Easy and Tasty Recipes

Ali Nazik: Another Special Local Dish With Aubergines

2011-10-14T23:05:00.002+03:00

When you are naturally interested in something, unintentionally it starts to become the main subject of your conversations. I often find myself in a situation like this. Even if the conversation starts with some other subject, it ends with cooking if I am in it.

I am no different at work. Nearly all my colleagues learned that I like cooking very much and I am writing a blog about this subject. This is an advantage for me because some are trying to help me by sharing their cooking experience and they are generous enough to tell the secrets of their recipes.

Last week, one of my colleagues, Bengi, shared with me her Ali Nazik recipe while we were at lunch. She said it was very easy for her to prepare this special and favorite Turkish dish. I was surprised because I normally eat Ali Nazik in restaurants.I like it very much, it is delicious. I saw two people in my life who cooked this dish at home. One is my aunt and the other is one of my friends' mother.

I was interested in the recipe not only because it was easy but also there are aubergines in the recipe, which is the favorite vegetable for my husband. He says he wouldn't get bored if he ate aubergine meals everyday. This was a second reason for me to try it.

When I told my husband that I would try to cook Ali Nazik he was excited about it. Last weekend we went for shopping and bought necessary ingredients. This week I tried it. I saw that it was really very easy to prepare. Its taste was delicious as Bengi said. My husband also liked it very much and we thought this could be a dish to serve our guests.

Here is the list for ingredients and the directions to cook it.

Ingredients:

4 aubergines (long ones, mid size enough)

2 tablespoons of condensed yoghurt
250 gr. minced meat (you can also use 250 gr. lamb or veal, in small pieces, yet you must boil them for about 45 minutes in pressure cooker first. I do this one day before I cook so the meat is ready)
2 mid size tomatoes

1-2 green peppers

5 cloves of garlic
Salt, black grounded pepper
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
2 tablespoons of olive or vegetable oil, or 1 tablespoon of butter

Preparation:

With a knife make a deep cut through aubergines starting from the stem finishing at the bottom.
Put the aubergines in the oven and let them get softened there at 250 degrees for about 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel the skins of tomatoes and chop them into very small pieces.
Cut the peppers into small pieces.
Peel the garlics and chop them into small pieces. (You can do all of this chopping in a food processor very easily and quickly. It will save you time.)

Put the olive oil in a shallow skillet or pan. Wait for a minute so that it is heated.
Put the minced meat in the skillet and let it get cooked until it lets its juice out and the juice evaporates.
Add the tomatoes, peppers, a pinch of garlic and tomato paste.
Add also some salt and black pepper.
Let the mixture boil down over medium heat. Stir it from time to time.
When the aubergines are ready, take them out of the oven and peel their skins off. As they are hot, you can hold them from the stem and peel the skins with a pair of tongs.
Put the peeled aubergines, the yoghurt, rest of the garlic and salt into the food processor. Make this mixture into a mash.

To serve:
Put 4 tablespoons of aubergine mash on a flat plate. Spread the mash on the plate with the help of the back of the spoon. Put 2 tablespoons of meat sauce over it. You can make a bigger portion if you like with adding more aubergine mash and meat sauce.

Enjoy!

Easy Pizza

2011-10-06T22:14:00.002+03:00

My husband's family do not often visit our house. And when they come, my mother in law always brings treats with her. She is a housewife and she is way more experienced than me in the kitchen. She thinks it is hard for me to come from work and rush into the kitchen to prepare for guests, which is quite true.

Last weak my husband called me at work and told me that her family would be coming over for tea after dinner. He added that I did not need to prepare for them because his mother was going to bake a cake & also prepare a kind of chicken meal which is my husband's favorite. I was releaved, yet I also thought that it would be chic and show that I care for them if I prepared something with my own hands.

I came home and opened my recipe book which is a present to me from my mother. As my mother in law would bring something sweet, I thought it would be nice to have something salty. I saw this easy pizza recipe, and thought pizza would be nice & different for them as they do not eat out much. I applied it as fast as I could. I saw that for a pastry meal it was quite quick to prepare. In addition, everybody liked it very much including my husband. My husband thinks that it is as delicious as pizza made in restaurants, although the dough that is used is very different. I prepared it using faggot and pastrami. He wanted me to prepare it once more with only pastrami.

