The food and drink of Istanbul

I've been asked to let you know what the food is like in Istanbul.  In a word, it is great!

Breakfasts in our hotel tend to be what we would consider meze or antipasto in Australia.  On offer are breads, olives, cold meats, boiled eggs, halve, cheeses, sauted vegetables, apricots, figs, cucumber, tomato, jams.  we can also get scrambled eggs, omelettes, natural yoghurt with fruit conserves, fruit and jams.  a variety of mainly fruit or herbal teas, Turkish tea or coffee and juices are also on offer.

 Appetisers are dips (hommus or capsicum) with Turkish breads, fried calamari, stuffed vine leaves, black olives and grilled vegetables

Main courses vary enormously.  At lunch time, most Turkish office workers seem to like to eat food which is kept warm in a bain marie.  From there, they pick a serve or serves of meat, vegetable and rice dishes. 

So far, we have tried grilled bass, gozleme filled with spinach and meat:
 

grilled lamb chops with a baked vegetable casserole

 

grilled lamb chops

a mixed grill of lamb, chicken, beef, chevappe type rolls and sort of hamburgers ( the capsicum sauce is yummy, as are the non-hot chillies)

and vegetable casserole

 For drinks, most places serve fresh orange, lemon and pomegranate juice in season, but they also serve a lot of artificial fruit drinks.

I tried and liked the slightly salty yoghurt drink

 Bob found the local coffee very good,  but we both generally order Turkish tea, which I have discovered is lovely with local honey and a lemon slice.

Lactation cookies

All the babies in my life are teaching me lots of new skills and reviving old ones.  One of my Jamaican friends swears by Stout to get the milk flowing.  Given the current attitude to alcohol whilst breast feeding, I made some of these for another friend, but my husband loved them as well.  I can't say that I've noticed an increase in his milk supply, and I don't know whether they will work for her, but who cares?  They taste great!

Lactation cookies.

This recipe is based on one I found on www.bellybelly.com.au.

 

Ingredients:

1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tbspn flaxseed meal
2 eggs
3 tbspn water
1 tbspn vanilla essence
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbspn brewer's yeast
1/2 tspn salt
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
75g cranberries


Method:

Preheat oven to 170 degrees.
Soak flaxseed in water.
Cream butter and sugar.
Add egg and vanilla.  Mix well.
Add flaxseed, cinnamon, yeast, salt.  Mix well.
 Stir in oats and cranberries. 
Roll dough into balls and place on a lined baking tray.
Cook for about 12 minutes or until golden.

Recipes for summer in the garden.

Normally, I loathe summer, but this year, partly because it has not been overly hot and partly because of the vegetable and fruit garden, I am quite enjoying it.  So far, we have had beans, Spanish onions, spring onions, kale, snow peas, corn, chillis, zucchinis, pumpkin, celery, basil, red cabbage, carrots, beet, lemons, limes, manderines, peaches, spinach, bok choy, cucumber, rhubarb, raspberries, articholes, strawberries, mustard greens and a few more that I have forgotten from our garden.  All this in spite of the bats, rats, mice, birds and dogs.  

 

 

 

 

We have had a lot of failures too.  My tropical experiments didn't work very well, and in my enthusiasm, I over planted my beds, but I'm learning from my mistakes and I am sure will improve in my skills with time.  We had to fence off some areas from the dogs but decided we preferred canine predators to rodent ones after we discovered rats love tomatoes and corn and are good climbers.  Now, we let the dogs into the garden in the hope they will put off the rodents.In addition, in spite of having a tank, we have had to use mains water, which has added to the expense, so I think another tank is likely in the future.

 

I was quite despairing because everybody else had tomatoes far earlier than I did, but now, the vegetables have taken off and we have so many that I have been able to bottle and freeze, as well as share the glut  with family and friends.  I think this sharing is what I am enjoying most.  I give eggs and vegetables, but I get back so much from friends and family.  It really makes me feel part of a community.

In this  post, I'm going to post some of my favourite  recipes for dealing with a glut of tomatoes, peppers and capsicums.

