♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - I visited Antakya, known in the history books here as Antioch, about a year before the earthquake.

And I came across, you know, a wonderful group of people, a community of cooks and bakers and neighbors.

So I do hope, I genuinely hope, that this offering of a few recipes and stories helps to celebrate the people and the traditions that still make Antakya such a great place.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (laughter) ♪ ♪ - I'm here in Antakya, a relatively small town in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border, not too far from Gaziantep, which is well-known, of course, for its baklava and phyllo dough.

This is a pretty small town, it was a Roman town at one time.

It's over 2,500 years old.

If you dig down deep under the streets, you'll find original Roman roads.

In fact, there's some bridges still in the outskirts of Antakya that were built by the Romans.

And it was, by the way, the site of the first church.

Peter and Paul came here.

They were mostly in hiding for a lot of the time, but in a cave, they started the first church, and it's been built out since.

So let's talk about the food here, because there's so much great fresh fruit.

Za'atar, the famous herb from all over the Middle East.

There are huge piles of it for sale through street vendors.

Olive oil, of course, olives, pomegranate, molasses, wild oranges, which are used a lot.

And some of the recipes are just very simple but great.

There's something called kebabi.

It's essentially a meat pizza, meat pie.

It's very thin, about maybe half-an-inch thick.

Lamb, beef, minced, red pepper, scallions, spices, and it's cooked in a wood fired oven in a round pan; it's absolutely delicious, served with a flatbread.

And the flatbread here is not that flat, actually, and it's very light and fluffy; I think it's my favorite flatbread throughout the Middle East.

Knafeh, of course, which is a dough cooked on a round.

Looks like bird's nest.

And it's used to make knafeh which is also round, it has two layers.

Knafeh, that cooked dough soaked in butter, and then in between, some fresh white cheese, often served with pistachios, and always with a simple syrup.

Kömbe, which is like a ma'amoul, which is a date-filled cookie.

I had some here.

It's the best I've ever had, it's almost all filling, very thin coating on the outside with some sesame seeds, so that's terrific.

Marshmallow, for example.

They make the original marshmallow here.

So Antakya is about fresh ingredients, it's about simplicity, and it's just really terrific food.

So stay tuned as we walk around and explore some of the great recipes from Antakya, Turkey.

- (speaking Turkish) ♪ ♪ - You know, my favorite dish, or probably one of my favorite dishes, when I went to Turkey, Istanbul, and then down to Antakya near the Syrian border, was tepsi kebabi.

Kebabi means kebab.

Tepsi means tray.

You can think about it as a meat pizza without the bread, or you can think about it as a major upgrade to the hamburger.

So we're going to take some tomato paste and put that in our skillet, and we're going to use a skillet instead of a tray, they use a round tray.

So we'll just spread that out, okay.

The thing about this dish that I really love is this knife called a zirh.

I actually ordered this from Turkey, I loved it so much.

And the guy who was doing the work had all the herbs there, had peppers, had onions, et cetera, spices and the meat.

And on his huge counter, he took this knife and went through it.

Took about five minutes.

I've never seen anyone with such amazing knife skills.

He minced it so it was incredibly fine.

Now you can buy zihr and do it, and actually, I've done it, and it actually does work.

Takes a little bit of practice, but we're going to use just a regular knife for this.

So I'll just show three things we're going to do.

We'll start with, let's say, the pepper.

This is common.

Now, what he did that was so amazing was he got everything really fine.

So we're going to cut these in really fine strips.

Normally, when I'm doing prep for soup or stew, I don't worry about this very much because you don't have to get everything absolutely perfect.

But in this dish, you want everything that's really nicely combined.

So I'm going to cut really thin strips.

And it's a good idea, when you're doing this kind of work, you're not just pressing down and crushing the vegetable, you're actually slicing through it.

That gives you a much cleaner cut, and you're not going to end up squashing everything.

So I'm just going to go through this a couple of times because I want to get it pretty finely done.

Okay, the onion, half a red onion.

There's a way I like to do it.

You cut the onion pole-to-pole in half, cut off the ends, take off the outer skin.

This end is the root end.

You can tell, it's darker.

So you start from the non-root end.

I hold up on the knife and you cut through like this.