As this recipe won high praises from my family, I thought I should share it with others on my blog. Here are the ingredients and step by step preparation guide.

Ingredients:

300 gr. wheat flour
100 gr. liquid oil
2 eggs
80 gr. yoghurt
60 gr. milk
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
200 gr. tomatoes
50 gr. green peppers
100 gr. of delicatessen meat products (pepperoni, pastrami, faggot, sausages or others)
50 gr. kashar cheese
One round shallow pan suitable for oven, like a tart pan, with 25-30 cm. diameter.

Preparation of the dough:

Take a deep bowl. Put the flour, oil, one egg, yoghurt, salt & baking powder in it. Mix them until they become a smooth dough.
With the help of a rolling pin, roll out the dough. Roll it out in a round shape, bigger than the bottom of your pan.
Wrap the dough around the pin and unwrap it over the oven pan. The sides of the dough should cover the sides of the pan, like a tart dough.

Preparation of the ingredients:

Chop the peppers, tomatoes and delicattessen products into cubicle small pieces. Mix them and sprinkle them over the dough.
In a small deep pan put the milk & one egg and mix thoroughly. Pour the mixture over the sprinkled ingredients over the dough.

Final touch:
Grate the kashar cheese and sprinkle it over the ingredients.

Preheat the oven for five minutes at 220 C degrees. Bake the pizza for 15-20 minutes.

My oven has predetermined baking functions and one of them is for pizza. So I set the oven to pizza function at 220 C degrees to bake the pizza. Your oven might have totally different functions so please watch the pizza while baking at your first time.

Enjoy!

Delicious & Very Very Easy Appetizer: Russian Salad

2011-08-16T21:28:00.000+03:00

Or Salad Olivier, invented in 1860 by Lucien Olivier, the chef of a celebrated restaurant in Moscow, named Hermitage. In my country, they call it also American Salad, probably because after the fall of USSR anything related to Russia was linked with socialism and people were somewhat afraid to look like one:) Anyway it is a delicious complementary dish, very much liked by nearly everyone and very easy to prepare.

My recipe is not like Olivier's though. The original dish contains meat yet we do not use meat in Russian Salad in Turkey. Moreover, my recipe is made easier if you benefit from frozen vegetables and chopped gherkins sold in markets.

The frozen vegetables I use is a mixture of peas, carrots and potatoes, the latter two already chopped into little pieces. I hope you have these conveniences in where you live and making Russian Salad is easier than easy to you too.

Ingredients:

1 package of frozen mixture of peas, carrots and potatoes. If you do not have this, you need 50 gr. of peas, 1 carrot and 1 potato.
One extra potato.
4 tablespoons of chopped gherkins.
8 tablespoons of mayonnaise
Salt, ground black pepper

Preparation:

Chop all the vegetables you have into very small cubic pieces. If you have this practical kitchen gadget, your work is easier:)

Boil them until carrots and potatoes soften and peas bright green color turns into a yellowish green.
In another pot, boil the extra potato. If you cut it in two halves, it softens more quickly.
In a large bowl, put the vegetable mixture and gherkins.
Peel off the skin of boiled potato, put it in another bowl and make it a mash. Put the potato mash over the vegetable mixture. This is to thicken the mayonnaise. Otherwise the salad becomes a bit watery.
Add the mayonnaise.
Add one teaspoon of salt and spice the mixture with some ground black pepper.
Stir the mixture.

Enjoy!

Sponge Cake with Mahaleb

2011-04-21T22:19:00.006+03:00

Sponge cake is very very easy to make. If you bake it in a flat cake form you can use it in making special cream cakes or if you use other forms, you can eat it as it is, even serve your guests.

Mahaleb is a kind of spice which gives a very nice aroma to the cake. If you can find it, try this cake with mahaleb, you will be more than pleased with the results.

The last time I baked it, I added 2 tablespoons of poppy seeds. Poppy seeds also go very well in this type of cake so I recommend it too.

