Stories & Recipes

No Waste Phyllo Rolls w/ Stamppot

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 09:59:45 GMT

No Waste Phyllo Rolls w/ Stamppot

For a Bosnian, there is no life without Burek or Pita: layered of rolled phyllo pies with meat, dairy and/or vegetable stuffing. Even though I'm all about self stretched yufka, especially for our Don't Call Me Bure k, the store-bought phyllo from your local Turkish grocery shop is a great user friendly solution for beginners. And even though classic flavors are classic for a reason, I see yufka somewhat as pizza dough: a white canvas to play with.

If you do your research carefully, you will discover that phyllo stuffed with cabbage and or onion might be forgotten, but not unfamiliar in the Bosnian cuisine. I made a version with fermented cabbage because not only does the fermented part add a funky note flavor-wise but in combination with potato, crispy caramelized onion and mushrooms makes yufka to ouur common ground: very Dutch and Slavic at the same time. If you have leftovers stamppot of any sort, you can put them to good use this way and make a surprising starter for your festive table or a lovely lunch any other day. Play with flavors, don't waste anything. In Bosnia, we always eat Burek or Pita with Sour Cream or Yogurt on the side, and you should too!

This recipe is our contribution to the recipe booklet Restj es, which is a part of national #verspillingsvrij campaign, created by Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling , plus Food Cabinet , Gemeente Amsterdam en Van Amsterdamse Bodem in Amsterdam.

Ingredients:

For the pie, 7 rolls, fits a 30x40cm baking tin:

750g leftovers stamppot

for example, fermented cabbage stamppot, consisting of 500gr mashed potato and 250gr fermented cabbage

2 tbs olive oil (for frying) plus extra to work with phyllo

3-4 shallots, approximately 200gr, sliced thinly in half moons

250g brown mushrooms, in 3-4mm slices

2 ts butter

salt and black pepper

1 pack phyllo, 450-500g, approximately 14 sheets

15g butter

15ml water

For the topping:

200g sour cream, cream fraiche or Greek yogurt

handful of flat leaf parsley leaves, chopped, and maybe some dill

1 garlic clove, minced

olive oil

a drop of wine vinegar or lemon juice

Method:

Preheat the oven at 200 ° C.

Warm up 2 tbs of olive oil in a frying pan and fry the shallots for about 20 minutes over middle heat, stirring occasionally, until they turn crispy and golden brown. Take them out and use the very same pan to fry the mushrooms. Depending on the size of your pan, you might need to fry the mushrooms in 2 or 3 batches for the best result. You don't want to overcrowd the pan and cook mushrooms in their own juices - it makes them soggy. When the mushrooms are golden brown, stir in some butter until it melts and season with salt and black pepper.

A package of phyllo usually contains around 14 sheets. Use 2 sheets per roll and split the filling in 7 aproximately even parts.

Grease the baking tin with a bit of olive oil or use baking paper.

Lay a sheet of phyllo on a clean working surface or a tablecloth a sprinkle with a few drops of water and some olive oil. Water makes it easier to roll the phyllo, but be careful not to make it wet as it will fall apart. The oil prevents sheets from sticking together and is necessary to create layers. Lay the second sheet of phyllo on top and sprinkle with a few drops of olive oil as well. Arrange 1/7th part of the fillings onto the sheet: the stamppot (fermented cabbage and mashed potato), followed by the onions and mushrooms. You don't have to use all the mushrooms in the rolls, you can leave some on the side to use in the topping, like I did! Cover max 2/3 of the sheet surface with the filling, roll it up tightly, starting from the shorter side of the sheet. Place the rolls next to each other into the baking tin, sprinkle a bit of olive oil on top of them and bake for 30 minutes until they blush and their edges become crispy.

Topping & Serving:

While your phyllo rolls are in the oven, make the topping.

You can use the same frying pan you used for the mushrooms, (there's still some flavor in it!) to make the garlic oil.

Mince the garlic and warm it up in the pan together with one 1tbs of olive oil, bringing it to a gentle bubble over low heat. Be careful not to burn the garlic, turn the heat off immediately as the bubbles appear and let the garlic oil cool down.

Wash de parsley in ice cold water and chop it finelly. Chop the the rest of the fried mushrooms. If you're using dill, chop it finelly as well. Combine both the mushrooms and herbs with the garlic oil, season with salt, black pepper and a few drops of vinegar/lemon juice to your taste.

Just before you take the phyllo rolls out of the oven, melt the 15gr butter with 15ml water in a pan. Instead of water you can also use milk. You don't have to bring the two to a boil, it's only important that the butter melts so you can pour the mixture all over the phyllo rolls after you take them out of the oven.

