All posts tagged: Turkish culture

Turkish food, caul fat

Happy Mother’s Day and Postpartum in Lockdown

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Hello folks, it’s been a very long time. Too many things have happened over the past year for me to even recount everything. Last year I was fully committed to wine making and WSET diploma and, as if they weren’t challenging enough, I decided to have a baby and carried her through the harvest. I thought I could take advantage of the super sense of smell on the tasting exams, which didn’t quite work out. However, it was proven quite useful when I was sniffing the fermenting wines and during the blending process of 2016 vintage. If my baby grows up to be a wine girl, no surprises there! My pregnancy was smooth and I quite enjoyed tucking into sucuk, kebab, katmar, kunefe and all other naughty desserts that I didn’t used to eat without feeling guilty. My cravings were for fatty and spicy food, and hubby drove to Istanbul and Izmir to provide me with the best croissants in Turkey. After 40 weeks, however, I started to get frustrated, not having any signs of …

Turkish Korean Wedding and Wine

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When your friend is a reputable photographer and you hire him on a friendship base, it’s hard to be demanding. I’d been dying to see the wedding photos because it was such a special event, and it’s been almost one month and they finally came through. Not quite but still good enough to take a glance at what happened. The first time I stood on top of the temple of Athena in Assos three years ago, I said to myself, “I’m going to have my wedding here.” Despite everyone trying to dissuade me from going there early in the morning and getting exhausted under the beating sun, I stood firm and made it happen. It’s about 1.5 hours drive, total 3 hours, from Çanakkale, Mr.O’s hometown, where our wedding took place so they had a reason to object. But I WE DID IT! I did everything from makeup to hair because I didn’t trust Turkish hairdressers after my disastrous last experience. We did a very casual shoot, laughing and giggling – I feel sorry for …

Asparagus New Season Garlic in Polenta Tart Crust

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I will have to give a darn good excuse for such a long silence this time, won’t I? What could it be? Yes, I’m getting married..finally!! I’ve been running around for the past 3 weeks – in order of importance – to find the venue, set the date, collect necessary documents and get them notarised, do a medical checkup, which I don’t know what for,  find the wedding dress, and so on. I had no idea what I was putting myself into; it’s quite a lot of work. I was secretly planning for a small intimate event in a winery until I got an absolute ‘NO’ from Mr.O’s parents, and my wedding plan started to shape up in a form completely different to my original ideas. Of course, I was disappointed and they acknowledged it but there is no point in trying to persuade Mr.O’s parents risking disharmony and stress, especially since all guests will be Turks, to whom a wedding is all about dancing. If I’d insisted, the winery wedding could have come true …

Top 3 Most Delicious Brussels Sprouts Recipes

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Mr.O says, “I like the way you cook Brussels sprouts. Why is there no bitterness?” Hahaha, it’s unusual for a Turkish guy to admit that my food is better than his mum’s. He didn’t like Brussels sprouts like any others but I love them, probably because I’ve never had bad experiences. So he complimented my Brussels sprouts miso soup a lot. These days I’m trying to make Mr.O eat while food is warm instead of taking photos before eating. So I’m not taking as many photos of what we eat on a daily basis. However, the bigger reason is that he is losing friends or being ridiculed for eating food, weird food as his Turkish friends call it. Three two and a half years on, we still eat a different food every day. Ok, today let me try this new way of attracting audience. Why are many articles titled as The 10 Most delicious…. The 5 best ways to…etc. But in fact, they are not the best and I think it’s somewhat misleading. I’m not …

Antakya Food Trip – I love Antakya!

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Here you go the second part of my Antakya food trip, where I got deeper into the town and food, but no luck with museums and churches. We got up the next day to find out that the archeological museum was closed along with all other museums… Yes, usually museums are closed on Mondays in Turkey and I knew that part, however, I was sure that I’d read ‘Closed on Sundays’ on the museum site. Was I dreaming? So disappointed at the finding and so annoyed by the cold weather, I lost my appetite for food. Take a deep breath…..calm down… Only the fact that the museum was under refurbishment in a new location and currently only half of the site is available to the public made me feel a little better. Alright, then, let’s just eat whatever we come across. I definitely needed food to cheer me up. The cheese bread just outside the hotel was so so good, reminding us a bit of Georgian cheese bread. You must try it when you’re in …

kunefe

Antakya(Hatay) Food Trip – Künefe Secret

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I’m writing this while munching on za’atar chips I made using the spices I brought from Antakya in Hatay province in the south of Turkey near the Syrian border. Mr.O and I were not sure where we were going right up to the moment we landed at Hatay airport, me going “I wanted to go to Antakya, not Hatay, because there’s no food except Kunefe in Hatay!” and Mr.O going “You booked the ticket, not me, well, we are here now, so….” We totally sound like two naive tourists, don’t we? In our defense, the name of the city is quite confusing as is the history of this city, which is better known as ‘Antioch‘ by many, especially Christian pilgrims. There is even a Korean protestant church there, which was founded in 2000, and Mr.O said, “Let’s visit and say hi to practice my Korean!”, but we didn’t go. All I want was food. I couldn’t shake off the guilt for having convinced Mr.O to come with me by saying that the weather forecast said …