Food and films

I have just finished savouring my second compost cookie from Momofuku Milk Bar.

I don't have a sweet tooth, so I never pine for sweets, but I do enjoy them when I get them. The compost cookie is almost a legend, and now I know why. Sweet, chewy, full of complex flavours thanks to the ingredient medley - the only thing I missed is ginger, which to me is "the" cookie ingredient. I need at least one more taste to make sure though. Ginger might overwhelm the other flavours!

 I got these cookies at last night's showing of the original Willy Wonka movie, part of Tiff's Food on Film series. The guest speaker was Christina Tosi, the slightly hyper (could it be all that sugar?) head of Momofuku's Milk Bar.

Impressions: it's a really good cookie. Sweet tooth or not, I've got to try her other desserts.
I loved the movie, much better than the Tim Burton remake -- and I'm a huge Tim Burton fan.
I loved her passion, and I loved her positivity, it helped me reframe things that were bothering me
She's the ultimate Follow Your Bliss success story,  no intended irony

I loved the movie even though it was a tad heavy handed. The innocence and hopefulness of the times won me over, even if the chocolate river was obviously water. (I know chocolate. That was not chocolate.) And let's not forget The Candy Man song, which I only knew from Sammy Davis's cover.  That alone makes it a must see in my book.

What else did I love?

I loved Gene Wilder, his crazy hair, and his two-toned eyebrows.
I loved Charlie's big chin.
I loved the knitting Grandma who's knitting never progressed beyond 3 inches or so.
I loved how lame all the adults were. What were they trying to teach kids?

But mostly, I want to know how four people spent 20 years in one bed and never had to get up, not even to go to the bathroom. I know, that's not the point, but I kept looking for the chamber pot. Couldn't help myself. And did they wash the sheets? And really, why did they stay in bed?

Who knew there was so much to discover in this film?

The foods of Turkey

One thing for sure, you won't starve in Turkey, they will make sure of that! Fun factoid: Turkey is entirely self-sufficient food-wise.

A typical Turkish meal is meze, grilled meat or fish, and dessert. Black tea (chai) is the prevalent drink, and everywhere you go -- stores, meetings, homes -- you will be offered at least tea or coffee. But beware, the coffee is often instant if you don't like Turkish coffee. They also have a good wine industry, and we had some pretty nice surprises on that front!

The meze are just slightly different than in other Middle East counties. Hummus, white bean and creamy and spicy eggplant dips, dolmas, carrot salads (including the amazing carrot/yogurt salad imspoke of previously) cucumber in yogurt, cigar pastries filled with cheese, etc.

One item that was every where in Turkey that I did not see in either Jordan or Egypt is soup. Lentil soup of course, but also fresh tomato soup, and also a nice eggplant and almond soup. I was surprised at how many of my fellow travellers don't like eggplant, since it's one of my faves, but that meant there was more for me, so I wasn't complaining.

Bread is omnipresent, but totally different than the Middle East breads. I loved the very flat breads you made wraps with (when stuffed they're called gozleme, and look like the bread they make lamacun with) and they have something very similar to Montreal-style bagels, called simit, as well as a flatbread that's a bit like a thinner focaccia, otherwise, we had varieties of sliced breads which tasted pretty ordinary to me.  Simit is sold on street carts for 1 Turkish Lira, roughly 50 cents. That was my daily bread!

Meat is typical of a Muslim country: lamb and chicken, but they also have beef. Lots of minced lamb and beef preparations, and we were mostly impressed with those. I had two awesome tavok shish dishes ( chicken kebabs). After awhile though, the flavours get repetitive, especially as we're used to more variety food wise. Istanbul just got its first Thai restaurant, for example, so the meals tend to be the traditional foods going back to the ottoman  days.

The one unique but quite ubiquitous item I saw pretty much everywhere is  urfa pepper. The link describes the smoked version, but you also find the unsmoked version on many restaurant tables to just sprinkle over your food like you would salt and pepper. I loved both and brought some back.

Our last day in Turkey we sampled Turkish ravioli in 2 different restaurants .. The first was ordinary, the second, sublime. So don't let your first experience fool you if  you're not impressed.

The best dessert we had, by far, was  poached quince, at least it was for me.  We had the typical baklava, lacoum, and such, but the poached fruit beat them all.

That pretty much sums it up from my perspective. We didn't have many great meals, but we had decent mid-priced meals, so overall I was pleased.

