I know I mentioned this meal already in the beginning but there are many different ways of doing stuffed peppers, as I said some have meat in it, some rice and some both. But this time I am going to change my kitchen to a special turkish cuisine and cook my favorite kind of stuffed peppers by myself and explain with pictures one step to the other what to do next.

First of all the ingrediants for 4 persons:

• 2 onions
• 12 peppers
• parsley
• 500g ground meat
• 2 cups long grain rice
• 3 tablespoon small nudles
• 4 big tomatoes
• 2 tablespoon tomato puree
• 1 egg
• yoghurt
• 5 tablespoon breadcrump
• vegatable stock
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper

The steps:

1. Wash the peppers, cut the inside out and cut the top of.

2. Cut onions in small pieces.

3. Put ground beef in a boal, season it with salt and pepper, ann add the onions, the egg and 5 tablespoons breadcrump.

4. Take the top of the peppers off and stuff   the peppers with the ground meat.

5. But olive oil in a steamer and steam the stuffed peppers in the oil for a little while (ca. 4 min.).

6. Put vegatable stock in a cup with hot water and add 2 talespoon tomato puree to it. Pour the cup in the steamer and add another cup of hot water to it.

7. Grate the tomatoes and add them to the steamer aswell.

8. Close the steamer and wait until there is enough pressure on it (usually there is a sign on a steamer that tells you when that moment is reached)

9. After that point is reached cook the stuffed peppers for another 10 minutes in the steamer.

10. Meanwhile you start preparing the rice: Wash the rice, put olive oil in a pot and add the 3 tablespoon of small tiny nuddles to it. Wait until the small nuddles turn goldish brown and after that add the rice and 4 cups of water.

11. Cook the rice as long as needed for the water to disapear.

12. When both rice and stuffed peppers are done, serve both on one plate with yoghurt and parsley.

If you are done it should look similar to this:

another turkish food blog with briliant recipes: Amost Turkish Recipes

I really like this blog because it is well organized, the recipes are seperated into breakfast recipes, lunch, veggy and even seperated into different ingrediants. So if you like something a lot you can click on it and get all the different recipes including that ingrediant that you like so much. Check it out!

Besides turkish food I love italian food because i could die for pasta. Italian Cuisine is also very famous because almost everybody loves pizza and/or pasta. I actually asked 23 of my friends and 14 of them answered that their favorite food is pizza, and pasta was the favorite food of 5. Only 4 people like other meals the best. I knew that italian food was loved by a lot of people but the result even surprised me.

Wherever you go in Europe or even in the Worl you will always find places that serve pasta and pizza since it became so popular. When I spend a year in the United States I thought I am going to eat burgers and french fries the most but in every restaurant I went to with my hostfamily served pasta or/and pizza. I loved it. On the other hand we could not find one turkish restaurant around Buffalo. That was little upsetting. But what we did find was a greek restaurant in downtown Buffalo and as I already wrote in a previous blog, the food is similar to tukish food so I was happy to at least find a greek restaurant. This summer I went to russia, france and sweden and in all countries I ate at least twice pasta and even more often pizza.

Italian restaurants are everywhere and the funny or interesting part of it is that those restarants are often not even run by italians. I have already seen turkish people running italian restaurants, Arabian and even Germans. And what is really surprising about that is that the food taste good aswell. Usually a lot of people think that food taste the best when you eat it in that country but I think the best pasta I have ever eaten was in Paris in a small italian family busines. But I have to admit that most meals are the best in their origin country.

Still to recommend you one good restaurant where you can eat deliscous pasta and pizza in Berlin: Vapiano

There are many variations when it comes to Pizza. Some Italian make the dough very thin but some also like the dough thick. Some like their pizza with just cheese and tomatoes and some like to have as much stuff on it as possible like the Pizza Mista (tomatoes, peperonies, peppers, mushrooms, bacon, corn and olives). But the turkish cuisine has also a kind of pizza, Lahmacun. The dough of a lahmacun is very very thin and they only but a tomato sauce with grounded beef on it and put it in an oven. When it is done they put cold vegetables in their (lettuce, toamtoes, cucumbers, onions) and role the whole thing up.

