Take Out

Other big cities likely have a similar service, but Istanbul is where I first came across this brilliant business idea. Yemeksepeti.com (which translates as my food basket) is a website allowing you to order in from hundreds of fast food chains and restaurants. No phone numbers to store, no take-out menus to save, no having to explain how to get to your difficult-to-find home. In fact, you don't have to speak to anyone -- no waiting on hold, no miscommunication.

You can narrow down your options by cuisine and location. Restaurants are rated on speed, service and taste, and you can even choose to be environmentally friendly and tick a box so that plastic cutlery, napkins and other such items aren't brought. The website remembers you, so ordering is quick and easy. And all deliveries are made on mopeds, so traffic is never a concern!

Since I love to cook and am considerably health conscious, we rarely eat out; hence my being so slow to discover this great service. But I'll still go ahead and recommend it to others, making sure to tell expats there's an English version!

The Things We Know for Sure - Part 2

I'm reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, and am once again reminded that I shouldn't assume "different" equals "wrong." For years I've been griping about the amount of animal fat and whole fat dairy products present in this region's cuisine, waxing poetic about the availability of low-fat everything in Toronto's supermarkets.

But Pollan's overview of the history of "Nutritionism" pointed out how many times experts have proclaimed a certain food or nutrient as healthful, only to later discover it caused cancer or heart disease. His examples of margarine and the first baby formulas shocked me, but what really hit home was when he described the way olive oil drizzled over tomatoes may very well help in the body's absorption of one nutrient or another, and that incidents of cardiac arrest increased in America after people stopped rendering their own animal fat and switched to hydrogenated vegetable oils.

So I am now going to feel less anxious whenever my mother-in-law adds kuyruk yağı, the infamous fat from a sheep's tail, to her sarma and am resolved to enjoy the whole fat milk delivered fresh to her door -- I will simply enjoy less of it!

Turkish Gnocchi

Every time I come across a Turkish dish I truly love, one that really makes my taste buds hum, I rejoice in being one step closer to home in this adopted country of mine. One such dish is sarmısaklı köfte, or "garlic balls," which I will from now on always think of as Turkish gnocchi.

I first tasted sarmısaklı köfte a few years ago, and loved them. One of my husband's sisters-in-law had made them, and I unabashedly ate far more than my fair share. After that, anyone else's were a disappointment -- until my son's nanny made them for us a few months ago. They were as good as the first time I'd had them if not better. She struck the perfect balance between dense bulgur and flour, a köfte you could really sink your teeth into, and a light but intense spicy garlic and lemon sauce.

But I've been busy and old habits die hard. It'd been ages since I'd enjoyed a delicious creamy bowl of real Italian pasta; the kind you get in Toronto's Little Italy -- loads of butter, cream, Parmesan, wine. In my old life, I'd satisfy that craving with a meal at one of my favourite restaurants.

But I've yet to find a good Italian pasta here in this part of Turkey, so in a burst of energy earlier this week I decided to take matters in my own hands and make gnocchi. I was motivated by a combination of my own Happiness Project and just wanting to eat pasta.

I researched recipes and settled on one of Mario Batali's from the Food Network, which you can see here. I admit I took liberties with the measurements; and having never made gnocchi before, I didn't know what consistency to look for in my dough. Nevertheless, I had fun mixing and kneading and rolling my dough into long snakes, then cutting them into little thumb-sized pieces and dropping them into boiling water. I dutifully fished them out as they rose to the surface and transfered them to an ice bath. It felt good, both to get my hands (and counter!) dirty, and to focus so intently on one task for an hour.

I ate a few immediately and even without the sauce thought they were quite good -- although admittedly not as melt-in-your-mouth-divine as I'd hoped they'd magically turn out to be.

As per Batali's instructions, I generously coated them in canola oil and put them in the fridge. I'd reheat them later that evening in a sauce and serve them for dinner.

But somewhere between making a great sauce and reheating the gnocchi, things went awry. The little dumplings fell apart with each gentle turn of the sauce and I soon had a mushy mess. It's amazing how important texture apparently is!

I didn't wallow in my disappointment, although I think if I hadn't had such a good time making the gnocchi, I would have been in tears. As it was, my positive mood allowed me to remember sarmısaklı köfte. The very next day I had our nanny teach me how to make them, and although they're labour intensive, I've promised myself to add them to my repertoire.

I'll leave the instructions to the experts and direct you to this recipe from Almost Turkish Recipes if you're interested in making "Turkish gnocchi."

Relaxed about Hygiene and Appreciating Turkish Cheese

Perhaps it's motherhood; perhaps Turkey has just relaxed me in general. But as I calmly pulled a piece of hair from the cheese on my plate this morning and went right on eating, I smiled at myself.

I should add that it wasn't human hair, but rather a piece of goat's hair -- the cheese was a lovely strong dry white goat's cheese, cured in a (hairy) goat skin sack. Deri peyniri has made up for the lack of cheddars and some of my other favourites (Appenzeller; Monk's Head) here, and the best ones come from one of the many little bakal or grocer's in the neighbourhood, not sterile or packaged in a factory.

Many of my favourite edible things here are indeed homemade and I happily consume them at my own risk -- something I would have thought twice about when I first arrived in Turkey four years ago. Most notably, I now buy all my eggs, olive oil and nar ekşisi (the gorgeous pomegranate syrup I've mentioned before -- I think one day soon I'll devote an entire post to the magical genius of this ingredient) from small local shops selling their own or a friend's product. I'd buy fresh milk from the cow's owner, too, if I could get organized enough; our supermarkets and grocer's only sell UHT milk, which I begrudgingly continue to buy.

