Hi everyone! Today we're going to do one of the street foods
of Turkey and it is called kumpir.
Kumpir is like a baked potato,
a little crunchy outside and very creamy cooked
inside but in kumpir in Turkey, probably it's from the Balkans
that tradition the word kumpir comes from this is wildly one of the first
fast foods that we had when i was a small child. There is like a
stand kısır, lots of pickles, pepper paste, tomato
paste different kind of stuff, ingredients the guy will get the potato
out and will add whatever you want inside and will serve it to you. Before
the hamburgers, McDonald's was in Turkey, this was our
fast food and it still goes on in some of the high
streets, some of the main places in Istanbul and around Turkey. These
potatoes are big and they are usually baked in special kumpir ovens.
There's a special oven sold for this but what I
did, I developed a technique which makes the same effect
on the potato actually this technique is very simple. This is a potato
from Cyprus, the Cyprus soil the red soil is on it Cyprus potatoes are really
really tasty, thank God they sent me some. I want to
show you how I clean it. You know the old squashes they get dry and then you can
use it as a scrub, it's one of the most organic ways to do it and I use it to
scrub my potatoes and after you scrub it, it's
almost dry yeah I'm going to put this on the baking
paper this is inside this baking paper outside this thin foil.
Now, there are lots of things going on in the world and especially in Turkey
not using the thin foil touching the food so there's the paper
and if you don't have this kind of paper, you can use
cooking paper. You wrap the potatoes like this nothing else
and you put it in the oven. Here I have some
almost done and what you do you put a tray like this
you have to size it in such a way you might need to
turn the tray as well. In such a way that there's just like
the top is touching the bottom is touching so
here it goes in. Sometimes, because of the like this is an old oven
15 years old the resistance are not so good, so i have to switch places of the
potatoes as well but this is going to cook
performance of your oven in 250 degrees top and bottom
with no fan. For about one and a half hours, you have to touch the potato
whether it's soft inside when it's done. It has like 10 to
15 minutes more at that time I'm going to prepare my ingredients.
One of the ingredients I'm going to prepare has a story we have something
called an American salad which Americans don't
know about because at the beginning of 80s as well I think,
it was really famous when we were small children. There's this
Russian salad coming to Turkey but at that time
like cold war, there's the fear of communism and etc.
They don't want to call it a Russian salad and they call it American salad.
Until age 25 probably, I didn't know this story. Everyone would say we knew
the concept of the Russian salad.. Oh Russian salad has meat,
the Americans don't use the meat, it's this....
explanation. We have a Turkish version of this Russian salad
called American salad and it has fresh peas,
you can use frozen ones or you can even use canned ones,
some carrots, if you have some potatoes more but I'm going
because I have potatoes, I'm not going to put diced and boiled potatoes in.
I'm going to make that salad, I put a bit of salt
to the water but it has to boil first. Now the water is boiling, I'm going to
put the peas on the carrots, let them boil for five to ten minutes maximum.
The peas will get brighter green and then start to go back to its own color
again, that's the time when I'm going to stop.
Now, I'm going to add a bit of pickles.
I'm going to add some kind of meat. This is
dried, bit smoked meat in Turkey this is called 'Boşnak eti'.
It's Bosnian meat from the Bosnian Turks, this has come. You can use bacon, you can
use jerk beef, some kind of meat that you
like can be added to this. Normally, I would make my own mayo but
I'm trying to make everything simple and I believe
it's very valuable in that sense, three heap tablespoons of
mayo and I'm going to add some water from the pickles, this is not
needed. This is Refika touch, I love it that way. The meat is salty, the
pickles are salty so I won't add salt but I'm going to add a bit of black
pepper and mix this first. Some salt to this
would be good.
This is done, I like spring onions with potatoes if you don't have spring onions
you can use chives.
I also grated some cheese that can melt, this can be cheese like put in a burger
or any other cheese that can melt. One final preparation is the meat, I'm
going to have two types of meat for each kumpir and it's going to be one with
a sausage. This is a sausage that I have made,
maybe someday we make a video of this sausage.
Since the sausages are very processed, I have an easy way that I've done make
sausages and also some these dried meats,
I'm also gonna add these. They will slowly cook.
I have my spring onions, the peppers and tomato paste,
ready! The American salad is ready. I have butter and cheese, these
are my bases and my sausages and smoked meat is there. So, I can one by one,
take the kumpirs out, it's very interesting that you can touch the foil,
even though it's so hot, oh.. yeah... I need a rectangular thing
that's so that it can hold the cheeks of the potato. I'm going to cut it..
Sometimes guys you can hear snoring, that's my really old
dog, sorry about that but he wants to see me, I want to see him
around. The first thing I should do always and
everything starts with this is to put butter
and what I do, I mix the butter like this and also it's still hot some
cheese, if you're doing this for your guests, everything will be ready and
they're going to choose their own stuff but this basic
melting the cheese and the butter is essential and a bit of salt of course
because there's no salt but not so much because other things are also salty.
I'm going to add my green peppers, a bit of tomato paste. If you have pepper
paste, it could be pepper paste. If you have tomato sauce some kind of a
tomato sauce, you can use. It goes really well, it's one of the
Turkish classics. As you know tomato is really high on
umami, it hires up the taste of everything else inside and some more
cheese on top and some big gherkins like this.
I take the meat, put it in here and chop it
roughly and this meat is like now chips on top. I have found these in my pantry
this is dried onions, you can use chips if you
like, for a bit of crunchiness. So the first
one is like this. How it feels is something like this.
Still too hot, still too beautiful.
Now let's make the second one..
I open this like that..
We make it a paste like that, here comes the cheese.
I've checked in the internet what people like in the baked potatoes they say
butter and parsley a bit of cheese, cheddar would do very nice in this.
So we can add one big garlic
pickle to the salad mixture. In my pickle video,
I didn't pickle garlic but I will put it in a second video but you can
always use that measurement and do your own garlic pickle. Now, I mix it
like this and as you can see the cheese have melt
and salt and pepper here comes the mixing time.
Red pepper to the whole plate maybe then finally
the Refika sausage. It's a bit big, I know.. The shape is not great but it's not the
size and the shape that matters as you know..
I'm sure that is really delicious.
This is just to give you an idea, the most important thing was to use the
technique please use it. It can be vegan, it can be
vegetarian, it can turn your meal into a feast. For now, that's all thank
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