At my grandmother’s home, in the messy back yard, soon to be my friend, nettle stung me, thousands of times in the good old days, me in my shorts, running up and down, thought every green thing is innocent and my friend. Isırgan, literally meaning stinger, you do the maths….
Egeliler, some Cretan, some Greek, some Sephardic, some pure İzmirli… Wherever their roots go, does not matter, they love to eat everything coming out of earth like the buds of the trees, the leaves, the roots… They don’t like wasting anything. Çitlembik, çitlenbek, çitlenbik – celtis australis- is a tree…
Kaplan’ın Yeri in Tire İzmir is a phenomenon. Climbing up the hill, surrounded by olive trees and wild nature, you see cows, horses, goats… Passing the nice small village Kaplan, admiring the small streets, our jaws dropping cause the view, Tire laying under your feet and mother nature. Place full of…
As if we needed any motive to eat, me and Katie celebrated the sesonal kebabs today. The sarımsak -the fresh bulb of garlic- and yeni dünya -loquat or medlar- kebabı at Çiya…
One morning, I rushed in the restaurant asking for ribs as if I was starving, Şeref Usta told me to come back at 11.30am, hence it is still cooking… But the büryan was ready, hanging on the hooks, still warm, the fats dripping, calling my name. But I wanted to…
Tire kebabı, the butter is almost as good as the meat!
Today at lunch I had one of the best kokoreç dishes of my life… Post coming soon!
It is around midnight, when the büryan ovens are light up in Bitlis. There is only smoke in the dark streets of the city. Bitlis has its own pace, like all the Anatolian cities. The büryan restaurants open at 5.00 a.m and close around 11.00 a.m. It is very hard…
The cracklings, the moist lamb, a piece of onion, a bite of hot chilies! A perfect lunch.