How to Make Zeytinyagli Fasulye Part 1/2

This Turkish Cuisine video shows you how to make Zeytinyagli Fasulye, or String Beans with Olive Oil part 1/2.

Hello and welcome to Turkish Cuisine; I’m Janine Aloisi. When you’re driving in Turkey for about every three to four hours, you’ll find yourself in different zones with all the accompanying changes of scenery, altitude and temperature. Turkish cuisine has come to reflect those changes. And now Jennifer will show you some fine examples of the richness of Turkish cuisine. Hello and welcome to Home Style Turkish cooking. For me, the attraction to Turkish cooking is how simple it is. It is a cuisine about balance, taste and color, with recipes that have been passed on from generation to generation. It only changes minimally according to taste but always keeps its tradition. Today, we’re going to make an exciting array of dishes. We’re going to start off with a ‘mezet’ or appetizer which is called Zeytinyagli Fasulye; what is Zeytinyagli Fasulye? It is olive oil string beans. Now to make our delicious string beans, we’re going to need: one pound of green string beans, two teaspoons of sugar, four tomatoes which we’re going to grate, half a cup of water, two chopped onions, pepper and salt to taste, three cloves of garlic, chopped not crushed; and about 1 cup of corn or sunflower oil. Now traditionally, olive oil is used in these dishes. These are dishes that are derived from the Ottoman Empire; but nowadays, people have changed it to make it a little more lighter. But you can use olive still; I just find that it has a much fluffier taste with the regular sunflower oil. So while we’re waiting for our oil to get hot, I can put in our onion now; so they could come to a nice heat and then I’m going to show you how to clean the string beans. So, it’s okay if this is not completely hot just about yet because it’s going to get some time to clean our sting beans. Now, not everybody does this, but in my home and the homes that I’ve eaten Turkish cuisine in, many people clean their string beans. So, what they do is chop of the ends; now when you go to a restaurant usually they chop off the ends and then they serve it like this. But in our home, we like to slice off the edges because there’s like a string in there. And when you’re eating the string bean, I don’t find it’s nice to have that string in your mouth. Now when this is cooked, don’t worry they’re going to open and the beans may fall out into your dish, but that’s okay because we’re taking out the thread that keeps them together. So see, that’s why I said it to the manner that our onions weren’t completely hot because we needed time to open our string. So, now is a good time to put in our sugar. With every Zeytinyagli or olive oil dish, you always need to add a little sugar. So we’ll just out in two very light teaspoons, just a little bit, and then we can add our garlic. Now with this, the garlic is best when it’s chopped and I’ve picked three cloves here; because it’s get that garlicky flavor without it being crashed, I just find this is better but you can crush it if you want to save time.