Ingredients:

· 2 glasses of wheat flour(200 gr.)

· 1 glass of milk(200 ml.)

· ½ glass of vegetable oil(200 ml.)

· 1 ½ glasses of sugar(300gr.)

· 3 eggs

· 2 packages of baking powder

· 2 teaspoons of mahaleb

· ½ tablespoon of butter to grease the cake form

How to prepare:

· Preheat the oven for 10 minutes at 180C

· Mix sugar and eggs very well. Make sure that these two ingredients mixed into eachother thoroughly.

· Add oil and milk, mix again.

· Add flour, baking powder and mahaleb, mix again but do not mix much. If possible, add the flour and baking powder by the help of a sifter. This is a better way to ensure that your cake rises well.

· Grease the cake form with he butter. Also sprinkle some flour on the cake form, all over. This is a more guaranteed way that your cake does not stick on the cake form.

· Put the mixture in the cake form

· Put the cakeform in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Do not open the oven until the time is over or your cake will not rise as much as expected.

Some ovens have different programs and I bake cakes at the baking program of my oven. Your oven might be totally different so at the first time you are baking this cake, watch it from time to time to make sure that it is not under or over baked.

One simple method to understand if a cake is well baked is to stick a toothpick in it. If the toothpick comes out clean, this means that the cake is in good shape. If not, then you need to bake it a few minutes more.

You can serve this cake by sprinkling some castor sugar all over it. It looks really nice, like your mom’s cakes and it smells very much like home.

Enjoy!

Shrimp Casserole with Vegetables

2011-04-21T21:36:00.001+03:00

Last weekend I ate shrimp casserole at a restaurant and thought of trying it at home. Thank God I tried! I would never think that it would be so easy and so delicious.

If you like seafood like me, especially shrimps, this recipe is made just for you. It is also very suitable as a specialty side dish or main course to serve your guests, at a seafood night. They will absolutely love it!

And it is unbelievably easy to prepare; nearly no process other than cutting/slicing ingredients, gathering them in a pot and putting in the oven, this simple!

What you need is:

· 200 gr. of frozen shrimps

· 2 long peppers

· 6-8 mushrooms

· 1 tomato or 5-6 cherry tomatoes

· 1 carrot

· 1 tablespoon of olive or vegetable oil

· 1 onion

· 50 gr. kaşar cheese

· Salt, black pepper

· 1 shallow casserole or similar oven pot, a mid size one is enough.

How to prepare:

· Preheat oven at 180 degrees for 10 minutes

· Chop the onions

· Slice green peppers into small pieces, as long as half cm.

· Slice mushrooms

· Peel the carrot and cut into thin round pieces

· Cut the tomatoes into small pieces

· Put all the vegetables into the casserole, together with shrimps

· Add the oil, salt and blackpepper

· Mix very well

· If you like, grate the kaşar cheese, sprinkle over the dish

· Put in the oven and cook for 20 minutes

Enjoy!

The Food Freezer: Lifesaver of Busy Home Cook Fans

2011-02-28T21:46:00.000+02:00

My life in the kitchen can be told in two stages: Before and after discovering the food freezer.

No need to say that utilizing the food freezer effectively helps me a lot in the kitchen by saving me time and money. I am so very happy about this that I cannot wait to share my methods with everyone. Just follow these easy steps below to discover the road to making it easier and quicker to home cook, by benefiting more from your deep freezer.

As we are only two persons at home I was always worried that excess of fresh vegetables we bought would end up in trash. I tended not to buy some types which are sold in bundles or bought only enough to cook the next few days' meal. Then I discovered frozen vegetables, which are mostly prepared for cooking and can be kept for a long time.
Of course you cannot find all kinds of vegetables frozen but you can make your own. Simply clean and cut the vegetables , make one meal enough bunches and put in refrigerator bags.Keep them in the deep freezer to take out when necessary.
In some meals we use more than one kind of vegetable. In that case, prepare all the vegetables, make into one meal enough piles and keep in the deep freezer in refrigerator bags.
You can even make your own ready to fry frozen potatoe chips, you do not always need to buy them, if it is more economical to buy fresh ones.
Sometimes I prepare too much of a meal ,deliberately or by mistake. No need to throw away the excess food. Pu it in refrigerator bags or storage containers and keep in the deep freezer, to take out when necessary.
Roasted onions and minced meat is the basis for most Turkish meals. When I buy minced meat, I roast it with onions, make one meal enough piles and put in refrigerator bags again to keep in the deep freezer.
Other than ready frozen vegetables, there are other kinds of frozen food. I constantly search for them in stores and try if they are tasty or not. I buy frozen meatballs, pizzas, fish fingers and other sea food, mozarella fingers and borek and manti; these last two are special to my country.

