Welcome to Delicious Istanbul!
I am Olga from Delicious Istanbul. Most of the time I eat, cook and shop for food in Istanbul and show others how to do that with gusto.
Want to know what's cooking in Istanbul? Please, get free tips on Istanbul food, living in Turkey and entrepreneurship.
Coming to Istanbul? Check out my Istanbul food walking tours and cooking classes.
MOST POPULAR ARTICLES
YUMMI TOPICS
- Family business (1)
- Gluten-free Istanbul (1)
- Growing your business (2)
- Istanbul fish (2)
- Istanbul food shopping (6)
- Istanbul restaurants (3)
- Istanbul spring (1)
- Istanbul summer (2)
- Istanbul winter (1)
- Kadikoy market (3)
- Kitchen learnings (2)
- My Istanbul home (1)
- Our Sapanca farmhouse (4)
- Personal freedom (2)
- Procrastination (2)
- Starting your business (4)
- Turkish boyfriend (3)
- Turkish breakfast (4)
- Turkish cooking recipes (12)
- Turkish food culture (3)
- Vegetarian Istanbul (1)
- What to eat in Istanbul (3)
FIND US ON FACEBOOK
Category Archives: My Istanbul Kitchen
Things I Have Missed in Istanbul This Summer and Purslane Recipe
September is a good time to get nostalgic about the passed summer. There are certain seasonal imperatives for spending your time in Istanbul. Things to do in Istanbul in summer would be revolving around lingering in one way or another by the Bosphorus or the Marmara Sea. This year I have missed most of this delights having been busy with running food walks and settling our two new houses in Istanbul and its countryside, Sapanca. I can’t say I am sad about it but it’s the purslane recipe that bothers me most.
See more: Istanbul summer, Turkish cooking recipes 1 Comment
Easy Eggs with Grated Potatoes
I am often puzzled why some people are more fussy about their food then the others. It does not take much effort to figure out good food and become reasonably fussy, if you ask me.
As kids we all (although to varying degree) were exposed to the grandma’s cooking which usually sets quite high bar for any food to come later in life. We all practice eating three times a day for many years which gives a natural grand to develop substantial expertise in food. Yet, some people are happy with any food they get and some are very particular about what they are eating.
“He has got interesting relationships with food, my brother. Every time he needs to find something beautiful that would be worth eating” - Özgür’s sister Özge once said.
Tomato Soup with Vermicelli
When I am in Sapanca I assume the duty of a lunch cook so I can test drive the professional kitchen of Zeliha Hanım, master new Turkish dishes and as a pure side effect feed six hungry diners of assorted appetites. No wonder I cook hearty, seasonal and cheap meals. “Few simple inexpensive ingredients always result in delicious food”, says Zeliha Hanım. This tomato soup is a proof.
See more: Turkish cooking recipes Leave a comment
Decent End of The Turbulent Week: Rice Casserole
We have had a turbulent week here in Sapanca. On Monday we witnessed a family drama of a Georgian helper whose daughter did not pass an entrance exam to the university she wanted to get into so the girl was about to take a veil. On Tuesday Özgür’s Blackberry reformatted itself and deleted all the contacts - all of them. On Wednesday parents’ furniture arrived from Istanbul and the house got filled with boxes packed with memories, five male movers bustling about and a sharp smell of their sweat. On Thursday one of the dogs broke the chain and went wild around the estate. On Friday we went to Istanbul to rewind over great food and drinks and meet a few friends: too much rewinding is worse than turbulence, let me tell you. By the weekend it felt only right to withdraw myself from much of the public life and resort to reading and catching up with family over skype.
Pepper Work: Roasted Red Pepper Salad
Being a child of the Eastern European Terrain I got excited beyond limits when first introduced to a variety of vegetables and variety of a given single vegetable in Turkey. Last year in Sapanca a mind-boggling range of species and assorted operations that they could be subjected to was revealed to me. Late afternoon Zeliha Hanim would come back after a day of shopping with dozens of bags of fresh produce and we would be sorting them out, placing in the dedicated storage spots or processing them immediately. August was about the pepper work.
See more: Turkish cooking recipes Leave a comment
Humble Food: Cacik, Turkish Cold Yoghurt Soup
Here in Sapanca I am learning to appreciate the beauty of humble food cooked to perfection. I am grateful for that opportunity as otherwise I am hungry for complications at the kitchen: recipes that take hours to make, ingredients that are many, tastes that are not so straightforward.
See more: Turkish cooking recipes Leave a comment
Ottoman Summer: Fresh Stuffed Vine Leaves with Cherries
Ottoman in Turkey is like Soviet in Russia or Berber in Morocco: sells well to tourists and has got little to do with the present life of the country. What looks like a wonderfully intriguing story to the outside world appears a complex matter of pride and shame for the locals.
See more: Turkish cooking recipes 2 Comments
My Turkish Potluck: Turkish Boyfriend, Turkish Mother and Turkish Zucchini Fritters
One of the greatest food excitements I have experienced in Turkey was introduction to the local food which real people eat at home. You don’t think people in Turkey survive on eating kebabs all the way, do you?
As a visitor to Istanbul you can get a flavor of homemade Turkish food if you venture into one of “mama”- run places found aplenty in Moda. Moda feels old Europe with its culture, education and class which all have conditioned the abundance of matriarchal food institutions instead of the men-run and men-frequented kebab shops dominating the rest of the Istanbul food scene.
My luck got me beyond Moda though: when I first came to the farmhouse in Sapanca and got “adopted” by the farmhouse owner and talented cook Zeliha Hanım I realized what it means to have a Turkish mother and eat excellent homemade Turkish food.
Menemen Recipe - Turkish Scrambled Eggs Rethought
If there is an iconic food that many Istanbulites would swear by, it is menemen, scrambled eggs cooked with tomatoes and green peppers and traditionally served in a tin-lined copper pan with two handles (sahan). The eggs are a bit undercooked: there is a definite joy in breaking a large piece off the white bread, dipping it onto the moist eggs and munch this deliciousness enriched by the tomatoes and crunchy peppers.
See more: Turkish breakfast, Turkish cooking recipes 1 Comment
Istanbul Fish Poetry and Sea Bass Recipe
In Istanbul fish is a poetry recited to the whisper of the blue Bosphorus waves and silent vastness of the Black Sea by the terse fishermen who go to the sea to find the world’s wisdom in the salty waters. They would keep the found wisdom to themselves and you could only dimly guess which marine secrets are hidden on the fish stalls at the local markets spotted with the shimmering scales and turned outside deep red gills attesting the freshness of the catch.
 |