Rulo Patates: Turkish/French Fusion
recipe including tips and tricks for cooking-in-a-foreign-language
Youtube is the source of most of my Turkish TV, and also many of my recipes. Sometimes, though, you need a written recipe because it’s quicker than watching videos (especially ones that were optimised for the recommendation algorithm, rather than for getting information across to the viewer). If you’re curious about cooking Turkish food, then here’s some basics and a few recommendations that start off fairly general for international cooking, but eventually focus on the recipe for today; the rolled potato dish known as “Rulo Patates”.
General tips
The first tip is a little Google-fu. There are plenty of Turkish chefs who write in English (Özlem Warren1 comes to mind), but with the quality of machine translation these days there is no reason not to go to the source. How to you search for recipes in Turkish, or any other language? Simply enter the query in your usual search engine using the language in question.
For my example today you search Google for “rulo patates tarifi” (“rulo patates recipe”) which brings you to this result near the bottom of the first page. Now, that Lezzet site is a lot of fun to browse, as you would expect from any site with a whole category called “Köfte recipes” containing more than 10 pages of results.
But don’t get distracted or you’ll never get dinner on the table. With modern browsers like Chrome you can right-click on the page, and get an English translation in a new tab. If not default, you might have to install an addon to do it (I use “To Google Translate” for Firefox) which looks like this:
…and gives this translated result. You can look back at the Turkish version to puzzle through anything Google Translate struggles with, but it looks pretty reasonable in this case.
Search for today’s Turkish recipe in French using “rulo patates recette” and you’ll quickly find the origin of the Turkish name (if you didn’t twig already, after saying “rulo patates” out loud). With beautiful Turkish phonetic efficiency, the French dish “roulé aux pommes de terre” (25 characters) becomes “rulo patates” (12 characters), borrowing the shorter word “patates” from Spanish via Greek.
Of course, this search tip works in any language that your search engine supports, even if you don’t speak it; you just start by asking Google Translate the word for “recipe” in the target language and copy-and-paste into your query. If you want to reverse-engineer that peanut sauce from your local Thai place, then Googling “peanut sauce recipe” gets you very different results from “peanut sauce สูตรอาหาร”. The latter search (with the help of “Translate this page”) will teach you some words for satay sauce, like “ซอสสะเต๊ะ” or “น้ำจิ้มสะเต๊ะ”, which hopefully will lead you to your new favourite Thai recipe site. (My current favourite is pholfoodmafia.com, which not only has a great satay recipe, but has an official English translation available from a drop-down toggle.)
My previous favourite Thai recipe source was an e-book that was formerly available in English from the Thai government public relations dept., but which now returns a 404. Sadly, because the e-book was presented in some stupid embedded form with turning-the-page animations, I couldn’t download it, and The Wayback Machine wasn’t able to archive it. This brings me to my second tip: when you find a good recipe online, write it down! Websites can go dark, even whole countries can be disconnected from the internet without notice. If it weren’t for the fact that I had copied a couple of favourite recipes before they vanished, I wouldn’t have discovered (by searching blocks of text) that some of the recipes ended up in a new book, now in its 3rd Edition, with additional contributors and a colourful new layout. The new book is available from the Thai government for free here as a massive 122M download. The recipes I remember from the original seem to be those by Chef Vichit Mukura; in particular the Hot and Sour Grilled Beef Salad with Grapes (p22) is highly recommended.2
What do I like about those Thai recipes? It’s the fact they give exact weights for almost every ingredient. There is nothing more frustrating than reading a recipe that calls for “a small bunch of mint”, when I have no idea what that means to a Thai chef. Instead these recipes say, for example “20g of mint leaves and stems”, which is a much more precise and useful description. So that’s my third tip, although I’ve said it before; buy some cheap kitchen scales, measure everything you do in the kitchen, and write it down. Your kids will thank you when they try to cook some of your dishes after you’re gone.
Turkish cooking measures
There’s little need for me to give you a list of culinary terms in Turkish, since Google Translate can handle those just fine. However, I do need to mention the conversions for Turkish weights and measures, which seem to lack a coherent standard online. Comparing tables at three different sites:
There’s general agreement that a “su bardağı” (“water glass”) holds 200 mL. However, that Lezzet table is a hot mess, immediately contradicting itself to say that “half a water glass” is 120 mL.
The next common measure, a “çay bardağı” (“tea glass”) could be 100, 120 or 125 mL, depending who you ask.
A Turkish “kahve fincanı” (“coffee cup”) is a standard measure of either 70 mL or 90 mL; the Nefis Yemek Tarifleri site contradicts itself here.
A “yemek kaşığı” (“food spoon”) is 10 mL at one site, 15 mL at another (and Lezzet uses both, depending on the page)
A “tatlı kaşığı” (“sweets spoon”) is generally 5 mL, but see next:
A “çay kaşığı” (“tea spoon”) is sometimes 5 mL, sometimes 2.5 mL.