So the knife starts in the onion.

It's not going to move on you, and you're not cutting through the opposite root end.

So now I'm just going to cut across again.

I want to keep this a fairly fine dice, and I'm going to cut through like that.

I'm not going to just cut down.

Okay, got the onion done.

And, finally, a little bit of parsley.

So how much you chop parsley or cilantro really affects the flavor and the texture of the dish.

Okay.

Teaspoon-and-a-half of salt.

Dried thyme, dried mint.

Aleppo pepper; this came from Aleppo, Syria.

It's very fruity.

It's not too strong.

Cumin, of course, little garlic.

Now, instead of using zihr, the knife, you're going to use your hands.

And you really want to get this mixed in.

Traditionally, you might see a lot of lamb.

Most places in the Middle East, there's a lot of lamb.

We use pound of beef, pound of lamb-- you can use all beef.

But I do find in this dish in particular, even if you don't love lamb, you're not going to taste a strong lamb flavor because you have so many other ingredients.

Okay.

So we'll clean up and then we'll finish topping this with a few more things, potatoes, et cetera, and into a very hot oven.

♪ ♪ So to finish it off, they topped the meat with some potatoes and tomatoes, et cetera, which get nicely roasted in the oven.

So we microwaved some Yukons for about six minutes just to precook them.

Put those around the side.

So we have some banana peppers and tomatoes, a little bit of oil, quarter-teaspoon of salt and pepper.

So we'll put the tomatoes in the center.

And put these around.

So this goes into a 450 oven for 15 minutes-- we'll take it out and finish it up.

So the broiler is hot.

We're going to put this in the oven for five to seven minutes.

And we want to get a nice char, obviously, on the top and finish cooking the meat.

So we let it rest just a few minutes till it cools a little bit.

But, you know, people talk about sheet pan dinners.

You know, that's all the rage.

Well, this is a skillet dinner; it's got potatoes, it's got meat, it's got vegetables, it's got lots of herbs and spices inside.

If you want everything in one pan, that's really easy to do, this would be it for me.

♪ ♪ So that's tepsi kebabi from Antakya in southeast Turkey.

It's a new way of thinking about a hamburger, a new way of thinking about a pizza, has great flavor.

It's really easy to do, and all comes in one skillet.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Turkish) (speaking Turkish) ♪ ♪ - So Chris came back from Antakya, Turkey, with these stories and they were really infectious and they were about hummus.

The hummus he had was made in a giant mortar and pestle, and it had tons of tahini.

It was really exciting.

The texture was very smooth and supple, and it was really nutty.

And it was wildly different than anything he had ever had before.

So let's go ahead and make it.

Now in a large bowl, I'm going to combine eight ounces of chickpeas, which is about one cup, with a tablespoon of kosher salt and eight cups water.

I'm going to stir to make sure the salt dissolves.

My beans have soaked for 12 hours.

You can soak beans for up to 24 hours.

Say you have soaked beans and you don't have time to cook them.

You can drain them and put them in a container in the refrigerator or even the freezer.

Now you look at the beans.

So these beans have soaked overnight, and you can see how much they have expanded in that time.

When you soak beans in salted water, the weak sodium ions interact with the magnesium and calcium ions and soften the skins so it allows more water into the beans so they come out more tender.

Okay, now I'm going to drain the beans.

Then we're going to come back and cook them.

I'm going to add my drained chickpeas to a large pot with ten cups of water and a half-teaspoon baking soda.

So we're adding baking soda to the cooking water, which softens the pectin in the bean's skin, which results in really creamy, very smooth hummus.

Now I'm going to bring my pot to boil over high heat, then reduce to medium and cook uncovered, stirring every once in a while until very tender and the skins are falling off, which takes about 50 to 60 minutes.

Make sure to reserve one cup of the cooking water, which we're going to use to thin the hummus at the end, then drain off the rest of the liquid in a colander.

So these chickpeas are perfect.

You can really see how soft they are.

The skins have just sloughed right off the beans, which is what we want.

You know, we're not making a salad with these chickpeas.

We're turning them into really smooth purée, so we want them as tender as possible.

Of course, that baking soda really helps.

So let's go ahead; we're going to add our chickpeas to our food processor.

