Spring Break

start:



level 2:



Back in a week-ish

no way

This is crazy. Small cat-like animals in the Philippines eat coffee cherries, then digest and ferment the cherry "pit" (the coffee bean) in their stomachs. These beans produce an expensive brew, purchased for about 227$ a pound.

dört tane

Yogurt flavored Doritos.


If I had hayir expectations I would have been disappointed. How flavorful could yogurt be on a chip? It was like ranch, but better... but not that much better.



From the saturday market -- loquats. You are supposed to peal them, oops. Pear-ish, with a hit of sour that makes your tongue itch after a few in a row.


You can dry the pits for 2 months then peel them and eat them.


Awesome lettuce -- thicker and way more stylin' than your average leaf, with a burst of lemon, seriously. nice.




Little, hard, crispy green plum. Mine aren't that good, apparently. For another dimension, you can eat them dipped in a little salt.

Leaf Me Alone

So I can eat in peace.

Adapted from this recipe, which caught my eye a few weeks ago... Stuffed grape leaves, dolma (derived from verb "to stuff") which I eat frequently here, fresh from the market (or sometimes from the can). I envisioned a sweet and sour stuffed leaf with eggplant and ground meat.

Here goes:
(no measurements, sorry)

>cook rice to al dente. set aside.
>saute onion and cubed eggplant in pan with olive oil, salt and white grape vinegar till soft.
>add seasoned ground beef and cinnamon.
>add some sour cherry jam. cook till done, brown, juicy, etc. turn off hot plate.
>add rice to mixture in pan, stir.
>while it settles, rinse ye (hopefully) fresh grape leaves, dry them, and set them shiny side down.

>arrange them, overlapping, and line with some rice mixture.



>roll out (and up)

>this part got weird: place extra rice and a small amount of water in pot, with grape leaves atop to steam / cook and soften the leaves... steady simmer for 20-30 mins (because I made so few). This didn't work so well, I would have preferred to steam them / some double broiler situation somehow but didn't have the right tools.
>to mitigate the awkward, slightly soggy leaves, I placed them in the pot again, drizzled in olive oil, and let them warm on most sides for... 20 mins?
>and they are done. let them cool slightly. eat with a squeeze of lemon.

>much better on day two. would also be better with more oil but I am personally willing to forgo a tablespoon here and there...

This recipe (mine, not the nytimes) could use some revising but considering hotplate situation and general challenges... But overall, I was pleased, will do it again, and maybe even try to follow the actual recipe. maybe.

iyi günler >> iyi akşamlar

On an afternoon stroll...
OJ squeezed to order from a street cart. 1 lira. (70 cents)


Tart and slightly pulpy.



Street snack of peeled cucumber with salt. 50 Kuruş. (35 cents)


Perfect.



Take out from my Turkish equivalent of Zorona's; delicious, comforting, wholesome, craving quenching, reliable, fresh, lemony, and any other relevant adjective. Those of you in 12604 know what I am saying... This place, Urfam, is off the charts. Red lentil soup comes hot with a big slice of lemon, thick, soft Turkish bread comes with fresh, spicy tomato dip, and tavuk şiş (shish) kebap comes with risotto-esque bular, charred tomatoes, sumak'd onion salad, and about 2 feet of flat bread (enough to fill up and then share with your suitemate).


All for about... 10 U$D.

No replacement for Joe, but a worthy parallel till I am back in P-Town.

Ketch up

I'm a bit behind...


Chronological Order:

Chinese take-out in Turkey. Definitely lacking in MSG. Rice didn't come with our order. Nor fortune cookie. Nor excessive amounts of food per person; isn't that the whole point? I went for Hot and sour soup and sesame chicken.



Sesame Chicken is definitely different over here -- positive and negative attributes. Warm, moist chicken, so seriously coated in seeds you could trick a bird into eating its own relative. Almost doesn't count as the same dish as the one I am used to (so I don't need to choose a favorite).



What's chinese food without the white box? Do they even use those any more (in favor of plastic, which I must admit I love). I know I sound like an annoying New Yorker, but seriously...

Next, a joke.

In Turkish, the word for cake is pasta. So look at this --

Good right?



Anyway.

I went to Fethiye last weekend, it is on the southern coast, I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone, it is beautiful and amazing. I biked 5km uphill and it was fun but notably strenuous, especially without water on a hot day. These feelings of frustration and exhaustion (coupled with excitement, the view was too much, there were many turtles, and we were headed to a beautiful beach and a deserted town) were dissipated with a lunch of eggplant salad with parsley, tzatziki (with huge hunks of garlic), and a grilled eggplant/yogurt mix (we ordered, perhaps unwisely, but luckily we like yogurt and eggplant a lot). Plus bread and previously mentioned savory turkish crepe with spinach. A lot of water too. This was served at a family run restaurant, where we ate in the shady backyard playing backgammon. Small farms surrounded us, goats and dogs too. It was so good, simple and fresh, I only remembered to photograph after we ate it all. Plus that NYTimes article that makes me never want to photograph my food again (here). So I enjoyed all other meals this weekend whole-heartedly with both hands and no pauses, and they were delicious.





Fethiye bakery, open till 00:00.

Better-than-they-look & better-than-your-average cookies



And some mystery pastries as well.





Every impromptu picnic,



Deserves a "Lapkin".



How to top a weekend in the south, we shall see.

Weekend Update

Happy Easter Friends. I celebrate cats, not rabbits, this year.





I did some serious eating this weekend and we could get deep into restaurant reviews but that is a whole other basket of eggs. Basically, if you go to Istanbul, eat at Ciya. It's the best. I'll get into details later (deserves its own post).


Funny Chicken. Drumsticks, breasts, wings, thighs... You can have whatever you like.



Delicious Chicken. Chick-N + Chick-Ps.



Shredded chicken atop light, buttery rice with chick peas. Hot pickled peppers, red pepper, salt and pepper (pepper extravaganza, for real) are added to your liking. Bubbly lemon drink (but next time freshly foamed beer mug of ayran) seals the deal.


And how to stay alert through 2 hours of Turkish class;


Black tea, a carrot-coconut-(glucose)-nut bar. Pretty good, but I prefer the sesame seed honey one honestly, it creates much more of a ruckus in class and isn't as creepy and gooey. But serious points for creativity. I usually don't eat the mechanical pencil, but sometimes...

yemek seviyorum

This is not a systematic collection but deserves some attention.


Variation on the classic simit you buy on the street.


Whole grain simit with oats and sunflower seeds dotting the exterior. I realized I love this so much because there is SO MUCH CRUST for so little bread. That means almost every bite has texture, flavor and crunch. It is also a wider ring with a larger whole that your average bagel, so you won't have eaten 10 slices of bread when you're done with it. That's nice.



Breakfast; fried egg, hanging out with spinach and cabbage (pan cooked with balsamic), lemony olives, sliced (toasted in pan) bread and hot pepper spread.




Black walnuts soaked in sugar syrup. Crunchy exterior, soft almost gelatinous interior. So sweet (can't eat too many) -- there is also pumpkin, eggplant stuffed with walnuts, tomatoes and olives; all sweet with a just a hint of what they actually are.




Looks like a gurgling canyon.


But it's the skin on top of my yogurt.


good day.