Correct planting and caring for the decorative turkish turban pumpkin. Turkish Pumpkin Dessert Turkish Pumpkin Dessert with Honey
In winter, one of the most popular desserts is “tatlysy tavern”, pumpkin sweets. At the festive New Year's table they must be present without fail. Turkish folk omen says, that the first thing in the New Year is to eat a piece of sweet pumpkin, then the coming year will be successful and abundant.
Walking around New Year's Istanbul and looking into the windows of cozy cafes and pastry shops, we have met this heroine of the Turkish New Year more than once.
I tried pumpkin sweets several times in Alanya and Istanbul, but was not impressed. The pumpkin slices weren't very sweet, and they were too soft for my taste. Usually it is prepared like this: the pumpkin pulp, cut into large pieces, is placed in a large saucepan, sprinkled with granulated sugar, poured in a little water and boiled for an hour or two. No, such a pumpkin is not for me.
One winter, shortly before the New Year, I saw on TV a New Year's report about a pumpkin, in which they gave a recipe for making a dessert from it. The recipe also sounded very simple, but still caught my attention to the point that I bought a pumpkin (Kabak) on the next market day. More precisely, it is called "honey pumpkin" - bal kabağı. By the way, from the same news program, I learned that pumpkin reduces the risk of cancer (especially lung cancer), reduces the risk of paralysis. Surely, she has many other useful qualities.
Pumpkin sales points can be seen from afar - no matter what colorful vegetables and fruits are sold from the stalls, the “acidic” orange-green gamut of pumpkin is the brightest in the bazaar. Whole pumpkins are very large, so they buy them in parts. It is not possible to cut a pumpkin with a knife - huge fruits are cut with saws! Sellers deftly cut the tough peel with special knives for peeling vegetables.
For the preparation of sweets, you should choose the brightest pumpkin in color with a wide layer of pulp. Take slices from only one pumpkin. After all, the density of the fruits is different. Then, during heat treatment, the pieces will be of different consistency - some are ready, others are either too hard or too soft, like porridge. You will be sawed off 2-3 kilos from any half of the pumpkin you like, cut into narrow crescents, then cleaned in a couple of minutes. And you get a pumpkin ready to use. If you want, bake in the oven, if you want, follow my recipe and make sweets.
Ingredients
2 kg peeled pumpkin
1 kg granulated sugar
for serving
chopped walnuts
thick fresh cream
So let's get started
Cut the pumpkin, peeled and seeds, into pieces about the size of a matchbox, lay in layers in a wide flat saucepan, covering each layer with granulated sugar.
Turkish housewives very often use pumpkin in cooking various dishes. In one Turkish family I was treated to an unusual pumpkin dish. The taste was so unexpected that I did not immediately understand that it was made from the most ordinary pumpkin. And the presentation surprised me. On a huge platter lay translucent orange pumpkin slices drizzled with white tahina sauce and sprinkled with greenish pistachios. Such is the riot of colors and tastes. I took the recipe for this dish as a basis and quite often I cook this dish, giving up tahina and nuts. What is called - the option is simpler. And when I treat guests with this dish, sometimes I replace tahina and nuts with a mixture of lemon juice and honey. It turns out no less beautiful and tasty.
Let's cook the pumpkin. Peel it and cut it into pieces.
Place the sliced pumpkin in a saucepan, in which we will cook it in the future, and sprinkle with granulated sugar.
Leave the pumpkin for 3-5 hours to give juice. It is better to do this at night and continue cooking in the morning.
Now we will cook pumpkin in own juice over low heat. When the pumpkin is soft, it is ready.
Put it on a dish and let it cool. As I said, you can sprinkle the pumpkin with nuts and sprinkle with tahina, or replace the tahina with a mixture of honey and lemon juice, or you can eat it just like that, without any sauces. Believe me, this is delicious!
To prepare an unforgettable and aromatic dessert, you need to choose the right pumpkin, it should be bright orange in the cut. It is advisable to choose a honey pumpkin. First, the pumpkin needs to be peeled and cut into small identical cubes, put them on a baking sheet in an even layer.
Then sprinkle with sugar and put the clove buds, pour in a little water and cover with foil. Bake the dessert in the oven for 25 minutes, and then refrigerate it. To make the Turkish pumpkin dessert look beautiful, before serving it should be laid out in bowls and sprinkled with walnuts.
Another wonderful pumpkin dessert, which is prepared in Turkey, is called "Kabak Tatlysi". It is made only from honey pumpkin, which is cut into large but thin pieces. They are placed in a pan in even layers, filled with water so that it slightly hides them.
