All posts tagged: no waste food

cranberry pancake

Fluffy Spelt Cranberry Pancake with Yogurt Whey

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Living in the proximity of three great open markets is a bliss for a foodie. I’ve been pondering if that’s the reason why many foodies live in my neighbourhood. I’m even luckier than most people because all three markets are within a walking distance and I go to each one for different things. Among the open markets is an organic market, which is held every Wednesday in Özgürluk Park. Honestly I don’t buy veggies there because they don’t look really fresh. Would I want fresh non-organic veggies and fruit or would I want wilted and old organic veggies and fruit? My choice is the former, at least here. But I still go there because that’s the place I get my favourite flour, buckwheat and spelt flour. Buckwheat has a nutty and bitter taste and spelt flour has a nutty and sweet taste, and they are good for different occasions. I usually buy spelt flour for making bread but this time I used it in pancakes because I was inspired by my recent guest, who introduced …

Chocolate beetroot cake

Honesty, really good?

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I’ve been thinking about ‘honesty‘ lately. You’ve probably heard enough of the cliché that living in Turkey will change your beliefs in what is right and wrong and what is logical and illogical. I’m still trying to absorb and digest all the confusions. I had so many ups and downs last week that I didn’t have any motivations to write or cook. Thanks to that, I discovered some hidden gem restaurants. The death of my lovely canary who used to wake us me at 7am with beautiful songs to start with, then came the news of my new nephew on the way, which isn’t entirely happy news as it should be…. and then, my good intentions and hopes got quashed by an unexpected tyranny, my naivety, and came the news of moving house. So I rummaged through my tiny bookshelf – nomads don’t have such a thing – and picked up Rumi’s poems to make sense of the things that had happened. I believe that life is fair no matter how badly it treats you from …

Cauliflower-Crusted Baked Fish Nuggets / Kayra Allure

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Everyone went to bed with the forewarning of a Siberian snowstorm and of closing of schools last night. It’s a privilege not having to walk to the bakery for the morning bread. If you’re crazy about fresh morning bread like me, you’d plan the hours of buying bread and never mind going out early in the morning to pick up bread. Whenever I think of fresh morning bread, I think of my Bordeaux time with my mentor, who buys bread 3 times a day and is very strict about the morning bread. Life is too short to eat bad bread, he says. Well, one can’t eat a whole loaf of baguette, though one easily can if one doesn’t hear the inner voice that nags you “Eat Healthy!”, but if you can’t finish it all, well, it’s a big food waste, which will be banned in Seattle from this year and which has been restricted in Korea for a long time. Most households have a dehydrator like this at home but in Turkey, they have street …

Bread Butter Pudding with Plums and Yogurt

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Now that Ramadan is over, it’s easier to get my regular sourdough bread, yippee! One day when Mr.O failed his morning mission of getting bread and came home with normal bread, I couldn’t eat more than one slice and left the rest on the kitchen top to go stale on purpose. It sometimes amazes how cooks’ mind scans the foods in the fridge and pantry mentally and synchronize their actions according to what they are going to make without hard thinking. Upon seeing a leftover loaf and pide bread sitting around, Mr.O bugged me to throw them away and he did the pide bread secretly. I even save the whey liquid after yogurt has been eaten, and he doesn’t understand why I keep all that little things. Everything comes in handy for cooks, and that’s why! Two bags of damson plums picked from Mr.O’s parents’ garden were clogging up the fridge because Mr.O doesn’t like plums. He prefers peaches, which have started to come out, giving these plums no chance to be eaten as we …

Zucchini Series #1

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 Today I want to talk a bit about Mr.O. He, who I mention on my blog, is the one who takes all the privileges of eating what I cook. Now he gets excited about what is cooking in the kitchen and sends photos of what we eat to his friends, who are tormented by the teasers and also puzzled by the changes he’s made in his eating habits. I’ve probably mentioned this in one of previous posts but I think it’s ok to remind people of this amazing phenomenon. Mr.O is my food tester for my blog, who had shed 25 kg in 6 months, just by eating and enjoying food with me. I still have a delightful memory of Mr.O’s parents bursting into a big laughter at one dinner, seeing Mr.O eating zucchini. They said something to each other but Mr.O refused to translate to me what they were saying at first but I pressed him and he finally said, “They were saying that I didn’t used to eat zucchini, in fact, I hated …

pumpkin rye no knead bread

Pumpkin Rye No Knead Bread with Caraway and Nigella Seeds

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I’ve been baking no-knead bread on and off for quite a while as you know. I love the smell of bread being baked in the oven but before that, the smell of yeast. I’ve been inspired by the book I’ve started to read, called “The Storyteller” by Jodi Picoult, which is full of stories about baking bread. I totally agree, as it’s said in the book, that bakers and butchers should always be regarded as high professions. They have my full respect for sure and I am one of many wannabe bakers who try to master the magic of how yeast turns flour into bread: and of how yeast turns into wine: and of how yeast turns milk into cheese. In the book, the main character, Sage, anthropomorohise bread by describing how she needs to sit quietly and retreat from touch and noise in order to evolve. I sometimes feel like that, too. A new stone oven is waiting for the final stage and will be ready for the first batch of baking in a …