The green of summer is different from the green of spring. In spring the green comes from the young herbs and wild plants, a welcome change from the pale colors of the winter produce. Spring greens bring bold peppery and bitter flavors to your meals refreshing your palate and helping your body cleanse after the heavy winter diet. The green of summer is nothing like that. It comes with subtle tastes and succulent bodies to cool down and hydrate you. Think green beans, or zucchini, or cucumber.
Spiced Chickpea and Purslane Salad
Aegean Skillet Greens
I love traveling off-season. Alaçatı, an upscale resort town on the Turkish Aegean coast, that overwhelmed me during the family trip last fall, looked much more promising this April. I did not mind that our hotel staff was busy installing doors at the rooms upstairs, that the nearby restaurant folks were painting their chairs “Aegean blue”, that you could hear the sound of a saw and hammer everywhere, that on Thursday night only a few places were open for dinner. None of that could cancel the blossom on the lemon trees, kids playing on the streets, air filled with anticipation and the carelessness one could feel only on the seaside.
Spring Gratitude Bowl
Two weeks ago I did a spring detox. There is a good reason why the 40 days of the Great Fast fall on the spring, time of new beginnings. Maybe because I was born in spring, this is when my year starts. I don’t care for the New Year resolutions, but every spring I take stock of what I am up to; my thoughts take shape, and new directions become clear. Some people undertake a major house cleaning, some remember that bikini season starts in a short while. Me, I make big decisions in spring.
Warm Salad of Poppy Greens
My first trip to the organic market this spring was a revelation. I regularly shop from farmers at the Friday market in Sapanca and have gotten to know producers that sell at a handful of weekly markets in Istanbul. So I though I was very close to getting the kind of food my grandparents used to grow in their beautiful garden. I was mistaken. Ah, the Turkish agriculture developments.. I have almost forgotten that beets come in whimsical shapes and have greens, that carrots don’t mean intense orange color, that artichokes are small and come unpeeled in all their formidable beauty, that leafy greens are not the size of a pillow case and that baby spinach is not an oxymoron in Turkey.
Whole Wheat Puff Pie with Beet Greens
When buying beets, have you ever though with happens its beautiful lush greens? The ones with the purple stem, purple veins and the leaves green as the forest at a summer dawn. Some of them may be fed to the animals, but a lot of the greens get tossed. A few weeks ago I was walking through the Kadıköy market at an early hour when the vendors are still setting their stalls. I spotted a huge box of assorted stems and leaves, and asked the greengrocer (who was peeling off very edible, but not so good looking layers from the leeks) what was going to happen with them. “We are tossing them”. I recognized beet greens and black radish stems in the box. “Can I take some?” “Go for it. What are you going to do with them?” I did know make my mind, “Soup? Börek?” For me it was ridiculous he even asked: what would you not do with the greens like that? “I took a bunch of mixed greens and headed home.
Homemade Nettle Pasta and Financial Security
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 my food career.
As Özge has started helping me with the food tours I can focus more on the cooking classes which I have been giving a lot recently. I have also had two big groups and piloted my idea of taking people to our countryside for cooking and food. Good busy times.
What’s next? What comes after the financial security is achieved again, 2 years after I quit my job? 5* vacation? A plan to conquer the rest of the world? Well, in my case it’s going to the countryside house, washing some dishes as our helper is away and then spending half a day to harvest nettle and making dry pasta. How is that for a reward?
Sorrel Salad
As the season with the food tours and cooking classes have started in a big way I am less at the farmhouse. No wonder when I am there I appreciate the place more. This week I came for a few days without my laptop and camera left behind in Istanbul. So there was time for studying the blossoming garden, walking with Ömür, chatting with Özgür and foraging the wild herbs.
