Identity Crisis...Yogurt Chicken from Turkey

At the end of July, Jeremy and I had two very special visitors to South Korea!  

Our MOMS came to visit us on vacation!

We had an awesome vacation spending time with them, and one of the things we did was take them to Itaewon, the foreigner district in Seoul for some shopping and lunch.  

 While they were here, we went to a beautiful Turkish restaurant called Kervan.  My meal at that restaurant inspired me to try to cook some Turkish food for this evening.  Before I get started on my recipe, I wanted to share a few beautiful photos from the restaurant.  

I love Turkish Tiles!  They are so beautiful!

The kitchen behind clear glass

Protect yourself from the Evil Eye!

Our food was delicious, and the prices, although they are what you would expect in Itaewon, could have been worse.  I have not stopped thinking about that meal in a month, and decided that tonight, it is time to make it.  Although, the recipe I found at yummly.com is probably not anywhere near the same as what I had in the restaurant, I know there are a few things in common. I am making Turkish Yogurt Chicken for dinner tonight with the homemade yogurt that I made this week.  

The meal at the restaurant was very nice.  We had hummus, Jeremy had lamb, Mom and I shared the yogurt chicken, and one of my favorite parts was dessert.  We did have baklava, but Jeremy and Mom also had Turkish Coffee.  I became familiar with it when I was in Kosova in 2000 and 2004, and although I can't drink the stuff, I have turned both of them onto it.  

Now what I can drink an what I thoroughly enjoy is drinking Turkish Tea.  I have a beautiful tea set in the United States that I bought when I went to Kosovo in 2004, and I miss being able to pull it out and brew black tea in my double decker tea pot, and serving it in my pretty little glasses with sugar cubes.  Well this experience brought me back to having tea in Korean living rooms, and enjoying conversation with friends.  

My tea was deslish, and got me to think about a great experience in my life, that I was able to share with my family a little bit at this restaurant.  

Anyway, Here is my experience cooking Turkish Yogurt Chicken:

This recipe needs at least 6 hours of marinating time, so think ahead when you want to try it!

Turkish Yogurt Chicken

Since I have never made this recipe before, I pretty much followed the recipe, all the way down to grating the onion.
I was only making three chicken breasts, but I didn't modify the recipe at all, just to make measurments simple.  I started by raiding my cupboard for the spices I would need, so I could open them and get them all ready to scoop.  Here is a list of the ingredients:
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
I used about a tablespoon of minced garlic,
1/2 cup grated onion
I did three tablespoons of Lime juice (deviation from the recipe, as it calls for lemon juice but I didn't have any)
1 cup plane yogurt (I used my homemade)

First you get 1 cup of yogurt into a bowl that you can mix.  My homemade yogurt was very thick and creamy.  It worked grate.

Next you combine all of the spices, garlic, onion, citrus juice, and oil mentioned in the recipe.

Yummy looking huh?

Stir it until well combined:

Okay, that looks a little better!

Next take up to 5-6 chicken breasts, and put them in a dish where they can marinate.  

And add the sauce over the top.  Make sure to move them around a little so the sauce is all around them.  

Okay, proof I made too much sauce for three chicken breasts...you can hardly
see the chicken breasts in there!

Lastly you cover the chicken and let the marinade do it's thing for 6 or more hours in the refrigerator!

Once you are done marinading, you can choose how you wish to cook this chicken.  You can bake it, grill it,  or broil it, however you desire.  I am going to bake it.

Okay, so I accidentally published this before I was ready, and I don't know how to go back and take it off and just save it in draft form, so I have just had half of a recipe up all day.  I am sorry about that.
My plan was to have this chicken for dinner, and cook it after it had been marinating all day, to serve for our evening meal, but plans changed a little bit.  We were out and about trying to get my new computer fixed, and wound up going to an Indian restaurant.  Click here to see the review for that restaurant..

When I got home, I put this mixture in the oven at 175 degrees C, or about 350 F uncovered.  After about

15 minutes, the top was starting to get darker than the rest, so I took it out and covered it with foil.  I will pull it out of the oven when the internal temperature of the chicken is at 160 F.

This is what it looks like right out of the oven:

From here, I am just putting the lid on and waiting for tomorrow.  I used maybe a whole tablespoon of cayenne pepper, so this one is SPICY!

THE NEXT DAY....

Since we ate Indian food last night for dinner, we turned our chicken into lunch today.

First I washed and sliced up some cherry tomatoes and some cucumber.  I also got the Simplot tortillas that we are going to wrap them in. for all you Idaho people, you know the name.

I sliced up the chicken into strips.

 

Next, I made some lime sour cream to cool the spice down just a little.

I put it all together,

And rolled it up.

It tasted really yummy!  The flavors were not something that is in our every day palate, but it really turned out well.  I think Next time I make this, I will try to grill it, rather than just baking it in the yogurt sauce!

Enjoy!  

<3

Ensalada De Taco

In my house, we love tacos.  We eat tacos, burritos, or something in between all the time.  In Korea it is possible to get taco seasoning, but where we have to go is an hour away from home to get it.  I have gotten pretty good at making my own, but why do it if you don't have to?  It has gotten to the point that for holidays involving gifts, one of my aunts sends us taco seasoning, which we love!  

