Purslane: the name in English always makes me think of leafy country lanes and Shakespeare. In Turkish it is semizotu. This lovely versatile vegetable is really a summer item but it is still available. One of my very first jobs here years ago was teaching English at the university in Ankara. I loved those lunches in the cafeteria as more often than not, they were all-in-one , vegetable-based dishes, sometimes with a little mince thrown in, which I soon discovered are typical of Turkish home cooking. Not smart fare but tasty, healthy, easy and also economical for the housewife to put on the table every day. You can find this sort of cooking in little neighbourhood restaurants or lokantas everywhere. I just love meals like this. They can stretch very easily to accommodate extra guests round the dinner table too. How different to our own meat and two veg! I never used to buy semizotu as I wasn’t sure what to do with it but now I buy it regularly and use it in salads in the summer or serve it hot as in this recipe below. The fleshy leaves are highly nutritious, a good source of vitamin C, calcium, and iron.
1. Cut off the roots which are often very muddy, and throw away. Put the purslane in the sink and discard any thick stalks and bruised or damaged leaves. Keeping the smaller, thinner stalks is fine.
3. Dice the tomato and chop the onion.
4. In a pan place the purslane, onion, tomato, olive oil, seasoned salt, and washed rice or bulgur and gently mix.
5. Very important: do NOT add water. There will be enough liquid from the tomato and the water still on the leaves.
6. Cover and cook for 45 minutes over medium to low heat, leaving the pan uncovered for the last 15 minutes. The sweet fragrance of the semizotu cooking is wonderful.
Afiyet olsun!Let it sit for 5 mins and then serve with plain yogurt if you like it. The ideal vegetarian’s lunch or supper, I would say!
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Turkish cooks have a wonderful way of chopping onions into little crescent-shaped pieces. Ask a Turkish friend to show you. They do it in their hands, not using a chopping board. I tend to use my food processor and once I have got it out, chop up several onions and freeze in little plastic containers that I use only for this.
- Your choice of pan is important too: you may not be aware but Turkish cooks on the whole tend to use wide, open pans as opposed to our more upright saucepans. Over the years, I now much prefer this type. Well, the shape suits this sort of cooking as you can see in the picture above. The way the food is displayed appeals to me.
- You can use 1.5 kg spinach instead of the purslane if you like. All the other ingredients remain the same although the time will increase to 1 hr as the spinach will first release its juices and then reabsorb them. Remove the lid for the last 15 minutes as before.
- Make sure that any extra liquid boils away. It shouldn’t be too watery.
- Try to time this dish so that after letting it rest for 5 minutes, you can serve. It will be at its best then.
This sounds lovely and was thinking of making soup for lunch so will try it now! I will have to use spinach in place of purslane however.
Tell us how it works! do you have purslane where you are?
Thanks for this, Claudia. I've often looked at purslane and wondered how it is used. Now I know! I will certainly give this a try.
oh good. do try it as it's great.
did you know that it has more omega 3 in it than oily fish has?
Yum!!! My favorite! What's it called again in American??
Claudia, I'm so impressed with your blog, it has brought back so many good memories of istanbul, particularly this recipe. I loved purslane with yoghurt and garlic – can't remember what that is called? I can't believe it's over 10 years since I left!
Keep up the good work!
Barbara M
Hi Barbara! so lovely to hear from you after all this time! that dish you mention is a classic similar to the cucumber one I describe in a previous blog -yummy! How are you anyway?
Ali, I'm not sure what purslane is in American!! you remember how you loved it when you were here? Do you have it over there?
Hi Claudia,
not sure if I can find Purslane in N.Wales but can try with Spinach. It sounds delicious and I will try it at the weekend when Mark is back from London.
It's a lovely Autumn day here today.
L. Heike x
Hi Claudia,
I would love to try your recipe. Unfortunately, we haven't come across any purslane in our neck of the woods here in Massachusetts. I'll just have to do some asking around and lobbying at our farmer's market.
I remember eating a delicious breakfast dish at a Mexican diner in Brooklyn once – eggs with purslane (huevos con verdolagas). I always thought that it would make a great vegetarian alternative to the "sucuklu yumurta" type of Turkish breakfast.
Also, a neighbor in Istanbul had once taught us a southern/southeastern purslane salad. Instead of the typical (and delicious) garlicky yogurt preparation, this one involved layering the bottom of a salad bowl with dry/stale bread cubes and layering it on with cubed tomatoes, thinly sliced onions and whole leaves of purslane. The dressing was olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and the whole thing had a healthy amount of "sumak" sprinkled in for that extra sour flavor. It would ideally "rest" in the fridge overnight to allow the bread cubes to soak up the dressing and the tomato juice. Thanks to the succulent nature of purslane, it would end up being a very refreshing and crisp salad. I guess one could replace the sumak with "nar eksisi" (tart pomegranate juice?).
Thanks for reminding me of this wonderfully yummy green – I just have to go get some.
Ozzie! I have only just now seen your wonderful comment! thanks so much! I also know a purslane one with sumac but no bread although I can see that would be nice. so purslane, tomatoes round the edges,purple sumac and the crowning touch, ground walnuts scattered on top. dressing same except no vinegar or lemon juice as sumac takes their place.
what do they call it over there? this is what my sister Alison above wants to know!
Hi Claudia,
love your blog ( Lisa told me about it) – as I now have an allotment in England and was missing Turkish food I decided that I would have to plant some purslane seeds. I managed to find them on a specialist Victorian seed website. I am going to do this again this year. Also I picked up some seeds from the misir casir when on a brief visit to Istanbul – however they had green and yellow purslane and assured me that yellow was the best. Do you know what the difference is ??? Sue
Hi Sue! What a lovely surprise to find you here! That's pretty adventurous to grow your own purslane! And no, I have never heard of the yellow variety! Do tell us how successful your crop is this year.
Thanks for dropping by!
Claudia