 

 

Kath's tomato ketchup.

 

I always loved the ketchup at my mother-in-law's farm because it was made from real tomatoes and tasted much spicier than the the store bought stuff.  She revealed her special taste to come from the addition of Ezy-Sauce.  When I realised I had so many tomatoes, I bought a bottle from the supermarket and now I have my own version of Kath's ketchup.

 

Ingredients: 

 

4 1/2 kg ripe tomatoes

56 g garlic

680 g onion

56 g salt

 2 tsp ground ginger 680 g sugar

375 ml Ezy sauce  ( use more Ezysauce for a spicier taste)

 

Method:

Sterilize clean bottles in the oven.  I used some nice red and white sangria bottles for some of my sauce bottles and they looked very funky.

Chop up onions and tomato and leave overnight.

Boil onions, tomatoes, apples, ginger and garlic for 3 1/2 hours. 

 

 

Magimix to puree.

Add sauce, warmed sugar and salt.

Boil for 1 1/2 hours, stirring frequently.  Make sure you keep the heat up or it won't thicken.

Pour into bottles and seal.

 

Capsicum relish

 

I confess that I didn't have enough ripe capsicums in my garden for this, but they were very cheap at the market, so I bought for this recipe.  My first attempt was so good, I made a second batch.  This recipe is based on the Australian Women's Weekly recipe.   However, I increased the spices and garlic and used golden sultanas because they were what I had in the cupboard.  Plus, unlike proper chefs, I never seed or skin tomatoes as I am too lazy and like lumpy relish.

 

Ingredients:

2 Spanish onions, chopped

50ml olive oil

1 kg red capsicums, cubed

 500g tomatoes, chopped

 3 clovees garlic

 1 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

120g brown sugar

 100g golden sultanas soaked in 80ml verjuice

240ml white wine vinegar

 1 teaspoon allspice

 

Method:

 

Sterilize clean jars in the oven. 

Sweat onions in olive oil till soft.

Add capsicum and cook for 5 min till wilted.

Add garlic, ginger, allspice, sugar, vinegar, sultanas and verjuice.

Mix and add tomatoes.

Simmer 40 min stirring from time to time until thick and homogenous.  Note that too low a heat will cause the mixture to remain watery.

Pour into jars and seal.

 

We eat ours with cold meats, cheeses and salads

 

Sweet Chilli Jam

 

 

 

I had a lot of chillis of all shapes, sizes, levels of ripeness and levels of heat, plus quite a few green capsicums so I put them to use in this "jam" which we use as a relish.  Obviously, if you want your jam  with more of a kick, use hotter chillis, and less spicy, use milder chillis and more capsicums.

 

Ingredients:

 

20 chillis and capsicums.

2 lge brown onions

 4 cloves garlic

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup white wine vinegar

1/2 cup water

juice of one lemon

1 tspn fish sauce

 

Method:

 

Sterilize clean jars in the oven. 

Wash chillis and cut off tops.  Peel onions and garlic.

Magimix them.

Place in saucepan with all other ingredients.

Stir to dissolve sugar and bring to boil.

Boil for about 45 minutes, taking care not to burn mixture. ( Too low a heat and it won't thicken.  Too high and it will burn.  Take care!

Pour into jars and seal.

 

I also made raspberry jam after buying fresh raspberries at Picnic Point Farm at Bairnsdale.  I bought some of their plums to make jam too, but we ended up eating them all!  Instead, we are enjoying the plum jam my daughter made. 

 

Even though I am enjoying harvesting the present crop of fruit and vegetables, I am avidly watching  the new crops ripening.  My potted olives have 2 crops on the them and will soon be ready to bottle.

 

 My persimmons are ripening too, as well as my quinces.  Plus, I've just discovered some pods on the soy bean plants. I can hardly wait.

While I am waiting, I've begun weeding, topping up and feeding my existing beds, getting them ready for sewing new crops.  The chickens and the rabbit are enjoying devouring the plants that I have ripped out once I have harvested their bounty.  And, I am enjoying trying to decide what to plant next time.

