Stuffed Green Peppers

Hello everybody,

Here we are with another dish which is world famous and is cooked more or less similar in different countries. This is the first in a series of stuffed vegetable recipes I will put here, mainly known as ‘dolma’ in the cuisines of former Ottoman Empire including Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Armenia and the Middle East.

You can find recipes for stuffed courgettes, aubergine, tomatoes and squash blossoms in time in this blog. (I am not sure I can find them in England but I am hopelessly optimistic:)

Let’s begin with stuffed bell peppers. There are two ways of cooking, with minced meat – here I will use soya mince- or with rice, you eat the first one with yoghurt, the latter, cold and with lemon juice at the top of it. You can find the olive oil version later on.

I would like to mention the type of green pepper, as they are not the normal ones from sainsbury’s or tesco! In London the green bell peppers are too big and thick – I think they are American- but the ones I used are from TFC- Turkish Food Centre, they are smaller and flavorsome. But as a last resort, I use the big ones of course!

Here we go:

7 – 8 bell peppers
200 gr of soya mince (original recipe is with minced meat)
1 glass full of rice
1 onion
2 medium size tomatoes
tomato or pepper paste (preferably spicy or use chilli paprika instead)
half a bunch of flat parsley
blackpepper
salt
2- 3 spoonful of olive oil

1. Wash the peppers and cut the heads and clean the seeds.
2. Heat some water and pour some over the rice to soak.
3. Chop the onions and parsley and mix them well with olive oil, soya mince or minced meat, tomato paste in a bowl, add some, paprika, salt and black pepper to season.
4. Add the rice to this mixture, stir well.
5. Stuff the peppers with this mixture, leave approximately two cm gap at the top.
6. Slice the tomatoes and put them at the top of each pepper as a cap.
7. Place the peppers in a pan and pour two or three glasses of water, cover the top and cook it on a low heat. Check the softness of the peppers with a fork, if they are not cooked after half an hour, leave them longer.

Stuffed peppers are ready! Enjoy them with a spoonful of plain yoghurt!

Spinach and Feta Borek – Filo Pastries

Yummy! I have never ever rejected anyone offering borek. If you want to find out why, try this recipe. It is perfect for picnics as it is edible hot or cold, any time of the day.

You can call anything cooked with filo pastries “borek” actually, but this dish is cooked happily in the Balkans as burek, in Greece as spanakopita (with spinach and feta), in Israel as burekas (with cheese).

You can fill your borek with anything you want, but usually cheese and spinach is used.  Flat parsley or minced meat are also good options.

Let’s begin:

• 500g filo pastry
• 1 glass of milk
• 5 spoonfuls of olive oil or butter
• 3 eggs
• some sunflower seeds or black seeds
• 250g feta cheese
• 1 pack of fresh spinach leaves (alternatively a big bunch of parsley)

1. Spread some butter onto your cooking tray, this will stop your borek from sticking the tray.
2. Filo pastry is usually sold in a round shape so leave one sheet aside and cut the rest to fit to your tray.
3. Mix your butter or olive oil, milk, and eggs all together in a bowl.  Stir well.
4. Put the sheet of filo pastry in your tray, leave the corners out, you will close them at the top once you finish layering.
5. Spread the oil-milk-egg mixture with a brush over each sheet, and put each sheet on top of the other.  Use half of the sheets.
6. Soften the spinach in a pan quickly, cool it down and mix with crumbled feta cheese. (if you use parsely, you do not need to cook it.)
7. Pour this mixture onto your filo pastry layers in the tray.
8. Then, carry on putting the filo pastries one by one over this mixture and each time do not forget to spread some butter-milk-egg mixture onto the sheets otherwise they will become dry.
9. When there is no filo pastry left, cover the corners of the first big sheet onto your borek and spread the rest of the butter-milk-egg mixture on top.

10. Sprinkle some seeds over it.

11. Cook it for about 20 minutes in the middle of a pre-heated oven at 200C, until the top and the bottom gets brownish. It is delicious eaten with a spoonful of yoghurt.

Bon appetit!