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.
Moroccan Spinach Salad (and Fez Cooking Class)
Vegetarian Spinach Stew: Roots and Higher Purpose
I spent Saturday rolling paper-thin phyllo dough, or baklava yufka how we call it here in Turkey. Some twenty baby versions of the giant sheets my mother-in-law rolls out. With that long-long thin-thin rolling pin which could as well be an instrument of torture but serves as a kitchen utensil instead.
This is what I call a higher purpose. I am always looking forward to that rare free day in Istanbul when the break between my food tours and cooking classes is to short to go back to the farmhouse. I picture myself experiencing the delicious sheerness of Istanbul, savoring and exploring. Only that I stay in my flat most of the time: experimenting with new recipes and going out only to get a bottle of sun-flower oil from bakal downstairs and latte from Starbucks. Me, a first-rate foodie who is supposed to shop only from Kadikoy market and drink nothing but the Fazil Bey’s roast.
