"I am a yummy robot!" said the cookie.

I always feel that I am blessed to have known Hatice and Selman who had their first son - Ahmed - almost three weeks ago. They live in New York and we are really sorry that we can't go and attend the baby shower. However, Milou and I wanted to make something special for Ahmed and decided to bake some salty sesame cookies for him. We know we can't send them to Brooklyn but we could send Hatice and Selman the photographs of this lovely robot instead, we thought. With the noodles as his joints and antenna, it's just lovely, isn't it? 

"Welcome Ahmed! We hope you will have fantastic days with your awesome parents!"

The recipe was quite easy but I hadn't baked salty cookies before. Perhaps that's the reason why I couldn't tell how my oven would react. They got a bit over browned in the end but they were crispy and tasty enough with a lot of sesame and mahlab in them.

Plum Jam Muffins

This is Just To Say

I have eaten 

the plums 

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving 

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

William Carlos Williams

       I haven't eaten so much  plums all my life as I've eaten in Sarajevo for the last three years. Plums are everywhere here. There are plum trees in almost every garden and so it's not surprising to find them at very low prices in the grocery shops, street markets and supermarkets. They eat them both fresh and dried. Locals enjoy them as part of their daily diet all summer long.

      

      We also made some plum jam with dark chocolate and rum extract two weeks ago. It was Emir who had the idea and spent his whole afternoon in the garden boiling plums and stirring constantly to get in the end a dozen jars of fantastic jam. It's worth all his effort. Even Milou likes it particularly with fresh whole wheat bread. Well, here is a photograph of the jam before we added the chocolate and rum extract. I'd prefer it without rum extract but it was the first time Emir had made some jam and that's why he stuck to the recipe with rum extract which he found on the Internet.  

 Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup milk

Filling

Chocolate Plum jam

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 185 °C and lightly grease or line a muffin pan with paper liners. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.
2. In a large bowl, beat eggs and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add oil, milk beating well. Stir in vanilla. With mixer on low, alternately add flour mixture.

3. Divide batter among muffin cups. Fill the cups halfway with batter and use a spoon to make a shallow well in the center of each. Fill each well with a rounded teaspoon of jam and then cover the jam with more batter. Bake for 20 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean, there may be jam on it. Let cool in pan 10 minutes; transfer muffins to a rack to cool more.  

Stuffed Peppers

When people have guests for dinner in Turkey, one of the basic dishes they cook is rice stuffed peppers which are usually served cold or at room temperature before or with the main dish . So it's usually placed on the dinner table as an appetizer. We cook them with no meat inside and vegetable oil only. However, people in Turkey also cook peppers stuffed with rice and minced meat and serve hot as the main dish. Well, my mother cooks peppers over medium heat and lets them cool and refrigerates them overnight, but away from the Mediterranean cuisine here in Sarajevo they only stuff peppers with rice and meat or in some rare cases with grated potatoes. Similarly, my mother-in-law cooks peppers stuffed with rice and meat in the oven, always. Her sons recognize them the moment they see the peppers with brown tops which is the proof the peppers were cooked in the oven in her style. Anyway, I decided to combine the two styles of cooking peppers with no meat and baking them in the oven.  I  added all the vegetables on hand to the common ingredients for a change. I stuffed the peppers and baked them in the oven until they got brown on the top. It worked well. There were unfortunately some ingredients missing such as currants and pine nuts which are special to stuffed peppers in Turkey but it had other new stuff inside so they were super tasty in the end. To have a better idea of Turkish rice stuffed peppers cooked with olive oil, please visit http://almostturkish.blogspot.com/2007/07/vegetarian-stuffed-peppers-zeytinyal.html and http://faygsm-thestuffoflife.blogspot.com/2011/06/turkish-stuffed-peppers.html. 

