Turkish Simit ( Gevrek )

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Simit is a fast street pastry sold in the streets of Turkey by simitciler. It is often eaten as a breakfast food with piece of cheese. Simit is also great by itself!
Simit is light and flaky, baked to a golden brown colour, and topped with sesame seeds. It is sometimes formed into rings, and are often braided. Some version of simit can be made slightly sweet taste. It is a great street food sold everywhere. Kumru is a kind of brown sesame-seed bread. You can cut kumru from one side all the way and fill with with grilled sucuk ( spicy sausage) , kaşar ( kind of cheddar ) cheese and salami. You can serve the food together with fresh tomatoes and fresh green peppers.

 

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup cups all purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoon water
  • 1 tablespoons milk plus 1 teaspoon
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • sesame seeds
  • milk for brushing
  • 2 teaspoon sugar ( optional )
Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together flour and salt.
Make a depression in the dry ingredients with your fist, making a "hole" in the middle.
Add olive oil, melted butter, water, milk, and egg.
Fold dry ingredients into liquids to form a dough. This may take 10 minutes by hand.
Once you have a dough, tear off pieces of dough, make long, cigar shapes. Bring ends of "cigars" together to make a circle.
Place circle on greased cookie sheet.
Brush with milk. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top. Repeat with remaining dough.
Bake for 30 minutes, or until simit become a golden brown colour and crispy on top.

Simit

Simit1

Kumru

Kumru1

Simit2

Simitci - Gevrekci

Turkish Sunday Food Markets and Stalls ( Turk Mahalle Pazarlari)

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Turkish sunday food markets is disappering from our lives slowly slowly. The big supermarkets and internet age are changing the habit of shoppers, especially Turkish daily life style..This colorful and beautiful markets are lost in many big cities. I love visiting these markets whenever I visit my native country. These markets and stalls are usually was on sundays because of weekend and people have time to visit leisurely. They sell everything you name it, clothes, shoes,  fruits, vegetables, nuts, fish, meat whatever you need in your daily life, therefore looks so colorfull and also you have a chance to eat delicious street food made with fresh local produce. When I was 12 I was working in one of this stalls at weekends, thats how I stepped in my working life. We were not working there to make money we were working for experience and thats how I learned to haggle..I try to give you some idea with the pictures how good this old tradiationally built up mobile markets…and sad to see they are disappering from our fast life style which was helping to slow down us…

Turkish Markets