All kinds of frozen food, ready or home made, save a lot of time for home cook fans who choose to eat healthy and economical and and would like to spend some of their precious free time and Money for other precious hobbies.

So these are some of the methods that I discovered to make my life in the kitchen easier and happier by utilizing the food freezer more. I would appreciate it if you share your methods with me.

Another Kind of Lasagna

2011-02-19T17:03:00.000+02:00

Would you ever think of using leftover food in lasagna? I did.

After I got married I realized that kitchen economics is hard business. Some of the food I prepare are left most of the time and I have limited time to keep them in the fridge. I hate throwing away food so I always try to find ways to reuse them.

One day while I was thinking of what to do with the leftover red lentil soup, pinto beans meal and squash meal, I decided to put them in the food processor, make a mash and use this mixture of vegetables in the sauce of lasagna.

Lasagna sauce is made up of minced meat and a mixture of certain vegetables and I thought changing the type of vegetables a bit might not harm the recipe much. Maybe an Italian will kill me for coming up with this seemingly not so brilliant idea , but it was a great success in my terms.

Firstly the meal turned up to be a delicious one after which you might eat your fingers. Secondly it was a great contribution to our budget. Now whenever my husband is bored of eating something he says “You can put this in the deep freezer and use it in making lasagna.”

Of course at first I didn’t tell him my little secret. I wanted to observe his genuine reaction when he tried my “another kind of lasagna”. His appreciation way exceeded my expectations; he was crazy about it and now he periodically asks from me to prepare lasagna for him.

If you have leftover food at home, especially vegetable meals or soup, you can easily prepare this recipe too.

Ingredients:

For the meat sauce:

• 1 tablespoon of olive or vegetable oil or melted butter
• 250 gr. minced meat
• 1 large onion
• Mash of leftover food (Approximately 300 gr. will do. )
• 4 tablespoons of tomato mash ( or 2 large tomatoes or 2 tablespoons of tomato paste)
• Salt, pepper

For the bechamel sauce:

• 2 glasses of milk
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• 1 tablespoon of olive or vegetable oil or melted butter
• Salt, pepper

For topping:

• Grated kaşar cheese (kind of a cheddar cheese we have in Turkey), or parmesan

Preparation of the meat sauce:

• In a shallow large pan put the olive oil, heat for a minute.
• Chop the onion into very little pieces ( I usually put them in the food processor)
• Put the onion in the pan and lightly brown.
• Add the minced meat and cook until color of the minced meat changes.(I usually keep some roasted minced meat with onion in the deep freezer, in one meal portions, because it is the basis for most of the Turkish meals. So this part is quicker form e, I only put the roasted minced meat with onions in the pan and heat for a while)
• Add the tomato mash(or peeled, grated tomatoes or tomato paste) and stir a few times, then add the leftover food mash. Stir a few times. Leave on the stove over light heat for about 5 minutes. Usually this mixture has enough water in it but if it seems too dry and you think it will stick or burn, add a little bit of water. Turn the heat off after about 5 minutes.

Preparation of the bechamel sauce:

• In a small deep pan put the olive oil and heat for one minute.
• Add the flour and over medium heat stir until it is lightly brown.
• Turn the heat off.
• Add the milk very very slowly. Add a bit, as much as a tablespoon of, stir and mix very well with the flour, then add again, make sure that all the milk is sucked up by the flour, stir, add some more milk again and continue until the flour is fully saturated with milk and will not make bumps if you add the rest.
• Turn the heat on to high, add the rest of the milk, stir the mixture until it boils, then turn the heat to medium and wait until the mixture thickens. You do not need to wait until it gets thick like a pudding because you will put the lasagna in the oven. The bechamel sauce will be cooked there also.

