10 Minutes Turkish Meat & Vegetable STEW
Merhaba everyone is welcome. I'm preparing a menu inspired by my Cappadocia Nevşehir trip. Welcome to Cappadocia Nevşehir my mom's hometown. I will make Meat and Vegetable Gouvedge Cooked in the Earthenware Pot. I bought it from Avonos district of Nevşehir. I will serve it with homemade fresh Grape Juice made with the grapes we collected from our vineyards in Cappadocia. And as a dessert, I will make a Cheesecake Topped with Grape Sauce. Let's begin. Before I use my new earthenware pot from Avonos, I need to butter the pan and heat it up to give the flavor of the fat to the pot. I'm using a mix of butter and tail fat. While my pot is heating, I'm gonna prepare the vegetables. I have three-four medium-sized eggplants, five plum tomatoes, and a couple of sweet green peppers. I partially peeled the eggplants and cut them into four and then kind of big chunks. I'm going to soak them in salty water. Soaking the eggplants will take out the bitter juice and also soften them to cook more easily. Vegetable "Güveç" is a very versatile recipe. You can add many vegetables like green beans or peas depending on the season. But this time I'm gonna use some potatoes and eggplants only along with the staple ingredients which are peppers and tomatoes and meat if you want. You can see, I cut them into big chunks. Because they're gonna cook for a long time along with the meat. And we are going to place them in a certain layer beginning with the hardest ones, for example, if I had green beans it would go first after the meat. And then the potatoes and eggplants and tomatoes on top which are easiest to cook. I'm using four pieces of lamb neck. And going to season with salt, black pepper, paprika, and some olive oil. To give some extra flavor, I decided to add capia pepper. Just cutting into the same size chunks. Everything is ready. So we can begin to assemble all the ingredients into our earthenware pot. First the lamp, next I'm adding the peppers. You can experiment with different types if you cannot find sweet ones. Next, I'm gonna add the potatoes, if I would use green beans this is the time to add. I scattered some garlic cloves. And I'm squeezing out the water from the eggplants and add to the top finally the tomatoes. And I'm gonna extra season my tomatoes with some salt and we are ready to go. As a final touch, I'm adding a couple of chunks of butter on top. Since all the veggies will release its juice, we're not gonna add much water to them. Only had about half a cup I added. And cooked first on medium until it begins to boil and then simmer and cook until all the veggies are soft and the meat is soft for about 45 or 55 minutes. You can check after it boils and get rid of the foam parts if there are any. And continue to cook. I wanted to use the grapes falling from the stems. So they don't get wasted and decided to make fresh grape juice. I simply boiled them in some water for 20-30 minutes and mash with a potato masher. Strained well and let it cool. And I ended up having beautifully flavored concentrated grape juice with no added sugar in it. You can dilute your grape juice concentrate either with water or a soft drink to add some extra sparkle. I served my Meat and Vegetable "Güveç" with Rice Pilav with Vermicelli Pasta and Shepherd's Salad "Çoban Salatası". It's a very easy, comforting, healthy dish you can make. The lamb meat and the vegetables were cooked beautifully giving all its flavor to the dish.