• Ingredients
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt, ground black and red pepper, cinnamon, oregano
• 2 cup rice
• bell peppers, seeds and ribs removed
• carrots, peeled and grated
• leeks, sliced

• Directions
• Preheat oven to 200 C degrees. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic, salt, sugar, and other spices. Cook until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.
• Add carrots and leeks. Cook until all mixed about 5 minutes. Stir in rice and add 2 cups water. Cook until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Fill peppers with rice mixture. Arrange peppers in a baking dish just large enough to hold them. Add 1 cup water. Cover with aluminium foil, and bake until peppers are tender, 35 to 40 minutes.

Two Young Men on the Road

One of my friends from Turkey and his younger brother who easily broke away from life's commitments decided to hitch-hike across the Balkans starting from Ankara. Although they let me know earlier that they were about to arrive, I felt such a great sense of relief and joy only when I saw them safe and sound carrying heavily loaded backpacks here in Sarajevo. After having spent two busy days around the city, we joined them on their way to Croatia.

WW2 Museum in Jablanica

They were heading for the Rainbow Gathering which would take place somewhere close to Karlovac. We took Milou with us and it was the first time we'd travelled such a long way all together. I felt as if I was writing a story of our own road trip. Everything we had on the road was something to remember.

In Mostar

When you are on a road trip, you share everything and we shared everything we had on our way to Dubrovnik. It was an amazing feeling to do so. I particularly remember the moment when Ergin -the younger one of the two brothers- offered a handful of wild grapes and cranberries we'd picked from some trees by the River Neretva. That very moment got stuck somewhere in my memory to serve as the summary of our whole trip. 

Ergin sharing wild grapes with Milou

Soon at our next stop, we found ourselves in the middle of a get-together of famous artists and sculptors in Bosnia. It was a little bit weird, actually. Later in Dubrovnik, Milou was the center of attraction with her pigeon-feather headdress like a little Indian. Late in the afternoon there, the two brothers packed once again and took the first bus to Zagreb as they planned to attend the Rainbow Gathering 2011 somewhere there.

Milou with her pigeon-feather headdress in Dubrovnik

Walnut Muffins

We were about to start an amazing journey from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik and these walnut muffins were fresh from the oven and ready to set off. 

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup milk

1 cup ground walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 185 °C and lightly grease or line a muffin pan with paper liners. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.
2. In a large bowl, beat eggs and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add oil, milk beating well. Stir in vanilla and ground walnuts. With mixer on low, alternately add flour mixture.
3. Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean, 20 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. Let cool in pan 10 minutes; transfer muffins to a rack to cool more. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if you like.

Banana Muffins with Cereal

Sometimes a muffin is just a muffin but these were beyond my expectations. With banana slices inside and honey Cheerios Os cereal on top, they were more than just muffins.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 ripe bananas
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup milk

 

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 185 °C and lightly grease or line a muffin pan with paper liners. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.
2. In a large bowl, beat eggs and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add oil, milk beating well. Stir in vanilla. With mixer on low, alternately add flour mixture.

3. Divide batter among muffin cups. Put banana slices into the half-filled cups and then fill them up. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. Let cool in pan 10 minutes; transfer muffins to a rack to cool more. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. 

Vegetable Pie with Cottage Cheese

I baked some Turkish pogaca rolls a few days ago and had some dough left in the end. There was a mixture of frozen vegetables in the freezer, I quickly remembered. The variety of the vegetables in the package made me smile: Carrots, scallions, cauliflower, potatoes, tomatoes, courgettes, celeries, cabbage, peas, green beans, leeks and parsley. And that big smile swept away all my worries about what to do with the dough. 

Anyway, the idea had already walked into my head: The dough, which could have ended up in the trash or the freezer, would easily turn into a pie crust. And it did. I spread the pastry on a lightly greased pan and folded the pastry edge upwards. The rest was easy enough to finish in 10 minutes. I stirred in some cottage cheese, cream and diced salami to the vegetable mixture. The vegetables got even nicer when combined with cheese. I seasoned it with salt, pepper and thyme, and then sprinkled with olive oil, and mixed it in. I poured it carefully into the pie dough and piled on it. I sprinkled the upward edge with poppy seed (for a change.)  Well, I baked it until the pastry was golden and the filling had set. 

For the pastry: The recipe is the same as I always use to make Turkish pogaca rolls. Have a look.