Since the start of my grain-free experiment I have been thinking about a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” Being this very scoundrel, I don’t miss pilaf, and my heart doesn’t beat faster when I bake with my cooking classes’ guests. Maybe because I know my grain-free state is temporary. But I long for the textures often associated with the grain baking. I imagine biting into a fluffy something made of butter, goat cheese and dill. And I fancy a crunch of home-made crackers. To make both possible in the grain-free existence, I started baking with bean and nut flours.
As the spring comes, it is easy to rush into the green goodness of the season and forget what has been nourishing us the whole winter. But the beginning of the spring might be deceiving: warm days end with cold evenings, wide open windows turn into drafts and thinner clothes means unpleasant colds. That’s why taking care of your immune system is so important at this time of the year, and one of the ways to do so is through taking care of your .. gut because this is where the majority of the immune cells in our body are located. And one of the best things you can treat your gut to is lacto-fermented food, like this Russian fermented cabbage.
It is almost summer here: the spring started in February. For one and a half months our countryside property has been turning greener and greener: nettle and starflower plant boomed, and so did the collard greens and parsley in anne’s garden. After every trip to a market in Istanbul, I return with a gigantic bag of green bunches - dill, parsley, cilantro, rocket salad, beet greens, collard greens, baby spinach, scallions and green fresh garlic.
Just like Scroodge McDuck taking a dip in his gold daily, I could be diving into my greens. Which I practically do because I eat more of them than ever: my every meal has a green in it - raw in a salad or as a dressing, cooked in a soup, sauteed or steamed. And being keen on variety I often can’t eat up all the greens I buy. So I found a solution to utilize them - my greenest spring soup ever.
There is a thin strip on the timeline between the slowness of winter and the rapidly changing images of spring. It’s called February, the month when a lot of things are shaping up, whether you are suspecting or not.
February was a month of many changes for me, but I preferred to keep quiet about them on this blog. When things are taking shape, I do lots of thinking, reading as well as talking to my husband and (increasingly) parents. Writing does not come easy then: I do my best writing when I am 100% sure. But here I am .. writing. Not that I know where the changes are taking me, but I feel good being on the road.
When I travel I love taking cooking classes: besides broadening my culinary picture of the world I enjoy connecting with my colleagues in other geographies. I attended a cooking class in Marrakesh four years ago to learn the basics of Moroccan cooking, key ingredients and techniques. The biggest revelation of the class was the amount of labor that goes into cooking couscous. Yes, cooking couscous, an ingredient considered instant in the West. I don’t know what shocked me more - the fact that couscous takes one and a half hours to prepare or the innocent ignorance of people who choose to believe that it does not require cooking at all. In our globalized kitchens we easily forget to credit the people who originated a certain food, and so we miss an opportunity to learn from them.
Customers of my cooking classes always tell me they do not need dinner after the lunch we make together. “Hm, they are not exaggerating,” I thought to myself as we could barely walk stuffed to the rim with the delicious Moroccan food we cooked at the Zeynep’s house in Fez. Dinner was out of the question if it was possible at all in the Fez medina presenting edible opportunities at every corner.
All right, maybe just a small dinner. A bowl of soup can do. I remembered how after my morning walk I passed by a tiniest shop with the tall dark wooden doors wide open to let in the line of the men waiting for the bowls of piping hot bessara, Moroccan broad bean soup.
I met Ulli through my Istanbul Breakfast Club and was soon introduced to her own cooking: her meals always strike me as utterly delicious, nourishing and making you feel content and yet light while her baked goods are the most delicious guilt-free treats I have tried in Istanbul. She’s such a fascinating woman that I wanted you to meet her in my Istanbul Pantries Series: I chatted with Ulli about her cooking style, favorite Turkish pantry items and tips for shopping in Istanbul.