Preparation of lasagna:

• I have a 20x20 shallow glass oven bowl. I put some bechamel sauce first and cover the bottom surface of the bowl with it. I put two sheets of lasagna side by side in the bowl. I cover the top of the lasagna sheets with the meat sauce. I pour some bechamel sauce on top of the meat sauce, just to lightly cover it, then I put two more sheets of lasagna and repeat the process until I run out of the sauces. I put two sheets of lasagna at the very top and cover the top with grated cheese.
• I put the bowl in the oven and I cook for 25 minutes at 180 degrees. Please watch the lasagna from time to time if it is the first time you are trying it because as in each recipe I state, every oven and stove are different and you might need to keep the lasagna less or more in the oven accordingly.
• Take the lasagna out of the oven after 25 minutes, or after the grated cheese is deliciously browned (not burned).
• Enjoy!

Check out http://easytasty.blogspot.com/ for quick, practical, delicious recipes because eating good is living good!

Creamy Mushroom Soup with Carrot, Celeriac & Dill

2011-02-14T21:23:00.002+02:00

Winter time is soup time. Your inner body warms up slowly with each sip, and you feel yourself better and better. It is the prize of making it to your sweet home after a tiring freezing journey in winter conditions. It is a quick, delicious and healthy remedy for cold.

It not only warms you up but also softens and activates intestines and gives you the chance to take in all the useful vitamins and minerals which are normally drained and wasted with the juice of the meal when you boil or cook vegetables and meat.

Soup is not only a miracle nutritious meal in which you can add any useful vegetable or pulse and enrich with meat juice but also very easy to prepare. It is very fulfilling when you eat with croutons or some bread. It can be a good diet course.

To benefit from all of these blessings everyone should know at least one good soup recipe. I am sharing here a delightful one for the ones who love mushrooms.

The basics to cooking is the same for nearly all vegetable soups so innovative masters of the kitchen will surely use this as a stepstone to their own super recipe.

Ingredients:250 gr of mushrooms of any kind

1 small celeriac root
1 carrot
A handful of dill
1tablespoon of flour
1 tablespoon of olive oil( or vegetable oil)
1 glass of milk
3 glasses of water (you may use chicken or meat broth)
Salt,grounded black pepper, cumin

Preparation:

Slice the mushrooms as thin as you like
Grate the carrot and celeriac
Chop the dill
Put olive oil and flour in a deep pot and brown the flour slightly over medium heat
Add the mushrooms, celeriac and carrot and stir until the vegetables have slightly softened, over low heat.
Add the milk ( for the cream) and water.
I also add a tablet of chicken broth, to enrichen its taste
Add salt, cumin and pepper, as much as you like. Add some, stir, taste, add some more if you like.
Cook over high heat until it boils. Stir from time to time.
After it boils turn the heat to medium and keep on cooking until it thickens. I like soup a bit thick so I cook a bit long but if you like it more fluid cook less. It is all up to you.you can understand thickness from the movements of the spoon while you are stirring. If it gets to move slower and slower while you are stirring it means the soup is getting thicker.
Shortly before you turn the heat off add the dill.If dill is not cooked to much its aroma will be felt much better.

Enjoy your delicious mushroom soup.

Eggs with Spinach

2011-02-08T19:56:00.003+02:00

Spinach is one of my favorite vegetables not only because I like its taste but also I can find it frozen in stores which saves the time to clean and cut them and it can be cooked very easily. In my country we cook it with minced meat and serve with yoghurt. Very healthy,satisfying and delicious meal.

After I got married it is a totally different story.My husband does not like spinach very much yet I do not want to give it up so easily.So I decided to cook spinach mixed with something else,hoping that the other ingredients would somewhat hide the genuine taste of spinach and he would eat it as eagerly as me.

