Welcome to my kitchen. Did you know that there are seas that surround the Turkish landscape?
The Black Sea, the Aegean, the Sea of Marmara, and of course, the Mediterranean. So obviously
fish is a very important part of Turkish cuisine. So we're going to make fish today. We're going
to do it Buloma style. Buloma is a type of style that you can steam the fish while you're baking it
in the oven. It’s delicious, it's tasty, and so healthy.
So along with our buloma, we're going to use tilapia. It’s a great flaky white meaty fish, and it’s
going to go great with everything else we're making today.
So first, what we're going to do is take one pound tilapia, salt and pepper it up, cover and put it in
the fridge. Really let it soak up all that salt and pepper. Now you don’t need too much seasoning
when you do buloma, because you want to taste the flavor of the fish. That’s the great thing
about Turkish cuisine, not too much seasoning, flavor of the meat or fish at hand. Because you
could see this is very easy, you can even just rub that in there with your hands. And then what
I'm going to do, you just take a plastic wrap, cover it, and put it in the fridge for at least 15
minutes. So if you brush with time, 10 minutes is fine, but the longer you do it the better it get
seasoned.
So while we're waiting for our fish to marinate in the fridge, we're going to start with our lentil
kofte. Lentil kofte is popular and famous all throughout Turkey. In the villages and in the big
cities as well. So for our red lentil kofte you will need 1 onion split in half, a quarter cup of
Bulgar, the fine one, the one we use for salads. Two chopped scallions, one bunch of finely
chopped parsley, one cup of red lentils, a teaspoon of pepper paste, a tablespoon of coriander
seed, pepper and salt, and of course olive oil.
So what we're going to do first is wash, wash, wash our red lentils. Red lentils look like this and
we use them in a lot of different recipes all throughout Turkish cuisine. It’s not the typical lentil
you would find in American stores. These are red lentils, you make a delicious soup out of them,
a few different kinds actually, I love to add them to recipes. So what you're going to do is after
you washed them, which I have already a cup right here I put in the pot. We’ll turn on the pot,
and we're going to pour in four cups of water. And this is okay if it’s cool, because you don’t
want the lentils to start cooking up right away. You want to slow nice cook.
The great thing about the lentil kofte, has to be a slow cook. So we're going to turn this on, I'm
going to put the cap back on so it brings it to a nice boil quickly. I'm going to let it boil for at
least an hour. A nice slow cook, we want a great creamy texture. And as you're boiling it, it's
going to from some scum. We're going to gradually skim off that scum. And then I’ll tell you the
rest of our ingredients.
So once you see its boiling nicely, you could start skimming the scum off the top. And you're
going to see that the red lentils are opening up. And they're going to keep opening up. And you
got to cook it until it opens up to a nice creamy texture.
Now once it’s boiling, this is a good time to add your salt. So you don’t have to add it in the
beginning, add it once it’s boiling. Take your wooden spoon, give it a nice stir and let it boil.
And at this point, you can even lower it to a medium and let it simmer. And just keep eye balling
it and skimming the scum off gradually.
So first we're going to get our skillet nice and hot and add a little olive oil. This gives it a really
great flavor. And we're going to wait for that to get hot and sauté up our onions, our garlic, and
our potatoes.
I’ll just chop up our skinny green peppers. Now you can use the Italian peppers, that’s fine. I like
the skinny green ones because it gives it a little spice. And I like to just cut them in circles,
because the seeds inside is what really gives it that spicy flavor. Every time I make this home for
my husband, he's always asking for extra spice. Really also gives it a great flavor, makes it really
delicious.
Now be careful when you're chopping these green peppers, because sometimes they're really
spicy. If you're not experience and sometimes it can be a real big mess. So you just want this to
get really nice and hot. We’ll just add our onions and sauté them a little bit. You just want to
sauté them up a little bit, then we can add our garlic. I like to crush our garlic here. So you don’t
need all the chunks in this one, you just really need a little bit of flavor.
Now we can add in our potatoes. Now I like to add in the potatoes right away, because they take
a little long to cook. So just sauté that up a little bit before we add in our peppers, and our
tomatoes. It’s going to be a really great delicious sauce. So brown those up a little bit. Now we
can even add some salt and pepper. And another thing I like to add when I make fish is bay leaf.
They give it a really great flavor. Any time you make a fish in the oven, always add one or two.
And you’ll see how the flavor’s different.
So we’ll just add that in now. Then add in our spicy peppers. Meanwhile, check in your lentils.
Make sure it's not getting too thick. And every now and again, take your spoon and kind of give
it a good mix. Sometimes when it thickens up too much, it can get stuck in the bottom, and you
don’t want that. So just give it a nice stir. And if you see its getting too thick, add a little water.
This is actually coming up really nice and creamy. You could see the lentils are opening up. And
they have to keep opening up, just because they're opened don’t think that it’s done. This still
needs a lot of cooking.
Let that boil. Sauté this up a little more. And now we can add in our tomatoes. You could see the
juice from the tomatoes, it’s going to be really great. And you could be creative with this, you
can add chili peppers if you want. You can add a little bit of tomato paste. Just make it your own.
This is just the traditional way that is done in my house and a lot of times when you go to the
restaurants in Turkey, you’ll find some variation of this. And the best restaurants in Turkey are
always the ones by the sea. Because not only they do have beautiful view, but you know that
they always caught the freshest fish.
We're going to wait for that, now we can add in our mushrooms, because mushrooms take really
quick to heat up. And again, this doesn’t have to be well done, because we're going to pour it
over our fish and bake it in the oven.