Photo found on facebook, not something I made.

So the special part of this salad is not the salad, as that could be made any number of ways, but the special part of this particular salad is the bowl..  I started off with an idea from a picture that my mom posted on facebook from Tastefully Simple.  This picture had a muffin tin turned upside down, and tortilla bows made on top and baked.  

I thought it was a brilliant idea.  I went home and wanted to try...only the only tortillas I had were too big for the tiny muffin tin I had.  So I improvised.  I turned bowls upside down, and draped tortillas over them instead.  I used foil to hold the edges down,  and I oiled the bowls to keep them from sticking.  I followed the directions that came with the photo which was bake for 10 minutes on 375.  Since mine were not being baked quite the same, they took a bit longer to cook, and eventually I did take the foil off to get them brown and toasted.  My first batch stuck to the bowls.  So the second round, I lined the bowl with foil, and used foil over the top.  Once again it took a long time for it to cook, but it worked better the second time.  Mine did not turn out as pretty as this picture, but oh well...they are still fun to make and eat, and even better are having baked taco salad shells, not fried!  

So anyway, variations of my salad are pretty simple.  I get red lettuce or some form of leaf lettuce whenever I can find it.  I chop it up and put it on the bottom. 

The photo above then has long strips of peppers and onions along with garlic and ground beef.  This is my fajita style salad.  The mixture is combined with taco seasoning, following the directions for the packet I use. Then I make a bed of lettuce on the bottom of the bowl, add the meat and fajita veggies, sprinkle cheese, and cover with pretty tomatoes and maybe salsa and sour cream.  That is the picture above.  

Here is my attempt from last night.  I think the first time I used smaller, deeper bowls because the second time, my bowl are not as deep as they were the first time I did it.  

In the oven, trying to get them nice and crispy 

(remember the foil underneath though, these are the

ones that stuck!)

It kinda turned out a little more like a tostada shell today than a taco bowl.

Below, is how I made my salads last night.  

First I sauteed a medium sized onion 

(I used half of it in my beans) and set it aside.  I cooked my beans rinsed out the pan for the ground beef.  I browned most of the beef, and added garlic and the reserved onion to the beef while it was cooking and I let it cook until it was no longer pink.  Once it was cooked all the way through, I followed directions on the back of a taco seasoning packet to season the beef.

I washed the lettuce, and the tomatoes, and cut them all up into bite sized pieces.  The lettuce I sliced both horizontally and vertically, and the tomatoes I just sliced in half because they were cherry tomatoes in the first place.  

To assemble the taco salad, First I put down a bed of lettuce.  Then I added a few scoops of beans, and the seasoned ground beef.  Next I put on a big scoop or two of my homemade pineapple salsa.  I then put on some grated cheddar cheese, and some homemade sour cream.  

Once again, a petty incredible meal that really is not very difficult to make.  My husband loves it, and I love that we are getting our veggies!  

<3

Beans Beans the Magical Fruit...

For now my main picture is of the ingredients that go into my beans, because I forgot to get a final picture of just the beans.  Oops!
 

I have been complemented many times on my re-fried beans.  Because of that, I am separating them out, as their own topic, even though I used them on this night to make taco salads...which will be another post.  The best part of my re-fried beans, is that they are not re-fried!  They are super simple with canned beans, which is the easiest for me now that my local store finally carries black beans.  You could do this with pinto or black, but I have always preferred black, and can't even get pinto (although you might need to adjust the flavors for pinto, I don't know)...My recipe is going to be with the canned beans cause I never have such good luck with dry ones.

In this particular case, I forgot the garlic, and cooked up a whole onion.
I set half of the onion aside to cook with the meat I cooked when the beans
were done.  

First you dice up half of a medium sized onion into fairly small slices.  Put a little oil in your frying pan and cook the onion on medium until transparent.  Add a clove of garlic or two minced or crushed to the pan as well.   Then when the onions are transparent, maybe even a little over done, pour in 2 cans of black beans.  Use the water and everything.  If there is startch at the bottom of the can, rinse it around with a little water (or chicken stock), and dump that in the pan also.  Because these are not truly re-fried, you need the starchy water to help thicken up the beans.  

Next add your seasonings.  I did about 2 teaspoons of cumin, 1 of coriander, and 1 of turmeric, as well as a tablespoon of Chicken bouillon.  If you have chicken broth instead, maybe use that to rinse out your bean cans, so maybe 1/2 a cup.  You don't want to add a lot of extra liquid.  

Next I chop up a maybe 1/4 cup of jarred jalapenos and add them to the mix.  Once all of the ingredients are mixed and simmering on the stove, I do the part that gives them the real re-fried bean texture.  The trick is mashing them with a potato masher!  

As you do this, the mixture starts to thicken.  You can scrape the sides of the pan and keep adding the starch back into the mix, and it gets thicker and thicker.  Once you have mashed about 1/3-1/2 of the beans you should start getting a really thick texture on the bottom and a more liquid texture on top, make sure you are stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan.  Take the beans off of the heat when it is just a little runnier than the texture you like.  As it cools, they will thicken a bit more.  If they thicken too much, just add some chicken stock or some water to get them back to the consistency that you like.   