Anatomy of a perfect day

This one started at 5:15 with a wake up call, which meant that I had an hour or so to conquer my fear of heights before taking my first -- and most probably last -- hot air balloon ride. Fear conquered, I can tell you this was a truly extraordinary experience. It's so peaceful and beautiful up there, I wondered why I was ever scared. A must try for everyone.

After breakfast, we headed out to the house of Ustun Bilgen-Reinart, a Turkish-Canadian writer and former CBC reporter who has returned to Turkey with her Québécois husband. They live part of the year in Cappadocia where they have restored a cave dwelling and turned it into a wonderful summer home. He now makes superb furniture, she's recently retired, and they both seem to be having a great time. Oh, and she's smart and lively. She'll be leading a seminar next year at Classical Pursuits Toronto on women writers of the Middle East. Having met her, I'm pretty sure it's going to be an exciting workshop.

Fom there, lunch at a small local hotel/restaurant where everything is cooked from scratch using local ingredients. This is a small village, so in fact it's the only place to eat in town. Best lentil soup I have ever had -- it's going to take me a lifetime to figure out how she did it, and an awesome carrot salad (I think this recipe might be close).  Properly fed we went on to a local pottery master ... Maybe more on this later.

Back to our hotel, I had booked a Turkish bath and a facial, so I headed off gleefully for a few hours of pampering. Oh me, oh my.  I walked out of there feeling like a wet noodle, in a good way of course.  Promise to myself: must pamper myself more often. Shoes don't count.

There's much more, but sleep beckons.  Ta.

From a teeming metropolis to the desert

I already miss Istanbul. I am definitely a city girl. Mind, we've just really arrived in Capadoccia, where we are staying in the magnificent Capadoccia Cave Resort, which is also a spa, so I'm pretty sure I'll get over it pretty quickly. If you click on the first link, our hotel is in that rock in the middle. click the resort link, and look at the picture of the pool. Just above the pool, there's a terrace with 3 lit arches. My room is in the first arch on the left.

Eight days in Istanbul proved just enough. Any less would have felt rushed, and I would have missed too much. And we had 2 great meetings -- one with the administrators of an NGO that works on training media reporters, and one with Orhan Pamuk's (incredibly young) editor.  In both cases these were smart people who were politically, economically and culturally aware, so it made for great discussions on what's happening in Turkey today and they're hopes for the future. The 3rd meeting I've already written about -- smart kids, but they lacked the maturity of our other contacts so the conversation was a bit lighter. Nothing wrong with that, but I enjoyed the other 2 conversations more.

Victor -- one of the participants on this trip -- and I split from the group yesterday to go see Pera palace , which was an Orient Express hotel where some pretty fancy people stayed, including Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway. But their most important guest was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of  the Turkish Republic as we know it today. Room 101 has been converted into the Ataturk Museum, and that's what I was hoping to see.  Fate intervened, however, and on our way Victor recognized SALT, a new contemporary art centre in Istanbul, sort of like the Power Plant in Toronto, that just recently opened, so we checked it out. Between checking out a new art centre and visiting a dead president's hotel room, I think we made the right choice, but I'm still a bit sad we couldn't do both. As it is, we had to rush to join the group that was waiting for us before heading out to the Museum of  Innocence and then the Istanbul Modern. That's a lot in one day, but I wouldn't have missed any of it.

We have a great group, maybe the best I've ever travelled with. We're only 10, so we're really getting to know each other quite well. And of of them lived in Turkey 40 years ago and still speaks Turkish, so we've been getting Turkish lessons. Repeat after me: beer, ick, ooch. That's 1, 2, 3.  I had so much fun yesterday ordering "beer Turk kavesi, oz sukar" which sort of means one Turkish coffee with a little bit of sugar. I think. I got what I wanted, so it couldn't be far off.

Tomorrow, the adventure continues with a hot air balloon ride. I'm afraid of heights, so that should be fun.

I'm mosque'd out!

Istanbul is old. We saw one of the earliest Christian churches today, built in 400 AD roughly. Now that's old.

In all, I think we've seen 6 mosques. That's a lot. It all gets blurred in my mind at the end. The nicest was Rustem Pacha mosque. Not the biggest, but the prettiest.

Thanks to a website called Delicious Istanbul, we found great foodstuff on a number of our stops --Turkish Delight, nougat of some kind, smoked Urfa pepper, all kinds of good stuff.

The Grand Bazar is an adventure. Found the most amazing scarf store, Ottoamano, with scarves ranging from $5 to several thousand dollars. I got to try a $1200 one. Light as air, with the most exquisite hand embroidery, it was a work of art.

