Coffee and Lokum for your walls

It's winter (at least on the calender) and that means renovation season for us, as there is still a lot of things we want to change and redecorate in and around the house. So we picked up the work with having the walls of two of our bedrooms painted. I discovered the ‘Osmanlı Renkleri’ collection from Marshall. A new palette of delicious colors, divided into the four themes Turkish Delight, Berlingot, Sherbet and Coffee, that refer to the magnificent interiors of villas and palaces during the Ottoman empire. I fell immediately for the names of those fruity and spicy colors like Lemon Lokum, Cinnamon Berlingot and Coffee with Musk. I had to have those colors, to create this warm and luxurious feeling, that the Ottomon style is so well known for, within our own four walls. We chose the warm Sesame Berlingot for the guest room and the deep Coffee with Cardamom (Kakuleli Kahve) for our bedroom. Here's a little preview. More pictures with the final results at some point in the future..

Pick a flavour

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Lokum / Turkish Delight:  powdery, innocent colors of cream, pistachio green, pastel lemon yellow and soft pink to add romance and a scence of luxury to the room.

Akide / Berlingot: comes in vibrant colors of Sesame, Mint, Orange and Cinnamon, adding the intensity and warmth of oriental spices to the room. 

Şerbet / Sherbet: reflecting the colors of nuts, fragrant flowers and ripe fruits like almonds and cranberries on the walls, adding a rich and dreamlike feeling to the space.

Kahve / Coffee! My favorite. Deep shades of Cardamom, Musk and Amber turn your room into a warm and comforting space that makes you want to stay in bed forever.

Those colors look amazing in traditional rooms as well as in contemporary, modern interiors. I also dig those traditional and symbolic patterns and motifs, looks interesting.

Images from Marshallboya.com

Project Bathroom

You might be wondering what's been keeping me busy and away from blogging the last few weeks.
We decided to renovate the bathroom, something we've been planning to do for a long time. Because summers were always busy and the winters we passed in Amsterdam.  Up until then we tried to look through the horrible green tiles, ignoring the old toilet and sink as much as we could and pretended it didn't matter that we had to jump into the tub to take a shower while being closed up in a hidious box with decorated glass. Also we had this small extra room with a 'hole in the floor' toilet wich we never used (below with pink tiles).

But no more. So we decided to roll up our sleeves and get rid of it all. We got help from Levent, B's younger brother who manages a villa project for a construction company in the back hills of Alanya. He brought he's men over and they started to drill and hammer and destroy the room the best they could. It felt sooo good to see those ugly tiles come off the walls and everything being removed within one afternoon.
In that first week we were pretty optimistic. One more week and we would be done, we thought. Meanwhile B was staying at his parents home and I became Elif's room mate for a while. But then, somehow, everything went backwards and I could swear the project was jinxed. The wrong tiles arrived, one order didn't come through so we were waiting for nothing, one Usta (constructor) got ill another one didn't get allowance from his chef to leave the construction site, our neighbours downstairs complained about a leakage caused by the drilling, the bath tub was wrong, etc. Two weeks turned into three and three weeks into four. Meanwhile the house was a complete mess, covered in dust and debris.

Our patience was heavily tested. But we kept cool as much as we could. And serving tea, lots of it. I repeted my mantra whenever I felt we were on the edge of dispair: it's gonna be worth it! But from time to time B opposed with saying:  actually the green was fine too, it wasn't that bad.

We moved back in a week ago. I spent three days on cleaning and organizing, with some help from sweet Elif. There's no way I would have gotten through this without B being the calm and cool man that he is and Elif's support, our crazy laughs and her home cooked dinners at the end of days. Now we really love the results and every time I enter the room in the morning I'm thinking: this was so worth it.

These pictures only show the work in progress. There are still some details we need to take care of so the final result will follow in another post.

