Tre-bon !
By now, you probably have realised that I like cooking, eating and drinking...Especially, when I have good friends over my house, the joy of cooking and gathering around the table for a nicely home cooked meal gives me a great pleasure. A couple of days ago, one of my best friends from Germany was visiting me in Istanbul and I wanted to cook a full course dinner of salad, soup, smoked eggplant salad, and slowly oven cooked lam shank. I know that I have not been posting new recipes lately, so this is a good opportunity to share these with you.
Green Salad
Difficulty: 1/10Cooking Time: 5 - 7 mins
Ingredients:
1 Fresh Lemon
Pinch of Fresh Mint
French Onion
Olive oil
Arugula
Salt
Simply cut everything into a large bowl, add olive oil, squeeze the lemon and give its salt.
Roasted Lamb Shank
Ingredients:
Served for 6
Difficulty: 8/10
6 lamb shanks
Salt
Pepper
Butter (50grs)
Olive oil (half a cup)
2-3 Carrots
1-2 Potatoes
2 Large Onions
5-6 Cloves of Garlic
Aluminium Foil
Steam pressured cooking pan
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| 6 pieces of Lamb Shank |
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| Other ingredients |
After drying out your lamb shanks with paper towel, slowly add the shanks into your pan. This way, you will seal your shanks. Keep on stirring the shanks and do this until they turn to slightly brownish color.
After about 5 minutes stirring them, you can now add your remaining ingredients with the shanks. Don't stop stirring, and avoid getting them burned out.
Now it is time to add some water on top and wait until it starts slowly boiling.
You are now ready to place the top of the pot and click to seal it it safely and securely. Then wait until steam starts blowing out of the top. Once you see the steam coming out, ease the fire on the stove and let it cook about half an hour.
Once half an hour is done, DO NOT OPEN the steam pressured pot immediately. Let is sit under the cold running water under the tab for about 10 minutes and slowly release the air out and then carefully open the top. You are half way there....
Take out all your shanks, and some of the other add-ins, place them into an oven-proof glass (or porcelain) tray. Add some of the sauce in it, then cover it with aluminium foil. Make sure to make some hole on the foil with the help of your fork.
You are now all set to place your foil covered tray with shanks, into the pre-heated (200C) oven to sit there for 2 - 3 hours.
SOUP of the DAY
Do you remember that we still have some hot sauce along with potatoes, onions and carrots in your pot. This will turn into a great soup with the help of a small hand blender. All you need to do is, use your hand-held kitchen blender to chop everything to let it turn into a nice soup.
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| Remaining sauce of the main dish |
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| Blendered soup |
Smoked Eggplant Salad (Meze)
4-5 Eggplants
Olive Oil
2-3 Cloves of Garlic
Salt
1 Peeled Tomato
Difficulty : 5/10
Cooking time: 30-45mins
Place your smoking pan (if you don't have such pan, you can place your eggplants directly on to the fire) on the stove. Let it heat for 5-6 minutes...Chop the heads of eggplants, and make sure that you scratch them with the help of a knife's tip. Let them sit and turn them in every 5 minutes, until they start getting wrinkled and dried. Once they are in such condition, peel them off carefully, and chop into very small pieces. Grind the garlics, and add them into your mesh, followed by some olive oil. Dress it with peeled tomato slices and serve cold....
Time for the GrandReveal....
After 3 hours of slowly cooking, you are now ready to take your tray out of the oven, and de-foil it. Since I had a German friend, I thought that a cold and non-filtered Efes beer would go nice with it...
Enjoy....Afiyet olsun ! :)
Coming up soon: A week in Luxembourg and its surroundings with great friends
