Meat-Stuffed Chard Rolls or Etli Pazı Sarması

Sarma or Dolma?

These are not quite the same although the names are sometimes used interchangeably. These made from Swiss Chard leaves are called sarma because they are rolled. Cabbage and vine leaves can be used in the same way and strictly speaking are also sarma but you do hear them being called dolma.  The term dolma  really refers to vegetables eg courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes, and peppers which can be hollowed out and stuffed. I associate  these with summer when those vegetables are plentiful.

I have stuffed a good many vegetables in my time and rolled a great many sigara böreği, those little cigarette-shaped börek made with white cheese and parsley, so making these was not the challenge it might have been. As with much of Turkish cooking, the preparation can be time-consuming  but the end result is always tasty!

this is how it's sold

Confession time: pazı is a new vegetable for me!  Spinach has always been my winter vegetable of choice but the attractive bright green of these leaves finally persuaded me to buy a bunch.   I was inordinately proud of myself as these sarma worked out beautifully. My husband polished off the lot leaving me wondering if he had been missing them all these years!

Ingredients for Meat-Stuffed Chard Rolls/Etli Pazı Sarması

Serves 6

2 bunches large leaf chard/pazı

300 gr minced lamb (I actually used beef)

½  cup rice

3 onions, finely chopped

4 tbsp cooking oil

4 tomatoes (2 for the stuffing, 2 for cooking in the pan)

small handful each of chopped parsley and dill

½  tsp pepper

½  tsp flaked red pepper

1 ½ tsp salt

2 cups hot water

Method

·         Cut and discard the stems of the chard leaves and then wash the leaves. In order to soften them in preparation for rolling, boil up a pan of water and put them in, a few at a time, and immediately remove and plunge into a basin of cold water. This way the bright green colour is preserved.

 

·         Take the chopped onion and cook gently in the cooking oil till soft.

·         For the stuffing:  wash and drain the rice and put into a large bowl. Add the cooked onion, mince, salt, pepper, flaked red pepper, chopped parsley and dill, plus grated tomatoes and mix together with your hands.

·         Take one chard leaf and spread it out on a hard surface. Cut out the tough central vein with a sharp knife so you have 2 halves.  Make sure the shiny side of the leaf is face-down. Place a small amount of the stuffing  on one half and roll up, folding over the ends first.  Use your fingers to roll it up tightly. 

·         Take your pan and first spread one or two more battered leaves on the bottom. Place the remaining 2 tomatoes in the middle and then arrange the sarma next to each other in layers. Pour the hot water over them and then cover with a plate (see picture).

·         Bring to the boil then lower the heat and cook for about 30 minutes.  When time is up, they can rest quite happily and be reheated if necessary. Serve with garlic yogurt and a sprinkle of flaked red pepper.

Tips

1.    If the leaf is small, cut out the vein and then overlap one half with the other half. This will make it easier to roll.

2.    There is a tendency to put too much stuffing on each half which then makes it impossible to roll. Some of the rolls will be very small but that’s fine!

3.    A friend of mine says her mother-in-law always mixed a little tomato paste/salça in the hot water at the end which sounds like a good idea.

4.    If you have a little bit of stuffing left over, roll it into walnut-sized balls and place them in the pan. They will swell up and be tiny hedgehog meatballs.

5.    These sarma are truly delicious and so authentically Turkish! But you wouldn’t want to make them for a large family unless you had a trusty helper to assist with the rolling!

afiyet olsun!

A little aside about the spelling: you may have noticed that sometimes there is a dot on the Turkish letter i and sometimes not, it’s not just me! They are two different letters and produce different sounds. İ with a dot is pronounced like the i in ‘bit’ while the dotless ı is pronounced  like the er in water (English pron). Their usage depends on vowel harmony but we won’t go into that here!  The final ‘si’  or ‘sı’ that you may have noticed on the end of some of the names of these Turkish recipes, indeed like the one above, is a kind of genitive. Just in case you were wondering!