Eggs with spinach is one of the tricky recipes I tried and I must say that I more than succeeded my goal.This simple meal became one of my husband's favorite. In fact omelet with spinach is also another very common spinach recipe in Turkey yet this one I will share is enriched with potatoes and cheese so I think it is quite unique.It is also very practical to cook,not to mention its taste.

So here is the way to the hearts of your beloved ones with a spinach fobby.

Ingredients:

4eggs
500gr spinach
50 gr feta cheese
50 gr kashkaval cheese
1 large potato
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt & black pepper & red pepper

Preparation:

Cut the potatoe into small cubicle pieces. Put 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and add the potatoes. Fry them by stirring from time to time.

Chop the spinach in small pieces and put them in another pan. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and cook over slow heat,until the color of the spinachs get darker and they are softened.

Grate feta cheese & kashkaval cheese.

Break the eggs in a cup, put a pinch of salt, black & red grounded pepper and stir.

Add the spinach over fried potatoes and stir.

Add the eggs over and stir again. Cook over slow heat until the eggs are hard.

Sprinkle the grated feta cheese all over the mixture.

When the cheese melts, turn the hardened mixture over, so that the feta cheese side is at the bottom. You can easily do this with the help of a large spatula.

Sprinkle the kashkaval cheese over the upper side of the mixture. Again after the cheese melts, turn the mixture upside down.

Your eggs with spinach is ready to serve now.

Enjoy!

For other easy, tasty, practical recipes that makes your life easier visit http://easytasty.blogspot.com/

How to Make A Delicious Berry Pie?

2011-02-03T22:46:00.002+02:00

Sweet or salty, pie is not a traditional pastry of our country. We have it but it is not baked at homes as often as cakes. I am pretty sure that my mom never baked it and I do not think she even knows how to.

Anyway I like pies very much when I try them in cafes and such places. I love both their taste & form. So I decided to try baking one, and even bought a special pan with notched sides. Then it took me like 3 years to realize this goal yesterday, just because I thought it is very difficult to make (ok I accept thet some kind of laze might have worsened the situation) , only to see that it is totally the opposite. I am so amazed & delighted with the delicious piece of pastry I created, I cannot wait to share my recipe with everyone.

Here are the ingredients for the dough:
• 3 glasses of wheat flour
• 3 eggs
• ½ glass of vegetable oil
• ½ glass of sugar
• 1 package of vanilla
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder

Ingredients for berry gel:
• 500 gr. of blackberries
• 100 gr. of blueberries
• 1 glass of sugar
• 2 tablespoons of starch

Preparation:
• In a large bowl, mix eggs, vegetable oil, ½ glass sugar, vanilla and baking powder. Add the flour slowly, add some, mix, add some more and continue like this. Make a dough. Wrap it with stretch film, put in the fridge and keep there for half an hour.
• In a pot, cook the blackberries and blueberries with sugar and starch, over medium heat, until the mixture becomes like a berry jam.
• Save a handful of the dough and roll the rest out with a rolling pin. Roll it out wider than the bottom of the pie pan.
• Wrap the dough around the rolling pin and slowly unfold over the pie pan. This is an easy method to put the rolled out dough over the pan.
• Place the dough over the bottom of the pie pan edges covering the pan’s edges.
• Pour the berry gel over the dough, to cover it all over.
• Roll out the rest of the dough that you saved. Cut out 1-2 cm. wide bands and place the bands over the pie, one row vertical, other row horizontal. Or pick small pieces from the dough and roll them between two hands to make threads. Put the threads over the pie one row vertical then other row horizonal.
• Heat the oven at 180 C for 15 minutes.
• Place the pan in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Please note that baking heat and duration might differ from one oven to another. Watch the pie while baking at your first time to find the right period and degrees to bake.

Enjoy!

I made the same recipe with peaches. It is as delicious. I recommend it!

Do not wait to visit http://easytasty.blogspot.com/ for other quick and delicious recipes to make your life a fest each day.

