Ground Meat Pastry (Kıymalı Poğaça)

One can only feel like cooking when the food made with much effort and time brings a smile and appreciation on people’s faces. Poğaça may not be the most difficult food to prepare, but considering I am not an everyday cook nor baker and still try to make it picture-perfect, it may have taken much of my evening to shape and set the yummy ground meat pastries on the baking tray. (Imagine spending 1 to 2 minutes for each pastry dough when there are 20-25 to make) but nevertheless, my dad loves non-sweet pastries and with the help of my sister, I had to make it a second time within the same week because it turns out my dad’s colleagues loved it, too. I cooked a big portion of ground meat and used about 2 cups of it for filling the pastries.

Ingredients

4 cups of flour, sifted
1 cup of oil
1 cup of yogurt
1 package baking powder
2 tsp salt
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2 egg yolk (for coating the tops)
sesame seeds
black seeds (nigella seeds)

For the filling

Ground meat

1 onion, finely chopped

1-2 tbsp olive oil

parsley

red pepper flakes

ground black pepper

salt

Instructions

- Cook the ground meat with a little water. When the meats juice is drained, add the onion and olive oil and cook until the onions get lightly brown. Then add the parsley, red pepper flakes, ground black pepper and salt. Keep stirring for a few minutes then set it aside to cool.

- In a bowl, mix the flour, yogurt, oil, baking powder and salt. Knead until it forms a non-sticky dough.

- Take walnut-sized pieces from the dough and flatten them with the help of your hand. Then place the ground meat inside each dough.

- Coat the tops with egg yolk and sprinkle sesame-nigella seed mix on each.

- Bake them on a greased tray in a 335 F preheated oven for 24-25 minutes until the tops are colored and bottoms are golden brown.

Eggy Toast (Yumurtalı Ekmek)

When I look back, I do not remember having eggy toast for breakfast even for once. I am thinking now that maybe it was because I never was on good terms with eggs in my childhood, as I happened to find one on my plate each and every morning and refusing to eat was not one of the options. But despite the bad memories, sometimes you grow up to love the food once you could hardly eat. So egg for me is one of them, and trying out recipes made with eggs became my new hobby ever since I stopped judging it for what is past and done.

Ingredients: 

7-8 slices of bread (stale bread preferably to soak up more egg mixture)

3 eggs

3 heaped tbsp flour 

¼ cup of milk

2-3 springs of finely chopped parsley 

½ cup of feta cheese, grated 

½ tsp salt 

¼ cup frying oil

Instructions:  

- Whisk the eggs and milk in a bowl thoroughly.
- Add salt, parsley and cheese. Blend them into the mixture.

- Add the flour, a little at a time, to avoid lumps forming and stir well.  

- Dip each slice of bread in the mixture, soaking it on both sides.

- Heat the oil in a frying pan.

- Fry the soaked slices in medium heat, turning once, until golden brown.

- Drain the excess oil on a paper towel.

- Serve while still warm.