Tender Green Beans with Meat



my favourite



I really love this meal: Etli Ayşekadın Fasulye in Turkish.  Etli means 'with meat': since this time I used mince, this is actually Kıymalı Fasulye. Not only does it look and taste delicious, but it’s very healthy as there is no oil in it.  To achieve this taste, fresh beans are streets ahead of frozen. This time I used one of the jars of tomatoes that I bottled in the heart of summer using those fat, juicy, sun-ripened tomatoes from the local tarla/fields around Assos. I’m really pleased that I did all that bottling: next summer I think I’ll make twice as many jars as it is just so much more satisfying to use your own and recall those long, lazy summer days, rather than a couple of sterile greenhouse tomatoes which are the only alternative right now. They may look firm and beautiful but they have no flavour worth mentioning.

ayşekadın fasulye



çalı fasulye

Here, there are two distinct types of green bean/fasulye: one is ayşekadın, the type used in this recipe. To prepare it, after trimming, it is simply snapped or cut in half. It is cooked with meat or sometimes egg, and served hot as a main meal. The other, çalı or string, looks completely different as it is much longer, and flat in shape. This one is cut in half lengthwise and is used for zeytinyağlı dishes ie  served cold.  If it is really long, it is also cut in half the other way. I have to confess I have never bought these. Of course if the beans need stringing, this is a pain, there’s no denying it!

Ingredients for Etli Ayşekadın Fasulye

Serves 6

1 kg tender green beans, topped and tailed.

250 gr ground beef/dana kıyma, or 1/2 kg cubed beef or veal/dana kuşbaşı

2 ripe tomatoes, chopped

1 tbsp tomato paste/salça

1 onion, grated

2 cups warm water

1 tsp seasoned salt/tuzot

Method

1.       Gently cook the grated onion, chopped tomatoes, and ground beef in a wide pan until all liquids have been absorbed. NB no oil is added.



here it is

all the liquid has boiled down

my jar of summer tomatoes



2.       Snap the beans into halves – you will soon see if they need stringing or not! – and add to the above mixture with the seasoned salt. Add the warm water and tomato paste, and cook over low heat till the beans are soft.



I did string mine


The beauty of these yemeks or meals, is that they can be made ahead and reheated with perhaps a little extra water. They keep well in the fridge too. Serve with plain yogurt if liked. A simple rice pilaf goes well with this.

Tips

§  The spoonful of tomato paste was my touch as I thought the dish looked a bit anaemic!

§  For a change, cubed veal or beef can be used instead of the mince - then it would become etli!

an aberrant fasulye

BBQ with Veggie Kebabs

'Komşu!'

Neighbour! The garden gate creaked and I knew immediately that the arrival of Leyla from next door was imminent. It was the first day of bayram and we were back in our village. The tradition is to visit family and friends after the testing time of the long fast. Children will look spick and span in their brand new clothes. The atmosphere is all rather Christmas-like actually. Leyla came with her university-educated daughter Emine bearing small dishes of village delicacies made in her outdoor oven: pişi, basically a deep-fried pastry, and baklava, made with olive oil and not butter as in the cities. A true bayram visit is not long: just enough to share a glass of tea and to offer something sweet to eat.

our neighbour Leyla with her daughter

The weather was delightful, so the idea of a barbecue that evening was tempting. We decided to keep it simple : some lovely little pirzola/lamb chops with fresh vegetable kebabs, and a salad with more of that wonderful bread.

Barbecue to go:

1. First we marinated the baby lamb chops: olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, fresh thyme. We covered them with clingfilm and put them in the fridge.

marinating the pirzola

2. We looked to see what vegetables we had. The markets didn’t happen because it was holiday time so we were limited to what we could find in the one and only grocer’s: a few eggplants, tomatoes, red onions, green and red peppers (the big ones, not the hot ones). We washed, cut and sliced a selection and threaded them on some metal skewers. Colour is always important to me so I was careful to balance the reds and purples, not forgetting to peel the eggplants in strips rather than leaving the peel whole. We also added bay leaves and sprigs of rosemary from the garden in between the slices. We treated the kebabs to a drizzle of olive oil too, seasoned them and put to one side.

our kebabs

drizzling olive oil

 I had brought roka/rocket from Istanbul. We really love it but sometimes the taste can be very fiery and needs to be tempered. Tomatoes are always good for this but we didn’t have enough so instead I discovered a lone carrot and some spring onions. I grated the carrot and secretly admired the colour contrast of the orange with the green. Then the spring onions, chopped. To perk the whole thing up, we roughly crushed some walnuts in a plastic bag with the rolling pin and sprinkled them on top. I wondered what else we could add to make the salad more festive and remembered that I had brought some parmesan from Istanbul with me so we shaved a few flakes off.

