I have been long wondering how other food bloggers get those wonderfully gloomy photographs that add quite a bit of drama to their foods. A dull November Saturday in Istanbul brought the answer: some of my brothers and sisters-in-food-blogging-arms simply don’t have enough sunshine. In Istanbul it is easy to take sun for granted, and that’s why the murky November days arrive as a surprise to any Istanbul dweller. There were times when I did not take sunshine for granted.

[click to continue…]

Sunday feels like a middle of a working week. The borderline between weekend and week days has been blurred for me. Because I don’t work in the office I can stay back at home and do some work on Sunday to avoid the weekend crowds, however hard it is with the windows open in the middle of Moda. I then can choose a quieter day during the week to rest. This rhythm is in sync with my family, and you understand me if you have ever worked in the hospitality.

[click to continue…]

Today while reorganizing my kitchen pantry I have found four varieties of bulgur in my cupboards. How unfair I have not written about bulgur more frequently! But I am going to improve right now. Bulgur - yes, I insist it is bulgur and not ‘bulgur wheat’ just like there is no such a thing as ‘lemon lemonade’ - is a wheat berry that was briefly boiled first and then cracked and ground. The ground bulgur is sifted and separated based on the degree of coarseness, each for different use.

[click to continue…]

This soup usually divides the masses. Some feel inspired - at times so much that they vow to reproduce it at their own kitchen. The others view it as a pure exoticism and will never relate to the action involved in its making. I am about to present arguably the most laborious Turkish soup and still.. if you want to treat yourself (and your near and dear) on a cold and dull weekend then do spare an hour and a half to make the soup with Turkish bulgur gnocchi (topalak çorbası).
[click to continue…]

Today I would like to dream. About how Turkish baking could be. With a bit of butter lavishness. And more experimental use of the local ingredients. Like persimmons.. like red pepper flakes..
[click to continue…]

Tarhana, sourdough turned into an “instant” soup has boggled my mind since the very first time I saw it. Mother of my then Turkish boyfriend bought some from a store of home-made foods during our visit to Beypazarı, a little town with its center set up to give dwellers of the nearby places (such as Ankara where we came from) a feel of visiting an idyllic village where locals have nothing else to do but interacting with the visitors and feeding them with assorted fruits of their varied labors. Home made jams, dried vegetables, longest and thinnest stuffed wine leaves I have ever seen, double-baked Beypazarı kurusu - Turkish take on biscotti, dry type of baklava, homemade dried pasta and then tarhana.

We bought some of those delights including a bag of fine coral color grains which - as I was explained - was kind of a dry tomato soup and was meant to travel with me to Moscow. With the recipe from one of those websites that adapt Turkish recipes for foreigners so thoroughly that most the of time I don’t recognize the original any more I got the directions which I followed. I combined water and that ground tomato soup and was stirring it and stirring as it simmered. Eventually I served a rather uninspiring muddy soup.

Little I knew about the real tarhana and a proper way to cook it. Things clearned when I met my prospective mother-in-law who became my guide into the depths of Turkish home cooking including its heights such as making tarhana. Tarhana is often translated as “sour dough soup” which kind of gives you a hint of the process - the dough is left to ferment for a while. But then how the dought is made, what goes inside and what happens after were a miracle to me. Until a rather epic process of the making was staged at our countryside kitchen in Sapanca.

[click to continue…]