İskender

This, my friends, is Iskender Kebap. And oh baby, is it good. Now, the iskender pictured below is definitely not the best that I've ever had in my life. There are french fries on the top for goodness' sake. 

No, no, the best iskender that I've ever had was in Bursa, the town where iskender was invented. It's named after it's inventor (like Fettucine Alfredo!), and you can read all about the origins here.

But more about what happens on the plate. First, they put a layer of bread on the bottom of the plate, then thin lamb slices which are covered in a tomato-butter sauce. Then after they serve it, they come around with a pot of tomato-butter sauce and pour it all over. Tomatos, lamb, bread, butter? Yes. Please.

Since my first iskender experience three years, I've been searching for the next best thing. I'll be honest. There is a Turkish restaurant in Dallas that does this dish a whole lot of justice. I hedge it because I can't in good faith say that the best iskender outside of the city where it was invented is in Texas. It's pretty good though. Check out Cafe Istanbul - they have two locations in Dallas.

As for finding the best iskender in Turkey, it's almost as difficult as finding the best chicken fried steak in America: everywhere makes it and price is definitely a factor. I'll keep searching and let you know what I discover.

Small Entertainments

I have spent the last three hours Skyping with my mother and grandmother. I talk to them about once a week, and half the time it's catching up and the other half of the time is us going "same old, same old." Sometimes I feel like nothing notable happens - as evidenced by the boringness of my blog. Nonetheless, these are the days of my Turkish life. I took this picture because I thought it was funny.

Ha. I also like the contrast between the blue screen and the orange and green. That's part of my SUPER healthy dinner of butter pasta with peas and carrots! Yum.

Here's a SUPER artsy picture of the pasta and the peas. Ooooh symmetry! Anyway, I'm tired and there's not a lot going on here. Back to Season 1 of The West Wing...

Weird Leafy Vegetables

I'm bad at grocery shopping, especially shopping for produce. There are several factors that result in purchasing disasters such as this:

The lighting is bad because it's my kitchen but that's a huge pile of white-ish, yellow-ish pieces of a leafy vegetable. I wanted to buy lettuce but I ended up with this.

Now, I am not totally incompetent. I know what lettuce looks like...in America, the land where food is grown to look pretty. So when faced with a wall of leafy vegetable heads that look nothing like the perfectly round, green lettuce that I'm used to, I get confused. At the same time, I haven't learned all of my vegetable vocabulary, so I don't know what to ask for. I usually say I'm making a salad and ask if whatever I'm looking at is good for salad.

In this case, I bought a head of something that was big. Like almost a foot in diameter. But I thought, "Hey, who knows? The outside is green, and it's clearly a leafy vegetable. Let's try it out!" The inside was all yellow/white, like the core of iceberg lettuce. After cracking it open, all I had was a pound of that weird core stuff that no one eats. Niko tasted it and said it was probably some type of cabbage, which I'm not going to eat either. I'll keep experimenting...

Kati - 0, Weird Leafy Vegetables - 1

The Lokma King

What happens when you fry dough and then soak it in honey and then sprinkle it with cinnamon?

Lokma happens. Yummy. This is a picture of some lokma I had a couple weeks ago - coincidentally, the day we signed up for internet, which we finally have (almost two weeks later, as predicted)! These were okay. It's actually hard to find lokma in the city so I was kind of just taking what I could get. 

My first encounter with lokma was in the beach town of Bodrum, when I went traveling around with my friend Stephen for my first week in Turkey. We found the mother-lokma. Watch this guy in action:

I call this guy the "lokma king." Pretty awesome, huh? Last week, Chris tried to make lokma and failed really hard. He's been inspired by this video and is going to try again. Who knows? With internet and a lokma prince in the house, I just might never go outside again.

Holiday Haiku

 Look at this full plate!

Awww yeah. Pass some gravy, please.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Afiyet Olsun!

"Afiyet Olsun Türkiye!"

Just like the French say "Bon Appetite," the Turks say "Afiyet Olsun." "Türkiye" technically refers to the country but if you say it in English, you can get a good Turkey/turkey joke in there.

And yes, I'll be eating turkey in Turkey in 17 short hours. 

