Scaled to however many of you there are.
Change the headcount and the amounts follow. Salt and spice do not scale in a straight line, and we account for that.
A recipe is how you make a thing: the amounts, the order, the timing and where it goes wrong. The dish pages explain what that thing is — where it comes from, the mechanism behind it, and why skipping one step makes it something else. One stays open in the kitchen; the other is read when you wonder.
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Çiğ köfte, without meat
The name says raw, but the bulgur is not: bulgur is wheat that has already been boiled, and here it is only soaked.
İmam bayıldı
Karnıyarık’s sibling: no meat, olive oil, eaten cold. The quantity of onion is not excessive — this is a dish about onion.
Spinach with rice
A kilo of spinach cooks down to a handful, which is why the size of the pan is part of the recipe.
Okra in olive oil
Okra goes slimy for one reason: it was cut. Cooked without breaching the pod, it does not go slimy at all.
Borlotti bean pilaki
A pilaki is eaten cold, and that is why there is sugar in it: perception of sweetness drops as food cools, so what tastes right hot tastes flat cold.
Red lentil patties
The bulgur goes onto the lentils while they are HOT, under a lid. Added to cold lentils it never swells and the patty falls apart.
Black-eyed pea salad
The one dried pulse that needs no soak: its skin is thin and it softens in twenty-five minutes.
Spinach with chickpeas
Under a lid, spinach turns olive-drab in its own acid. With the lid off, the colour and the taste both stay where they were.
Black-eyed pea stew
The one common dried pulse that needs no soaking: its coat is thin and permeable, so it goes from dry seed to tender in twenty-five minutes.
Green lentil salad
A lentil goes on cooking in its own heat for three or four minutes after the pan comes off. The eighteen minutes in this recipe already has those minutes counted in.
Kısır
It never meets a flame: fine bulgur swells by itself in boiling water. The pomegranate molasses and lemon go in after the swelling is over.
Tabbouleh
Tabbouleh is not a bulgur salad but a parsley salad: the bulgur is under a tenth of the whole. And what swells it is not water but the juice of the tomato.
Green beans in olive oil
A classic that cooks in the vegetable’s own water, with none added. The secret is patience and a low flame: the beans sweat, they never boil.