Kayseri Manti

Today I made Mantı ~ a popular food from Kayseri. It is like a lot of little dumplings with minced meat inside them, served with garlic yoghurt (sarimsaklı yoğurt) and topped with burnt butter (yağ yakma) with chili flakes (pul biber). It's simple and yummy.

Here's a short video of how I made it :

One day maybe I will try to make mantı from scratch, (with the dough and the rolling pins and all) but since I'm kinda lazy, I cheated with the ready made ones :D

this is the soy meat version

First boil some water and empty out the whole pack of manti. Let them boil for about 20 minutes (or depending on the instructions on the pack). 

once boiled they will look like this

While waiting for the manti to cook, you may go ahead and prepare the garlic yoghurt sauce. It's very simple, just chop a few cloves of garlic finely, mix with the yoghurt and put some salt to taste. How much garlic to be put depends on how you like it. I prefer to have more garlic-y taste so I put about 4 cloves of garlic to half a tub of yoghurt.

plain ol yoghurt

If possible, you should chop the garlic finer than this, especially if you don't want to bite into the garlic. I was too hungry and lazy ("_")

just mix them together and add some salt

Next, put some manti in a bowl or a deep plate, add some of the garlic yoghurt on top, and get ready to make the butter sauce. 

put about a tablespoon of butter, melt it over medium fire

add some chili flakes and stir

pour the butter on the yoghurt and ta-da, it is ready!

Dhal and Chapati day

So today I was craving for some good ol' dhal and chapati but Indian food is not as easy to get in Ankara as compared to Malaysia. After scouring youtube and asking mom, I set out to try make dhal and chapati for the first time. 

As there are several recipes for dhal, I didn't follow a specific recipe and just tried to do it my way.

Dhal Recipe

ingredients A :

• -1 cup of red or yellow lentils
• -2 cups of water
• -1 tsp of turmeric
• -1/4 tsp of salt

ingredients B :

• -1/2 onion
• -2 cloves of garlic
• -2 green peppers
• -cinnamon
• -cumin seeds (but i used cumin powder because i dont have cumin seeds)
• -some ginger
• -paprika chili powder
• -tomato salca (domates salcasi)
• some salt
• a teaspoon of sugar

                                           

I used yellow lentils - sari mercimek in Turkish

After washing the lentils once, put in the water and a teaspoon of turmeric. Let boil and simmer for about one hour.

yea this is the turmeric or kunyit in Malay

While the lentils simmer, we chop our Ingredients B. I used only half of the onion and 1 inch of ginger

But I kinda made a mistake of chopping the gingers finely and when I mixed them with the lentils people can't see the gingers and would bite into them. So you would want to make big slices of the ginger.

After about one hour, the lentils should be soft and fluffy, you may want to add more water to reach the right consistency. I added some more water but couldn't remember the exact measurement. After that I used a hand blender to just give it a quick blend.

In a separate pan, stir fry the ingredients B with some oil and a bit of butter. Indian recipes usually use ghee or clarified butter but I don't know where to find that in Ankara.

Pour in the lentils/Ingredients A into Ingredients B and add a bit more water. Stir occasionally on medium heat. Add in salt as needed. Sprinkle some paprika chili powder. I like my dhal to be a bit thick so I didnt add too much water. Oh yea and at the end I decided to throw in two bay leaves (defne yapragi)

My dhal looked like this at the end. I think it is edible :p

Chapati Recipe

A dhal is not complete without chapati! I found a great and simple recipe to make chapati on youtube by this lady : 

how my dough looks like

take a small ball and roll it out with a pin

use on small heat and let it rise

loved them! so soft and easy to make

Do try these out if you like Indian food :)

Hello post

Hello and welcome to my humble blog! I just feel the need to have an introductory post before I can really start posting.

This blog is basically for me to share my hits and misses at trying out new recipes, mostly Turkish or Asian food. 

Cooking is a newfound love for me, after I moved to Ankara and have my own kitchen and a lot of free time - not to mention it is more cost-efficient than eating out all the time :) 

But my food photo-taking skill needs some work, so bear with me.

Till next time!

~A Rdz