Aisle 6

Spotted in the grocery store, specifically in the exotic spice aisle:

TEXAS BBQ SENSATION! Holy cowpokes, this is exactly what I've been looking for! Ok, not really. I was shopping in MacroCenter, a large grocery store that carries both regular Turkish grocery store items and more international fare. The taco supplies, barbecue sauce, and Indian curries were all in the same section. 

While I passed on the TEXAS BBQ SENSATION disguised as squeezable grape jelly, there was no way I could pass on these:

Actually I did. But I wanted one soooooo badly. It's a crazy straw with a giraffe on the top. Had the price been marked, I would have bought it, but I was afraid I was bumping against my grocery budget (adult word!). Even now, writing about the crazy straw makes me want one really badly. I'm go back tomorrow now that I'm reminded of how whimsical they are.

Sorry, TEXAS BBQ SENSATION, I won't come back for you - you're just offensive.

Cooking Fail

Ok, I tried to make bulgur stuffed mushrooms tonight. Impressive, I know! It was mildly disastrous. It started off well but ended up being a mess.

Abby and I went to MacroCenter today and got tons of groceries. When we got home I set to work. I washed and capped my mushrooms, finely chopped carrots, spinach, and the mushroom stems. Then I preheated the oven. (Well, it's more of a 20 year-old experiment in mixing microwaves and ovens than an actual oven. Also, all the buttons are in German. But it came with the apartment, so whatever.) I converted the recipe to Celsius and preheated the Gewichtsautomatik. Then busted out the bulgur. Saw that it takes 30 minutes to make. Whoops. 

While it was cooking I reviewed my recipe and saw that I had to cover my mushrooms with foil but it turns out that I didn't have any foil. Whoops x2. 

Ok, let's problem solve. The other day I saw Niko making stuffed eggplant in a big pot with a little water boiling (?) around it. So I figured I would do that instead of using the oven. So when the bulgur was finished, I opened the pot and saw that I had made wayyyyy too much. Like, the I Love Lucy episode where Ricky and Fred make a pound of rice per person. It kind of watered-down (bulgured-down) my carrot-spinach-mushroom mix. Sad. 

Oh well, I piled the mixture on the mushroom caps and stuck them in the bottom of the pot with a tiiiiinnnny bit of water. Five minutes later, the tiiiiiiinnny bit of water was boiling and had taken the smallest of my mushrooms out. Now, they were literally watered-down. Whoops.

Pulled the puppies out and let them dry. Voila!

Cute, huh? Actually they don't look too bad. But they tasted terrible. I forgot the spices, and bulgur isn't that flavorful. Good thing I made enough to last until 2012 and good thing I bought a back-up dinner. Who's going to clean the kitchen? 

No but seriously. 

America Is Missing Out

Ok today I will share with you the greatest thing in Bebek, my neighborhood in Istanbul. Do you see this line?

It is from Sunday night, around 9pm. It extends all the way to the street. It's for waffles. Yep. You get a waffle for 9 lira ($5). It's a pretty expensive dessert for this part of the world but it's amazing. And so worth it. First, you get a thinner waffle than you would get at IHOP or would make at home. But it's cooked in a waffle iron right before your eyes. Then you pick what spread thing you want. You can pick one for each side or get the same for both sides. Options include milk, dark, and white chocolate, Nutella, strawberry, or hazlenut spread. I like milk chocolate and Nutella. 

Then you pick your toppings. I personally prefer banana, strawberry, and kiwi. But you can also choose cherries, pineapples, chestnuts, pistachios, sprinkles, and powdered sugar. Any and all toppings. Remember you pay a flat price no matter how much you have them put on there. So pile it on. I do.

Then you fold it in half, taco-style, as best you can. And you keep a tight hold on it, burrito-style, lest any yummy (still warm) goodness spill out. Mine exploded on me the first time I had one but I've gotten much better at managing the amazingness. Now you want one don't you? 

The place is Ab'bas on the main road through Bebek but it's a chain so they can be found elsewhere in Istanbul. Their website: http://www.abbaswaffle.com. Check it out!

Does anyone know of a place in America that has waffles like this? Someone needs to get on it.