Your Most Intimate Introduction to Turkish Food and Culture
If you know nothing about how to find a worthwhile Istanbul fish restaurant a good rule of thumb is look for one by a fish market or big water. That way you can be sure their kitchen receives the freshest catch from a high-turnover fish mongers or directly from the fishing boats. That is why [...]
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Italy has been on top of my mind recently. I have finished reading Bill Buford’s “Heat” on his pursuit of real food at the Italian kitchens in NY and Italy. My sister has reported on her yet another trip to Italy and shared a plan to return this summer for more. Russian TV-chef celebrity Julia [...]
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I met Marina after a long while of no see. We have filled in each other on the happening of the past few months over a tall glass of lemonade at Fazıl Bey, a respectable coffee spot and simply a institution. As we parted ways Marina, once local to the area but now a proud [...]
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Tomato paste, or domates salcası is probably the most fundamental Turkish cooking condiment. Closely followed by red bell pepper paste (biber salcası). Both thick deep-red pastes enclose the essence of summer and its flavors - that of tomato and red bell pepper. You would add both to possibly every third Turkish dish: aromatic red lentil [...]
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Living in two homes is something I have been doing for the past 5 years. I would find one place I am really happy at.. and then would almost immediately find the other. So I would be shuttling between the two.
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It is characteristic how we do not grasp certain things before experiencing them. And our intellectual capacity keeps quiet until our hands or hearts learns. I sort of knew that cooking for a crowd takes stamina and organization. But have not discovered it until anne got into the hospital and I stayed back at the [...]
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My mother-in-law is at the hospital in Istanbul. It’s a planned thing and she was on a waiting list for a while. They are making yet another round of the tests to find out what exactly should be done with her thyroid gland which refuses to work properly. Baba and Özge are talking turns in [...]
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It is fashionable to speculate on minimalism. Run minimalism experiments in clothing, eating, working and living in general. Cut down, get rid of, recycle, re-use, reduce. Sometimes out of real need. Sometimes of plain curiosity. I must confess I have had a few minimalism projects in progress too. No clothes shopping, no coffee, no alcohol, [...]
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First time I landed at a restaurant kitchen when test-driving my idea of having my own I was shocked by the harsh truths of the professional cooking world. I had a somewhat romantic notion of food, a fruit of creative labors, and much idealistic image of people making it. It is only when I saw [...]
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May has already been financially satisfying. I have made it to the breakeven - given my visa runs to Russia last year and ridiculously high rent I am paying right now in Istanbul. Which means I can give legitimate answers to the persistent questions my friends and parents still ask about the financial viability of [...]
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