My home kitchen and our restaurant kitchen is the same person. In a minor identity crisis. Deciding whether it gears towards an old village kitchen, a kitchen that can serve dozens of restaurant guests or a kitchen I want. First I thought I would give her time to make up her mind, but since she has been taking a while, I am going to open the wooden door (that we removed upon declaring this possibly the most robust part of the whole kitchen obsolete) and get you to meet her.
My New Kitchen
Moroccan Preserved Lemons
It started with pomegranates. One of the four trees in our garden brought a load of them. “Sweetest I have ever eaten,” my visiting mother-in-law confessed. Mind you, she grew up amidst pomegranate trees unlike me, a child of Russia, who used to treat this exotic fruit as a questionable pleasure. Pomegranate, always sold at premium, was sour and hard to peel. It stained tablecloth, dress, pants, sofa or carpet depending on the consumption situation. In the Russia of my childhood pomegranates arrived in winter to the market stalls run by the men who spoke with the accent as thick as their black eye-brows. The sellers addressed every female shopper “young woman” and at times even asked out. Think of it, along with the pains of buying the overrated fruit you get an unsolicited evidence of your sexuality.
Fried Sardines
Where to start? Maybe I should tell you about the tons of fruits and vegetables we have been turning into jams and pickles. Or about the simple matter of building the restaurant toilet in the garden that has acquired the fuss of a full-fledged hotel construction. Or about the most sensible requirements of assorted governmental agencies that should (at least in theory) lead to obtaining the permission to open restaurant.
Spasibo Babushka
We came to Alaçatı in the evening of Republic Day. Public holiday may not have been the best day to move and according to our lawyer even impossible to start the rental agreement on. We arrived in our rented Doblo filled to the rim. I spent the 600 km journey with the pot of aloe vera over my knees and a bag of organic cleaning detergents under my feet. [click to continue…]
Farewell Istanbul, Hello Alaçatı
2014 has been the year of two questions I heard over and over again. My food walk guests have been asking whether I am planning to open a restaurant of my own while my cooking class customers have been wondering if I have a cookbook in the workings. After many heated debates and painful hours of contemplation I finally have the answer: my cookbook has to wait.
