Just like others read news or magazine articles I read recipes. At the age of 15 I was paging through the paper clips and handwritten recipes in my mother’s cooking journal and then boldly clipping my own find. Inspired I would set my mind to cook a fruit tart only to find out that brown sugar was unobtainable exotic item in a small Russian town in mid 90s. This recreational recipe reading, urge to cook and pressure to substitute have taught not to depend on recipes and more often than not cook without a recipe as such. And I am sure everyone can with these simple tips.
(English) Big Picture I Saw From Far Away
Visit to Russia, my home country, brought fresh perspective on my life here in Turkey. As I described my Istanbul and Sapanca living over and over again to my Russian friends and relatives I got to realize a few things. Like in that professor who explained a theory so well that he eventually understood it himself.
(English) Sinful Turkish Sponge Cake: Need for Rest
I was meant to write this post 2 weeks ago. I can only hope that it rested well and turned as fine as Turkish sponge cake called revani. With revani you bake the cake, pour over the syrup and then let it rest so the cake hungrily soaks in all the syrup. Making the Turkish sponge cake can turn into a fairly quick deal if you serve it still warm. Yet I find that it reaches perfection when the cake is cooled completely or even chilled overnight. I wonder if a post nursed for 2 weeks can be compared with a rested sponge cake.
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(English) Why We Cook
There must be an explanation to the sweating at the kitchen to roll that fresh pasta instead of cooking a package of the store-bought one. To reading culinary books and planning your own endeavors when others are watching a new episode of Fatma Gülün Suçu Ne? (popular Turkish series). To yet another time twist the tried-and-proved recipe of the dish instead of just cooking it the way people already like it anyway? There must be a good reason to why we cook. Different for each of us and yet sort of common ground for all.
