Our Saturday Night Dinner: "Keşkek"

I was ten when my older uncle got married. The wedding day was a bright sunny day with very little sleep for me as it was for the preceding week because of the hectic wedding preparations, such as accommodating guests coming from out of town, organizing the official ceremony, arranging transportation and logistics for wedding band, inviting people in and out of town, and so on… Finally, it was the time for the big feast where we were supposed to serve 7-8 different dishes over a thousand guests witnessing my uncle’s and aunt-in-law's wedding. One of the traditional dishes we prepared and served that day was keşkek (mashed wheat with beef). I recall myself observing every little detail about its preparation; yet, after two decades of chaotic, nomadic, and terribly cumbersome living conditions I’ve experienced, most of those memories got blurred. Nevertheless, we tried to cook keşkek at home depending mostly on my intact reminiscences about taste of that wedding keşkek, and partially on online recipes.

Ingredients (four servings):

 
* 200 gr wheat (preferably shelled)
* 400 gr Soup Bone or Lamb Shoulder/Chops (bone is needed for the broth)
* 2 tbsp butter
* 1 tbsp red pepper flakes
* 1 tbsp paprika
* Salt
* Water
 

We purchased the wheat from World Harvest in Champaign, IL. I think Ziyad is the only brand that they carry for the wheat. Duyguzela had already told the story about the soup bone. I used the meat falling off the soup bone as the meat ingredient in keşkek. Lamb meat is preferred in certain regions, but in Aydin (Western Anatolia), we always prepare this dish with beef. Butter, red pepper flakes and paprika are from Turkey--the former two we bought here, and paprika my mom made and sent us. 

Preparation: 

Soak the wheat overnight. If you lack time, or you forget, you can increase the boiling time to compensate for it. Before boiling the wheat, wash it a couple of times, until the water is clear. Then, boil it until the wheat is tender. We boiled it for almost 3 hours, just to make sure it was “mashable”;) Then, I continually stirred and mashed the boiled wheat while Duyguzela gradually added almost half a liter of soup bone broth over an hour period until the wheat took the following form

Mashed Wheat

I remember that there were more than 10 adult men stirring and mashing a cauldron full of wheat while a cook interrupted this process and added a huge bowl of beef broth at every single visit. After an hour of hard-core stirring and mashing process, I now can tell why there were so many men then. I used to complain to my mom about how rare she cooked keşkek for us, and, now, I do understand. It requires quite a lot of physical strength mainly because the boiled wheat gets thicker and stickier while mashing, and you get more tired;))

Letting the mashed wheat and myself rest a little bit, I pinched the boiled beef from the soup bone into fibrous pieces as shown in the following photo:

Pinched Beef

Pinching it into smaller pieces helps the mashing and mixing with the mashed wheat. I tasted some versions of keşkek with only mashed wheat and lump or stew meat on top. However, I prefer the mixture, as it is served at wedding ceremonies: it provides a decent texture and the meat flavor is equally distributed around the mashed wheat. Yet, this requires another hour of mashing;((

Hence, after adding the meat and salt, we continued the mashing process for another hour or so. At the end of this process, the keşkek was ready in the following form

Mashed Wheat with Beef

Finally, we melted the butter and added the paprika on it. And, poured the sizzling butter sauce on a plate of keşkek as follows:

Keskek with the Sauce

Afiyet olsun!