As a descendant of Greeks of Asia Minor (my grandad grew up and lived in Istanbul and had a cheese stand at the Grand Bazaar!), I’ve always felt some sort of connection with Turkey, Turkish people and of course Turkish FOOD – YUM!!!!

The Greek menu does have many similarities to the Turkish one, but there is this one delicious dish which we don’t have – Yogurtlu Kebab. I mean seriously, it tastes like heaven.

Yogurtlu Kebab – restaurant version

Until recently, I had to head over to my favourite Turkish restaurant in London (The Grand Bazaar on St. James Street) to get my dose of Yogurtlu Kebab. It’s a great place, very good food, great atmosphere, average service but hey you can’t have everything!

The Grand Bazaar Restaurant

Anyway, I digress… I recently came across this super recipe  – it’s tested and tried – twice in fact and it’s as delicious as the real thing you’ll find in Turkey. It has lots of ingredients and spices but execution is a piece of cake.

Yogurtlu Kebab – my version

You’ll notice that the recipe says to mix the tomato sauce and yoghurt but I quite like serving them separately and tasting the contrasting hot and cold!

Shish Kofte ingredients:
1kg lean lamb mince
1 small onion, grated
1 egg
1 garlic clove, mashed with salt
4 slices of 2 day old bread, soaked and squeezed
1/2 bunch of parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp paprika
1/2 tbsp cumin
1/2 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tbsp ground spice
Salt, pepper

Tomato Sauce:
1 cup crushed tomato, in can
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt, Pepper

Yogurt Sauce:
1 cup yogurt, plain, room temperature
1-2 garlic cloves, smashed with salt

Garnish:
1 tbsp butter
Paprika
4 pitta breads, cut in bite size

1. Mix all the kofte ingredients together with your hands. Take fist-sized balls and skewer them. Place on grill and cook evenly on all sides.

2. Cook the tomato sauce for a few minutes, put aside. Whisk the yogurt sauce ingredients, put aside.

3. Heat pitta pieces. Then arrange on plates and place the kebabs on them. Pour tomato and yogurt sauce all over.

4. Melt the butter in a small pan. When the the butter starts bubbling, pour over the Yogurtlu Kebab.

5. Sprinkle with paprika.

Recipe taken & slightly adapted from Binnur’s Turkish Cookbook.

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It’s been a couple of weeks since I did a “Katie is cooking” post so I’ve gone all out and really tried my best for you on this one! I’m a lot more confident with my styling now, but still no way near happy with my photography skills. I think I might just have to resign myself to the fact that I will never become a good photographer!!! Oh well, one can’t be good at everything – haha!!

This photo has been taken on my white kitchen countertop against my lovely pink splashback. I think the contrast with the melting chocolate is just gorgeous and I brought in the cherry blossoms to merge all three colours together. I think it works beautifully, no??! What do you think?

I always assumed profiteroles (cream puffs to the Americans) were French but wikipedia seems to suggest their origin is unclear and that they’ve existed in England and the US for centuries. The funny thing is that they have a section dedicated solely to the consumption of profiteroles in Greece. Isn’t that completely random?

Anyway, here is the recipe I used. In fact, it’s a combination of two recipes that I found online (I always like to mix and match recipes to create my own!) and they tasted fab. It is quite a long winded one and this is a dish that requires both patience and time so be warned!

Ingredients:

• 150g flour
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 75g butter
• 200ml water
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 600ml double cream and 1tbsp icing sugar for the filling
• 15g butter, 4tbsp water, 175g plain chocolate for the sauce

1. Preheat the oven to 200C. Place butter, water and sugar into a large saucepan over a low heat till it melts. Increase the heat, add in the flour, then remove and quickly beat the mixture vigorously until a smooth dough forms.

2. Leave to cool for 20 minutes then add the egg little by little, beating hard between each addition until well combined.

3. Spoon out about a teaspoon of the mixture onto a lightly greased baking tray, then bake for 25-30 minutes, until they are golden and puffed up.

4. Prick each bun with a skewer to release the steam then return to the oven for 5 minutes to dry out.

5. Prepare the filling: lightly whip the cream and icing sugar until soft peaks form, then pipe the cream into the holes of the profiteroles.

6. Finally, melt the chocolate with the water and butter over a pan of boiling water and pour over the buns.

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I’ve been to Mexico before actually… in fact it’s a rather romantic story! I was working in LA at the time and met a man from San Diego who romantically whisked me away to Mexico for the weekend. It was what every girl could wish for!

If I am lucky enough to get the chance to go again, I will be hoping to visit this amazing pâtisserie in San Pedro.  The dazzling all-white interior is enriched by the bright, bold colours of the macarons, which gives striking results.  I love the clinical feel and the priciseness of the carefully-considered layout.  I just had to share these pictures with you!

Images via We Heart

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Yes, as you might have guessed, I have been watching too much How I  Met Your Mother lately! We bought the DVD sets last week and after watching several episodes one after the other, I’ve started to sound like Barney…

Anyway, back to the subject matter, I’m very excited about today’s post as this is a fantastic recipe, looks great, tastes great and is pretty easy to make (although a bit fiddly and time consuming). 

I also think I’ve done a slightly better job on the photography this time! I made them last night but only photographed them this morning as it’s bright and sunny today and natural light is soooo much better when taking pictures. What do you think? It took me quite some time to style everything so please be kind!

All you do is mix together some coconut flakes, biscuit crumbs (I used Mcvities rich tea) and condensed milk. Seriously that’s all… It does get pretty dirty and sticky though, the trick is to form the balls and then roll them again into the coconut flakes otherwise they’ll keep on breaking apart.

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We normally have dinner in front of the TV (unless we have guests), which is a terrible habit but I tell myself that this will change when we have kids… We’ve never had a problem with leaving food on our coffee table as Coco is one of those dogs that eats very little, is extremely picky and would NEVER go for it… I visited a friend’s house once and her dog literally knocked the pizza box out of my hands and started tucking into it! I also caught our dog in Greece licking the ganache off my chocolate cake when I was younger.

Well, yesterday evening that all changed as little boy nicked a slice of prosciutto (he has expensive taste) right out of my plate. I was playing around with my new camera – a Nikon D90 SLR – I know you can’t tell from the quality of the pictures how good the camera is (haha!) but it really is amazing – so I managed to capture it all on film! Enjoy…

Then he hid under a chair after I told him off! Note, his ears are down… Poor thing, he was so cute, I immediately felt sorry for him and gave me a big hug  : )

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