Before

Work

After

Before

After (not completely finished yet)

You’ve gotta love ‘Türk Tatlıları’. Turkish sweets, like honey-and-nuts-baklava cut into little golden pieces or those colourful Turkish Delight cubes with aroma’s of roses, mint and orange. Displayed like jewelry on a silver plate they flirt with anyone who passes a patisserie. Served with a small glass of nice and strong black tea or a tiny cup of ‘Türk Kahvesi’ they can bring your sugar level from zero to one hundred within a few bites. Not very healthy but irresistible. Just make sure you drink a big glass of water along with it. Maybe this is the point where I should admit that I have a weak spot for anything sweet and delicious. But even though I love to discover all these fantastic sweets that Turkey has to offer, I sometimes would love to trade all these stuffed, sticky pastries for a good old classical muffin. My favourite is plain or filled with blueberries. They are mild and soft and just the right size to eat cake for breakfast without a bad conscious. Or enjoy them with some really good coffee in the afternoon. It’s a pity that American Bakery is hard to find around here. But in order not to crave what you can’t have, I decided to make some myself. I went online to check if domestic goddess Nigella Lawson (who I can watch for hours) would have some good recipe.  And Nigella wouldn’t be the Calorie-Fearless Cooking Queen that she is if she wouldn’t have come up with this one: Bakalava Muffins! How great is that! The best of American Bakery and Turkish sweets combined! Of course I had to try it.

So here we go:

BAKLAVA MUFFINS

For 6 big muffins (but I got 10 out of it)

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

For the filling:
-          100 gr of chopped walnuts
-          75 gr brown sugar
-          1,5 tbl spoon of cinnamon
-          45 gr unsalted butter, melted
-          a little salt

For the muffins:
-          210 gr plain flower
-          2 big tbl spoons of baking powder
-          75 gr cristal sugar
-          1 big egg
-          45 gr unsalted butter, melted
-          1,75 dl yoghurt
-          0,75 dl milk
-          a little salt

Honey for the finishing touch.

1) Mix all the ingredients for the filling.

2) Mix the flower, sugar, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Mix the yoghurt, milk, egg and melted butter and give it a little stir. Add this mix to the dry ingredients and gently mix everything. Remember to do this very lightly, it doesn’t need to become super smooth this will make the muffins too heavy or compact.

3) Fill the muffin cups with 1/3 of the dough. Then add a layer of the walnut filling and cover with another layer of dough. Place the muffins in the oven for 15 minutes until they’re golden brown.
Let them cool off a little and sprinkle with honey before serving.

4) Enjoy!

Because 10 is just a few too many for the two of us, I brought them to the restaurants and had the guys try them. They are my test panel whenever I bake something. They love to try pretty much everything but still remain very critical since everything gets measured against the high, very hard to match standards of their mothers home cooking. Safe to say these baklava muffins passed the test and I even got a ‘ellerine sağlık’. I love that expression. It means ‘health to your hands’ and you can wish it someone who cooked or made something delicious.

If only there was a recipe  to combine cultural and political differences as joyfully as we do with the culinary ones.. surely the world would be a better, more delightful place to live in. And maybe we could come up with a special expression for someone who succeeded in doing so too. Maybe we would wish someone something like ‘sağduyuna sağlık’ (health to your common sense). I’m just saying.

Turkish Delight. by David Crowder Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aF7ibfbX_M

    

Elif's sarma

First of all let me introduce you to Elif. Since I met her early spring this year, Alanya has become an even sunnier place than it already was before. Getting used to living in Turkey has definitely been a lot easier and more fun with a new friend like her in my daily life. Elif is funny, intelligent, well behaved, ‘clumsy-dumsy’ (in her own words) and very beautiful. She’s European and Oriental. She’s ‘Copenhagen chic’ combined with Turkish charms. She’s a believer and social butterfly. She’s milles fleurs and polka dots and she makes people around her smile.
I’m not surprised anymore when I hear that an old man, a total stranger, follows her to her office only to ask her politely if she would be interested to meet his handsome single grandson. Or when the taxi driver compliments me on my kind and beautiful friend after she got off. Or when a police car stops at the bus stop she’s waiting at late at night to escort her home safely. All very normal anecdotes from Elif’s life around here.

One of the great things about her is that she can always understand both sides of a European – Turkish relationship. And because she is Turkish herself she can explain to me a lot of things from a girls point of view and make everything complicated sound simple again. And we love to laugh together about the cultural differences and misunderstandings that are inevitable in our situation and make fun of them in a good way. So I learned new things and new ways of thinking from her for which I’m really grateful.
And she can teach me a lot about Turkish Cuisine too. So far my experience has only been based on tasting and enjoying the food. But Elif can actually make it. And she knows some nice traditional dishes. She’s committed and passionately about cooking, the way it was passed on to her by her dear mother and elderly sisters. No scales, counting and measuring in grams, ounces, tablespoons or teaspoons for her. And forget about using only half the vegetable or fruit. Smaller quantities are measured in çay glasses, if anything. ‘You can feel it. And if you want to make it a little stronger or make a bigger portion, just add a little bit more’ is what Elif has to say about that. So this is why I decided that if I was ever going to learn how to cook real Turkish food, I wanted to learn it from her. It’s the way most women still learn to cook in this country.. not through expensive cooking books, fancy magazines  or celebrity chef tv shows. But by passing on the knowledge and the skills to each other.