A Praise for Breakfast: Make It Even Bigger with Sausages In Tomato Sauce

2010-09-07T10:53:00.000+03:00

A Smart Way to Reuse Leftover Biscuits: Learn How To Make Mosaic or Pyramid Cake

2010-09-03T20:11:00.003+03:00

While we were moving in to our new house we could not cook anything proper and buying packages of different kinds of biscuits was a good idea to quickly satisfy our hunger and keep on working. After we moved in completely and started our new life as a newly wed couple, I noticed that our cellar in the kitchen was full of half eaten packages of biscuits of every kind.

Those half package biscuits are always kept for a while but doesn’t matter how tightly you wrap them they become useless. You keep them till they are so rotten and so unedible that your consiousness is releived enough to throw them into the wastebin.

I don’t like throwing away any food if it is not threatening health so I started thinking of a way to reuse these biscuits. Then I remembered my mother making a delicious dessert out of biscuits for me and my sister while we were small children. It is called Mosaic Cake or Pyramid Cake. I quickly searched for its recipe and tried it.

I not only found an economical way to reuse leftover biscuits and felt myself smart enough but also remembered to make this delicious and for me nostalgic dessert which is very easy to prepare with the very ingredients usually found in homes.

Follow me below to taste it yourself! It is going to be your favourite life saving recipe when you need to prepare something quick and sweet for your beloved ones.

Ingredients:

• 500 gr. of biscuits of any kind, can be a mix of different varieties.
• 125 gr. of butter
• 225 ml. of milk (1 glass)
• 60 gr. of cocoa powder (4 tablespoons)
• 100 gr. of sugar (4 tablespoons)
• A handful of chestnuts or hazelnuts (optional)
• Grated coconuts for decoration ( optional)

Step by step guide to this delicacy:

• Make the biscuits into little pieces and put in a big deep bowl.
• In a small pan melt the butter.
• Mix the cocoa powder and sugar in.Stir till the sugar has fully melted.
• Add the milk and stir enough times to make sure that all ingredients have mixed in.
• Add the sauce onto the biscuit pieces.
• Add the broken chestnuts or hazelnuts in if you like.
• Make a dough by stirring with a spoon or with your hands gently.
• After that keep the dough in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes so that it hardens a bit and becomes ready to be shaped.
• Take the dough out of the refrigerator, put it on a flat and preferably thin & long plate like a rectangle or oval.
• Shape it with your hands as you like. You can roll it and make it like a long cylinder or you can shape it as a pyramid like my mother did, by making its two sides flat.
• Sprinkle some grounded coconut over it like snow flakes if you want.
• Put the mosaic cake in the freezer and wait for a few hours.
• After that slice it and serve it.

Enjoy!

Yasemin’s Favorite Easy Recipe: Eggs with Potatoes

2009-12-10T21:15:00.003+02:00

Yasemin’s Favorite Easy Recipe: Eggs with Potatoes

Very Easy Breakfast Recipe: Italian Eggs

2009-12-07T20:55:00.004+02:00

Chicken Dinner for Moms on The Run

2009-12-04T19:49:00.001+02:00

Learn How to Cook Turkish Style Creamy Tomato Soup

2009-12-01T22:06:00.002+02:00

Learn How to Cook Turkish Style Creamy Tomato Soup

Here is How You Can Cook Delicious Spicy Red Lentil Balls

2009-11-21T18:56:00.002+02:00

Here is How You Can Cook Delicious Spicy Red Lentil Balls

How to Make Turkish Pilaf

2009-11-09T22:13:00.002+02:00

How to Make Turkish Pilaf

Chicken with Curry Sauce

2009-11-04T20:41:00.001+02:00

Chicken with Curry Sauce

Seven Gadgets for More Convenience and Fun in The Kitchen

2009-10-15T11:31:00.002+03:00

Seven Gadgets for More Convenience and Fun in The Kitchen

Shared via AddThis

How to make butter biscuits?

2009-10-04T23:28:00.001+03:00

How to Make Paluze: A Quick and Tasty Dessert?

