Holiday Cooking Time!

It was my mother’s 79th birthday yesterday which happened to be a national holiday.  The plan was to take my parents out to a nice French dinner but she called in the morning to say Gen was sick so we rescheduled which led me to cook again last night.

First things first.

I am working on the Turkish cookbook again.

Here comes “etli biber dolmasi” literally “stuffed pepper with meat”.  The recipe said use either beef or lamb.  I preferred lamb but where I went to shop didn’t have the right kind so settled with beef.

 

I did not have a pan that was just right for cooking this dish so used something that was on the small side which forced me to 1) cook the sauce separately and 2) to cook over very low heat so while the recipe did not tell you to steam, that’s what I ended up doing.  Worked OK.

I had trouble finding the right serving dish for them, too. At the end used a bowl I bought in Istanbul but still too wide and too low.

I was only cooking half of what the recipe called for (which I always do) but I was still one green pepper short so the filling became meatballs afterwards.