WWNCD

WWNCD? What Would Nicholas Cage do? The beauty of writing a blog is the freedom to change course just because if feels like it. As we learn from the hotel that Nicholas Cage is staying during the filming of Ghost Rider 2 in Denizli, Turkey he developed a liking for Menemen and Sucuk[1], the spicy turkish sausage. As the winter front hits the Northeast again and again why don't you go home and feel like a Hollywood actor.

Mavi Boncuk |
MENEMEN | Ingredients for 4-5 Servings:

olive oil or butter | 5 eggs | 1 small onion (optional)| 1 green pepper (optional) | 4 tomatoes| grating cheese | 1 garlic clove (optional) | salt & pepper

1 Boil the tomatoes in hot water for 3 minutes then skin.
2 Melt the olive oil or butter in a large frying pan (butter is best) and add the tomatoes, thinly sliced green pepper onions and garlic to the frying pan. Cook on a low heat for 8 minutes or until softened.
3 Crack the eggs you can leave whole which I prefer or mix into the existing ingredients. If whole make sure it is a very low heat.
4 Cook until the eggs are set and add salt and grated black pepper.
5 Grate some cheese over the top until melted and server with Turkish bread or crusty bread if you do not have access to it. Source

[1] SUCUK Sujuk, also soudjouk (from Turkish: sucuk) is a dry, spicy sausage in Turkish cuisine eaten from the Balkans to the Middle East and Central Asia. The 19th-century Persian-English dictionary by Francis Steingass describes it as "the intestines of a lamb stuffed with mincemeat, rice, etc., and dressed".

Sujuk consists of ground meat (usually beef, but pork is used in non-Muslim countries and horse meat in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), with various spices including cumin, sumac, garlic, salt, and red pepper, fed into a sausage casing and allowed to dry for several weeks. It can be more or less spicy; it is fairly salty and has a high fat content.

Sujuk may be eaten cooked (when raw, it is very hard and stiff). It is often cut into slices and cooked without additional oil, its own fat being sufficient to fry it. At breakfast, it is used in a way similar to bacon or spam. It is fried in a pan, often with eggs (e.g. as breakfast in Egypt), accompanied by a hot cup of sweet black tea. Sujuk is sometimes cooked with haricot bean or incorporated into pastries at some regions in Turkey. In Bulgaria, raw, sliced sujuk is often served as an appetizer with raki/rakia or other high alcoholic drinks. In Lebanon, cooked sliced sujuk is made into sandwiches with garlic sauce and tomato.