This is the closest picture I have to the beans done, I was trying to show that I added garlic powder cause I forgot to cook garlic with the onions...It really is important to the recipe though.
Don't the beans look re-fried?  

\

So, my recipe is super simple, takes less than 20 minutes to make, and always provides at least four servings of my family of two.

 

What a Crock...Pot Yogurt!

I really enjoy making yogurt.  I have only done it four or five times, and it works really well for me, just about every time!  It is much cheaper than buying the same amount, although I do actually have to buy a four pack just to make it.  Food is very expensive in Korea, so having something that I can make cheaper than I can buy, really helps, especially when I use it so much in my cooking.  I have started making things like chicken salad, and potato salad with yogurt instead of mayo as a base. Anyway,  here is how I make crock pot yogurt. You can use any crock pot/slow cooker you have, the size determines how much yogurt you can make at once.  My pot will handle about a half gallon of milk.

The first step in making any dairy product, be it yogurt, or cheese, is to sterilize your instruments.  I do this by pouring boiling water into the pot and letting it sit for a minute or two.  I throw in the utensils I will be using while cooking, and don't forget to sterilize the lid too!  Be careful not to burn yourself!  

After everything is sterilized and ready to go, you pour in your milk. I used non fat milk for the first time, but was scared it would not thicken, so I chickened out and added about 1/2 cup of heavy cream to it.  The more milk fat you have, the thicker and creamier your yogurt will be.  Also, only use non pasteurized or pasteurized milk. Don't use ultra pasteurized milk because the more pasteurized it is, the less likely it is that it will thicken.  

Next, you turn your crock pot on to high, and you let it do it's thing for about two hours. (insert Jeopardy music here)

Check the temperature every once in a while, and when you hit 180 F turn the Crock Pot off.  I lucked out and happened to check it on this day at the perfect temperature!  I have never done that before, and as you will see later, it probably will never happen again!

Remove the lid, and wait another 2 1/2-3 more hours.  Then check the temperature again.  Stir several times within that time, to help lower the temperature all the way though the pot.  You are looking for the pot to be at 115 F.  See, I didn't quite get the temp right this time, but I was pretty dang close!

Once you have reached 115 F, you take a ladle, or a measuring cup, or something with a handle (that you have sterilized already, and scoop maybe about a cup of the warm milk into a separate bowl.

Once you have that, you add 1/2 cup-1 cup of yogurt with live active cultures to the small bowl and stir up the mixture.  It is possible to get live active cultures without using a yogurt starter like this, and if you have that, then this is the time to add it.  I don't have access in Korea, so I have to start with some store bought yogurt.  Once it is well mixed, you stir it back into the crock pot.  The 115 degree(ish) temperature will allow the cultures to thrive on the milk and grow, but it is not too hot to kill them.  

Then you put the lid back on tuck in your crock pot for the night!  You wrap a beach towel or something large and warm around and over the pot to incubate it so the cultures have time to thrive, rather than cool off too much to do anything.  I don't really have any extra towels in my house, so I use a really heavy sweatshirt.  

This picture reminds me of the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter!

Now that it is all tucked in for the night, I go to bed.  

When I wake up, this is what I find:

                             

It is very thick, and it is starting to separate from the whey.  Now it is time to strain.  I use the same filter bags to strain yogurt, that I use in my almond milk, only in my yogurt, I have to double up the bags, or the yogurt strains right out...

First I use my blender pitcher just to hold the bags open while I pour, but I don't have the blade in the bottom.  I place it in a bowl, and put the two layers of filter bags inside of this.

 I carefully pour the yogurt into the bags, and tie up the top of the bags.  Then I put the bags into a mesh strainer.  then I put a bowl underneath to catch the whey coming out.  I knew it was going to be unattended for several hours, because I did this before work, so I had to put this in a deep bowl for straining.  So, I took this full bag, with the tops tied up, and in a strainer and just put it back over the crock pot, as it is the deepest bowl I have.  

I left this all day, and when I came back home from work, the crock was half full with whey.  There was a little runny yogurt in it, but not enough to care about.  Until it gets thick, you have to expect a little yogurt to run out.    

Once it is to the point it has been draining for hours, I give it a little squeeze.  Not too hard but to ring out any more whey that is hiding in the bag.  I get a container ready for the yogurt to go into, and then I untie the bags and take the outer bag off.  I usually tie the inner bag closed again once I have it down to only one layer.I get the yogurt into one corner, and over the canister I use, and then I use my kitchen sheers to cut off the corner like a pastry bag. I squeeze it into the container, and salvage as much as I can from the bag.  Most of it comes out with only a little bit that sticks.  I didn't get a pic of this step cause I need both hands to do it, and my hands were really really messy!  

 You can just see how thick and creamy it is!  

Now your yogurt is ready for you to put in a bowl and add some honey, or jam, or in my case, it is ready to prepare meals with...like the tatzikiki I am looking forward to making with it this week!  

Enjoy!!!  

<3 Jessica