zucchini and green apple salad

Without a doubt my favorite new recipe so far this summer! This is beyond “a keeper” into the territory of “one of my favorite salads of all-time”! Happy to share this recipe from Didem Şenol‘s Aegean Flavours, which I read on a wonderful Turkish food blog called Pantry Fun. I’ll include both the original, and the version I made with what I had.

---

---

MY VERSION:

1 large zucchini
1 large sour green apple like Granny Smith
a few spikes of garlic chives and a handful of mint leaves from my garden
half of a small container of goat cheese, crumbled
just a tiny bit of vinegar and olive oil
half a lemon, juiced
a sprinkle of nigella seeds, salt, and pepper

I sliced the zucchini and apple on a mandoline, tore the herbs by hand, and then added the other ingredients and mixed everything together.

---

THE ORIGINAL:

2 green courgettes/kabak

1 green apple/yeşil elma

½ bunch of dill/dereotu

1 spring onion/taze soğan

a handful fresh mint leaves/nane

150g lor peyniri OR goat’s cheese/keçi peyniri

20g nigella seeds/çörekotu

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

juice of half a lemon

100ml vinegar/sirke

extra virgin olive oil/sızma zeytinyağı

Slice the courgettes and apple as finely as possible. I used a mandolin slicer. Place the apple slices in water with lemon to prevent them from discolouring. Finely chop the dill, spring onion, and mint and mix with the courgette, apple and cheese. Add the nigella seeds. Add the vinegar and salt, and then finally the olive oil and mix together. The recipe states that if you add the olive oil first, the salad won’t absorb the vinegar. I would say, go carefully with the vinegar and taste the salad as you add it. You don’t want it to be overpoweringly vinegary.

write-up by Claudia at Pantry Fun – original recipe by Didem Şenol

---

Absolutely wonderful, fresh, delicious, and healthy. August is the perfect time of year for a no-cook recipe! The goat cheese and lemon are tangy, and the garlic chives and nigella seeds add just enough interesting flavor while still allowing the apple and zucchini taste to shine through. I didn’t have any dill in the house, but I can only imagine that the addition of fresh dill would make this salad almost too delicious to eat. I plan to eat this again and again!

---

Looking for more healthy plant-based summer recipes? If you like fresh raw salads, fresh fennel and cucumber salad in yogurt sauce is a favorite of mine. Cucumber salads are so budget-friendly and infinitely adaptable, and of course cooling, refreshing, and hydrating in increasingly hotter summers. I love a charred onion and cucumber salad (vegan!) and a Sichuan style cucumber salad and, if you love the mint and lemon in the zucchini and green apple salad, you’ll love this five-minute healthy cucumber, lime, and mint salad.

cacik (cooling turkish cucumber and yogurt)

A hot weather, no-cook, quick, light, and cooling vegetarian side.

Think of it like raita without cilantro and cumin.

PERFECT for cooling down something that is a little too spicy. Just serve a small bowl as a side dish!

+

2 cups plain yogurt
1 cup water
4 Persian cucumbers or mini cucumbers
a half-clove to 3 cloves garlic, minced FINELY
1/4 t to 1/2 tsp salt, to taste
1 1/2 tsp dried mint, or to taste
a drizzle of olive oil

Whisk the yogurt in a large bowl to make sure it’s smooth. Add water to the yogurt and whisk until it’s completely incorporated.
Grate the cucumbers in another bowl and if they’re too watery, squeeze out the excess water. If they’re not too watery, add the directly to the yogurt and water.
Mix well and add garlic, salt and dried mint. Taste and add more salt if needed.
Don’t heat or cook this. Just chill cacik in the fridge for 30 minutes before serving.
To serve, divide it between 4 bowls and top each with a little bit of olive oil.

+

Recipe by Unicorns in the Kitchen and adapted just a bit by friedsig

+

A great cooling raw sauce for anything super spicy, or even mild Turkish meals, anything from veg kofte to roasted chicken.

If you don’t like raw garlic, 3 cloves will be way too many. Even a half of a giant clove was quite a bit.

The neutral flavor is a bonus in the sense that it can go with foods that you would never pair with a middle Eastern appetizer, especially if you reduce the mint. I ate some with Sichuan style deep fried fish that got almost too spicy to eat overnight as it steeped in hot chili oil. The yogurt and cucumber and mint added such a cooling, fresh flavor to the way-too-spicy fish. I highly recommend the unusual combo of super spicy Asian food with this cacik!

Not something you would find yourself eating for a whole meal, like any other yogurt sauce. Just a perfect simple and cooling sauce to help use up your midsummer cucumber harvest.

