So what we’re going to do first is get our skillet really nice and hot. We’re going to soften up the onions along with the butter and I like to add a little bit of olive oil because this keeps the butter from burning. So we can do that now and you know there is an Ezogelin soup which is famous all throughout Turkey. It’s kind of like the lentil soup that we made today but it has just a variation of tomato paste and some carrots. It really gets a great orangey color and is actually named after a beautiful girl named Ezo. She’s from a village back in the 1900’s, very beautiful girl, rosy red cheeks, long black hair and men always long for her hand in marriage. So they always made Ezogelin Soup the night before a bride’s wedding to wish her good fortune with her future family which is actually a nice tradition.
And we call this Ezogelin Pilaf because it just has a great red color; maybe in reference to Ezo’s beautiful red cheeks. So this is really easy, you just want to soften this up once it gets a little hot, we’re going to gradually add in our orzo and we’ll wait for that to get just a little hot. I’m going to sauté that up just a little bit. But first I just want to talk to you about a leek. Now a leek is from the onion family. You can find it at any grocery store. It kind of looks like really big scallion. But in Turkey are much thinner than these and they’re much softer and much sweeter. They actually taste like onions but it’s a more subtle flavor. So, there’s a trick actually to cutting the leaks. After you wash them, you want to peal any bad part of it off; which is you could see, I’ve already done. And then you want to chop the head off which I’ve done here and then chop off the bad part of the leek.
Now as you know, they’re grown in the ground so there’s a still a lot of soil in there. So even if you wash it under the sink, you’re going to think how am I going to get all that soil underneath? So what you have to do is chop them, however you wanted them to be chopped which I have done there, just chop them in 4’s and I’ve already done it but I just want to show you. When you chop them like this, you can just put them in whatever bowl you have and wash them like that and as you wash them, you’ll see all the soil coming out from under it. So I’ve already done that here and now this is getting good sizzle. I added our olive oil, the orzo. We just want to sauté that up just for about a minute. And then once we add that, we can add the rest of our ingredients and the final touches are going to be two cups of boiling water.
So now, we’ll just add the rest of our ingredients; one small leek, finely chopped; the red pepper for Ezo’s red cheeks and the tomato. And when I chop the tomato, I like to strain it before I put it in the orzo because it comes very liquidy. So I pour that liquid out, I really just want the taste of the tomato and the beautiful redness. Now we’ll add a little bit of salt and pepper; now what we want to do is just add in 2 cups of boiling water. Once it comes to a boil, see that? That’s how it’s supposed to be, really nice and steamed up. And you could see already the green and red, how beautiful it is and it smells good too, I mean who doesn’t like globe onions right. So we’re going to just wait it up to come to a nice boil and then we’re going to cover; lower our heat and let it simmer; or until all the water is soaked up. Probably about 15 minutes but you just want to keep eyeballing it. And now, we’ll get ready to make our delicious appetizer.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services