Here a picture so you get an idea how I mean it:

To find out mor about the italian cuisine, meals and recipes, I would recommend you to visit this blog about italian food:

cook-italian blog

I like this blog a lot because it is very entertaining to read and it has some deiscious recipes on their for you. One can tell that the author of this blod is passionate about italian food and that he loves it.

Hasir is a turkish restaurant chain here in Berlin. Hasir started out with a single restaurant but since it got more and more popular over the years they opened more restaurants. Currently there are 6 restaurants all over Berlin City, in Mitte, Wilmersorf, Schöneberg, Spandau and 2 in Kreuzberg.

For more information: Hasir webpage

First time I went to Hasir was when one of my best friends celebrated her birthday there. She invited a lot of friends from different origins but since she is turkish as well she wanted to show all her friends who did not know a lot of turkish cuisines and probably never tried it bevor, how tasty and deliscious it is. And it worked out, when we went there we all were starving and my friend ordered a huge plate with all different kinds of  food.

It was amazing and I have never seen such a huge plate with so many different meals on it. Everybody found something on the plate they liked. After an hour of eating we were all full but all of us could not stop eating. he food was so good and the variety impressed me. There was rice, köfte, kebab, grilled chicken, sigara börek, Kisir, goat cheese salat, humus and much more on the plate.

It was proabably one of the nicest evenings at a restaurant I had and after that we celebrated her birthday there every single year. I really can only recommend this restaurant for everybody who loves turkish food or who would like to try it once because those mixed plates really give a good impression of what turkish food is like.

They serve soups, cold and warm starters, grill and fish dishes, salades and selfmade desert.

Have a closer look an the menu

The atmosphere is tratidional like in restaurants in Istanbul for example. Pretty lound but still comfortable and kind of personal. The waiters are very polite and the cooks obviously make a good job.

As coffe they usually drink turkish coffe. The special thing about turkish coffee is not the beans the coffee is prepared from, it is the way the coffee is prepared. The coffee is prepared by boiling finely powdered roastcoffee beans in a pod. When the coffee is done you serve the coffee in very small nicely painted cups.

When you are finished drinking it is a tradition to turn the cup upside down and wait for about a half an hour. During that time the dregs leak down from the sediment. This procedure usually creates a very nice pattern in the inside of the cup and it is said that some people can read the future in those patterns in the cups. My aunt always told me that she could read it but when I got older I realized that she just saw stuff in the pattern with a lot of phantasy and then build a story out of it.

Well I just remember that I was always so impressed when I saw the beautiful pattern and when I listened to her stories.

Conserning tea the turkish almost only drink black tea. But not like we used to from a tea bag. Turkish have a special way of preparing tea.

They have a special tea kettle which consits of two parts. In the top part there are the tealeaves or most of the time just powder made out of the black leaves. In the bottom part there is jut water.

When the tea is ready you first pour in some of the top strong concentrated black tea and then you fill in the glass with the water from the bottom part. With this way you can also decide exactly how strong you want your black tea to be. Then you serve the tea in very traditional special tea glasses and almost to every time of the day.

to get to know more about turkish coffee culture and how it is prepared go to:

Mahir’s Turkish Coffeehouse

related blog about britain tea culture

For example Tsasiki: There is Tsasiki in both cuisines and both say that they were the first one to have it. The same with the turkish Döner and the greek Gyros. They are  not the same but still very very similar. And they always argue which dish taste better. The Greek Cuisine is in general more spread over the world that is why a lot of people think that the turkish imitate the greek and not the other way around. I personally do not know who did what the first or who imitated who I just know that I love allo three cuisines.

With the turkish and kurdish there have always been problems so the cuisine is almost identical but again both argue who imitaded who and who made what first. I think it is ridiculous because since all three cuisines are so similar they should admit that all meals are good and not try to show the other cuisine in a bad light. And that is what one of the stores sis in Paris: They put all three cuisines on one sign to show that it is almost the same!