Cover the rolls with a clean cloth and let the rolls rest and soak up the butter/water mixture for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

Serve with self made herbs and mushrooms topping and sour cream/crème fraîche or Greek yogurt on the side.

Šalša

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 19:08:30 GMT

šalša

If summer had a heart, it would be tomato shaped.
And if there's one summer addiction I'd recommend to anyone, it's homemade Šalša - Dalmatian fresh tomato sauce made of fragrant, sun ripened, juicy oxheart tomatoes. The tomatoes really need to be at their best, as they make šalša to what it is, so check the farmers' market or a good specialized greengrocer while they are in season.

Do hurry up, all the good toms might be gone before you learn how to pronounce šalša.

If you can, make a big batch, keep it in the fridge for a couple of days and use it any way imaginable - turn it into a tomato soup, add it to your stews, risottos and pastas or eat it with fried eggs and a piece of bread.

Serving tip #1:

With Pasta, obviously. Our favorite pasta shape to go with šalša is mafaldine , with grated Parmigiano Reggiano and a few fresh basil leaves on top.

TIP: warm up some pre-cooked cannellini beans with the pasta for a summery pasta e fagioli.

Serving tip #2:

With garlicky boiled potatoes and chard.

Peel the slightly starchy potatoes, cut them in chunks, add to the pan with cold water and bring to the boil. While the potatoes are cooking, wash and cut the chard. Leaves can be cut more roughly and the stalks a bit more finely so they can cook through evenly. After 15 minutes or so, when the potatoes are almost done, add the chard stalks and leaves to the pan and cook until soft. When timing, take into account that delicate young chard will probably be done in a minute or two, while it could take 3-5 minutes for older, sturdier chard. Strain and save some of the cooking water.

Add a generous splash of olive oil into the pan (you can use the same pan in which you have cooked your potatoes and chard), and throw in a couple of finely chopped garlic cloves. Heat it all up carefully over low to medium heat, until the garlic releases its aromas. Return the potatoes and the chard into the pan, followed by the saved cooking water and stir well for a couple of minutes. Season with sea salt and pepper and urn off the fire.

Combine with šalša. Serve at room temperature with a piece of good bread to dip in the juices, some feta or a slice or two of good prosciutto.

Serving tip #3:

With pan fried mackerel filets.

Clean and filet the mackerel or let your fishmonger do that for you. Make a few undeep incisions in the fish skin. Pat dry the filets, coat them in well seasoned flour and pan fry them in hot oil. Seasoning could be simply salt and cracked black pepper, but you could also add some spices like chili flakes to the flour. Fry the filets skin side down first, then flip carefully. The filets should be done in a few minutes, depending on their size/thickness.

Serve on top of šalša, drizzled with parsley and garlic olive oil or any green salsa of choice.

Mahune

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 17:33:19 GMT

Mahune

You know I'm here for the beans. In any shape, color, dried or fresh, beans are the ultimate all year round source of comfort. The naming Mahune refers to the young podded beans, green, yellow, purple, Romano or any other kind. They are sweet and bursting with flavor in stews, salads and frittatas, and they are in season right now.

We had a small place outside of Sarajevo where my grandmother used to grow her vegetables, small scale and mostly recreational. Once I open the drawer labeled Buhotina in my memory, I could stay there for hours, watching her rhytmically disappear and reappear behind the tall vines of beans, not saying much, just showing me how big they had grown that year.

I am convinced however that her crop was merely a small fragment of the beans galore going on back in her Sarajevo kitchen. When a certain vegetable was in season, there would be so much of it on the market and it would be incredibly inexpensive for those couple of weeks that she couldn't help herself but buy her weight in it. Some would be preserved for the winter, some would be eaten straight away, prepared any way imaginable.

Some cook Mahune as a stew with veal or beef, but we like them best in this meatless version, with other seasonal veg and cooked in their own juices. Some would add some water or broth into the pan to speed up the cooking, but I am very opinionated and firmly belive adding water dilutes the flavor, while skipping it makes for the most concentrated flavor explosion and helps the beans preserve their shape. I do hate when things fall apart.

The cooking time can vary a bit, depending on the type and freshness of the podded beans you use, but you can control the level of doneness by checking in on them every once. Even al-dente they are yummy, but obviously the longer they cook, the deeper the flavors interlock.

You can use one type of the beans, or combine different types, depending on what you have on hand. My favorite are yellow Romano beans, as they are tender in both texture and flavor, but they are not widely available in Netherlands so anything works. During the summer months, my local Turkish grocery stocks a special variety of Turkish beans, with fat juicy beans on the inside and slightly bitter pods, which are also yummy in this dish. I count around 200-250 grams podded beans per adult, young kids will obivously eat a bit less, but I doubt there will be any leftovers. Add a boiled potato on the side or serve over some rice, and you've got yourself a wholesome lunch the next day. Mahune taste great (if not better) cooked in advance.

