I’m a winter baby and I love when the temperature drops so I can roam Istanbul to my heart’s content without getting too hot. It’s really lovely to experience Istanbul in winter, as Julia Bayne, business owner at Istanbul Place Apartments – offering historic apartments for short stays in Galata – knows well. You remember…
For this year’s birthday post I thought I’d tell you about my long horror hate relationship with kelle paça, sheep head soup for the uninitiated. My intense dislike of offal started long before I moved to Turkey, although as a four year old I apparently loved the tongue soup my nana made, at least according…
Back in April this year I wrote a list of must try Turkish foods for CNN Travel. My aim in putting it together was to let people know there’s more to Turkish cuisine than kebab and baklava. I made a conscious decision not to include a famous dish called Adana Kebab because, well, it’s famous….
When I first came to Turkey more than 20 years ago, I experienced the sweet frenzy then known as Şeker Bayramı (sugar festival) for the first time. It marks the end of the fasting month of Ramazan. It would be logical to think the name Sugar Holiday comes from the amount of chocolate, baklava and…
It was with great pleasure that I opened the pages of reviewing Ozlem Warren’s new cookbook Ozlem’s Turkish Table: Recipes from My Homeland. She’s already well-known for her website of the same name and the cooking classes she gives all around the world. In this collection, Ozlem not only shares many of her favourite recipes…
As most of my friends know, I love eating but I’m not so big on cooking. I have a lot of tried and true recipes that don’t require much thought to put together, and I’m usually reluctant to dip into cook books. Istanbul & Beyond: Exploring the Diverse Cuisines of Turkey is the exception. Reading…
For a Turkish person, not having enough food to eat is as unthinkable as not being able to breathe. So imagine Noah’s delight when the ark finally came to rest near Ararat in eastern Turkey after the great flood, in finding enough leftovers to create the gourmet delight known as aşure. Also called Noah’s Ark…
In Turkey, all traditional drinks come with their own history. Whether it’s the better known tipples like rakı, ayran and tea (soon to have its own dedicated post) or one of the more local, acquired tastes, each drink has its own story and specific ritual. What unites them all (other than the Turks’ passionate devotion…
In Turkey, when you a buy a fridge, they don’t tell you how many litres it holds. Instead, they tell you how much Turkish ice cream it can store. Not just any ice cream though. Called dondurma, literally meaning ‘freezing’ in Turkish, Turkish ice cream is made with two magic ingredients, mastic and sahlep, and…
Everyday, in a suburb somewhere in Istanbul, a weekly street market is being held. One of the one of the many traditions brought to the big city from small towns and villages, vibrant, crowded, noisy Turkish street markets persist, despite the increasing number of supermarkets opening up every year. Trucks loaded with produce criss-cross the…