Mahmudiye

Recently I have developed interest in Ottoman Cuisine. Unlike traditional Turkish Cuisine, Ottoman cuisine is more like a fusion kitchen. The first recipe I want to share is called 'Mahmudiye' which is a chicken dish with honey. It reminded me some Asian recipes.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken breast (it is better if you use both leg and breast, but I only had breast at home)
• Butter or olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1/2 onion
• 3-4 dried apricots
• 3-4 dried figs
• 1 plum or 2 prunes
• 1/2 ounce raisins
• 1/2 ounce almonds
• 5 grams of honey
• Basil
• Parsley
• Salt
• Black Pepper
• Oregano

Preparation

First boil chicken breast and then make small pieces out of it with your hands. Don't throw away the water.

Then chop figs, apricots, plum and onion. Put raisins and almonds in warm water and wait about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes take out the almonds and peel them.

Take a large pan and put some olive oil in it and after heating the oil add minced garlic and onions. Then add ingredients in this order: chicken, almonds and fruits and cook them in high heat couple of minutes.

Then add parsley, oregano, salt and basil and roast couple of more minutes and add black pepper and honey. Finally add warm water that you boiled chicken in it and after it boils reduce the heat and simmer about 10 minutes. You can serve it with rice pilaf, enjoy!
 

Cauliflower Pizza

I do not eat bread anymore, however I really miss pizza.So, I decided to make a healthy pizza with cauliflower and it turned out great!

Ingredients

For the base

• 1/2 cauliflower
• 1 boiled potato
• 2 eggs
• spinach (optional)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• parsley
• salt
• cumin
• red pepper
• black pepper
• oregano

For topping

• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• Salt,pepper,oregano
• Spinach
• Onions
• Pepperoni
• Grated mozzarella

Preparation

Steam and chop cauliflowers and mix them with chopped potato, eggs, spinach, parsley, olive oil and spices. Pour it into a baking pan. Bake it in 400 F preheated oven around 30 minutes. In the mean time to prepare the sauce mix tomato paste and salt, pepper and oregano and some water. Put the sauce on the cauliflower base. Add mozzarella, onions, spinach and peperoni. Broil it 10 minutes and your pizza is ready. It will have a better texture the next day. Enjoy!

Cocoa Balls

Recently I have decided to eliminate  sugar in my life, after I discovered how the industry is trying to make us sick by feeding us with these junk food and make money our from our illness. I don't usually eat desserts, the only dessert I used to eat regularly was dark chocolate. But even if the high percentage ones have sugar in it, so I decided to make my own no sugar chocolate. I found couple of recipes online and tried. It was a successful attempt to soothe my craving. I used only mulberry and raisins cause those are the only ones I had at home, if you have any other kind of dried fruit such as dates you can use it. But be careful, dates will be sweeter.
*This recipe is for 20 balls

Ingredients

• 1/2 ounce of peanuts
• 2-3 walnuts (you can add more)
• 1 ounce of hazelnuts
• 1.5 ounce of dried mulberry 
• 1 ounce of raisins 
• 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 egg
• Coconut (optional)

Preparation

First put nuts into a food processor and grind them about 1 minute. Then add dried fruits and grind them one more time.

Lastly add egg and cocoa powder and grind one last time.

Take the mixture in a bowl and knead it.

I did small ones and had 20 of them. You can make bigger balls. You can sprinkle some coconut on top f them if you want.
Bake it about 20 minutes in a 350 F preheated oven. If you don't want to put egg you don't need to bake it. You can just chill in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Peanut Butter

I wanted to buy peanut butter the other day, but when I saw that most of them contain at least 25% of sugar, I decided to make my own. I would have done that before if I knew it was that easy!




Ingredients

• 1 cup of peanut
• Honey or molasses (optional)
• Salt (optional)

Preparation

Take a large pan and roast peanuts. I have roasted a little bit more than I have to, so mine was a little darker. Roasting couple of minutes will suffice.

Then put them into a food processor and grind them until they become creamy. Add honey and salt if you want. Your peanut butter is ready.

Enjoy!

Chia Pudding

I try to avoid sweets lately. So I decided to make a light dessert with no added sugar. I had some fruits and chia seeds. I thought why I have never tried chia pudding and here we are! I hope you enjoy:)

Note:This recipe is for 6 to 8 cups of puddings

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup of chia seeds
• 1 cup of yogurt
• 250 ml almond/coconut milk
• Honey/mollasses
• Strawberries(optional)
• Banana (optional)
• Shredded coconut(optional)
• 1/2 cup of water

Preparation

Soak Chia seeds in water and wait about 30 minutes. Take a large bowl add yogurt, almond milk and chia seeds and refrigerate one night. Next day, put some of it in a smaller bowl, add some honey and stir. Serve it with some fruits and coconut. The reason of the owl shape is that I put the pudding into freezer in a silicone mold one night.

Meatballs in Clay-Pot

I wanted to make meatballs today and use my new clay-pot. It turned out to be really delicious dish.

Ingredients

For the Meatballs

• 300 gr ground beef
• Salt, black pepper, cumin
• 1/2 small onion,chopped in little pieces
• Bread crumbs

For the Meal

• 3 medium potatoes
• 3 sweet green peppers
• 1/2 small onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Cherry tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 dessertspoon butter or ghee
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil

Preparation

To prepare meatballs mix all the ingredients in a large bowl and knead them until you can make little balls out of them. 

Cut potatoes in cubes and put them on the bottom of clay-pot after pouring the sunflower oil on the surface.

Put meatballs on top of  potatoes. Then add onions, tomatoes and green peppers. Bake this in 400F oven for 30 minutes.

Put the tomato paste in a small bowl, add 2 cups of warm water and minced garlic. Add this mixture to the clay-pot after taking it from the oven.

Spread the butter on top an put it back to the oven and bake it like 20 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.

Then add some grated mozzarella and bake another 2 minutes until it melts. I like it crispy, so I baked like 5 minutes after putting the cheese on top.

Date Snack

I bought some roasted chickpeas, I ate some of them and the rest has been on the shelf for couple of months. Then I realized I needed to find some other way to eat them and decided to mix them with dates. The good part of this recipe is you don't necessarily need chickpeas or dates, you can use any kind of nuts and dried fruit such as prunes, apricots or figs.

Ingredients

• 10 dates
• 100gr roasted chickpeas
• 1 tablespoon tahini
• 1 oz raisins
• Any kind of nut-I used couple of hazelnuts, some almonds and 3-4 walnuts

Preparation

Take out the seeds of the dates and put them in the water around one hour. I did not have food processor so I crushed the chickpeas and nuts in a mortar and pestle. I chopped the dates and raisins on the cutting board and mixed them all. If you want to use food processor, put tahini first add some water, when it got mixed add dates ad raisins and grind them together. Lastly add nuts and chickpeas and grind them altogether. Take out from the processor and put it on a parchment paper, cover up with stretch film and make it square with the help of a rolling pin. Bake it around 8 hours in the lowest heat like 150F until it gets dry. I only baked for 4 hours, it is still good.If you don't wan to bake it, just keep it in the fridge.