They sold Döner and Gyros and all different kinds of Tsasiki! I think this is a really good idea to show people that it is pointless to argue about those kind of things!

related blog: greek food blog

We get together with all my oncles, I have 3 linving in Berlin and their families so we usually are a total number of 20.

That means we also have to cook a lot of food!!!! Since my dad loves duck what Germans eat usually on christmas, we have duck, and since my mom can cook “Hühnerfrikassee” the best, we also have that and since we always have “Falscher Hase” with dumplings and red cabbage we also have that.

All of this are german dishes but it is weird because whenever we have that on christmas it tastes different than when I had those meals at my friends house! The meals have some kinf of turkish taste to it! It is weird but I love it!

Hope you all had a nice christmas eve!

One dad when I was 5 years old my dad came over to pick us up and I was soooo happy and excited about the weekend with my dad (the weekend were always so much fun with him!!!) but when I woke up that morning I had such a stomachache you cannot even imagine. I was so upset because I knew that my mom would not let me go out with such a stomchachache. My dad came in and saw me on the couch all kuddeled up in blankets. I told him how bad I feel and how upset I am that I could not spend the weekend with him.

But my dad said: Don’t worry, I know how you are going to feel better very quick and then still spend the weekend with me and your brother. I am going to make you the beste soup ever calles mercimek corbasi and your stomachache will be gone very soon. So he baught all the ingrediants:

• onions
• butter
• lentils
• creme fraiche
• pumkin seeds

and made me the best lentil soup I have ever eaten in my life and my stomachache was really gone after I ate the soup.

So for everyone who has problems with the stomach or has reaaly bad stomachache I can do nothing than recommend this soup. It is like a miracle.

Try it out and let me know!

how to do lentil soup (= mercimek corbasi)

Well obviously there is a difference because in Turkey you have the product right there and I think one can taste a difference. It just taste better when you eat a börek with goatcheese from a turkish street market in Turkey because the goatcheese is maid right there of the goats in the mountains, rather than the goatcheese that needed to travel such a long journey to finally arrive in Germany or even goatcheese from a supermarket. The flavour is missing in supermarket cheese and it is the same with different products aswell.

Another question that arises is if there is a difference in turkish food made in Germany or for example turkish food made in America.

Again my answer would be ‘yes’ because all the different countries adapt to their food culture and change the ingrediants or sometimes even only the way of preparing certain things so it taste just right for their own population. For example I can taste a difference in a Döner Kebab that I ate in Germany with a Döner Kebab I ate in  London.

]]> http://talyay.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-there-a-real-difference/feed/ 1 talyay IMG_2249 IMG_2007 http://talyay.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/sofram/ http://talyay.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/sofram/#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:51:02 +0000 talyay http://talyay.wordpress.com/?p=73 ]]> Sofram is the turkish restaurant of my dad in Berlin. The food differs from the most turkish restaurants I know because they do not serve Döner Kebab.

It is pretty cheap and with every meal you get a salad and rice on the side. The meals vary from day to day, but there is almost always at least one vegetarian vegetarian and most of the time they also serve pasta just in case people bring their small kids who do not like to try turkish food.

Each day there are 5-7 different meals.

Most commom meals:

• tas kebab (veal gulash)
• izmir köfte (rissole with potatoes and tomato sauce)
• kuzu/firin (veal scallopped)
• patlincan kebab (eggplant scalopped)
• dolma (stuffed peppers)
• kizartma (vegetables fried in a pan)
• tavuk budu (chicken pieces)
• taze fasulye (green beans with potatoes and tomato sauce)
• kuru fasulye (white beans)
• ispanak (spinach)

directions and comments

It is basically just Sucuk (garlic sausage) with eggs fried in a pan.

It is mostly served with bread and some people also but some vegetables in  the pan and frie them with the sausage. But a turkish breakfast usually also contains a tomato-onion salad, black and green olives on the side, goat cheese on the side and of course the typical turkish black tea. The coffe culture is not so widely spread yet in turkey and modern turkish families. They rather stick to their old black tea.

In general turkish people like to have heavy meals at all times(at least my family does ). But I can imagine that this can be a problem if you are not used to eat heavy meals very early in the morning. But I love it!

how to do it