We started our cooking sessions a short while ago. The first thing we made was Kısır, one of my first favorite dishes in Turkey. And it’s great for summer. It’s similar to the Moroccan Couscous. It’s fine Bulgur mixed with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, spring onions, pepper, paprika powder, salça, parsly, mint, lemon, salt and olive oil. You serve it with fresh yoghurt (or cacık), turșu and sometimes with börek and you can roll it up in long leaves of lettuce and eat it with your hands. Yam! It’s great for picnics and as a side dish as well.

Last week we thought we could do something a little more difficult. Something like Yaprak Sarma. The announcement of our plan to the guys brought us remarks of respect and delight. Clearly everyone loves Sarma here. But it’s known to be a lot of work and nobody makes it better than their own mother. Murat never misses the chance to remind me about his mother’s Sarma that I was lucky enough to taste during her visit from Adana. “Kat, do you remember how we ate the Sarma my mother made when she was here? How was it?” His eyes lit up as he suddenly thought of his mother’s cooking while answering his own question: “Ooh it was so good, she makes it really the best değil mi?” It was 7 years ago but yes, I still remember. And I agreed with him that it was the best Sarma I’ve ever had.

We reserved all afternoon for this event, just in case. Little did we know then that we were going to need it. Sarma is grape leaves filled up with a spiced rice mixture or with bulgur or minced meat if you like (sometimes it's also called dolma). But we went for the classic rice filling. We found fresh leaves on the marked. They have a natural sourness and it tastes even better in the end. The rice mixture was easy. We fried chopped onions and the rice in a pan with olive oil and later added some salça, herbs and salt. We put the leaves into boiling water for about 10 seconds just to soften them. Then we brought everything out to the balcony table and got ready to roll! It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon when we started. Little did we know then that 3 hours later we were still sitting there.. filling up every leave with 1 tablespoon of rice, while we had a pan of almost 1kg rice in front of us. It took forever. And with every leave my respect grew for all the Turkish women making Sarma by themselves. It’s fun to make it with Elif because we never run out of subjects to talk about but I’m not sure I will ever make more than 10 pieces if I would have to do it alone.
By the time the first pan was full, we started cooking the Sarma in a mixture of water, oil, salça and salt. And we got on with the second pan. It had gotten dark already and we lit the candles on the table. As the second pan slowly got fuller the Sarma rolls got bigger and bigger.
But something wasn’t quite right with the cooking.. the rice didn’t cook properly. Elif said that it normally takes 30 minutes to cook them. But it stayed raw for the longest time and so we kept adding water every now and then.. and with that some salt.. and some other things. And so another hour passed with waiting and adding and adding and waiting. Surely this wasn’t the way it was suppose to go but we had so much fun over it. We were patient, but also starving by the time they were done and I made a promise that I would eat anyone’s homemade Sarma more slowly and thankfully next time. But they tasted delicious and we ate a lot of them. Elif took a little bag of it home. We had made so much that I brought Sarma to school the next day to share it with girls during lunch. And to the restaurant for the guys the day after that (they liked it!) and still I had more left over's for the next three days that followed. I'm adding a few pictures of our Sarma marathon below to demonstrate.

Hamsi damsi is a small fish
Hamsi damsi makes a great dish
All the Turkish people
Every year in fall
Cannot resist eating them all*

The air is turning chilly in Istanbul and Northern Turkey and people are seeking the sunshine again to warm their bones instead of fleeing from it. Fall has long arrived and with it the excitement of the Hamsi season kicks in. Hamsi is a tiny silver anchovy that Istanbulites and people all along the north coast are mad for. As the waters of the Karadeniz are cooling off, it is the best time to enjoy this little Black Sea bounty again. There are many ways to prepare Hamsi but I guess the most popular way is fried or grilled. But I’ve been told that Black Sea Turks love it so much that they cook Hamsi rice, bake Hamsi bread and even prepare deserts with it.

