy flavor that feels made for spring. In Turkey, when picked young and tender, they're cooked in the pod and served with a generous dollop of garlicy yogurt on the side. When picked a bit later, once the shells and beans have grown larger, they are shucked and the beans are peeled to remove the waxy outer coat. Shucking goes quickly; peeling takes a little patience, but it's entirely worth it. What follows is a traditional Turkish springtime olive oil dish recipe for fava beans.

serves four

• 1 pound fresh fava beans, shelled and peeled, or 1 pound frozen fava beans (widely available at Middle Eastern markets)
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced 
• 1/2 bunch of green onions, finely chopped
• 1/2 bunch dill, chopped, plus more for serving
• 1 tsp white sugar
• 1 tsp salt, or a little more to taste
• 1/3 cup olive oil, divided
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp flour
• juice of half lemon

-In a bowl, whisk together the water, flour, and lemon juice. As you peel the beans, drop them directly into this mixture to prevent browning. (If you blanch the beans in boiling water for 30 seconds first, the skins slip off much more easily.)
-Heat half of the olive oil in a pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and translucent, without letting it color--browning is one unforgivable offense in olive oil dishes.
-Add the sugar, green onions, and garlic, and cook for about one minute until garlic is fragrant.
-Add fava beans along with their soaking liquid.
-Season with salt and add more water if needed to just cover the beans.
-Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the beans are tender.
-Remove from heat, cover, and let the dish cool in the pot before transferring to a serving plate.
-Like all Turkish olive oil dishes, this is best served at room temperature or cold.
-Drizzle the remaining olive oil over the top and finish with fresh chopped dill.

Serve with crusty bread and garlicy yogurt son the side.

Garlicy Yogurt
For every cup of yogurt, use half a clove of minced garlic as a starting point. adjusting upward if you like it stronger--though one clove per cup is a reasonable ceiling, as the people around you will have opinions about this. Mix well, season with salt, and serve alongside or spooned over the fava beans.

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Beet Greens with Rice and Olive Oil (Pirinçli Pancar Yaprağı)

Beet greens, stems and leaves, although usually discarded, are in fact quite healthy, sweet, and delicious when cooked in simple ways. There are a couple of different ways of cooking beet greens in Turkish cuisine. The following recipe is a simple one rice and olive oil.

When you buy beets and use them to pickle or for salads and risottos, do not discard the greens. 

beet greens of 1 bunch beet, stems and leaves chopped

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1-2 tbsp white rice or bulgur wheat (you can use brown rice as well but you need to cook it ahead of time)

2-3 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

Red pepper flakes    

-Heat olive oil in a pot.

-Add onion and garlic and cook on medium 3-4 minutes.

-Add beet greens and sauté another 3 minutes.

-Add water to barely cover the greens and sprinkle the rice on top.

-Salt and pepper to taste. Add hot pepper flakes if you wish.

-Cover and cook on low for approximately 20-25 minutes or until rice is fully cooked.

Beet greens are good warm or cold. Serve them with yogurt on the side, preferably with garlicy yogurt. (For garlicy yogurt, use 1 clove of minced garlic for each cup of yogurt. Mix well and serve.)     

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