Becca's Bistro

Pomegranates

I have got out of my blogging groove a bit recently, mainly due to taking a holiday in the south of Turkey.  It was an excellent time of year, still warm enough to swim but long past the stickiness of July and August.  It was harvest time for pomegranates and you could not turn round without seeing a tree laden with ripe fruit.  Juice vendors were out on the streets.
I knew from experience that I don't actually care for pomegranate juice which is tarter and more astringent than cranberry juice.  The reason for this is that when the fruit is juiced, the skin and pith goes through the juicer too.  I still bought a cup because it seemed the seasonal thing to do and because of the alleged health benefits.  It is antioxidant and supposedly anti-inflammatory.  Research is still in progress about other medical uses of pomegranate, especially for the treatment of certain cancers.

 

Baking Supplies in Istanbul

In supermarkets and homewares shops there are baking supplies, but they are limited of course.  Cake tins are either huge baklava tins, spring form, bundt or loaf tins, and occasionally heartshaped tins.  Cake decorations are also very limited, usually only icing sugar, chocolate chips and coloured vermicelli.  More adventurous decorating and baking materials I have tried to bring from home.

Imagine my excitement then, when last week in a back street in Kadıköy, I came across this shop.

I won't pretend they have absolutely everything, but they have every cookie cutter imaginable, many size baking tins and food colouring, ready-to-roll cake covering and other cup cake decorations!

Whoopee doo!

(No that is not me in the doorway, it is the proprietor)

Buying Ingredients in Kadıköy

My mission was to buy some ground almonds to make macaroons or acıbadem cakes as they are known here in Turkey.  Buying ground almonds is not very easy here, so I went to Kadıköy to the main food shopping street which has many shops selling dried fruit and nuts.  In two or three shops the proprietors just shook their heads dismissively, but finally I came to this shop:

The proprietor of this shop, which is called Baloğlu, was only too happy to grind the almonds for me himself.  As you can see it is a treasure trove of mainly healthy food stuffs.  Needless to say my greedy little eyes were more drawn to the unhealthy fare on offer like:

Turkish delight and sticky sweets various, yum yum!  Well at least they look natural and are not full of colouring.

Due to an exhausting schedule and a rather nightmarish journey across Istanbul, the macaroons have not yet been made.  Hopefully, they will soon feature in their own post.

Fresh Food Free Food

Summertime is wonderful when it yields some free food that we can enjoy.  So far this summer, I have enjoyed fresh mulberries, sour green plums (see my tart plum tart) and stuffed vine leaves made with fresh leaves from the garden.  A stuffed vine leaf post will appear in the future, a food blog from Turkey simply must feature one dolma recipe. 

If you are also lucky enough to have a garden, no doubt you are already picking soft fruit.  My friend Michael sent this picture of some yummy blackcurrant cakes he made yesterday with fresh blackcurrants from his English garden. 

Even if you don't have much of a garden or indeed any garden you can still take advantage of wild food on offer.  Michael's father-in-law makes delicious elderflower cordial every summer with elderflowers he picks while out walking.

Here in Istanbul there is lots of communal mulberry collection going on in village centres (for Istanbul is really a very large collection of small towns and villages).  Athletic people climb up the trees to shake the upper branches and the others stand below to catch the berries in a large sheet or curtain.  The berries are then distributed among the neighbours.

I am really looking forward to the figs from our fig tree which ripen in late summer, it is a great benefit to living in Turkey, the availabilty of fresh figs.  I do miss blackberrying though, which I used to do each September in the south of England.  There are wild brambles in Turkey of course, but not many in Istanbul.

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Curse on my Cookery

Alas, I had wonderful plans for two posts.  Since starting this blog so recently, there seems to have been a curse on my cooking because it has been one disaster after another.  My cooking is normally fairly reliable if I say so myself, but not so this week.

Take the strawberry tart I made for visitors on Sunday.  Oh I had a lovely mental picture of my blog post.  Crisp tart crust, juicy strawberries nestling jewel-like on a cushion of creme patissiere.  To be fair to myself I could have taken a photo of the tart.  At the time of its assembly only a rather overdone crust detracted from its beauty.  The humiliation came during the serving of the tart.  Not only was the crust tough to cut, but it refused, simply refused to be parted from the base of the flan dish. 

Lessons have been learned.  The pastry recipe was new to me and used caster sugar rather than icing sugar and also a higher quantity of sugar than I had ever used before.  Firstly, I realise that the presence of so much sugar in the crust made it likely to burn so the oven temperature should have been a little lower than normal.  Secondly the quantity of sugar made it stickier than normal so the flan dish should have been greased or lined.  Nevermind, it did actually taste very good.

Today's lunch was another frustrating foray into the kitchen.  It all started in Beşiktaş fish market when I spied some squid for a ridiculously low price.  I bought a kilo on impulse and headed straight home.  The journey home was not exactly pleasant either for me or the rest of the passengers on the number 17 bus.  One dripping bag of squid + long journey in high temperature = memorable olfactory experience.

My husband was most excited by the prospect of calamari and even volunteered to clean and prepare the squid.  He placed it in a bowl of soda water to tenderise and left the rest of the project in my hands.  Last time I made calamari it was wonderful, crisp battered rings perfect to look at and taste.  Today my breadcrumb batter did not adhere to the squid, it just dropped off in the oil and I would have to salvage the squid rings tough and naked from the crumby mess.  In frustration at wasting my bargain squid, I summoned my husband to rescue the whole operation.  His rings turned out just right.

His lessons for me:  Use more flour and don't bother with breadcrumbs unless you have stale bread, which I didn't.  Perhaps he should be writing this blog.