2009-08-25T23:27:00.003+03:00

Guests for dinner? Don’t worry your dessert is ready in minutes!
Paluze is a delicious, sour-sweet dessert which you can prepare in very little time whenever you want to pamper yourself or your family. It can also be your life saver when you have guests for dinner at the end of a full time work day.
Ingredients ( for 4 people) :

*200 ml. Pomegranate juice
*200 ml. Apple juice
*200 ml. Sourcherry juice
*50 gr. Plain biscuits
*50 gr. Grounded chestnuts
*3 tablespoons of sugar
*3 tablespoons of starch

Preparation:

*In a bowl break the biscuits into little pieces and mix them with the grounded walnuts.
*Pour the pomegranate juice into a soucepan. Ad one tablespoon of starch and one tablespoon of sugar.Cook this mixture to boil, continuously stirring, until it thickens like a jelly sauce.
*Take two glass ice cream bowls.
*Pour the pomegranate sauce into the bowls. Wait until it is frozen.
*Pour the apple juice into a soucepan and make a jelly like sauce just like you did for the pomegranate juice.
*Cover the top of the frozen pomegaranate sauce with a layer of biscuit_chestnut mixture. Pour the apple sauce on top of it. Wait until it is frozen.
*Pour the sourcherry juice into a soucepan and make a jelly like sauce just like you did for the pomegranate and apple juices.
*Cover the top of the frozen apple sauce with a thin layer of biscuit_chestnut mixture. Pour the sourcherry sauce on top of it.
*Keep the dessert in the refrigerator for about an hour.

Serving tips:
Decorate the top of the dessert with some chestnuts if you like.

Summer Squash ( Zucchini) Mucver

2009-08-06T21:10:00.004+03:00

A Turkish Delicacy
For everyone who knows that squash is not only the name of a kind of sports, let's admit that summer squash (zucchini) is not the tastiest vegetable. Turkish cuisine has always had some solutions for this matter though, and here is one of them:Mucver.

So why on earth should we cook a dish of summer squash at all?
Let's see... Eating good is being healthy, being healthy is living good, living good is a lifestyle. These green vegetables are low in calories (approximately 15 food calories per 100 g fresh zucchini), rich in fiber and contain potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, sodium and iron. They are very good laxatives, which means something very good for people with lazy intestine. They clean up our inner body like natural detox and help calm our nerves down.

So I think these give at least some of you enough reason to follow me to the kitchen to cook a nice & healthy Turkish dish, mucver, with summer squash.

Let's start cooking!
While I was searching the Internet to get some information about squash vegetable, I was amazed by the varieties of summer squash. I use the "middle eastern" ones in the picture above because this is the main type that we have in Turkey, but if you have other forms of it around where you live, I think they will do too.

I cook mucver in the oven but you can also fry them in hot vegetable or olive oil by making flat round discs of mucver by the help of a spoon, which will of course ad more calories than necessary to it.

Ingredients ( for 2 serves):
* 2 summer squashes ( medium size will be enough)
* 4 scallions
* 2 eggs
* Dill & parsley ( a handful from each will do)
* 3 tablespoons of wheat flour
* Salt & pepper (season according to your taste but summer squash itself contains a lot of salt in it so it doesn't need too much extra salt)
* 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Cooking Instructions:
*Cut the stalk and bottom part of the squashes off. Grate them. Water comes out of the squashes while grating. To squeeze it you can use your hand or put the grated squash in a strainer and get the water out with the help of a spoon.
*Chop the scallions into little bits.
*Chop the dill & parsley.
*Put grated squash, chopped scallions, dill & parsley into a deep bowl.
*Add the two eggs, salt, pepper, olive oil and wheat flour into the bowl.
*Stir the mixture.
*Get a pot suitable to use in the oven not too deep or too shallow, rub its interior with some oil, in order to prevent the mucver from sticking. Pour the mixed ingredients into the oven pot.
*Cook mucver for 25-30 minutes in 200 Celsius degrees. The cooking period and the heat might give different results in different oven so for the first time watch it from time to time while cooking. When the top becomes deliciously brown it is usually the time to take it out of the oven.

Tips:
1-Enjoy your light healthy delicious meal with yogurt if you like. I like it better with yogurt myself.
2-You can reduce the amount of zucchini and add grated potatoes & carrots also.For example one zucchini, one potato, one carrot would make a great mix.