 

A murderess in the garden

I have a confession.  I have become a mass murderer, plotting genocide, stalking my victims and taking enormous pleasure in killing them.  I have turned from a being a hippy brained idealist, who believed that love was all we needed, that all creatures on this earth need equal rights, and that one should turn the other cheek, to a monster who finds it impossible to forgive and forget, a natural killer who declares that vengeance in mine.  This deterioration in my character is all because I have started seriously keeping a kitchen garden, trying to live more healthily by eating more fresh food and spending more time with nature, trying to  do my bit for the planet by eating less food grown with pesticides and shipped or flown or trucked to my local supermarket from far away.

 

When I started this venture at the start of the year, as many of you know, we bought  a rabbit, called Ralph, that I had fallen in love with for his lovely gentle character, and intended to feed him with weeds, pruning and offcuts from my own vegetable consumption.  I used his droppings and old straw as compost for my new vegetable garden,

 

We also bought six chickens of varying breeds and ages - 2 Wyandottes, a Sussex,

 and three crossbreeds of Leghorn, Australorp and Isa Brown -  

 

 

 

 

 

 

and Bob built a chicken Taj Mahal with a large yard full of weeds for them to live as close to a free range existence as possible.  (From previous experience, we knew that they would destroy our garden completely and take over the house if we let them have access to the whole garden.  Plus, Maisie, our cairn terrier, seems to think that her vocation in life is to kill anything that moves and free range chickens are, in her mind, take away chicken.)  These chickens were to share the weeds and garden trimmings with Ralph, and our kitchen scraps with the compost bins, provide us with eggs and manure and compost for the vegetable garden and they have done that admirably.   

 

 

Next, we cleared the garden of weeds and old plants, pruned existing fruit trees, keeping them as far as possible from the fences to deter possums, and planted a vegetable garden and potted herb garden.  So far, so good.  I thought I had self-sufficiency down easy.

 

The first obstacle was that earwigs invaded the rabbit hutch.  I tried flea powder but that didn't work.  I am still working on a solution for poor Ralph.

 

 Then, local birds noticed I was giving supplementary feeds to the chickens and decided to partake.  The stupid chickens seem to be lacking a territory gene and I can only hope that our Maine Coon cats' occasional strolls round the garden will deter them.

 

 

The second obstacle was the amount of water needed to keep the garden alive and thriving.  It isn't even high summer and yet we have run out of water in the tank twice now and have realised the need to install more water tanks so that our water bill doesn't drive us bankrupt.

 

Then, I discovered that vegetables need a great deal of nourishment - more than my compost and manure could provide.  My neighbour and grandaughter introduced me to the joys of fortnightly doses of Seasol and told me that I should have fed the tomatoes with lime when I planted them.  I also discovered that mulch is no good until the seeds have grown into sizeable plants.

 

Next came the problem of mice devouring seedlings.  We cleaned out the old compost bins and religiously avoided putting the wrong ingredients in the newly empty bins.  We pulled down an old shed, and are removing the old fence which both provided shelter for rodents.  The dogs seem to be doing their bit by barking at them too but aren't much good as killers.  They are much less successful than the local owls at killing them.  Evidence:  the innards of a corpse dropped onto my car from the telephone wire above it.

 

If that wasn't enough, I noticed holes on  the leaves of my finally thriving vegetables.  Turns out that the earwigs and cabbage moth caterpillars have moved into the garden, and they are not being balanced by the good guys: silver-eyes, ladybirds, et al.  After a while, I noticed all I was getting was stalks instead of leaves.  And, with the warming days, the gall wasps have returned to my lovely lemon tree.  This was the point where I turned into a mass murderer.  I still haven't resorted to pesticides, but three times a day at least, I roam the garden searching for earwigs and caterpillars.  Then, I take the wriggling bodies to my chickens who seem deeply suspicious of the earwigs, but adore the fat green caterpillars. I take enormous pleasure in the hunt, the capture and the extermination now.  The gall wasps are dealt with by using sticky tubes to trap them and cutting off affected branches and putting them into the council green bin.

