All posts filed under: Turkish

globe zucchini

Stuffed Globe Courgettes: Turkish Red Pepper Paste and Siyez(Spelt) Wheat

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I’m sorry for having been slack in blogging. In case you’ve been wondering… When you read this, I’ll be on the plane to or already in London for my first WSET Dip exam. Juggling work and study has been quite a task. So I thought I’d go a bit early to give myself a few days to cram. I hope all the wines to try AND the world cup won’t be too distracting! Last month, I went on a spontaneous road trip, which combined many celebrations into one: hitting the 40s bracket, friendship, new adventures, etc. Gosh, what an ecstatic holiday it was! I struggled quite a bit trying to get back to the grind after such a long crazy holiday with endless eating and drinking. But it was well deserved and that’s what life is about: being happy. A fabulous boat trip and swim in Bodrum and an unplanned catch-up with an old friend in Cappadocia… I came home with such lovely memories that I wished I could have been a full time traveller. By the way, …

Turkish wine USCA

Sommeliers’ Selection Turkey 2018

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Beside repeated barrel tastings at the winery, there are some exciting official wine tastings lined up this year, and I’ll share them as they happen. First, let’s start with Sommeliers’ Selection Turkey 2018 I attended a week ago. The event, organised by Gustobar, was held in The Marmara Taksim and there were about 200 wines by 50 Turkish producers. It’s been a while since I last bought any Turkish wines, which had drifted away naturally in the course of time. So I was delighted at the chance to reconnect with them. I went to only the Sunday tasting and masterclass, and I’ll share my observations with you. Let’s start with ‘Walk Around Tasting‘. #1, Open Your Wine Horizons And feed your curiosity. The rule number one is always first try the wines you haven’t tried before. I don’t normally drink white wines so tasting events are a good opportunity to try them. My first sip was Sevilen Isabey, which had been raved by many people. It was indeed a delicious and lively white, similar in style to NZ Sauvignon Blanc. …

cabernet sauvignon

Life in the Vineyard – Part 2 – Harvest

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Today marks one month of harvest work at Chateau Kalpak. I came back here with a small suitcase of clothes and a big bag filled with my pantry essentials. After 2 weeks here, the temperature dropped suddenly and most of the clothes I’d brought became unsuitable, not only for the weather but also for the work I do here. Red wine stains everywhere! Luckily, our sweet staff has given me some of her old clothes so I’m managing to survive so fa r. More than surviving really… I’m revitalising my inner soul and body here. I wake up every single morning, thanking to the nature and thanking to everyone who made it happen. Hubby is missing my food so much! And my in-laws are looking after our dog. My in-laws visited me and saw how happy and exuberant I looked and confirmed how happy people are when they do what they love. No matter how old you are and what obstacles you have, you’ve got to live your dream after all. While most wineries have finished the …

cauliflower

Cauliflower Steak with Thracian Wine

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Winter is almost over as the temperature is heading for the 20 range and the daylight saving will start in started a couple of days ago. For some reason, WordPress is working again so I’m going to cram blog! I couldn’t because of the unbelievable nation-wide power outage yesterday, but it’s more to do with my personal affairs happening all at once lately, which makes it very difficult to sit down and write. Amid all this, I find it important to continue writing and let things off my chest. Some of you might have detected some sort of change in my voice as if molten lava boiling its way through a tiny crack. Well, I’m dramatising it a bit but I think there will be quite a huge change with my life soon but until it really happens, I’ll keep silent not to stir up the good karma, however, I’ll try my best to keep you informed and inspired just about everything I come across, culture, food, history, and my observations and random thoughts, which …

Slow Food…11 Hour-Cooked Duck and Sweet Potato Sage Gratin Cheat

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It’s been quite a while after the last post about after the Korean event, it’s been full-on but mostly because of me cooking Korean food and socialising offline. I had many people requesting for a Korean dinner and ended up cooking Korean food nonstop for two weeks. I’ve never cooked so much Korean food in such a short period, which was a good exercise to review my Korean palate but also meant that I didn’t have interesting recipes to write about. So after serving the last Korean dinner to Mr.O’s parents, sister and her friend, and cousin, I decided to put a full stop to Korean food for a while and get back to exercising my culinary brain. I’ve had enough of making dumplings and rolling kimbap. Having said that, I’m not sure when the full stop will be removed as I see growing enthusiasm for Korean food after the event so I’m thinking of creating some Korean-inspired recipes occasionally. The downside of Korean food is that it’s very difficult to match it with wines …

New Year’s Eve / 2015 Manifesto / Süryani(Syriac) wine

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Third day into 2015, I’m still writing my new year’s resolutions, feeling slightly bad that I hadn’t made them before New Year’s Eve. In a way, I’m glad that I didn’t because I’d have felt worse for having broken them in the first days of the new year. Koreans have a great excuse for this, “The real New Year is on Feb 19th!” The year 2015 is Sheep so I’ll be celebrating the lunar New Year then again. I would like to give big thanks to our hosts, Filiz and Onur, for the fantastic NYE feast, which far exceeded my expectations. I was so surprised by how much food Filiz managed to prepare in just a couple of hours after work with some help from her sister-in-law, Ozge, who made the most artistic presentation of potato mash. The roast turkey was great and also the meze Omer, one of rare Turkish men who cook. I brought Cheesy Polenta Sticks and Christmas Fruit mince Pies, and as I’m writing this, I got a recipe request for …