Cafe Fernando

Smoked Turkey Sandwich and Cacik

I don’t always have the time to cook when I arrive home from work. And if there isn’t anything left over from the previous day, my choice for a quick & light dinner is usually a sandwich with cacik on the side. Tonight’s sandwich was smoked turkey with avocado.

Cacik (closest pronounciation is “Jahjik”) is a traditional Turkish meze (appetizer), which is made of yogurt, cucumber, water, garlic and your choice of spices. It is much more diluted than its Greek version Tzatziki. Its consistency, the way cucumbers are chopped, amount of garlic and your choice of spices added all differ according to individual taste. You will find below my version of this extremely refreshing goodness.

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Chocolate Ganache Tart

As previously featured on my best friend’s oh-so-delicious blog Baking Fairy, here is the Chocolate Ganache Tart. The recipe belongs to Martha Stewart. As always, her recipe is right on target. Crisp almond based tart dough topped with to-die-for velvety ganache.

When you come across perfect recipes like these, the only way to personalize it and make it your own is how you present it. So I crafted a stencil, placed it on top of the ganache and sprinkled the cropped parts with powdered sugar. Before you apply the coating of powdered sugar, you must wait for the ganache to set completely in the refrigerator (overnight if possible; if not at least 4 hours) otherwise your precious stencil may disappear in a matter of minutes.

You can either craft your own stencil or use one of Martha’s clip-art templates. Each link will take you to another link with its respective pdf document. Just print the document, cut around the clip-art to fit the size of your tart shell and crop the image.