Semolina—yeah, we get it, it’s a bit of a love-hate thing. And we know why: flashbacks to dodgy school puddings that were overly sweet, gloopy, and borderline inedible. One of our grandmothers, for reasons that still mystify us, used lemon essence in her semolina despite having a fruit-laden lemon tree right outside her kitchen window. Go figure…

Welcome to Fellah Köfte. With roots in Turkish and MIddle Eastern cuisine, it’s a humble kind of a dish using everyday staples that would traditionally have been super-cheap and constantly on hand. Depending on what burghul and semolina cost in your vicino, it’s still pretty cheap to make and if you can get Turkish pepper paste all the better…

Bonus recipe, people! As you can see, we really got into semolina this week. There are tons of version of this Middle Eastern/Turkish/Greek-style cake, some use coarse semolina, some a finer one or even a mixture of the two; others include some wheat flour in the mix…

Ovens can be dodgy bastards. See that thermometer dial on yours? If your oven’s calibration slips, which it inevitably will, the dial is not necessarily the most reliable indicator of the exact temperature your oven is at. Bummer. But there’s a simple workaround…