The fourth tip therefore becomes “be careful with international weights and measures”, but its also an extension of tip number three: “buy some kitchen scales, and record exactly how much you used, so you can tell everyone”.
Adapting the recipe
One chef I admire is Felicity Cloake, who writes her “How to make the perfect…” series at The Guardian.3 The point is not whether an objectively “perfect” version of a classic recipe actually exists; it’s that she tests all the variations, and gives her own reasons why she preferred one over another, before combining them into her subjective idea of perfection. Readers are then encouraged to discuss why her opinions are wrong in the comments. You might be noticing a similarity here with my approach to cooking, which is to document exactly what you did and why you did it; both so you can improve next time and also communicate the recipe to someone else effectively. Today’s recipe required some adapting,4 but I’ll tell you what I did and why, so you can decide how to cook it for yourself.
There’s a wide variation in French recipes for “roulé aux pommes de terre”, with this version adding egg to hold the potato layer together, and using ham in the filling (which is obviously not used by Turkish Muslims). My recipe today is based on the Turkish version at Lezzet, but it’s helpful to contrast it with this very similar version in French, to better define what makes it “Turkish”.
The peppers:
The extra attention paid to a wide variety of pepper products in Turkish cuisine is one of the biggest differences compared to the French style.
The French recipe calls for both red and green peppers (“poivrons”) suggesting that the colour effect is important. The Turkish recipe specifies a red “Kapya” pepper, and a generic green one (“yeşil biber”).
Given that Kapya peppers seem to be expensive even in Turkey, they may be after a specific flavour here, not just colour. Kapya peppers are said to be sweet rather than hot, and this site claims that they are the main ingredient in Hungarian paprika. Bingo! I’ve got Hungarian paprika in the cupboard, so I’ll use some of that to spice up a red bell pepper (a simple “capsicum” in Australian English).
Green peppers are usually sweet in Türkiye, but can be hot too. I’m not too bothered about the colour myself, so I’ll add an extra red bell pepper, plus a smidge of hot chili powder.
Note that if you’re looking for the kind of smoky, chocolate flavours typified by “Ancho” chilies in the Americas, the Turks also enjoy these flavours in the form of “İsot” or “Halep” (“Aleppo”) peppers. The latter is implied in the “pul biber” (“pepper powder”) common in many Turkish recipes. I don’t have any, but my Hungarian paprika is smoked, so that will help I guess.
Where I live, imported eastern European groceries are more widely available than Turkish imports. This means that the “biber salçası” (“pepper paste”) that the Lezzet recipe calls for is hard to find; instead I use “ajvar”, which is the Balkans equivalent.
The Turkish product is basically concentrated peppers, but ajvar has additional ingredients such as roasted aubergines.5 Some on the internet suggest that the Macedonian style is particularly good, and I happen to have this Macedonian brand currently. Don’t worry if you can only find the “hot” (“лут”) type; it’s still pretty mild.
The cheese:
While the French recipe calls (naturally) for gruyère cheese, the Turkish version uses “taze kaşar peyniri” (“fresh kaşar cheese”). Kaşar is a meltable cheese roughly equivalent to young cheddar, but which can be made from cow, goat or sheep milk; I’ll use Australian “tasty” cheese, which is our cow’s milk cheddar standard.
Another common Turkish cheese is “beyaz peynir” (“white cheese”) which is similar to feta. For the stringy, melty-type cheese dishes where we might use mozzarella, Turkish recipes might call for “dil peyniri” (lit. “tongue cheese”).
Note that everything I know about the rheology of Turkish cheeses comes from videos by Refika Birgül, including her excellent recipe (Youtube link) for the classic Turkish egg dish “menemen”.
Mincing and frying:
I made a couple of minor changes to the recipe, such as beginning with the potatoes rather than the filling as I find you’ve got time to fry the filling while the potato layer is in the oven. This is just for convenience and won’t affect the final product. However, there is a Turkish method to frying the mince that will affect the taste, and that wasn’t communicated fully in the Lezzet recipe. Here’s how Lezzet writes it (Google translated):
Kıymayı da ekleyerek suyunu salıp çekene kadar kavurun. En son salçaları ve baharatları ile yarım su bardağı kadar su ilave ederek pişirin. Ocaktan alarak bir kenarda bekletin.
(Add the minced meat and fry until it releases its water. Lastly, add the tomato paste and spices and add half a glass of water and cook. Take it off the stove and keep it aside.)
The bare bones of the technique are summarised in that paragraph, but the full method I learned courtesy of Refika Birgül, from her “içli köfte” video (Youtube link) that I posted previously. It’s a thorough frying to a dark brown colour, and water is added frequently to deglaze the pan, so all that Maillard-browned tastiness can be easily scraped up and absorbed onto the meat where it belongs. You’ll know its ready when you can no longer visually distinguish the meat from the onion, and the mixture “smells like a kebap”.
This is a very important technique in Turkish cooking. In fact there is a famous dish (“İskender kebap”) that in its Istanbul form at least, is based on deglazing brown tastiness and mopping it up onto cubes of bread (Youtube link).
Another thing Refika says later in the “içli köfte” video is “in Turkey, we do a lot of mincing”. The attention paid to carefully mincing different ingredients into appropriate particle sizes to finish off the mince (starting around 07:50) seems particularly Turkish. Like her, I add parsley directly to the cooked filling before rolling, rather than sprinkling it on at the end.
Finally, the damn recipe:
Ingredients for Rulo Patates (weights accurate to ±10%):
1 kg peeled potatoes (about 1.2 kg with the dirt and skins)
80 g butter
100 g of grated cheddar cheese
500 g minced meat (mine was beef with 10% fat, but lamb works too)
200g onion, finely chopped
200 g capsicum/bell pepper, chopped
splash of olive oil (~10 g)
1 teaspoon of salt (5 mL)
1 teaspoon of paprika/chili powder (5 mL)
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 mL) each of black pepper, cumin, thyme
1 tablespoon (20 mL) of tomato paste
1 tablespoon (20 mL) of pepper paste or ajvar
25 g flat-leaf parsley (about 8 stalks)
Method:
Preheat oven to 190°C.
Thinly slice the potatoes (this is easier with a mandolin or food processor).
Microwave the butter for ~30 seconds until its mostly melted.
Line a baking tray (mine is 350 mm x 250 mm) with baking paper (even if you had a non-stick tray it helps with rolling later, like a sushi mat).
Sprinkle grated cheese (40 g) over the baking paper in the tray.
Arrange potato slices (200 g) in an overlapping layer on top of the cheese.
Brush melted butter (20 g) on top.6
Continue laying potato slices and brushing with butter, and a final layer of potato on top.
Sprinkle the top layer with grated cheese (40 g).
Bake in oven until golden brown on top, and starting to go crispy around the edges (45 min - 1 h).
Meanwhile, add a splash of olive oil (~10 g)7 to a frying pan; add the onion, capsicum/bell pepper and mince, and stir over high heat until the water comes out of the food.
Add salt (2.5 mL), continue stirring occasionally as the water evaporates and the mixture begins to fry. You can turn the heat down to medium here if it’s going too crazy.
At this stage, a brown tasty layer will begin to form on the base of the pan. Every 5 minutes or so, add a splash of water8 and stir to deglaze the brown layer off the pan and onto the meat, repeat as necessary.
Once the mixture is dark brown and you can’t distinguish between meat and onion, mix the rest of the salt with the spices and pastes into 50 mL of water, and add to the pan. Continue cooking for another few minutes, until the mixture is piping hot again, but not enough to dry it out. The mixture will be strongly flavoured on its own, but more balanced once rolled into the potato.
finely mince the stalks of the parsley and stir them in. Allow to cook while you mince the parsley leaves.
Switch off the heat and stir in the parsley leaves.
Once the potato is ready, let it cool for 15 min so that it doesnt burn your fingers, then spread the filling evenly on top. To get it looking like the picture up top, I spread it fairly thin and had some filling left over.
Grab the potato rectangle by the shortest edge, and fold the first few inches over onto the filling. Continue rolling, with the assistance of the baking paper, into a flattened roll shape.
Sprinkle the top with grated cheese (20 g), and stick it back in the oven until the cheese melts and browns.
Slice into rounds (easiest with a serrated bread-knife) and serve.
The recipe at that link for Warren’s red lentil soup (here, I’ll link it again for you) is a Turkish classic; so simple and yet so good.
We call this dish “fingernail salad” in my family; as you might see from the picture the finely sliced lemongrass reminds us of nail clippings. That picture has more meat and less lemongrass than the actual recipe calls for, but the real version turns out much, much better and tastier than it sounds!
I’ve linked directly there to Felicity Cloake’s borscht recipe, which is my favourite thing she has done. Some extra vinegar makes it perfect, in my opinion.
Lezzet pages are also annoying in that they reload themselves every few minutes to reset the ads, the usual result being that you lose your place in the recipe at a time when your hands are coated in flour.
No, the Lezzet recipe doesnt call for butter between the layers. However, I am of the opinion, like many French people, that if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing with butter (cf. “Pommes Anna”). If you don’t use butter, consider a little salt in the potato instead.
I wouldn’t normally weigh out a splash of oil, but did so here out of the principle of recording everything for your enlightenment. I weighed the oil bottle, then splashed, then weighed again.
Splashes of water here turn out to be 20-30 mL, but I didn’t go by weight. I added just enough that the water flash-boils and steams the brown layer off easily; if you add too much water it cools the pan and stays liquid.