As some of you already know I have been blessed with a Black Sea Turkish family, from Rize to be precise. Both Bülent’s parents are from that city as is the family of my sister in law; Zekiye. That area is world famous for its çay, but here in the country Hamsi makes a great second. And though I have heard many times how incredible good this little fish is, I’ve never tried it myself. I don’t like anchovy to be honest so I was a bit skeptic when we all got invited by Zekiye for Hamsi this week. But Bülent was so looking forward to this dinner that I held my brave face up because I didn’t want to spoil the fun.

Last night we got a call from Levent (B’s brother) that fresh Hamsi had arrived in town and we were all expected at their house around 7pm. As we arrived at their door we walked into a cloud of fresh ocean smell and the sizzling sound of oil in a pan. Zekiye’s mom was in charge that night. She stood in the kitchen, the floor covered with newspaper because of the spattering oil, patiently preparing those little fish one by one. First she covered them in corn flour. Then she fried them in the pan, tightly put next to each other like a pancake. After a few minutes she tossed those little suckers into the air with great routine to turn them around and bake them on the other side. Then she slid them into a covered bowl and began with a second portion. She made so many that we could have invited all the neighbors within smelling distance.

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When making Hamsi for dinner it is the only star running that show. So nothing else is served with it but a simple mixed salad, fresh bread, some onions cut into big chunks and lemons cut in half. We drank cola and water with it. I was told to eat them with my fingers, which I did. If you’re a real Rizeli like my father in law, you lift them by their tale and put the whole thing in your mouth with bone and all, followed by bites of bread and salad. He told me the bone is good for your eyes. But couldn’t do as Rizeli do. I did take them by the tale though. I put them on my plate, removed the thin little bone in the middle and the tale (heads were removed before already) sprinkled a bit of lemon on it, put it between two pieces of bread and then took a bite. It was very tasty. Crunchy on the outside with a soft and meaty torso.

I liked it, though it took me a little strength at first to overcome my inner vegetarian. But if you love fish you will absolutely feast on Hamsi. After a lifetime of not eating anything with a face, I learned to eat fish when I came to Turkey. I’m still not a lover, but I guess I am a becoming friend. At least of this dish. And the fact that it’s an annual thing makes me want to eat it partially because it tastes good and partially because of the anticipation and celebration that’s going on all around it.
Merry Fishmas everyone!

*After Humpty Dumpty, an English poem I learned when I was 6 and still had an eternal memory.

First image by David Hagerman.

Ashure: Noah's Pudding and something from Elif Shafak

Yesterday, as I looked through the peephole of our front door after someone rang the bell I saw the lady from the second floor standing there, holding a tray in her hands with a little bowl on it. As I opened the door she lifted the tray somewhat towards me and offered me that bowl with a friendly smile. ‘Oh, Așure!’ I said, sounding happily surprised. This made her smile even brighter, visibly relieved and content that I recognized her offer. I took the bowl with two hands, brought it into the kitchen to pull the content into one of my own bowls and gave it back to her, thanking her and wishing her a wonderful day. I think I just earned me another point on her list of ‘examining this yabancı kız (foreign girl) from upstairs’ and I felt like I took another tiny hurdle on the road to integration.

How lucky was I that I had read about Așure the evening before, while surfing online. And though I had eaten this delicious pudding of grains, fruits and nuts before I didn’t know that there was a traditional, historical and religious meaning to it as rich as the dish itself. ‘Did you know that Așure is served during the first month of the Islamic Calender, Muharrem, on the Tenth of Muharrem, also known as the Day of Așure? And that Așure actually means tenth in Arabic?’ I asked Bülent, who was watching an important football match between Turkey (Trabzon) and France (Lille). ‘Yeah’, he said, ‘it’s something about Noah’s Arch arriving at the Mount Ararat (Northeastern Turkey) and they celebrated with Așure, and they put everything they had in there’. That’s pretty much about right. Since their supplies were nearly exhausted upon arrival, they put all that was left of the grains, dried fruits and nuts together into a bowl and cooked them into a pudding, now called Așure. The day of Așure marks an important day in the Muslim year and is prepared with special prayers for good health, safety, healing and spiritual nourishment. Traditionally Așure is always prepared in big quantities and handed out to colleagues, classmates, neighbors, friends and family, without regards to the recipients religion or belief system. It is an offer of love and peace. It is a typical winter dessert because it’s so rich in calories and spiced with cinnamon. Other ingredients are: beans, chick peas, whole hulled wheat, white rice, sugar, roasted hazelnuts, pistachios, pine nuts, almonds, vanilla, cinnamon, raisins, dried figs, dried apricots, orange peel, water and rosewater and pomegranate seeds.