Baked Rice Pudding w/ Rhubarb and Cherry Compote

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 09:36:00 GMT

Baked Rice Pudding w/ Rhubarb & Cherry Compote

Not much of a story here.

Ado is not a fan of classic rice pudding, Sutlija, as that's all he was allowed to eat for months when he was a small boy in the hospital due to the kidney problems. I, on the other hand, love it's creaminess and nostalgic, comforting feels but I craved baking so this is what we ended up with, and we were both pleased with the result. A perfect light dessert for warm days, it is best served properly chilled and eaten in the shadow. Keeps well for a couple of days in the fridge.

Musaka

Sun, 03 May 2020 10:36:08 GMT

Musaka

Kiflice & the little black book

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 17:45:36 GMT

Kiflice & the little black book

It might seem hard to believe, but there was life before internet and no matter how vague any memory of that place might have become, it did exist and I was born into it.

In that world on the verge, but with no anticipation whatsoever of the future drowning in culinary blogs, food-tubes or mouth-watering instagram feeds, right around the corner, food was still a thing - just like it had been in many worlds before – and the recipes were finding their ways through communities.

I remember them flying around the town on fatty papers of all sorts and sizes torn out of notebooks, even handkerchiefs, written in unrecognizable handwritings, being exchanged at casual get-togethers, birthday or holiday feasts and often after funerals. Some being more reliable than others, the recipes were passed on, forever burdened with their shady names, making themselves comforable and well accepted in their new families as if it were their own.

By 1997 my mom had a pile of those randomly collected recipes in one of her kitchen drawers. Needless to mention, there was no beginning and no end and certainly no system to her stack so lacking other entertainment that would satisfy my creative OCDC, i decided to take care of it. She protested for a while, but I persisted: they were all re-written or glued in a little black book, categorised – savoury, sweets and such – the best way I could at the time, and with credits to people who made them or passed them on in the upper right corner. In the end it turned out to be a beautiful document of an era we had no idea would end so quickly. The little black book still exists and is being used on regular basis - just a week or two ago, I consulted it to make some savoury kiflice by my mom's friend Mira for the first time.

About Freedom & Other Demons

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 15:29:12 GMT

About Freedom & Other Demons.

This is a part of the text I originally wrote for the first issue of an internal newspaper at Studioninedots which was published weekly to keep everyone in touch during the Corona Crisis.

A bazillion of (in)appropriate jokes has been circling on the internet since the very conception of this Covid-19 induced social – distancing, a lot of them being weird scenarios for couples that doomed to spend all of their time together now. One of my favorite jokes is about two friends chatting. 'Where's your husband?' asks First. 'He's in the garden', answers Second. 'But, I havent's seen him there', wonders First. 'You'll have to dig a little', answers Second.

Luckily for us both, Ado and I are very much used to being together all the time, both at work and home, so in that sense, this so the whole situation doesn't affect that aspect of our relationship. Moreover, it has improved, since all football matches on TV have been cancelled, followed by minor withdrawal symptoms on Ado's part and a silent ovation on mine.

Inescapably however, all sorts of posttraumatic issues were expected to emerge sooner or later. Ado's fear of being hungry, deeply rooted in real life 1990's Bosnia, started kicking in as early as mid Febraury, when the threat of Covid-19 seemed too far to bother the rest of us and it resulted in some of the weirdest pantry items, which I'm ashamed to name publicly. For me, however, this recalls alot my very own social-distancing 7 years ago, when I had to give up many social activities for as long as it took, due to a premature baby with health issues. Sometimes it feels as if I had been trained for this, but this is not a drill and the anxiety of having to deal with life-threatning health-related situation which is completely out of my control is very palpable. Switching on the survival modus means me refusing to leave the house under any circumstances, even though we are not under an official lock-down.

One thing I remember from 7 years ago is that the key to saving one's sanity is keeping oneself busy and occupied with things one enjoys doing. That's why, next to mandatory creative experiments in the kitchen I immeresed myself into finally finishing INAT's website and writing for the sake of the soul.

The universal truth, which most of us, including me, tend to forget in the times of abundance and prosperity, is that physical freedom is just one of many forms of freedom and it makes all the sense now.

Next to the somewhat wrong jokes, an unhealthy amount of cliché texts about how this is all good for natural balance and interhuman values has also been shared on social media. But if you ask us, it is just another reminder that nothing in this world has ever been static and everything is constantly prone to change, which makes our carefully maintained comfort zones, no maater how well cushioned they are, mere glass houses on top of a landslide. Which is ultimately a positive idea if you give it enough room to settle and reveal itself in its full glory.