Zucchini, poor zucchini, your popularity fades as soon as the other fruits of summer appear at the markets. Who wants to eat zucchini when the eggplants are nice and plump, and can’t wait to be roasted and savored in style? Even my husband was unprecedentedly supportive when I started writing this post. “Hm, why are you repeating yourself? Have you not already written about zucchini?” pointing to the 2 year old post about infamous zucchini fritters of my mother-in-law that I shamelessly deconstructed. Telling you: zucchini, poor zucchini..
Ennobled Baby Zucchini
My Turkish Potluck: Turkish Boyfriend, Turkish Mother and Turkish Zucchini Fritters
One of the greatest food discoveries in Turkey for me has been the introduction to the local food that real people eat at home. You don’t think people in Turkey survive on eating kebabs and baklava all the way, do you?
As a visitor to Istanbul you can get a flavor of homemade Turkish food if you venture into one of ev yemekleri, or “mama”-run places found aplenty in the neighborhoods like Moda. Moda feels old Europe with its culture, education and class, all of which have conditioned the abundance of matriarchal food institutions instead of the men-run and men-frequented kebab shops dominating the rest of the Istanbul food scene.
My luck got me beyond Moda though: when I first came to the farmhouse in Sapanca and got “adopted” by the farmhouse owner and talented cook Zeliha Hanım I realized what it means to have a Turkish mother and eat excellent homemade Turkish food.