Note: I recommend delicate Persian cucumbers for this. My coworker gave me two enormous heirloom cucumbers that had grown a bit woody and chewy. It did impact the texture of the cacik, even when grated.

turkish-style braised eggplant

Craving something sweet, healthy, and vegan?

1 large eggplant (about 1 pound)
2 teaspoons salt
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons pine nuts
1 large tomato, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
¼ cup raisins
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
black pepper
½ cup roughly chopped dill
2 tablespoons roughly chopped parsley
pinch of sugar (optional) 1 teaspoon sugar (optional – the raisins make it very sweet!)
Thick yogurt, for serving
Lemon wedges, for serving

1. Trim ends off the eggplant. With a vegetable peeler, cut off alternating strips of skin. Cut eggplant into 1-inch cubes, place in a colander over a large bowl and toss with salt. Let sit for 30 minutes to 3 hours, rinse well and squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible; do not break cubes up.

2. In a large skillet or saucepan, heat 1/4 cup olive oil over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add the eggplant cubes and move them around occasionally, until they are rather tender and somewhat browned, about 7 minutes. Remove from the pan with tongs, leaving as much oil as possible in the pan. Set aside.

3. Add remaining oil to the pan with the onions and pine nuts and stir occasionally, until the onions are transparent and some pine nuts are lightly browned, 7 or 8 minutes.

4. Return eggplant to the pan with the tomato, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, cumin and pepper. Mix well, then turn heat to low. Cover the pan and cook until the eggplant is very tender but still in distinct pieces, about 30 minutes. Uncover and continue cooking, stirring once or twice, until the liquid is somewhat thickened, 5 to 10 minutes.

5. Remove the pan from heat and let sit uncovered until it is at room temperature, about 45 minutes. Stir in the dill and parsley, adjust the seasonings to taste and serve, accompanied by yogurt and lemon wedges for squeezing.

+

recipe by John Willoughby at the NYT

+

I am firmly in the camp of people who never bothers to pan-fry eggplant. Why pan-fry, wasting all that time, when the eggplant just absorbs the oil? This method definitely worked, although the “7 minute pan-fry” was more like 17. The raisins and pine nuts meld perfectly with the other flavors. I cheaped out and skipped the dill and parsley, and it was still good. You can replace the pine nuts with lightly smashed walnuts or even peanuts. Even just a pared-down version of this – pinch of sugar and raisins, tons of eggplant and onions, a few nuts, fresh tomato, cinnamon, and cumin – would be incredible.

The salt cure really extracts a lot of the bitterness, but then again, I used super fresh eggplant from the farmers market that was nowhere near as bitter as the supermarket stuff. I think next time I’ll just roast the eggplant. It’ll turn the dish into more of an eggplant dip than distinct cubes of eggplant, but who cares? It’s easy.

Ended up eating this throughout the week as a dip with crackers, and had no problem finishing the whole thing.

Adding this one to my favorite aubergine / eggplant recipes. If you like the kick of sweetness to balance out the bitterness of the eggplant, this is in the top 3 that I would recommend, along with sweet and sour Indian eggplant, or Georgian-style eggplant stuffed with carrot and parsnip

roasted eggplant dip with yogurt (yoğurtlu patlıcan salatası)

A lighter baba ghanouj with yogurt instead of tahini? The perfect summer snack! A great lunch served with hummus and crackers or veggies to dip, and maybe some olives and cheese on the side. This Turkish dip is similar to melitzanosalata (greek eggplant dip) but the addition of the yogurt makes it taste more like a true dip than just a puree.

No blender necessary – mashing it with a fork works just fine.

If you like baba ghanouj, you’ll love this recipe from Almost Turkish.

 

2 long Asian-style eggplants, or one Italian-style eggplant

juice of half a lemon, or more or less to taste

yogurt to taste, about a quarter-cup

half-clove of raw minced garlic, or less if you don’t like garlic

splash of olive oil and pinch of salt

optional – fresh parsley and mint, minced

 

roast eggplant at 425 until black outside and mushy inside.

discard eggplant skin. mash up eggplant with the rest of the ingredients, using a fork or a blender. serve.

+

recipe by Almost Turkish

beet salad with dilled yogurt

400g beets / beetroot, fresh, cooked to your liking and cut into matchsticks (roasting and boiling are both great) or grated raw and uncooked
2-3 Tablespoon fresh chopped dill, to taste
3 Tablespoons Greek yoghurt
1 tspn za’atar (opt.)
salt and pepper, to taste

one OR the other of:
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tbspn pomegranate molasses

Mix together the yoghurt, molasses, garlic, za’atar and seasoning – check that the taste is okay for you and add more molasses or seasoning as needed. Stir in the beetroot and half the dill. Fold together gently or mix well – depending on how pink you want your yoghurt to turn, or whether you want a more marbled pink/white look! Scatter over the extra dill and serve.

