Çintar Mushroom Risotto Recipe

It's that time of year again; the days are shorter and cooler, there's a dampness to the cold night air...and the beautiful çintar mushrooms sprout beneath the pine trees of Fethiye. As you are no doubt aware by now, we enjoy our Turkish seasonal produce and the çintar mushroom season is one we particularly look forward to. Perhaps it's because the season is really short so we feel the need to dive straight in there and snap up as many as we can. Or, maybe it's just simply because this mushroom is downright delicious!

Çintar mushrooms on Çalış Market last December

I mentioned in last year's çintar mushroom post that they were really tasty, eaten with scrambled egg. They are! This year however, we're trying to add a bit of variation to our mushroom diet. After I did the spinach and cheese börek recipe last week, we still had some spinach left over so Barry decided to produce Çintar Mushroom and Spinach Risotto. Risotto is perfect this time of year; oozy and comforting and these seasonal mushrooms fitted the dish perfectly.

The traditional rice for making risotto is arborio rice. You can buy it from supermarkets in Fethiye but it's expensive compared to local rice and to be honest, Turkish rice is just as starchy. We always use Turkish rice and the results are perfectly acceptable.

   Mmm - meaty but meat-free risotto

Many people are put off making risotto because you have to stand over it and tend to it constantly. But, it's not difficult and it's worth a little attention just for the final results. We love risotto! This recipe makes two decent-sized portions.

• First of all, in a pan, bring around 1.5 litres of stock (chicken or veg) to the boil and leave to simmer.


• In a separate pan, melt a knob of butter, add a chopped onion and fry gently for a couple of minutes.


• Next, throw in some chopped chillies (optional), a clove of garlic and fry for a few minutes.


• Once the onion has softened, add one mug of Arborio or Turkish rice and stir to coat all the grains. Add some salt at this point.


• Throw in a few handfuls of roughly chopped (not too small because you want to keep the flavour and feel the texture of the mushroom) çintar mushroom and stir. Obviously, you can use other types of mushroom if you can't get çintar mushrooms!


• Stir the mixture for a couple of minutes. At this point, it's traditional to add a splash of vermouth to your risotto but we stick to the stock otherwise, in Turkey, your risotto will suddenly rocket in price. 


• Get a ladle full of stock from your simmering pan and add it to the rice and mushroom. Stir gently with a wooden spoon until the stock evaporates.


• Take another ladle full and repeat the process. Keep adding a ladle full of the stock and stirring till it evaporates until your rice is al dente. 


• Keep testing it as you don't want to end up with a plate of mush. A risotto should have the rice grains intact and the starch should have created an oozy sauce.

Delicious, oozy çintar mushroom & spinach risotto

• Once you're happy the rice is cooked, remove from the heat, add a small knob of butter and some Parmesan cheese and stir.


• Add a couple of handfuls of chopped spinach, cover the pan and leave it to stand for five minutes.


• Mix in the spinach and serve. (If you're being very naughty, a drizzle of olive oil over the top does taste really nice - but I don't put it on. Cheese and butter is more than enough guilt for me.)

Turkey's for Life is a Favourite Blog

Expecting a mushy disaster - we actually got rice fritters

Remember this photo? This is a photo of the outcome of a recipe we attempted (and then posted) for rice fritters. Afterwards, people said to us, 'Oh, we made those rice fritters. They're really good. Nothing like we expected.' 



They are fantastically good (I'm not exaggerating - they really are nothing like you expect) and the recipe was from Sarah at Foodbridge. Sarah was one of the first people we 'met' online (on Twitter) and we hope to meet her in person one day. Her blog is all about Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine and travel. She recently travelled to the Republic of Macedonia and Sweden and is a bit of a champion of hunting out and exploring local food markets wherever she is (you can see why we like reading her blog.)



Anyway, why are we going on about Sarah and Foodbridge? Well, as we're nearing the end of this year, she's listed her favourite food blogs of 2010. There aren't too many in this list - just the ones she likes to read - and as you might have guessed by now, we've made that list. Woo hoo! Thanks Sarah. Of the other blogs she links to, we already subscribe to four of them so it appears we have very similar tastes. Click the following link to see all of Sarah's favourite food blogs of 2010 on Foodbridge.

The Turkey's For Life Giant Mixed Tost!

Tost: You can't come to Turkey - at least the west of Turkey - and leave without sampling tost. Tost is a big, tasty toastie and the Turks do a mighty fine tost! It's not two tiny slices of bread with a delicate filling and a dainty side salad (unless you're in an eatery trying to cater for foreign visitors). Instead, expect a half bread - a Turkish loaf cut in half - with your choice of filling. In  Fethiye, the fillings you're most likely to see on offer are variations of cheese, sucuk and tomato and if you're in Turkey on a budget, well, you need to hunt out the Turkish toastie. They'll fill you up, they taste great and they're cheap!



For those who feel like splashing out and treating themselves, you can order a karışık tost. This is a mixed toast and means you would like all three fillings (our favourite tost). When we make our own karışık tost at home in Fethiye, of course we have to add a couple of little extras and we use bazlama rather than the usual, equally good, Turkish bread. This is purely for the reason that we're slightly addicted to bazlama at the moment. 

Prepare your Turkish mixed toastie ingredients first

• Slice your tomatoes and sucuk (salami or pepperoni is fine if you can't get sucuk) and grate your cheese. There are no set amounts for this. We've called this a giant tost because we like to squish a lot of filling in between the slices of bread.



• You will notice some chopped fresh chillies in the bottom right of this photo. For us, these are an essential ingredient in any tost. You can ask for chillies in your tost in the Fethiye cafes. Sometimes, they will be added into your sandwich or you might get a small plate of pickled chillies if you are sitting down to eat. 

Your Turkish mixed toastie is ready to be eaten.