Image by vincen-t via Flickr

And now I'll leave you with a small story, just to show you how far I've come. It was October 2005 and I was on a whirlwind trip to Turkey for the first time. Determined to have me see and taste and experience everything in two short weeks, my Turkish hosts took me into a sort of delicatessen to taste nar ekşisi for the first time. The obliging proprietor took a bottle off the shelf, twisted off the lid despite the safety seal, and poured a little syrup into the cap. He extended it to me, but I declined, feeling sorry for whomever would later buy the bottle after I'd stuck my finger into its contents. My surprise turned to shock, however, when my guide took the proffered red cap and with one swift movement lifted it to his lips and let the syrup run into his mouth.

Unimpressed with that particular brand, he shook his head and repeated the taste test with another bottle, while the proprietor nonchalantly screwed the cap back on the first bottle and returned it to the shelf. Needless to say, I was left speechless.

Free Stuff!

Who doesn't like free stuff? Celebrities apparently get it all the time -- sunglasses, clothing, cell phones ... But am I weird for getting excited about free groceries?

I recently wrote about the 5-kilogram bucket of yogurt we get every few weeks from one of my husband's workers, but it dawned on me the other day that we are constantly receiving free food items, and in huge quantities at that. And I love it!

Turkey is a country that loves its domestic agricultural products, and there is plenty of everything. Add to that the country's culture of sharing, and you've got free food. My husband recently returned from a project in Anamur, a city famous for its bananas. Guess what he brought home with him?

But my husband is from a large family, and is used to seeing things in large quantities. So he didn't just bring back bananas, he brought home five kilograms of bananas!

I've gotten tea from Saudi Arabia; and pul biber (Turkish paprika) from Mardin. And it's always been in huge quantities. Every year, the family orders one hundred kilograms of honey from somewhere in eastern Turkey, and distributes it among the siblings. There are only six siblings. You do the math.

One year, my husband's brothers decided to plant peanuts on a random strip of land they had somewhere outside the city. I knew nothing of this until one day my husband came home with a potato-sack-sized bag of peanuts, and plonked it down in the middle of our kitchen floor! Needless to say, I wasn't exactly overjoyed. What the heck would I do with 50 pounds of peanuts?

I admit that the peanuts were more a source of stress than joy over the course of that year. Every so often I'd shell a few until my thumbs developed blisters (I never got more than a small bowlful at a time) and we'd roast them in the oven as a snack. I made peanut butter, otherwise unavailable here (the sweetened version they sell in the supermarkets doesn't count!). And from the peanut butter, I made peanut butter cookies.

It took me a while, but I've finally figured out that you've got to embrace what you've got when you've got it. Back in Toronto, I'd buy a few oranges and other pieces of fruit for the fruit bowl each week, and enjoy a couple of different fruits each day; at the end of the week, I'd buy more. But when your mother-in-law gives you 20 kilograms of oranges, grapefruit and lemons, you've got to consume them quickly, or they go bad. And nothing feels worse like knowing you've let good food spoil and go to waste. And so it's freshly squeezed grapefruit juice every morning, and a few oranges for an evening snack each night, and lemon juice on every salad; it's orange cake and candied grapefruit peel.

In the winter, it's citrus; in summer, it's figs. You can never have too many of those. Once a year it's olives and olive oil; every autumn it's pecans -- whole, unshelled, raw. As each crop is harvested, a huge portion is doled out to each sibling, friend, or neighbour. I now look forward to each season and what it will bring to my kitchen; and then, for a few weeks, we feast on a certain food, knowing it'll be another year until we see it again.

So Sad ...

My brother in England decided on a Friday afternoon to fly to Turkey that night and visit for a week. He wanted to meet his newest nephew and get away from the stress of work. Despite his hasty departure, he was still thoughtful enough to ask me if I wanted anything; and without a few days to carefully mull over a list, I blurted out the first things that came to mind at that moment: parmesan cheese. And salami.

In a dramatic drive-by last-minute dash on the way to the airport, he picked up my goods. Two long sticks of salami and a generous wedge of parmesan cheese, both of excellent quality. My brother was going to deliver!

Over the course of a week, my brother, my husband and I nibbled a little on the parmesan and salami as we prepared dinner; other evenings we enjoyed some with an evening nightcap. But we barely made a dent in what my brother had brought, and it looked like I'd be able to enjoy these perfect, salty tastes for weeks to come.

And I did. A slice or two of salami one afternoon; some shaved parmesan to really make my pasta dish complete on a night when I didn't really want to cook a more elaborate meal. (Pasta is my standby go-to dish in emergencies.)

But the other afternoon, I realized the days of the salami were coming to an end. I'd taken the formerly hefty stick out of the fridge, peeled away a little of the skin, and sliced two thick pieces for myself. As my taste buds danced on my tongue, I glanced down at the cutting board and noticed that all that was left of the salami was a tiny stump. So sad.

Rather than save such a small piece for another time, I decided to finish it off then and there. Why postpone something painful? Just like I prefer to rip off a bandaid quickly, I'd attack that last piece of salami, enjoy it, face the sadness of it being gone, and move on, only its memory living on.

With a little difficulty, I scored a small section of the skin and peeled it off; I sliced off as many small pieces as I could, and then held the final bit by its end and gnawed the remaining meat out of its casing much like a beaver might work at a tree trunk. A lovely image, I know. But why waste lovely salami in the name of propriety?