Then add sugar to taste, but ½ cup is enough for about 8 pieces. The saucepan is put on fire, the water is brought to a boil and the pumpkin is cooked for 20 minutes. At this time, you can additionally add honey. The main thing is to make sure that the pieces do not boil, but, at the same time, become tender and soft.
You may need to practice several times to get it right. How to make a pumpkin dessert so that it is fragrant and truly divine? The whole secret lies in the right decoration and presentation. Best of all, pumpkin dessert will be combined with heavy cream or kaymak.
If you are in Turkey, it will not be difficult to buy liquid halva and pour pumpkin over it. You can also sprinkle the dessert with chopped nuts or ice cream chunks. Another Turkish option for making a pumpkin dessert: for 6 kg of pumpkin, which is cut into small pieces, you need 3 kg of sugar.
The pumpkin needs to be laid out on a greased vegetable oil Cover the baking sheet with sugar and leave to infuse for 2-3 hours, it is during this time that the vegetable will give juice. Then we put the baking sheet in the oven for a few minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees. Before serving, pour over the dessert with tahini and sprinkle with nuts.
Baked pumpkin - Zyngata winter.
Baked pumpkin according to the Turkish recipe from the Aegean cuisine. Serve this pumpkin with garlic and yoghurt sauce. Baked pumpkin is a great side dish for poultry and fish.
By the way, I already brought summer zucchini to Zyngata. Served this pumpkin as a side dish to chicken thighs.
What do you need:
Pumpkin (peeled) - 1 kg.,
Onions - 3 pcs.,
Garlic - 5-6 cloves,
Chili pepper flakes - to taste,
Ground black pepper - to taste,
Flour - 1-2 tablespoons,
Tomato paste - 1 tablespoon
Water - 150 ml.,
Salt to taste
Butter - 100 gr.
How to cook:
Peel the pumpkin, cut into slices and place in a baking dish.
Cut the onion into half rings, finely chop the garlic and put everything between the pumpkin slices and on top.
Sprinkle the pumpkin with black pepper, chili flakes and sprinkle with flour after it has expired.
Put in a small bowl tomato paste, add water, add salt - mix everything with a fork. Pour the pumpkin over the top with tomato sauce.
Put pieces of butter on top of the pumpkin.
Put the pumpkin dish in a preheated oven to 180 degrees, bake for 1 hour, at the end for 5 minutes place under the grill to get a beautiful golden brown crust.
Serve baked pumpkin with garlic-yoghurt sauce.
In thick Greek yogurt, grate a little garlic (for piquancy), salt to taste and stir.
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Grilled chicken thighs "in Italian marinade"
Juicy chicken thighs, marinated in "Italian flavors", cook quickly, eaten even faster!) An ideal lunch / dinner for weekdays, as you need a minimum of time to prepare this delicious meal. The only thing is that you will need to marinate the meat in advance, preferably a day in advance, in extreme cases - 6-12 hours. I marinate in the evening and cook the next day. You need to fry in a grill pan for 4-5 minutes on each side. While the thighs are roasting, you can put the vegetables in the oven for a side dish.
It is best to immediately buy cut thighs - without bone and skin, at a price they are a little more expensive, but given that you will need to remove the bone, remove the skin and the time spent on this - in fact, it comes out to that.
What do you need:
Chicken thighs (without skin and bone) - 6 pcs.,
Olive oil (vegetable) - 1 tablespoon,
Dijon mustard - 1 tablespoon,
Lemon juice - 3 tablespoons,
Sugar - 1.5 tsp
Salt - 1 tsp
Black pepper - to taste
Dried chili flakes - 0.5 tsp,
A mixture of Italian dried herbs (or replace with a mixture of parsley, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary) - 2 tsp
How to cook:
Rinse chicken thighs, dry, put in a large cup. Sprinkle with chili flakes and Italian dried herbs - stir well.
For the marinade, in a small bowl, mix with a fork until a homogeneous emulsion - olive oil, Dijon mustard (it is not as sharp and vigorous as our "Russian"), lemon juice, salt, sugar.
Pour the marinade over the chicken thighs, mix well, massaging the meat.
Close the marinated meat with a lid and refrigerate for a day, or at least 6-12 hours.
An hour and a half before cooking, you need to remove the meat from the refrigerator so that it becomes room temperature.
Heat the grill pan well, brush with vegetable oil and fry the chicken thighs on both sides for 4-5 minutes.
We serve immediately!