• Preheat your toastie machine.



• Cut your bazlama in half (ciabatta is a good substitute for bazlama) and then carefully slice it through the middle.


• Spread salça across one half of the bread and sprinkle some of the grated cheese on top.


• Add your chopped chillies, followed by the sucuk slices and tomato. 


• Sprinkle kekik (dried thyme or oregano) over the top, followed by the rest of the cheese and place your other slice of bazlama on top.


• (Carefully) place your future toastie onto the griddle and pull the lid down. Our griddle comes off its hinge. If yours can do this, take it off the hinge so that you can just rest the top of it onto the toastie. (More even coverage!) If you're using standard Turkish bread, press down onto the top of the close griddle so you can sqaush the bread down to make it as flat as possible.


• After 10 or 15 minutes, işte! A personalised Turkish karışık tost. Either wait a few minutes to let it cool down or do what we do and wrap a serviette round it so you can begin straight away and burn your mouth!

Turkish Food - Turkish Rice Recipe

We've been meaning to do a recipe for what we call Turkish rice for a long time now but it's taken till last night for me to get round to actually making some.(It's real name is şehriyeli pilav.) If you're familiar with Turkish food, you'll know that rice features quite heavily in many of the main meals. A lot of the Turkish recipes I follow usually end with, 'serve with rice' and if you go to a lokanta (a type of Turkish restaurant), whichever dish you order, it's highly likely that you'll be asked whether you would like a side serving of rice to go with it. 

A staple Turkish food - side serving of rice

Thankfully, Turkish rice is very tasty. Whenever our friends come over to Fethiye to visit us, they always say, 'I can't wait to have some of that Turkish rice.' (They must be sick of eating the 'quick cook' rice for sale in the British supermarkets!) One of our Turkish friends is an amazing cook (and loves to cook) but her husband says he's happy just eating Turkish rice with yoghurt - surely a good example of how rice is much-loved by some in Turkey (even if it does drive our friend round the bend!)



So, it was becoming increasingly difficult to live in Fethiye and not be able to produce a good bowl of Turkish rice for the table whenever we had friends round for dinner. A couple of years ago, I asked my friend how she made it and I've made it this way ever since. So here is our friend's recipe for Turkish rice - with a tiny little change by us.

• Heat a glug of olive oil in a deep pan on a low heat. (This is the change by us. The traditional way is to melt a knob of butter but I find the butter a little too rich).


• Next, add around 3 dessert spoonfuls of şehriye to the pan. (I had never seen this till we came to Fethiye. It's a type of pasta and if you're outside Turkey and can't find it, vermicelli can also be used.

 Şehriye is used in servings of Turkish rice.

• Stir the şehriye and watch it carefully, as you are looking for a change of colour. As soon as you notice the slight change in colour, add a cup of rice (we use a coffee / tea mug) and keep stirring for a few minutes. (Remember to keep it on a medium to low heat or else the rice, and particularly the şehriye, will burn.) 

The rice and şehriye is sauted for a few minutes

• After a few minutes, add 2 mugs of water. Use the same sized coffee mug as you used for the rice.



• There'll be a big sizzle and the water will bubble up. Turn up the heat and bring the water to the boil, fully.


• Give the rice a couple of stirs, cover and return the heat to medium / low.


• Leave it to simmer for 8-10 minutes, turn off the heat and leave the pan covered for another 5 minutes.

Lovely steamed Turkish rice

• When you remove the lid, fork through the rice to make it fluffy and then serve it with whatever exciting Turkish food you have made.

(This recipe makes enough rice to serve as a side dish for four people. However much you decide to make, the easy thing to remember is you just use twice as much water as rice and it should cook perfectly.)

Turkish Food - Pickled Red Cabbage Recipe

Today has been a 'getting organised for Christmas' day. We've done the Christmas shopping and the Christmas making. We like to feel we're putting the thought and the feeling back into Christmas (well, that's our excuse anyway) by not spending too much. Two of our Christmas presents for other people are made by us. Someone will be getting a jar of muhammara and another person will be getting a lovely big jar of pickled red cabbage.



We did quite a few posts last winter on the Turkish love of pickled vegetables and pickled red cabbage is included in that. These days, we struggle to get through a serving of gözleme without devouring a plate or two of pickled red cabbage and other pickled vegetables; peppers, carrots, aubergines, white cabbage.



Anyway, here is our pickled red cabbage recipe. I made it last Christmas and it went down very well with all concerned. It's actually an old Mrs Beeton recipe and I like it because of the spices in the vinegar.

Excess juices will leave the red cabbage because of the salt

• First of all, take all the outer leaves from a medium-sized red cabbage and cut it lengthways, through the heart, into quarters.


• Cut out the thick white stem, and slice the rest of the cabbage into thin shreds.


• Lay all the cabbage out onto a plate and sprinkle salt over it. The cabbage is supposed to be covered and left overnight like this but I just waited a few hours.

The spice flavours will infuse into the vinegar as it boils 

• Add some crushed black pepper, a pinch of freshly grated ginger and a little chilli powder to a pan. 


• Pour around 75cl of vinegar over the spices and bring to the boil.


• After the vinegar has boiled for a couple of minutes, remove it from the heat and leave to cool.

Glass jars are readily available on the Fethiye markets, maybe because Turkish people love their pickled vegetables so much. We usually use empty jam jars and the like but, well, it is Christmas so we splashed out 1 lira for a dedicated pickled red cabbage jar.

• Add the cabbage to your chosen jar (our jar holds about a litre) and then pour the cooled vinegar through a sieve and over the top of the cabbage.

 Festive pickled red cabbage

Seal the jar and leave it for a day or two before opening it. All ready for Christmas Day, Turkish pickled vegetables have made a decent Christmas present. It's the thought that counts!