Kumpir, the turkish baked loaded potato

More than a recipe, kumpir is a kind of "fast food", very popular in Turkey, which combines the forcefulness and sobriety of a hot potato with the fantasy of a salad.

As in any salad, the ingredients can be very varied. In the same way we can build a very caloric or relatively dietary dish.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 very large potato (the type of potato that we generally discard because of its excessive size)
• oil or butter
• sweet canned corn
• Sliced ​​pitted olives
• Chopped of variants
• Pickled cucumber
• Cooked sliced ​​mushrooms
• cooked peas
• Beef mince or sliced ​​German sausages
• Vinegar
• mayonnaise
• Ketchup
• Salt

We wash the potato or potatoes (each potato represents a portion) well and without opening or peeling it, wrap it with aluminum foil, placing it in the oven at 180º (356 F) for approximately 45 minutes (or until pricking it with a toothpick we notice it is tender ).

Take the potato out of the oven and be very careful not to burn yourself - it has to be prepared with the potato still hot, for which we recommend protective gloves - we will open it lengthwise without breaking it into two halves (as if it were a book) .

With the help of a spoon we will empty some of the internal pulp (not much, it is only to make a hole where the salad fits) and we will beat the interior with some olive oil or butter.

Obviously with butter it will be softer but the number of calories will skyrocket.

Once we have prepared this puree , we will add some salt and proceed to prepare the salad.

Here everything depends on the imagination of each one. If we want a kind of "hamburger" we will first deposit the minced meat already fried, we will beat the content again to mix potato and meat, to then add sweet corn, laminated mushrooms, chopped variants, etc. Then we will add mayonnaise and a little ketchup in the style of the patatas bravas.

If we only want a vegetable kumpir we could put laminated mushrooms (the first product is the one that is beaten with the potato pulp, the rest obviously not), pitted olive slices, gherkins, pickled beets, all topped with mayonnaise for example or other typical sauce for dressing salads.

Kumpir is fast food and so let's not look for too many dietary "pros". It is an excess of once a month at most. It is served on the plate with a spoon or fork or eaten on the street with plastic cutlery on a cardboard plate. The contrast between the warm potato (it takes less than 1 minute to prepare) and the cold salad is very interesting and makes this dish suitable for both summer and winter. In fact, many people who taste it on the street during winter use the potato to warm their hands and only eat the salad.

The first time I saw this recipe was in Ortaköy, a neighborhood in Istanbul, where it is served in small street stalls.

The famous image of Istanbul is actually the Ortaköy Mosque that seems to float on the Bosphorus, with the bridge that crosses from Asia to Europe in the background. On the side from where the photo was taken, there is an anchorage for ferries, a square full of cafes and a network of streets where a large number of street stalls run by vendors, many of whom are hippies, are crowded. There are the typical stalls where they prepare kumpir according to the ingredients you choose.

Know more about Turkey with out travrl guide: