For months I was waiting to cook this dish again. As much as I love my winter roots or spring greens, I am passionate about the nightshades that come out in summer. Firm eggplants with shiny skins and ripe tomatoes bursting with sweetness. After all, the whole imam bayıldı business is about excellent summer produce.
İmam Bayıldı (Stuffed Eggplant Boats)
Chilled Spicy Tomato Soup (Bostana)
Look at the change: just a month ago my dinner looked like a comforting stew and right now I can’t think of anything but raw. This is how I know the summer has arrived: eating raw would have been a hard sell to the winter me. Ok, the whole meal does not have to be raw, but I want all the crunch, and color, and juice of tomatoes, cucumbers and fresh herbs. Unadulterated. So I have been frequently eating shepherd salad for dinner. Until I recalled a dish my mother-in-law introduced me to a few years ago.
Spiced Chickpea and Purslane Salad
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.
Samphire and New Potato Salad
When we traveled along the Aegean last September I could not get enough of samphire (deniz börülcesi) while my Russian mom insisted on potatoes in every meal we cooked. She parboiled them first and then pan-fried in olive oil to create a cozy crust. A few meze (with the compulsory samphire), grilled wild sea bass and the mom’s potatoes have become the dinner we cooked many times on that trip.
I don’t know why the idea of getting samphire and new potatoes to meet in a single dish did not occur to me back then. Some things take time to distill. And now I think of samphire and new potato salad as the best summer meal ever.
Stunning Courgette Flowers Stuffed with Cheese and Herbs
When on holiday all I need is peace, space, good food and inspiring people. That’s why when choosing where to stay I prefer small family-run hotels with thoughtfully done rooms, enthusiastic owners and lovingly prepared breakfast. What could be better? Only a vacation house - your own or rented from a nice host. I found Sara’s house almost immediately when I was looking through the listings in the Aegean region where we were heading out with Özgür, my visiting parents and sister, and at once I knew we had to stay there. Our whole trip was planned in a way to make it to Köyceğiz by the time Sara had her house available.
Pilaf with Green Lentils and Caramelized Onions
Pilaf is a part and parcel of our family meals in Sapanca, and we are no different from other Turkish families. When mothers fry a pile of home-made meatballs (köfte) they do not forget to make buttery rice pilaf as a garnish. Pilaf with orzo (dark-brown pasta looking like an oversize rice grain) is cooked everyday at the canteens serving sulu yemekler (stews): indeed, kuru fasulye and such are only right to eat with pilaf and let the grains coat in the tasty gravy. At a kebab restaurant your portion of Urfa kebab arrives with a neat pile of bulgur pilaf reddish with the tomato paste. Stuffing wine leaves, mussels an what not also means preparing pilaf called iç pilavı in Turkish (literally, pilaf for stuffing) that everyone loves for the sweetness of onions, crunch of pine nuts, tartness of the raisins and fragrance of the spices.
Pistachio Labne Ice-Cream Without Machine
The whole summer I have been theorizing about homemade ice-cream. But the practical implementation had to wait: maybe I live too close to an excellent artisanal ice-cream parlor or, even more likely, I am just afraid to clatter my kitchen with a new ice-cream maker. Whenever I clean the kitchen (every day, few times a day) I find a utensil that has to go or pantry item that needs to be used immediately because the expiry date is too close or I have abnormal quantities of that (1 kg whole dry sumac berries from Antakya anyone?). And still my kitchen is packed, and there is no way to fit even a small ice-cream maker in the cabinets.
