Category
January 20, 2016
Chicken with Okra and Tomatoes Okra, you either love it or hate it. Personally, I love it. I love it fried and in soups and stews. I started making this recipe, Chicken with Okra and Tomatoes, when I lived in Turkey, many years ago. The okra or bamya (Turkish name) that I used to buy at the Pazar was so cute and really small. I wanted to make something to showcase it. My ex-husband didn’t really care for...
January 16, 2016
Falafel If you have never had Falafel, you don’t know what you are missing. They are little balls of heaven. You all know that I am far from being a vegetarian, but if I ever decide to go down that path, I am taking these little jewels with me. Besides being deep fried, these are very healthy. And yes, you can bake them if you want to go that route. Just spray a baking pan with cooking spray or...
December 19, 2015
Lamb Okra Chickpea Stew aka Bamyali Nohutlu Kuzu Et When I think of winter comfort food, Lamb Okra Chickpea Stew aka Bamyali Nohutlu Kuzu Et immediately comes to mind. It is a hearty, satisfying dish that will leave you will a fully belly and make you want to curl up by the fireplace with a good book. If you are not a fan of okra, this dish is one that you should try. It might make an okra lover out of...
December 7, 2015
Creamy Manchego Rose Sauce over Angel Hair Pasta I love pasta. Not just a little, but, really, really, really love pasta. I could eat it everyday. With meat, without meat, tomato sauce, cream sauce or both sauce (rose)! Creamy Manchego Rose Sauce over Angel Hair Pasta which combines both tomato and cream to make this gorgeous rose sauce is one of my favorites. Whenever I ask my daughter what she would like for dinner, she almost always says “Ooh, Mom, can...
July 4, 2015
First of all, Happy Fourth of July! I am sitting here stuffed to the max, but our lunch was so good, I wanted to share my recipe for Smoked and Slow Cooked Boston Butt Pulled Pork Sandwiches with you all right away. I will be posting my Peach Habanero Barbecue Sauce, my White Barbecue Sauce, Grilled Corn and Black Eyed Pea Salad and Potato Salad Recipe with you this week. I had been wanting to cook a Boston Butt...
June 27, 2015
Can you keep a secret? I thought not, but I am going to tell you anyway. This is a secret that I am happy to share with you. And that is that the secret to Light and Crispy Southern Fried Chicken is using a combination of self-rising flour and rice flour. I don’t fry food that often but when I do, I want it to be light and crispy. I have been using rice flour instead of self-rising flour...
June 24, 2015
Nothing says comfort food like meat and potatoes. That is why you are going to love my recipe for Kofte Patates aka Meatballs with Potatoes. It is a Turkish dish and is super easy to prepare. You could even prepare it the night before, cover with aluminum foil, then just take out of the fridge while you are pre-heating your oven. Then bake as directed and pair with a nice salad. You will have dinner on the table in...
May 27, 2015
As promised, here is my recipe for Tavuk Doner or Chicken Doner. Considering I did not have a “real” doner machine from Turkey, I think the results were fantastic. The chicken was tender and the spice was delicious. If I would have had the real machine and the traditional sword-like knife that is used to cut the meat as it cooks, it would have been perfect. There were no complaints and out of five pounds of a combination of breast...
April 14, 2015
My friend Rania recently showed me how she makes Makdous, which is eggplant cured in olive oil and that is the inspiration for my newest pasta recipe, Penne Pasta with Makdous, Tomato and Feta . Making Makdous is a pretty tedious process and I will make a post on that later. I will quickly tell you how it is made. We started by preparing the eggplant. This is just removing the stems. We then boiled the eggplant briefly. Next, we salted...
April 12, 2015
I owe the creation of my Shrimp and Mushroom Angel Hair Pasta Alfredo Recipe to my daughter, Stella. We were talking the other day and she said she was really wanting some creamy pasta with shrimp. I was going with my sister to Birmingham for her doctor’s appointment so I thought I would go by Restaurant Depot and pick up some shrimp. Unfortunately, the only wild caught shrimp they had out was a 5 pound bag of frozen shrimp that...
March 12, 2015
Who loves Meatloaf? Not the school lunchroom kind but the yummy, meaty, full of flavor kind! I know I do and I had been thinking about how good it would be for dinner for several days. Well, last night I decided to go ahead and make one. Boy was it goooooodddd. I served it with mashed potatoes and a green salad. Nothing is better than some good old comfort food but for the record, it was even better today as a...
July 19, 2014
For my first new post on inthekitchenwithapril.com, I really wanted the dish to be amazing and I must say the dish I made tonight goes above and beyond. It was so good, in fact, that there was none left. That is right NONE. We were scraping the bottom of the pans to get all the yummy, creamy potatoes and all the flavorful gravy because we didn’t want to leave any behind. I don’t want to admit it, but...