We had dinner with a lovely couple -- a university prof and his wife. Both passionate activists, their idealism and enthusiasm were endearing, but I'm glad I'm not that age anymore. Her Ph.D. thesis sounds remarkably interesting though -- roughly, she's demonstrating through the works of Moliere andTurkish theatre that the west is just as influenced by the east as the east is by the west. Strange to think that's not a given!

So far, I have eaten everything I was hoping to eat while I was here -- tavok shish, lamacun, kofte,  fresh grilled fish,

And more meze that I can shake a stick at. The best? Sliced green beans poached in olive oil. Served cold with a squirt of lemon and a 

sprinkle of Urfa pepper, it's da bomb!

I'm looking forward to another good night's sleep!

Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, Bosphorus Cruise...

... and yes, I will sleep well tonight.

(I had to remove pictures as this thing wouldn't post. See this link for photos.)  

Crazy busy days can be the best, even if they are a bit tiring. Topkapi Palace is the kind of place that just just blows your mind, with all the great history that hides in its walls. Standing in the harem, in the valide sultan's room -- the mother of the sultan, probably the most important person in the Empire -- was a dream come true. That was probably the room where the biggest decisions were made and fates sealed for 4+ centuries, before the sultans moved to new palace. See link above for a  picture of the courtyard between the valide's apartment and that of the mother of the first born son, another highly placed person. Oh the intrigues those walls must have heard.

We did a stop at Aya (or Hagya) Sofia afterwards (it's big, it's old, what else is there to say?), a quick lunch and then a chilly cruise on the Bosphorus.

We didn't mind the cold, we we're pretty much all dressed for it, and in warmer weather, we probably would have dozed off. We were walking for 4+ hours in the morning, so a nap would have been welcome.  That's where you really see how huge Istanbul is. Want to talk about density? Check out the photo of' Istanbul, seen from the water. And it goes on and on like this for miles. 15 or 17 million people, depending on who you talk to, is a lot of people.

You have to be really wealthy to afford a detached house, so the ones we see tend to be really big.

We had a lovely fish dinner outside, and it was surprisingly comfortable even though it's really cold. Strategically placed heaters and good company and we never noticed the cold. Our guide told me they eat outdoors like that year round, even though it gets much colder during the winter months. But they don't get a lot of snow, so that might make the difference. I do think they are crazy, but I'm too polite to say it.


We have a really good guide. He's been doing this for nearly 14 years so he knows his stuff, and he's very funny. This tour company does pick good local guides, we haven't had a bad one yet.

Tomorrow: blue mosque, fancy lunch, and then my first hamam experience.
 That's where you sweat for 20 minutes and then they loofah  a lifetime of dead skin off you.
Sounds awesome.

First impressions

Hard to beloeve it's day 2 in Istanbul. It's been a busy 2 days, but wow, do I love this city. My hotel is in the old town -- Sultanahmet -- that's Byzantine period. Yesterday, I walked up twisted and tortuous cobblestoned Byzantine streets until I got to an Ottoman Empire-time area (the Blue Mosque) and then back.  Thus, I discovered that Istanbul is built on 7 hills. And I feel I went up and down every one of them, or will.

Today, I went to Taksim square, of  recent fame, but they've been demonstrating here for close to 100 years, so turkish rebellion is nothin new. To the right, I saw the intercontinental hotel, the Hyatt, and the Ritz ( a surprisingly ugly building, and awkwardly-located). To the left was a long pedestrian street called Independance Street that is populated with consulates as well as stores stores stores and coffee shops. Did I mention stores?  It was OK in that I had good food with bad names (milk pudding with blackened top, anyone?), saw gazillions of people walking with no purpose other than gawk at cheap touristy stuff (yes, lemmings did come to mind)' but you know what? I had fun. The weather was glorious, the Turks are funny, you can get half-sweet Turkish coffee, and the taksis ( yup, that's taxi in Turkish) don't try to run you down. What's not to love????

So far, I've resisted shopping, except for soap. Great spa (hamam) country, the handmade soaps are awesome, and the cotton towels. Guess what I'll be bringing back?

Foodwise: great fresh fish but you have to pick your spots; dried fruit and fruit pastes are amazing; fresh walnuts! Who knew how different they taste fresh? And I'm on a baklava and Turkish coffee discovery mission.

Tomorrow, we do a cruise on the Bosphorus. History calls out to me!

Good night!