Thursday, December 16, 2010

Cooking with love and love for cooking

For me it goes both ways. In my tiny kitchen I find solace that is hard to find anywhere else. When it comes to cooking I do not know about procrastination. It is always good time for me to cook. I love cooking and I rarely follow the recipe. If I do, it makes me really nervous, I usually screw up something and it does not turn out to be the way I want it. Well, I do follow recipes sometimes, it sometimes turn out to be OK, but I always modify something as I usually do not have all the ingredients the recipe is calling for. This is what I hate the most about recipes because in each and every one of them is an ingredient that I do not have. So, I cook "from my head". I do not think that I am able to make the same meal twice, because I always make it differently. Ingredients may be similar, but I add them in different order, I add different quantities, and I try it as I cook and decide what is the next step.

My family loves my cooking. I explained them that it tastes so good because "I cook with love". There is no tasty homemade meal if the love is not one of the ingredients. The love is magical. It combines that spices and ingredients in a perfect way. Adding love to your cooking with make your meals to be not only testy, but in a way your vehicle to spread the love.

For tonight I am planning on making the meal called "Turli tava". My son asked me several times to translate this word. We do not have translation of this word into Serbian, so when it is translated from Turkish - turli means "mixed" and tava means "pan". It is Turkish or Middle Eastern dish, but I adopted it through my Macedonian roots. It calls for all different kind of vegetables (mainly eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, onion, pepper) including the main ingredient okra. You can make it to be vegetarian, or with meat. When I make it with meat, I like to buy nice, fresh veal stew. It is fairly easy to make. The most of preparation is cutting veggies, and stewing the meat with onions, before everything is combined and put in the oven to bake for few hours. I like this to be baked in the slow heat to combine flavors. My hubby likes to add few pieces of bacon on top. I am not particularly in favor of this, but I will do it today because he specifically asked for it. This is another thing about my cooking: it is my way or highway. I do not like any suggestions, and like to add things just the way I feel they should be added.

Here is the recipe for "Turli tava"


■1 kg. mixed meat

■potatoes, tomatoes, paprika

■onions, okra

■aubergine, string beans

■1 ground onion piece

■cooking oil, salt

■red mixed pepper

■pepper



Chop the meat and fry it in a pan with cooking oil. Chop the vegetables into small pieces, add the meat and some cooking oil and water. Put enough water so the mixture is boiled and still there is no much left after baking. Add spices and boil for a while. After that put it into a crockery baking dish and bake it on 2000 C for 1,5 hours. Stir the mixture 2-3 times during baking. The food is ready when it becomes brown.

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