Last week I hosted folks from a London-based designer agency who are meeting with food-conscious people around the world to gather insights about the use of fruit and vegetables. We talked a lot about the Turkish food culture that I had embraced and made a part of my pantry and diet. We touched upon both fresh seasonal produce and the second life it gets in the form of salça, pekmez, ekşisi, tarhana, dried vegetable skins used for stuffing, seasoning made of dry vegetables, dried fruit and other ways of preservation. Besides sharing these insights, I got a few insights myself in particular about how I eat. I mean how I really it which appeared different from what I thought.
After I had quit our restaurant kitchen I started eating and cooking more like a normal human who eats proper things at proper hours. During my restaurant kitchen days I realized that professional cooks often have most unhealthy eating patterns because they do crazy hours and work when people eat. I also got to understand that chefs eat very differently from what they cook at work. I quickly developed indifference to out beautiful restaurant food just because I got to see it so often. That’s why I was not surprised to find out that in top restaurants around the world the staff meals are nowhere close to their regular menus: for instance, at Noma they do a mixed bag of world cuisines gearing to the home comfort fare and at Ottolenghi the cooks enjoy hot dogs, burgers and pizzas for staff lunches. Once I was out from the professional kitchen I could eventually eat what my appetite and not my desperation suggested. Or so I thought.
For the mentioned interview I was to write down what I ate in the past 3 days: I realized that out of the days only one I ate what I wanted. Throughout the week I ate food we cooked at my cooking classes, food we savored at the Istanbul markets with my food tours’ participants and food I made for my Turkish family at the countryside or my husband when he came to Istanbul. After getting my share of Turkish fare I just want to eat something else. Something meatless, light and quick to put together.
I rarely have a lot of time to cook for myself. However, I have never been a fan of fast-food or processed food: I love eating wholesome meals cooked from scratch. That’s why I use my freezer a lot: it is full of things that can be thrown into a soup or a stew and become my one dish meal. Like the other day when I took out of fridge a tiny bag of bulgur gnocchi left from making my bombastic soup, and I turned them into a scandalously easy and equally delicious stew. Or, with a bit of planning, in the morning I’d buy a fresh seasonal catch from my fish monger and simply roast it for lunch. This is how I really eat.
Most often, however, I resort to salads for many reasons. First, they are easy to put together. Second, they combine ingredients that are fresh and those I can pull out of the freezer. Take beans, my favorite protein source: I soak a few types in the morning and then in the evening while I am busy with something else I let them cook and cool down so I can freeze them and use for my salads any time. Third, salads are carnivals of flavors and arenas where I can experiment with all those amazing seasonings we have aplenty in Turkey. Finally, I like that in salads the ethnic background of food gets blurred: in Norway I used to mix rice noodles with feta cheese and Middle Eastern cured olives and seasoned the whole deal with soy sauce and Spanish olive oil.
Turkey is one of those places in the world where you can create most luscious salads with the bounty of seasonal produce and seasonings of all sorts. The idea of this one comes from Refika Birgül, author of Cooking New Istanbul Style and TV chef who made her name on playing with traditional ingredients. She originally uses boiled beets, but I had carrots handy and I prefer my vegetables roasted. The cheese köfte idea was genius: I like cheese in my salad but if often crumbles and messes up the whole look while the köfte keeps the salad orderly and neat. For cheese köfte coating Refika is using dried tel kadaif that I replaced with bread crumbles of that gorgeous Black Sea bread: I ground a dry leftover piece in the food processor. I also updated the seasonings to my liking and here is a salad that I love to eat. For real.
Fancy Dressed Cheese Köfte Salad
Don’t be intimidated by the long ingredient list! Just follow the steps exactly and you will be done before you know: as green lentils are boiling and carrots are roasting you get the rest of the ingredients ready to combine into this impressive salad.
You can play with seasonings just as I did; however, I recommend investigating typical Urfa pepper, nigella seeds and definitely pekmez, reduced grape juice that can be sourced from the Middle Eastern and Turkish stores.
Source: Vaguely adapted from Refika Birgül
Prep Time: 30 Min
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup green lentils
- 30 g fresh mint
- 180 g arugula
- 90 g lettuce
- 4 medium carrots washed and peeled, sliced into 1 cm/0.5 inch thick rounds
For salad dressing:
- 5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 3 tbsp pekmez
- 1.5 tbsp lemon juice
- dash fine sea salt
- dash freshly ground black pepper
For cheese köfte:
- 180 g feta-like cheese
- 2 tbsp finely chopped mint
- 1/4 tbsp Urfa pepper
- 1/2 tbsp nigella seeds
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil more if cheese is dry
- pinch fine sea salt if cheese is not salty enough
For cheese köfte seasoning:
- 3 tbsp hazelnuts coarsely ground
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
- 1 tbsp bread crumbs
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 220C/430F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- Cook lentils: Place green lentils and three times more cold water (3/4 cups water for 1/4 cup lentils) to a medium saucepan, bring to boil and let simmer uncovered on the low heat until the water evaporates and the lentils soften but not fall apart (about 20 min). Set aside to cool down.
- Roast carrots: Whisk the salad dressing ingredients together. Place the sliced carrots in a large mixing bowl and add about 3 tbsp salad dressing: toss the carrots to get them nicely coated and with your hands rub the seasoning into each carrot piece to extract the most flavor. Place the coated carrot slices on the prepared baking tray leaving enough space in between the pieces. Send to the oven and bake until the carrots are soft and nicely roasted but not burned (about 25 minutes).
- Prepare greens: Meanwhile, wash, drain, spin the greens and place them on a clean kitchen towel - chop lettuce leaves into 3-4 wide stripes, discard mint stems, separate arugula stems, chop them finely and set aside. Cover the leaves to prevent withering.
- Prepare cheese köfte: Combine the ingredients, form 4 large/8 small balls and then flatten them with your palm into the round patties. Set aside. Warm up a small frying pan and first roast the ground hazelnuts lightly as you toss them, then add sesame seeds and continue tossing, in a few minutes finally add the bread crumbles. Turn off the heat and roll your cheese köfte in the seasoning to get them thoroughly covered.
- Assemble salad: Get serving plates ready. In a large mixing bowl combine the greens and pour the salad dressing along the edges. Gently with your finger tips shovel the herbs to get them coated in the dressing; divide the greens between the serving plates. Divide the roasted carrots between the plates too. Transfer the cooked lentils in the bowl where you have just tossed the greens to wipe the remaining dressing and sprinkle over the leaves. Also sprinkle the chopped arugula stems. Place the köfte on each plate and season with the remaining köfte seasoning.