And we're going to add two cloves of smashed garlic.

And a half-teaspoon of salt, and we're going to go ahead and process this till it's pretty smooth.

Now that the beans are smooth, I'm going to add a half-cup of tahini, a half-cup of lemon juice, three-quarter teaspoon ground cumin, and two tablespoons of oil-- and I'm going to continue processing the mix, scraping the bowl as needed until well incorporated, one to two minutes.

Now, with the processor running, I'm going to slowly stream in the reserved chickpea cooking liquid until the mixture is really smooth; about two minutes.

Seemed like a lot of liquid I was adding, but now the hummus is really smooth and really creamy.

Now that's fully blended, it smells amazing.

You can smell the tahini, the lemon's coming through.

I'm going to go ahead and give it a taste.

Always want to taste for seasoning.

Oh, man, that was really good.

It's really creamy, it's really smooth.

Just amazing flavor.

I'm just going to add a little more salt.

And process that, and then we're good.

♪ ♪ So the hummus is done, but one of the things Chris really talked about was all the garnishes that went on top of the hummus that really helped make it really exciting.

So we're going to go ahead, we're going to make Aleppo oil.

So it's two tablespoons of oil.

And one-and-a-half teaspoons Aleppo chili.

So we want to cook this oil and chili mixture until it's really bubbly and frothy and turns a little bit red.

We don't want to overcook this, otherwise the chilies can turn really bitter.

So let's spoon some into our bowl here.

You can see how creamy that hummus is.

It has a lot more tahini and a lot more lemon than you might be used to.

But here comes the fun part.

We're going to put those garnishes on.

First of all, let's drizzle that oil over the hummus.

Oh, it's gorgeous.

Going to throw some red onion.

Just sprinkle it over top.

Some tomato.

Let's add some chopped pickle.

I like walnuts, which really help bring up the tahini flavor.

♪ ♪ And let's finish with our herbs.

So this is gorgeous.

We added all those garnishes and adds a lot of texture and flavor.

I could eat this whole bowl for dinner and not share a lick of it.

So, Turkish hummus, fully loaded.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Turkish) - (speaking Turkish) ♪ ♪ - (speaking Turkish) - Who's the boss?

- She's the boss.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ - You know, if you spend any time in the Middle East, you'll come across ma'amoul cookies, which are date-filled, sort of, shortbread on the outside cookies.

They're delicious; but I was in Turkey, and I went to a bakery.

And they made kömbe, which is sort of the Turkish version of ma'amoul.

I thought they were, like, a step above because they were incredibly tender, and they were sort of perfumed with some spice.

And I ate a dozen of them.

I think this is a recipe-- I think you do too-- that you could actually make at home, you don't have to be in a bakery.

- Right, I mean, I think when you see them, they look kind of intricate and beautiful, but they're really easy to make.

So first we're going to add some flour and then semolina, which adds a really nice texture to the dough.

So it's a durum wheat flour.

It's a little sturdier than regular flour, and it adds a lot of nice texture to baked goods.

We're going to add some of that sugar, and I add a little bit of cinnamon to these and a little bit of salt, if you want to just zhuzh that up for a second to mix it.

Just a couple of pulses.

And just scatter the butter on top.

So then we're going to run it until it turns into, like, wet sand.

That takes about 30 seconds.

- Let's just take a look-- so you can tell it's darker.

- Yes, and it feels kind of just like wet sand, right?

- Yeah, and there are no big pieces.

You shouldn't see chunks of butter in here.

- Right, okay, so we're going to add some yogurt to bind it all together.

I also added a little bit of orange zest because I have orange zest in the filling, and I thought it would be nice in the dough.

- So how long, just a few pulses for this?

- Um, actually, let it process for about 30 seconds, just let it go.

And it's going to form large clumps.

And then we'll just dump it out, make the dough.

- I feel like I'm a student driver.

(chuckles) It's like she's watching every step.

(chuckles) - You'll see the dough is really soft.

If you want to just bring that together and then we'll cover it in some plastic wrap before we make our filling.

Okay, great.

So I'm going to set this aside at room temperature, while we make the filling.

So now we're going to make the filling, it's really easy.

All of these ingredients go right into the food processor, and it makes a delicious date paste.