So here is my symbolic offer of a bowl full of peace and love and sweetness to you all. To nourish your body and spirit. May you all be blessed with love and health and good neighbors throughout the year!

In Elif Şafak’s fantastic book: The Bastard of Istanbul, Așure plays the key role in the story. Not only is every chapter named after one ingredient of this dish, but enriched with a secret ingredient it also determines the faith of the men in the family for generations. Here is an extract from the chapter Golden Raisins:

But it was no doubt Grandma Gülsüm who was most thrilled
with the news. At first she refused to believe that her
only son was coming to visit them after all these years,
and when she finally was convinced of the news, she
incarcerated herself in the kitchen amid the dishware,
cutlery, and ingredients, cooking the favorite dishes
of her favorite child. Now the air inside the kitchen
was heavy with the scents of freshly baked pastries.
She had already oven-baked two different types of
börek –spinach and feta cheese – and simmered lentil
soup, stewed lamb chops, and prepared the köfte mixture
to be fried upon the guests‘ arrival. Though she was
determined to make ready half a dozen more dishes before
the end of the day, undoubtedly the most important item
on Grandma Gülsüm’s menu was going to be the
dessert: ashure.
   All throughout his childhood and teens, Mustafa Kazancı
had relished ashure more than any other sweet, and if
those terrible American fast-food products had not
messed up his culinary habits, Grandma Gülsüm hoped, he
would be delighted to encounter bowls of his favorite
dessert in the fridge, waiting for him, as if life here
were still the same and he could pick up from where he
left off.
   Ashure was the symbol of continuity and stability,
the epitome of the good days to come after each storm,
no matter how frightening the storm had been.
   Grandma had soaked the ingredients the day before
and was now getting ready to begin cooking. She opened
a cupboard and took out a huge cauldron. One always
needed a cauldron to cook ashure.

Ahure, a little bowl of everything good

It's Ashure month again, the first month of the islamic calender. Ashure (Aşure in Turkish) is also called Noah's Pudding and contains a mixture of grains, dry and fresh fruits, nuts and spices. There is not recipe for it as the ingredients depend on families and region. Toppings can be crushed walnuts, pomgranate, raisins, cinnamon, orange zest or rose water. Read my post about the history and tradition of this delicious dessert here.

This last couple of days I wasn't home much so I must have missed my neighbors knocking on our door to offer us their ashure. But how lucky am I that Elif decided to make us some herself? She ended up making a lot, and now we have a big box of sweetness chilling in the fridge, ready to put on your lab and start eating with a big spoon . By the way, it's vegan... totally hip and healthy yani, this good ole dish of Noah. But also with a lot of calories they say.. to keep you warm and nutured during those cold harsh winter months.. or, if you are in lack of those, just to keep you happy on midweek november evening somewhere inbetween those Halloween and Christmas blues.

Elif's beautiful creation. Don't you just want to put your face in this?

This is what she made for me to enjoy at home with B. Little bags of pomegranate and walnut crumbs included. Isn't she cute?

And so we did:) I warmed it up a bit first, it brings out all the flavors even more. A heavenly bowl of .. heaven.

And one box for our sweet parents in-law (I decided to share mine with her until she gets her own). Yes.. gentlemen. You heard that right. This domestic goddess is single and her heart to win. But you have to be quick. Girls like her don't come along very often and they certainly don't stay available forever.. i can ashure you! :-)

C.O.F.F.E.E.

Coffee to me means:

C - Cup

O - Of

F - Fabulous

F - Fresh

E - Energy

E - Everyday

I found a daily coffee picture goldmine the other day: Günün Kahvesi - Daily Coffee. By Billur Saatci, the girl behind the really cool lifestyle and fashion blog: Off Ne Giysem (Off what to wear)

Coffee never looked so handsome.