Turkish Toast

We made a trip to Turkey few years back and food was certainly one of the main highlights of the trip. I was so excited about the food that after I got back, I threw a house warming party with all food Turkish.

Finger Sandwich - Avocado & Strawberry

I am fond of the concept of an English tea party. Sipping tea with scones and finger sandwiches in a relaxed environment is such a treat.  I like finger sandwiches as they are very simple to put together. It is obvious that the bread and ingredients need to be fresh and tasty to enjoy these delicacies.

 I attended a fund raising event with the theme of English tea party couple of years back and had lots of fun.  About 10-15 tables were arranged by volunteer's who brought tea sets and plates from their own collection. Everything looked so darn pretty. Here are two pictures from the party:

Quinoa and orange salad

This is one of my favorite salads these days. Full of nutrition, healthy and very easy to put together. Perfect for summer afternoons.

Plum cake

Here is a recipe for summer plum cake. A good twist to simple cake with  juicy plums.  The post has been sitting in the draft for a year but its never late to post it right !

Chocolate Chip Cookies

At one point, I was the following the "how to cook perfect..........." series on the guardian and found how to cook perfect chocolate chip cookies. It took me a while but finally got a chance to make them.  Here is the link in the guardian that describes different aspects in great detail. Cookies are stress free baking for me both in terms of time and preparation.

The perfect chocolate chip cookie was easy recipe to follow and thanks to the weighting scale it is easy to measure as well.

Ingredients:
120 gm unsalted butter (original recipes calls for salted butter but i didn't have salted butter )
75 gm light brown sugar
75 gm granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
240 gm all purpose flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
170 gm dark chocolate, chopped
sea salt flakes

1. Using a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until well combined on a medium speed. Add egg and vanilla extract and beat well.
2. Sift together flour and bicarbonate of soda and slowly fold in to the above mixture until everything comes together.  Use a lower speed on the stand mixer. Fold in the chocolate pieces with spatula and bring everything together.
3. Wrap the dough in a plastic sheet and keep it inside the freezer for 1/2 hour or keep it refrigerated overnight.
4. Preheat oven to 350 C.
5. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Make about 14 golf size balls using the dough and keep them at a distance on the baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes until golden. Make sure they are not brown.
6. Sprinkle one tray with salt and allow them to cool for couple of minutes on the sheet and then move them to cooking racks.

Enjoy the cookies.

Persian Mulberry Tut

These are such a treat! Easy, tasty and pretty. We used to have two mulberry (sahtoot) trees in my house when I was a kid. I enjoyed making these while remembering the uncounted mulberries we used to eat.

I saw these mulberry sweets in the book "Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies" by Najmieh Batmanglij.  Also, a recipe of these appeared in Los Angeles Magazine from the blog My Persian Kitchen. The detailed step-by-step instructions can be found on the blog. I made couple of changes in the recipe. I decided to use almond meal instead of the almonds in the recipe to decrease one step :)

Ingredients:

1 cup + 2 tablespoon almond flour/meal (Use the meal that is prepared after peeling off the almonds, you can also use dry almonds and prepare the almond meal in a food processor.  I like the JK Gourmet Almond Flour which I buy through Amazon)
1 cup confectioners sugar (Use 3/4 cup if you don't have very sweet tooth)
1/2 tsp cardamom powder
2 tablespoon rose water (If you are using 3/4 cup of confectioners sugar, only add 1.5 tablespoon of rose water to begin with and add more if desired)
1/4 cup granular sugar
Slivered pistachios ~ 30 pieces

- Mix almond meal, confections sugar and cardamom powder.  Add rose water and pulse couple of times in a blender until mixture comes together. The mixture shouldn't be too dry or too sticky. If you find it sticky, you can add an extra tablespoon of almond meal.

- Take a small portion from the mixture and roll the mixture in to conical shape with hand and taper at the end as shown in the picture to give mulberry shape. You can make almost 30 pieces from this mixture. Approximate length of the mulberry tut is about 1.5 inch.

- Now, roll each piece in the granular sugar and put a single slivered pistachio at the fat end of the mulberry tut.

- Wait couple of hours before eating them. They also taste great after a day.

Baked Apple Chips

Vendor's at the farmers market in Santa Barbara often sell baked apple chips and persimmon chips. However, those are not a very common in Ventura's Farmer market. After seeing a post about apple chips on The Italian Dish blog, I decided to bake them. I absolutely adore The Italian Dish blog and have tried many recipes from the blog. In fact it is my "go-to" blog for italian recipes.

Recipe:

Ingredients:
1 large apple
2 tablespoon brown sugar
3/4 tablespoon cinnamon (I used less cinnamon than suggested by The Italian Dish)


- Preheat oven to 225 F
- Slice apple into thin slices (as thin as possible 15-20 slices per apple)
- Lightly coat the apple slices on both the sides with the sugar and cinnamon mixture
- Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the apple slices on the baking sheet
- Bake for an hour
- After an hour, flip the slices and bake for another hour
- Remove from oven and cool them for some time and store in airtight container.

Variations:
- Make these chips with any fruit e.g. pear, persimmon etc.
- Eliminate brown sugar and cinnamon for a plain apple chips taste