 

As a result of my reign of terror, for the first time, I feel we are ahead of the predators. We are now eating the results of our hard work (as is Maisie - she has worked out that strawberries taste good) and our garden is looking lush.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And best of all, my granbdchildren now have the pleasure of  roaming round my garden foraging for fruit and vegetables and eggs, just like my children did in their paternal grandparents' garden in Sarsfield..  For instance, this week, Miss 3 had a lovely time sampling the raw broad beans, peas, strawberries and raspberries.

 

 

 

We have enjoyed  Asian greens in our stir fries: 

 

 

Bob has discovered that he doesn't mind the the type of  kale we are growing, when I  saute it with tomatoes, parsley, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper.

 

The ruby chard will be  used with fetta and spinach and wrapped and baked in filo pastry.  The rhubarb was used to make icy poles 

 

 

Rhubarb and Yoghurt Icy Poles

 

Materials:

750g chopped rhubarb

3/4 cup castor sugar

1/4 cup water

1 cup yoghurt

 

Method:

Heat rhubarb, water and sugar until rhubarb is cooked.  Cool and mash.

Roughly stir in yoghurt. 

Place in icy pole moulds and freeze.

 

 We have eaten our variegated lettuce, zucchini, spinach and variegated radishes which taste like radishes used to.

 And we have enjoyed our own lovely artichokes.

We have been bottling prunes in port and dried fruit in brandy, but we have also bottled our own cumquats in brandy.

Cumquats in Brandy:

Ingredients:

Cumquats
Sugar- about 125 g sugar to 500g sugar
Brandy

Method:

Collect your cumquats and prick all over with a skewer.
 Place in a sterilised jar.
Pour on sugar and brandy.
Shake to dissolve sugar every dsy

Murder does have its good side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can only fit so much food in before you have to leave Hanoi.

Our last few days in vietnam were sad on many levels, not the least of which was that we would be missing our continual investigation of, and appreciation of, Vietnamese food  and drink. 

 

I have really enjoyed a lot of the fruit combinations used in mocktails, smoothies and iced drinks.  I love the combinations they come up with.  They are colourful, tasty and refreshing.  I must start experimenting with fresh fruit and soda and fresh fruit and yoghurt at home.

 

 

I added another experience to my breakfast list, banh cuon, a sort of rolled rice noodle dough with scallions.  Yummy with a little sauce poured over.

For other meals, we tried  the restaurant at the Museum of Ethnology,  Baguette & Chocolat, which I remembered with  pleasure from a previous trip.  Like the mseum, the restaurant is looking a bit tired, but the food is still good and the staff, who are still being trained by the Hoa Su School,  are still young, enthusiastic and friendly, though in need of some supervision as they were not quite on the ball or keeping an eye on their customers.  We aren't sure they got our order right - one of these was supposed to contain crab and meat and the other pork, but one clearly had prawns and the other, which tasted very good, didn't taste of  crab.  But, we couldn't be bothered to compalin once we started because the waitress was so sweet.

The desserts were good though -  sweetened black rice and yoghurt, and taro, coconut and chocolate  icecream.

 We also revisited the Net Hue restaurant and this time, we had fried rice cake with steamed prawn dumplings (banh ram it nhan tom) which was fantastic

and a grilled pork and peanut dish (bun thit nnoung) which was very tasty

Bob went for his old favourite, the banana based dessert, but I tried a new experience che sen hue (Hue lotus sweet), which I loved.

 

And then, it was all over.  The food on the Vietnam Airlines trip back was so disappointing, like all airline food.  After all the weeks of being catered for and eating well (Vietnamese food is so light and tasty, using so many vegetables), I was not looking forward to cooking again.  Luckily, my gorgeous daughter and son-in-law had thought of that and cooked us dinner -grilled meat and prawn skewers and a light salad, with home made chocolate ice-cream.  Maybe being back isn't so bad!