Another delayed post, I’m afraid, but I am slowly catching up. Feast of the Hare is held in early November every year, and I was asked to prepare the lunch, with no particular theme in mind. I settled on Ottoman, as I had quite a few good cookbooks and recipes I had been wanting to test.
Ottoman cooking has lots of vegetarian and gluten-free options as well, and I wanted to provide a lunch that did not have obvious “substitutions for the real thing”. All but one dish was vegetarian, most were vegan, and I kept all but one gluten-free. I think it worked, as at least one vegetarian commented about how pleasantly surprised he was to crave a full range of choices, and the meat eating types also went away satisfied.
I relied heavily on 500 Years of Ottoman Cuisine and Bountiful Empire as my main sources. I used some of the redacted recipes in 500 Years, but used modern recipes for dishes that had no ingredients inappropriate for 16th C Turkey when I only had literary references or kitchen accounts to go by.
Pickled turnips and beets. https://www.themediterraneandish.com/pickled-turnips/. The Ottomans had both pickled turnips and pickled beets, so I did them together. The olives were purchased.
Pickled cucumbers (500 years of Ottoman cuisine). These had a really interesting flavour because they were only lightly pickled, and used fennel for flavour.
Kofta Kebabs https://www.panningtheglobe.com/grilled-turkish-kofta-kebabs/. I had several redacted kofta and kebab recipes, but lamb was beyond my budget so I went for a modern beef version.
Green rice and chickpea soup (both from 500 years of Ottoman Cooking). The cinnamon in the soup gave it a really rich, complex flavour. It’s rare to have people coming back for seconds of soup or asking for the recipe, but I did for this.
Pide https://www.turkishfoodtravel.com/2021/12/08/turkish-pide-pizza-recipe/?amp. I did one version with cheese and another with spinach and onion. They are much smaller than the original recipe, so that I could serve them as individual portions, rather than a huge thing that would be sliced and shared family-style. They were a lot of fun to make.
Zerde (500 years of Ottoman Cooking). Zerde is the dish that got me interested in doing an Ottoman meal. This creamy rice pudding flavoured with saffron and rosewater was a treat I got to try every time I went to Afghanistan (flying on Turkish Airlines, and often with a stopover in Istanbul). This was another dish that won converts among the crowd who hates rice pudding, as the texture and flavour profile is nothing like a mid-century rice pudding made with milk and containing swollen raisins.
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