Manti and Fake Manti Recipe :)

I love eating Manti more than making it. Wonderful taste, it takes a bit long time to make but eating takes 5 mins. Not fair! :)

My husband, of course, loves it, too. He was always bugging me to cook it soon. Finally, I cooked it. Everyone is happy now.:)

In my country, you can find different types of Manti. Recipe varies region to region. I learned it from my grandma and my mum. They used to make the way I described below. Hopefully, one day, my kids can learn it from me! :))

My grandma has a lot of grandchildren. I remember her making Manti for all of us, when I was a little girl. We used to help her. She used to put a few chickpeas inside the Manti. The idea was if you could find the chickpea while eating, you will be the luckiest grandchild. We loved this game. :)
Now, I honor the tradition by putting two chickpeas when I make it. My husband is very lucky not just because he has me, but also he found the first chickpea in the first spoon today.:)))

Here are my first recipes, I hope you will enjoy them.

Manti Recipe:
Ingredients:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup water
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt

For the filling:

• 250 gr ground meat
• 1 large onion (chopped in very small pieces)
• Salt and black pepper

Yogurt Sauce 1:

• 2 cups plain yogurt
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  

Red Pepper Sauce 2:

• 6-7 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons red pepper ( hot or mild, its up to you)

Method:

1. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, water, egg, olive oil and salt.
2. Knead them very well until the dough is formed. The dough should be smooth and not sticky. If you feel it is sticky, add a little bit more flour.
3. Cover the bowl with some plastic wrap and let stand at cool room temperature for an hour.
4. Meanwhile, prepare the filling. In a medium bowl, put onions, meat, salt and black pepper. Knead them together for one minute (do not cook.)
5. Lightly dust a work surface and a rolling pin with flour. Divide the dough into 4 equal balls. Roll out each ball into sheets as thin as you can roll out, but be careful don't tear it.
6. Cut each sheet into squares of about 1.5"x1.5".Put a very small piece of filling at the center of each square. Continue until the dough is finished.
7. As you see below, bring the opposite corners together and make a triangle or, fold them to make a rectangle. Both works fine. Press the sides firmly. (Don't forget to hide your chickpeas for the game. :)
8. Bring two of the adjacent corners together as shown in the picture.
9. In a large pot, boil the water and add a little bit salt, olive oil. Add Manti and stir. Cook for about 15 minutes. Please check while cooking. Don't overcook.
10. Meanwhile, prepare the sauces. Firstly, in a small bowl, grate cloves of garlic and add yogurt, water, salt. Stir them together. Secondly, in a separate sauce pan add olive oil and red pepper, stir together and cook them only for half a minute.
11. When Manti is ready, you can drain well or not, the way you like, it is up to you.
12. Serve warm with yogurt sauce and red sauce.

Fake Manti:

Also, there is another option for Manti. In Turkey, we call it Fake Manti. It doesn't taste the same as original Manti, but pretty close.
Lazy girls, like me, love it :)

You only need; shell pasta instead of dough.
Enjoy Fake Manti, too.

Burma Baklava (Twisted Baklava)

Hi all,

We’re starting with delicious traditional Turkish Burma Baklava :) I know y’all very curious about the recipe. Now, it is time to reveal the top secrets about Burma Baklava. Don’t worry it is not that hard. It just takes a little bit time, but the final taste will make you forget the time you spend for preparation. In Turkey, we have different kinds of Baklava. Burma Baklava is one of them. Hopefully, we will give more recipes about the other kinds in the future. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 rolls of phyllo dough (1/2 of a package of phyllo dough)
4-5 cups of chopped walnut (not too chopped, the parts should be at least as big as sweet peas)
2 sticks of unsalted butter
3/2 cups of sugar
3/2 cups of water
1/2 tbs fresh lemon juice

First, take out the phyllo dough from the freezer at least two hours before you begin. If you forget to take it out or just decide to cook Baklava, don’t worry, you can defrost it using a microwave. However, you should be careful if you use microwave. We want the dough just defrosted, but not hot and melted. Take two sheets of dough and put it on a table. Scatter 3-4 tbs of chopped walnut to every place of dough like I do in the picture (picture 2). By the way, you can just click on the picture below to expand it :). Then, wrinkle the dough by using your fingers (picture 3), bring the sides to the middle (picture 4). Then bring two opposite sides together on top (picture 5). Twist it, like you are sharpening a pencil by using sharpener, starting from the right by using your right hand and support the dough by using your left hand. It will look like picture 6. Then put the twisted dough in a pyrex or in a deep baking tin.

Apply the same procedure to remaining dough. After you finish this step, cut the dough inti small pieces as in picture 8. Then, put butter in a pan and melt it. After it is melted, continue heating it. Butter will begin to boil. Boil it for 5 minutes. During this time, mix the butter with a spoon. Then pour the melted butter onto twisted dough equally. Put the tray in a preheated oven. The heat should be 325F. Cook it until the color of the dough becomes brownish (picture 9). After the dough is cooked, you can start to prepare its syrup. Put sugar and water in a pan and heat it. After it begins to boil wait 5-6 minutes. Then pour the lemon juice and boil it one more minute. Turn off the heat and wait just 5 minutes, During this 5 minutes, the syrup will be cool down a little bit. Then pour the syrup onto dough equally. Don't forget, the dough should be cold or warm but not hot while you're pouring the syrup. Wait at least an hour for dough absorbs the syrup. Burma Baklava is ready to serve. Bon appetite!

Welcome

Hi guys,

We’re two Turkish ladies living in Florida, one (minikkus) in Gainesville and the other (ayseyaman) in Orlando. We both have cooking blogs in Turkish. Our friends keep asking us about the English version of our blogs. Finally, we decided to combine our powers and have a joint cooking blog in English. We’re still preparing new posts for you. Let us give you some food names that are on preparation for you: Burma Baklava (twisted baklava), Manti (Turkish meat pastry), Pogaca (pastry with cheese filling), Yaprak sarmasi (stuffed grape leaves), Karniyarik (stuffed eggplant), Borek (cheese Pie), Tavuk Gogsu (a kind of Turkish pudding), Gozleme, different kinds of breads, pies, tarts, cookies, hummus and more :)

Since we're living in the States, we have a great opportunity to meet with international people and to learn about their culture and cuisine. Also, we both like trying new recipes, so you'll find different recipes from all over the world in this blog.

Follow the great smell, you will find us here :) Enjoy!