Sometimes we even order more than one of these dishes at a time, eating until we are really stuffed. Do you find yourself teasing your friends, the ones who say they are vegetarian? Maybe it's time to stop teasing them so much because, these days, almost every menu that contains meat dishes also offers similar variations of these recipes, but without meat. So that, in reality, even vegetarians can enjoy dishes like hamburgers, içli köfte, lahmacun, grilled meat, imam bayıldı and maklube. No, this doesn't mean that the people eating them are no longer vegetarians. What it means is that menus have really changed.People who don't eat meat were, up until about five years ago, relegated to satisfying their hunger at restaurants with salads or pasta. But these days, larger restaurants are preparing special vegetarian dishes, versions of the meat classics that mark Turkish cuisine. Before brushing this off as nearly impossible, you might want to try these dishes: We did, and they were delicious. In fact, we found that some people tried these dishes just out of plain old curiosity and were so pleased with them that they have kept on returning. The owner of the Kadıköy Çiya restaurant, Musa Dağdeviren, approaches the topic of vegetarian dishes from a unique perspective. He says his restaurant decided to come up with delicious new meatless versions of kebab dishes for people who did not want to eat meat so that the general excitement about eating kebabs would not disappear altogether. His restaurant uses bulgur wheat, lentils, mushrooms, onions and cheese to replace the meat in meat kebabs.
At the Ziya Şark Sofrası restaurant, owner Ziya Bingöl offers vegetarian versions of the classic lahmacun and içli köfte that customers love. He notes that he saw the ingredients used to produce these vegetarian dishes at an eating/drinking trade fair abroad and that he started to import them, frozen, into Turkey for use in his restaurant. Actually, Bingöl's entire goal at first was simply to offer customers something that no one else was offering. He calls his meatless lahmacun an "ısmacun," and rather than the ground beef you would normally find on lahmacun, he offers spinach, mozzarella cheese and special "çeçil" cheese. In the near future, he plans to offer this dish with potatoes, chard and chickpeas. To replace the meat filling in traditional içli köfte, he came up with a filling that's composed of spinach, walnuts and mushrooms.
So what about maklube, that traditional Anatolian dish with rice, meat and vegetables? Can that be made without meat? There are very few restaurants these days that offer maklube, a special dish made for many people at once. In Çamlıca, the Maklube Tepsisi restaurant has shown its commitment to also making this dish without meat, offering customers two alternatives, one made with pulse legumes, the other with vegetables. Maklube Tepsisi partner İmdat Kındam underlines that as far as he is concerned, the meatless versions of maklube offered by his restaurant are actually much richer in ingredients than the traditional meat ones. The maklube made with pulse legumes includes rice in a clay pot and cooked for hours, don't worry, you don't have to erase this from your dreams either if you are vegetarian. Güveççi Abdullah offers his customers special meatless güveç made from fresh beans, carrots, eggplant, potatoes, squash, onions, garlic, long green peppers and tomatoes.
One last point: With the growing popularity of fast food these days -- and the hamburgers that sit at the pinnacle of these fast food menus -- is it any surprise that even hamburgers come in vegetarian versions? Gourmet Burger King is a restaurant that offers customers nearly 30 different kinds of hamburgers, many without meat, and owner Cengiz Bahçekapılı says the delicious non-meat dishes at his place have helped destroy the belief that you need meat for good food. Another important aspect of vegetarian dishes is that they are less expensive by far than their meat-filled counterparts. For example, normal meat güveç is YTL 18, while its meatless counterpart is only YTL 11. Similarly, normal meat maklube costs YTL 85 (to serve 10), while vegetarian maklube costs only YTL 50.
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Vegetarian kebab: Bulgur wheat, lentils, onions, mint, olive oil and cheese. (Çiya, YTL 9)
Ismacun: Spinach, mozzarella cheese, çeçil cheese and a special sauce. (Ziya Şark Sofrası, YTL 3.50)
Vegetable içli köfte: Spinach, walnuts, mushrooms and a special sauce.(Ziya Şark Sofrası, YTL 3.50)
Vegetable maklube: Rice, mushrooms, eggplant, okra, potatoes and carrots. (Maklube Tepsisi, YTL 50 [serves 10 people])
Meatless güveç: Fresh beans, carrots, eggplant, squash, potatoes, onions, garlic, long green peppers and tomatoes (Güveççi Abdullah, YTL 11)
Apple dessert (serves 4)
Ingredients for the sauce: 750 mls of milk, 1 egg, 2 tbsps of butter, 3 tbsps of flour, 1 cup of sugar, 1 packet of vanilla powder
For the filling: 1 ground walnut, a handful of raisins, 3 tsps of cinnamon
Other ingredients: 4 or 5 yellow apples, Some icing sugar, 8-10 "Petit Beurre" biscuits, Some dried coconut
Preparation:
1. Peel the apples, cutting them into halves and removing the seeds to create a pocket in the middle. Line a saucepan with the apples - - the carved side facing downward. Sprinkle one tbsp of icing sugar to half an apple. Pour in enough water to reach halfway to the height of the apples and allow apples to cook on the stove until they become tender.
2. With the exception of the butter, simmer all sauce ingredients on medium heat until the mixture becomes thick and pudding-like. When thick enough, add the butter, allowing it to melt.
3. Mix the ingredients for the filling in a cup. Remove the cooked apples from the saucepan one by one in order to fill the carved-in pockets with the prepared filling. Put the biscuits in the bottom of a casserole, and cover all of them.
4. After lining the bottom of the tray with the apples, pour the sauce over the apples, making sure to cover the apples well with the sauce. Sprinkle the coconut on top and cool in the refrigerator before serving.
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Mini German cakes (makes 20)
Ingredients: 1 kg of flour, 125 grams of margarine (softened), 1 cup of milk, 3 eggs, 1 teacup (çay bardağı) sugar, 30 grams yeast, 1 tsp salt, Half cup warm water
Preparation:
1. Mix the warm water, yeast, sugar and salt, and leave to sit for 1 hour.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Let the dough rise to twice its original height.
3. Flatten the dough out with a rolling pin, to about 3 cm thick. Cut small circles from the dough with a Turkish tea cup. Place the circles of dough on a greased tray, allowing the dough to rise again for 30 minutes.
4. Cook the cakes in an oven at 200 C until they turn golden brown. Place them on a rack, and once cool, cut into the middle and fill with the chocolate filling* -- you can create a dispenser for the filling by cutting a small hole into the edge of a plastic sandwich bag.
5. Sprinkle the icing sugar on top.
*Chocolate filling:
Ingredients:
1 liter of milk, Half a liter of water, 1 cup of flour, 500 grams of icing sugar, 3 tbsp of cocoa, 125 grams of margarine, 2 eggs
Preparation:
1. Mix the eggs, flour, icing sugar and cocoa thoroughly. Add the milk and water and cook on low heat. Add in the margarine and mix. Let the filling cool, mixing occasionally so that it doesn't harden.
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