Category
July 23, 2016
Eggplant Lasagna When I am in the mood for comfort food, I can’t think of anything more satisfying than Eggplant Lasagna. Cutting into layers of tender pasta, gooey melted cheese, eggplant, tomato sauce, more cheese. . . Ummmm. Making my own mouth water. 🙂 The thing about a good Lasagna is letting it sit for a few minutes after removing it from the oven so it can firm up. Who can ever wait though? When I make Lasagna, we are...
April 17, 2016
Zesty Garlic Lemon Grilled Boneless Chicken Thighs I am so excited that the weather has warmed up and it is actually nice to sit on my back porch and use my grill. I had some of my Saffron Garlic Infused Olive Oil left over from making my dressing for my Chickpea and Orzo Salad and I wanted to use it up. What better use for it than to make a marinade for some grilled chicken. I love garlic and lemon...
April 14, 2016
Chickpea Orzo Salad Something about salad just makes me think summer. This Chickpea Orzo Salad is no exception. It literally screams summer. The crunchy cucumbers and sweet grape tomatoes make this salad really refreshing. This salad would be a great light lunch or side to grilled meats. And if you are looking for a dish to take along to any summer cook-outs you may be going to this summer, you definitely need to make this and take it along. Your vegetarian...
April 13, 2016
Saffron Garlic Infused Olive Oil First of all, before going any further, I would like to address concerns about the price of Saffron. Several people had mentioned wanting a substitute for Saffron because of the price. I included a picture of my Saffron that I bought from TJMAXX with the sticker attached because I wanted to point something out. While Saffron is expensive, you can find bargains sometimes. Plus, if you are only using a pinch of it, the...
March 6, 2016
Manti Inspired Fresh Made Spaghetti and Meatballs First and foremost, let me say this is not Manti!!!! Manti is a delicious Turkish dish that is best made when you have plenty of helping hands around. It could be done alone but part of the fun of making Manti is spending the time stuffing the dough with the meat mixture while you chit-chat with your family and/or friends! The best Manti in Turkey is from the Kayseri region. My former...
February 7, 2016
Oven Roasted Pickled Lemon Chicken “Oven Roasted Pickled Lemon Chicken”, bet I made your mouth water. Didn’t I? It is a proven fact that just saying lemon can cause your mouth to water. I bought these pickled lemons on my last trip to Atlanta. I had been wanting to try them for a while. I had seen several Moroccan recipes using the pickled lemons and thought they sounded interesting. The good thing about these pickled lemons is that the flavor...
January 16, 2016
Garlic Yogurt Sauce Garlic Yogurt Sauce is one of my family’s favorite sauces. Because it is so versatile, we use it like most people use Ranch Dressing. It is so good on oven roast potatoes, french fries, kofte (Turkish meatballs) and sandwiches. It was especially good on the Falafel sandwiches I made recently. Honestly, I could almost drink this stuff. Another variation on this sauce would be to add some seeded and chopped cucumbers. You could make this a little thicker...
January 16, 2016
Tahini Sauce Tahini Sauce is a great sauce for Falafel Sandwiches and Kofte. The main ingredient in this sauce is tahini which is ground sesame paste. It adds loads of flavor to dishes like hummus. In Turkey, they even use tahini to make something called Tahin-pekmez, which is tahini mixed with pekmez (molasses) that is served at breakfast on bread or sometimes as a dessert. This sauce could also be used as a dressing for a chopped salad. You...
January 16, 2016
Falafel If you have never had Falafel, you don’t know what you are missing. They are little balls of heaven. You all know that I am far from being a vegetarian, but if I ever decide to go down that path, I am taking these little jewels with me. Besides being deep fried, these are very healthy. And yes, you can bake them if you want to go that route. Just spray a baking pan with cooking spray or...
December 7, 2015
Creamy Manchego Rose Sauce over Angel Hair Pasta I love pasta. Not just a little, but, really, really, really love pasta. I could eat it everyday. With meat, without meat, tomato sauce, cream sauce or both sauce (rose)! Creamy Manchego Rose Sauce over Angel Hair Pasta which combines both tomato and cream to make this gorgeous rose sauce is one of my favorites. Whenever I ask my daughter what she would like for dinner, she almost always says “Ooh, Mom, can...
June 24, 2015
Nothing says comfort food like meat and potatoes. That is why you are going to love my recipe for Kofte Patates aka Meatballs with Potatoes. It is a Turkish dish and is super easy to prepare. You could even prepare it the night before, cover with aluminum foil, then just take out of the fridge while you are pre-heating your oven. Then bake as directed and pair with a nice salad. You will have dinner on the table in...
April 14, 2015
My friend Rania recently showed me how she makes Makdous, which is eggplant cured in olive oil and that is the inspiration for my newest pasta recipe, Penne Pasta with Makdous, Tomato and Feta . Making Makdous is a pretty tedious process and I will make a post on that later. I will quickly tell you how it is made. We started by preparing the eggplant. This is just removing the stems. We then boiled the eggplant briefly. Next, we salted...
