I don’t know how about you, but I end up with piles of green leaf plants, stems and root vegetable tops in my fridge. After a week of cooking and shopping I would have more celery stalks that I can use for my soups or salads. Any celeriac (celery root) here in Istanbul comes with the stalks packed with the vitality that makes them curl: you would not recognize the guys if you just know the thick celery from a supermarket. Then chard: its juicy leaves make a perfect börek filling, but what about the thick stems? When possible, I slice them paper-thin and add to the filling, but what if you don’t want too much crunch? Also leeks. “They are onions in disguise!”, I announced once to my laughing mother-in-law. “How can you make them a star in your dish?” I asked her referring to the only zeytinyağlı I can’t bring myself to eating - leeks braised in olive oil. And yet, every time at the market they deceive me with their looks, and I buy more than I can use.
With so much leftover leaves, stalks and stems in your fridge, you should get decisive! I resort to throwing only when things turn inedible, and I have made enough stock to take all the room in my freezer. So why not a vegetable potage?
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Do you keep a cookie jar? I try not to, but in winter it is hard to resist the temptation and to overlook the practical side. On a cold day the need of a comforting snack is more pressing and the cost obtaining one is higher (putting on the coat alone is an undertaking). That’s why I feel right to go back to the long-standing tradition of baking ahead and keeping the bake treats handy in a cookie jar or even a sack if we speak of a large household like the joint family house where my mother-in-law was born.
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Salads like this make you forget all the longings for a good tomato and other things the past summer was abundant with. Instead, you will be grateful that the winter is almost here with its cheerful, delicious and super-nutritious produce.
The base of the salad is the sprouted mung beans. I have gotten the idea from Ulli. We met at my breakfast club a month ago, and I wondered why our paths had not crossed before: both of us live in Moda and both are passionate about eating healthy. Ulli is a certified Ayurveda consultant and yoga therapist who teaches her clients to live and eat in sync with their bodies. She is such a fascinating person that I am planning to tell you more about her one day, but for now - to the sprouted mung beans. [click to continue…]
I have been long wondering how other food bloggers get those wonderfully gloomy photographs that add quite a bit of drama to their foods. A dull November Saturday in Istanbul brought the answer: some of my brothers and sisters-in-food-blogging-arms simply don’t have enough sunshine. In Istanbul it is easy to take sun for granted, and that’s why the murky November days arrive as a surprise to any Istanbul dweller. There were times when I did not take sunshine for granted.
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This Sunday I made a trip to the Inebolu market to procure dairy and jams for my upcoming Black Sea breakfast, and of course I could not ignore the abundance of the seasonal produce on offer. As the way back to Moda was long, I had to plan my shopping really well. But I could not resist two things.
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There was the time when I thought that quince, a fruit that looks like a bright yellow oversized pear, was hard, astringent, and impossible to eat. That was surely before I tried ayva tatlısı, a classic Turkish dessert of quince poached in sugar syrup. Ayva tatlısı is a good example of how carefully you should pick a right cooking method to fully unleash the flavor of a seasonal ingredient. A few hours of gentle cooking in the sugar syrup do wonders to quinces: every tiny cell of the fruit gets saturated with the viscous syrup, and the quince transforms into a soft candy perfumed with a floral fragrance that even the most skilled perfumer at the Spice Market would not be able to replicate.
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Our Sapanca hotel is a heaven on earth for everybody who comes to stay for a day or two. You can full recharge as you marvel the vast vistas, walk in the woods, indulge the lovingly cooked food or simply get much needed sleep. Our guests keep telling us how lucky we are to live here. They obviously miss the fact that our family does not only live, but also works here. And however much we love the place, we look forward to the days when we can trade off our middle-of-nowhere for another middle-of-nowhere. Thankfully, the spots like that are abundant in our region: Sakarya has not made it to the Turkish guidebooks because it does not have world-class beaches or ancient moments. But the area is full of hidden secrets that we keenly discover.
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