More uses for Turkish salce

Eggplant wrap with dolma          Turkish French fries

Chickpeas

Salce recipe

A bit of salce (pronounced salje) in the fridge makes simple meals easy this summer.

1-      Turkish French fries:

Cut 2 -4 potatoes into even-sized chips, any style. Fry them in hot oil (I use coconut in a shallow cast iron pan). Maybe two batches.

When the potatoes are golden-crispy, remove & blot with a paper towel to soak up excess oil.

Option 1-

Mix  2 Tablespoons of salce with juice of a lemon, so that it’s thin enough to dollop over the fried potatoes like ketchup. Heap the whole thing with chopped fresh parsley. Think of parsley as a vegetable. Eat it with a fork or pick it up with ripped pieces of French bread.

Option 2- messier but worth it

Drain most of the excess oil from the pan and add 2 or more Tablespoons salce (I don’t know! How many potatoes did you cook?) Heat, add the juice of a lemon, stir.

Add the fried potatoes, stir to cover in salce mixture and leave to fry a few moments at a time, turning when the salce blackens. Add ripped fresh mint or sprinkle lightly with dried mint.

Serve with about a cup of chopped fresh parsley on top.

2-      Eggplant wrap

Slice an eggplant, sprinkle with seasalt, set aside.

Peel 6 – 8 cloves of garlic.

Heat olive oil in a fry pan.

Dap eggplant with a paper towel to dry as the salt draws out moisture. As the oil comes up to medium heat, add eggplant slices and garlic cloves. Add olive oil liberally as the slices fry to sticky brown and you move them all in and out, turning them and the cloves until browned and soft.

Eggplant, garlic, onion

Spread tortillas or flat bread with salce. Mash or cut up the garlic cloves and add to sandwich with eggplant slices. Roll.

Lotsa options: add a few potato fries from above, maybe black olives, blackened green/red pepper, fried onion, parsley, any leftover chicken in the fridge?

salce is already spicy-hot and salty

3-      Chickpeas and salce:

Rinse a can of chickpeas (or white beans)

Put them in a pot with 2-3 Tablespoons of salce, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic (whole or sliced) and just cover with water. Boil until most of the liquid evaporates.

Optional- add ripped fresh mint or crushed dried mint during cooking or as a garnish.

Serve with lemon.

Both recipes use silken tofu. This delicate tofu comes in a small plastic container. Remove the plastic cover and drain the tofu, then rinse by pouring a bit of fresh water over it and draining gently.

Cut the tofu into serving squares. Tofu is fairly tasteless, but soaks up flavour easily, so cut the squares small- about an inch or 2.

Cover with a few spoonfuls of sauce and serve cold. Refreshing on a summer’s day.

Japanese sauce:

What is simpler than pouring some tamari sauce (or a little soy sauce thinned with water) over the tofu and sprinkling with chopped green onion?

I was in a bar in Hiroshima and this was the complimentary snack. Better than peanuts!

Korean sauce:

Slightly more effort as you will need a pot and some heat.

Into a small pot:

½  cup tamari sauce (or ¼  cup soy sauce and ¼  cup water)

1 teaspoon honey

2 chopped cloves of garlic

Chili to taste

Optional: chopped green onion

Heat for a few moments, then spoon over cold silken tofu squares.

Another option- throw chopped firm tofu into the pot (or fry pan), heat in the sauce and stir.

Okay, I’ve seen the dolma recipes online that call for meat, cumin and other spices. I guess those are the fancy versions for guests or rich folk. When I lived in Turkey, my husband and I were very poor, and I was taught this simple recipe. It’s the easy and cheap family supper, I suppose. This dolma is a tasty nutritious meal, and I still cook it this way today.

You will need:

4 medium-sized green peppers – hollowed out from the top

1 ½ cups cooked brown rice (see below, or use leftovers or substitute white)

2 heaping Tablespoons salce (see recipe in this blog)

1 bunch of parsley- chopped

2 cups garlic yogurt (2 c yogurt- Greek is nice- mixed with 1-2 crushed garlic cloves)

1-      Mix the rice, salce and parsley

2-      Stuff the peppers about ¾ full

3-      Stand the peppers in a pot so they stay upright. Put about an inch of cold water in the pot, around the peppers, so that when it boils it will not get the inside of the peppers wet. Add salt to the water. Cover the pot.

4-      Boil the water. The bottom of the peppers are boiled, the tops are steamed. About 5 – 10 minutes- you’re just heating it through and softening the peppers to your liking.

5-      Serve dolma whole smothered in garlic yogurt.

Perfect brown rice:

1:2 rice & water. (For example 1 cup of rice and 2 cups water or ½ cup rice and 1 cup water)

1-      Pick over the rice looking for hard husks. Rinse it several times in cold water.

2-      Add about a Tablespoon of olive oil and cook on medium heat for about 3 minutes. When it starts sticking to the bottom of the pot, add the water.

3-      Boil on high for a few moments, then cover the pot, reduce the heat to low and leave it until all the water has been absorbed (30 – 45 minutes)