+

adapted from lime and barley

 

+

 

I highly recommend this salad, though I changed the recipe to recommend garlic OR pomegranate molasses and not both. It’s amazing how a good fresh beet has so much flavor on its own and barely needs any seasoning to taste so complex and interesting! This is my new favorite three-ingredient meal.

mercimek köftesi (red lentil kofte)

1 cup red lentil
1/2 cup fine bulgur
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cups of water
1 medium onion, very finely chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp tomato + red pepper paste (if you cannot find red pepper paste you can use 1 tbsp tomato paste)
~1 tsp salt
juice of half or 1 lemon (depends on how you like it: sour or not so sour)
1/3 bunch parsley, finely chopped
1/2 bunch green onion, finely chopped
curly leaf lettuce

-Wash lentils and boil them in 2 cups of water until it almost soaks the water.
-Once you turn it off, add bulgur and salt. Mix once and cover to let the bulgur expand. Let it cool off.
-Heat oil in a pan and add the onion (not the green one!) and cook until soft.
-Add tomato paste and cook for another 1-2 minutes.
-Add cumin and stir once you turn it off.
-Add this to the lentils which should be cool by now.
-Add half of finely chopped parsley, green onion, and lemon juice to the lentils. Mix all well.
-Take walnut size pieces and give them kofte shape in your hands.
-You can either place lettuce leaves on a serving plate and put koftes on top as in the picture, or serve koftes and lettuce leaves separately. However, when you eat them you should wrap each kofte in a lettuce leaf.

+

from almost turkish

Mücver (zucchini fritters)

5-6 small firm zucchinis, grated or left over zucchini carvings from stuffed zucchinis (makes ~4 cups)
3 eggs
1/3 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
1/3 cup chopped fresh dill
2-3 tbsp or 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint (depending on how much you like mint)
3-4 green onions, finely chopped
1 cup white cheese/feta
1 tbsp paprika
salt
black pepper
~1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup olive oil for frying

-Put grated zucchini in a colander. Sprinkle with salt and let drain for 10 minutes. Squeeze and place in a bowl.
-Mix well all the ingredients except for flour and frying oil.
-Add flour in slowly and mix well.
-Heat oil in a frying pan. On medium drop scoops of mücver mixture in hot oil. Make sure they don’t touch.
-Fry them on each side until golden brown, 4-5 minutes.
-Drain excessive oil by placing fritters on paper towels.
-Serve with plain yogurt or garlicy yogurt sauce. For garlicy yogurt sauce beat every 1 cup of yogurt with 1 clove of minced garlic.

+

from almost turkish.

chicken liver pilaf (Ic Pilav)

i see the vegans out there already wrinkling their noses. substitutions, baby! my chosen protein source for this dish will DEFINITELY be chicken livers – super cheap, crammed FULL of protein, a good use of a byproduct of our culture’s wings-and-breasts chicken obsessions (seriously, how did wings ever become so popular?) and SO DELICIOUS.

but what’s stopping you from making a delicious veg turkish rice pilaf with nuts and dried fruit? turn that ‘chicken liver’ into chunks of fried eggplant, extra nuts and seeds, chunks of a lentil loaf, or just skip the chunks of protein entirely and toss in some of yesterday’s bean salad or soup! pilafs are a great way to use up the four bites of yesterday’s dinner that you lost your appetite for.

ic pilav

3/4 cup rice
2 tbsp butter
1 onion, chopped
100 gr liver, chicken or lamb, cut in small pieces
2 tbsp pine nuts
2 tbsp currents (or other sour dried fruit like unsweetened cherries)
1 cup hot chicken or beef broth
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
Salt
Pepper

Garnish:
1 tbsp dill, chopped

Melt the butter in a cooking pot. Saute the onion with butter for 2-3 minutes while stirring. Add the liver, nuts, current and saute for another 3-4 minutes. Then add rice, cinnamon, allspice, salt and pepper, stir. Pour hot beef broth or chicken stock in it. Cover the lid. Turn the heat down to low and cook until the rice absorbs all the water. Let the Pilaf stand for about 5 minutes. Garnish with dill, then serve.

walnut-stuffed figs

walnut-stuffed dried figs

walnut and hazelnut yogurt dip

walnut and hazelnut yogurt dip