Always look for the best dates you can find.

You can order them online, get dates that are really soft and beautiful.

You can buy them at most supermarkets now.

So we're going to put our dates in.

- How much is this?

- This is one pound of dates.

- And always check for the pits, because sometimes they miss a few.

Some cinnamon, we have a little bit of salt.

Some orange zest.

- So, similar to the seasonings of the dough.

- Yes.

- The other great thing is no sugar.

The dates are naturally sweet.

So a little bit of butter.

Let's pulse it a little bit, just to chop them up, and then we'll let it run.

- You want me to let it run now?

- Yeah, I think you can let it run now.

And also if you think they're a little bit dry, you can still add a little bit of orange juice and that will help you.

♪ ♪ - Okay.

- So now the filling's all set and we can start shaping the cookies.

♪ ♪ So now we're ready to make the cookies.

What we want to do is portion out the filling and the dough.

So I'll do the filling and you can do the dough.

- Okay.

- So we need... - So, I'm doing what, a rounded tablespoon?

- Yeah, a pretty heaping tablespoon of dough.

- Like that?

- Yep, perfect.

- And then roll it into a ball.

This makes 20 cookies.

And we're going to put them on our parchment cookie sheet to get them ready.

So we're going to roll these out.

Okay, so now we can shape some cookies.

So what you want to do is take your dough.

- Oh, do along with you?

- (laughs) Yes, you can join me!

- I'm going to actually make one by hand without using the mold.

And you can use the mold.

So we want about a three-inch circle in the palm of your hand.

- Yeah.

- And then you're going to take a ball of the filling and then take the sides and move it around.

This dough is really forgiving, so you can really kind of squish it around that.

- By the way, the guys who did it locally?

- Yeah?

- Took them about three-and-a-half seconds.

- I bet.

Then just roll it around in your hand to kind of seal it up.

And I'm going to make mine by hand.

So I'm just going to press it into about a two-inch circle, and I'm going to put sesame seeds on mine.

So I'm just going to press it into my sesame seeds and put it on my tray, but if you want to use the mold - So I don't have to put any flour in here or anything?

- No, it works great, and then you just, kind of, press it with your hand, - Okay.

- And then, see if it'll flip out onto your hand.

If not, that's what this little tip is for.

You just bang it on the edge of the counter.

- Look at that, hey!

- Pretty.

- Look what I did!

- I know.

- It's fancy.

- This would be, - I have a couple of young kids, this would be... - Isn't it?

I know.

- Yeah.

- A great project, really.

- That's really cool.

- It's a great holiday project.

- I like that.

- So let's make a couple more.

The other great thing about these is they keep really well, so they're great to give as a gift.

If you gave someone a box of those, they would feel like you really outdid yourself, I think.

So we're going to put these in the oven at 325 and bake them for 30 to 35 minutes till they're pale golden, and the bottoms will be a little bit browner than the tops.

So these are fully baked, I've taken them off the tray to cool.

I'm going to powder the ones that we put in the mold because I think that looks really pretty.

- So now can I eat one or...?

- Yes, you can.

- I'll put some on a plate, make it a little bit more official, but... - Hm.

- What do you think?

- They're tender, but the orange and the cinnamon I really like, because it's subtle.

You know, I'm not a big cinnamon fan in, like, big quantities.

- Right.

- But it's just a hint, and it really adds a lot.

- Well, I'm glad you like them.

- Mm.

- You know, this is sort of like the Fig Newton of my childhood, except it's not figs.

- Much better, right?

- But yeah.

- It's a date newton and about ten times better.

- And the dough is so tender, don't you think?

- Well, it's a nice ratio of dough to filling, has a great taste to it.

The best thing is it makes you look like you know what you're doing.

- Oh, I agree.

- It looks like you're actually a knowledgeable baker.

- (chuckles) - Anyway, this is a great recipe from Turkey, it's date-filled cookies called kömbe.

You can get this recipe, all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

You're going to look like a pro.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - Introducing Hestan ProBond.

Crafted from the resilience of cold-forged stainless steel, we collaborate with top chefs to redefine cookware and the kitchen experience.

Italian craftsmanship meets innovation with Hestan ProBond.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