Waiting for the heat of the charcoal to subside to allow cooking to commence, wine or rakı glasses in our hands, we watched the sun go down and listened to the homeward-bound tinkle of goat bells : it seemed a splendid ending to the day.

Tips

• 
  
  If you don’t have metal skewers, you can buy the wooden ones BUT remember to soak them in water for 30 minutes beforehand otherwise they will go up in flames! Not a good thing.
• 
  
  Marinating overnight is best to get the full flavours and to tenderise. Take the food out of the fridge early enough as it will cook better at room temperature.
• 
  
  Eggplant takes longer than the other veggies to soften up. Courgettes would be quicker. These kebabs take about 30 mins. At least.
• 
  
  If you are not barbecuing, I suggest grilled vegetables in the oven. (200C/ 180C fan). The same thing with or without the skewers. It makes a great sight: a full aluminium foil-lined tray of colourful veggies.Take them to the table like that. A real crowd -pleaser. Recipes always say about 30 mins but in my experience, a good 40 – 45 mins works better.

shaving parmesan for the salad

Shaving rather than grating cheese is much more attractive on a salad. Nuts, especially walnuts, are always a good addition.


Make sure you have one last BBQ before the colder weather sets in!
              

Beef Casserole with Figs

I have the feeling that the recipe that I am about to describe is destined to become my dinner party favourite this autumn. So perhaps I am mad to share - but I am so excited about it that it would be a crime to keep it all to myself! It is figgy again but this time in a savoury form, something that I said was not usually found in Turkish cuisine yet it comes from a super new cookbook called Cooking New Istanbul Style by Refika Birgül (http://www.refikaninmutfagi.com/). She describes it as her version of Boeuf Bourguignon meets Algerian tagine with overtones of juicy meat cooked in South East Turkey. Ambitious, eh?  But oh,so do-able. Serves 6.

Here are the very figs I bought from
this luscious display at the Spice Bazaar 

We went to the Spice Bazaar in Eminönü to get the figs although you can get them anywhere.But the Bazaar is so atmospheric,especially with the pre-Bayram buzz. I love going there and then crossing the Galata Bridge for a cheap fish lunch beside the Golden Horn. 

Now back to the meat: I highly recommend using your local kasap or butcher as opposed to the supermarket. Ideally get a friend to introduce you to hers.You will get the best service if you build up a relationship with your friendly butcher. Always go to the same one and he will reward you with the choicest cuts.You can also phone in your order and if he is obliging - and they usually are - he will deliver!

 Ingredients for Beef Casserole with Figs

Preparing the meat and onions

I kg fillet steak in a piece  - bonfile (pron: bon-fi-leh). Although you can buy beef already cubed, Refika recommends that you cut this yourself into largish chunks.

3 onions, finely sliced in rounds

5 cloves garlic

1 large red pepper, cut into strips (about 1cm thick)

I green bell pepper: cut the same way

Getting everything shipshape

2 carrots, chopped into small cubes

2 tbsp flour
10 bay leaves

5 sprigs thyme

1 tbsp red pepper paste /biber salçası ( pron: bee-bair sal-cha is enough ), readily available here

15 dried figs

1 tsp salt

 one handful black peppercorns- you may prefer to give a few good twists of the pepper mill instead

7 tbsp olive oil

3/4 cup chicken stock made from stock cube
1/2 cup red wine

Method

1. Saute the beef in the oil in batches. Remove from pan.

2. Continue with onions and remove.

3. Now saute the peppers and carrots for 1 min.
4. Add whole garlic cloves. Saute for a further minute.

5. Return meat and onions to pan. Reduce heat to very low. Sprinkle the flour over meat and stir for 2 mins.

6. Add hot chicken stock and the wine.

7. Add pepper, salt, thyme, bay leaves, and pepper paste. Stir it all together gently.

Adding the paste to the pot-
I actually used tomato

8. Finally, add the halved dried figs.

Cover the pan and cook on very low heat. After 1 hour, stir and continue cooking for a further 1 1/2 hours. The smell is divine!

As Refika says: 'Taste, enjoy, and devour!'

Everything's in and ready to cook!

Tip

Next time I think I will use a güveç or Turkish earthenware cooking pot, and cook it nice and slowly in the oven.Or simply my le Creuset in the oven. I think it would be even more succulent.