my culinary woes

February 2009

Ever since I took an interest in cooking 15 yrs ago, I was never at a loss of what to cook. Maybe it was being in NYC and having access to world class restaurants for inspiration, ingredients from all over the world, and a eager circle of friends willing to come to & host dinner parties which made cooking seem easy & fun & natural, and provided a safe, non-judgmental environment for experimentation. No one cared if we ate at 11pm or if the appetizer didn't work out. It was a party and there was a lot of food around to snack on & free flowing wine.
Never really having received any cooking lessons from my mother, and after muddling my own way through various cookbooks and cooking shows, not realizing that there were different measuring cups for liquid & dry measurements, I decided about 15 years ago, that it was time to get some formal training. So I enrolled in the Institute of Culinary Education on 23rd St. which held night classes for busy working professionals. Using generally accepted professional methods grounded in French technique, I learned the basic principles, theories & techniques to cook all kinds of dishes from hot & cold hors d'oeuvres, soups, salads, fish, poultry, meat, and dessert, including sauces, and knife skills.
This was a revelation to me, because it basically freed me from having to use recipes. Once i had mastered the basic techniques and proportions, the rest was just flavorings. At the end of class we shared the meal that we had prepared & critiqued it, accompanied by a few bottles of wine. I loved the class so much that I took a Spa Cooking course, to marry my new love for cooking with my interest in health & nutrition. But I knew that these courses were for laymen and were more of an introduction to cooking for curious beginners. I became so enamored with cooking that I seriously considered switching careers, and enrolled in a course at the French Culinary Institute on Broome St on lower Broadway. It was there that I learned in more depth & detail the classic French techniques (the French codified cooking in Europe) and basic recipes to make all kinds of dishes, all in a professional kitchen setting, along with standards on hygiene and food safety. We had our own chef uniforms, with our names embroidered on the white double breasted jackets and wore tocques and aprons. During the 22 sessions, we made stocks & sauces (including the mother sauces) and pastry doughs, including pate feuilletee, mousses, souffles, all the different cuts of meat, de-boning a chicken, cleaning fish & shellfish, even genoise, bavarian & butter cream, creme anglaise, and syrups.
In the end, with the prospect of starting over again at the bottom of a new career, and the long & physically demanding restaurant work hours while standing on your feet, I decided that cooking would remain a passion, but not a profession for me.
But in all the years that I have enjoyed the pleasure of cooking, I have never been at a loss for what to cook...until now.
Arriving in Turkey, newly wed and excited by the prospect of learning a whole new cuisine first hand with all its own exotic ingredients and spices filled me with anticipation. I had never had Turkish food, or maybe once, but had Greek food, especially from the islands, and middle eastern food, and although they were not my favorite cuisines, I embarked with an open mind, knowing that i could fall back on my Western cuisine whenever I wanted.
So after having shared several restaurant meals with my husband, most of which were meat-centric - doner, kebabs, kofte, pirsola, and also a fish restaurant, I have to admit that I was not very enchanted with Turkish cuisine. I found the meat overcooked, and the fish I had although fresh, was nothing to write home about. I could have broiled it myself at home for 1/4 the price. Where was the artful presentation? Where was the preparation, skill and variety?
I chalked this up to the mediocre touristy restaurants we had been to in and around Sultanahmet, where my husband worked, during our short but sweet courtship. But now after living here, and sampling the cuisine at a range of restaurants from low to high, I still feel the same disappointment. Even the prized Bursa Iskender which most Turks rave about alongside Ottoman palace cuisine, left me unfazed. Of course I can appreciate the freshness & simplicity of Turkish cooking. But it wasn't until I had dinner at his parent's house that I really started to enjoy and appreciate Turkish cuisine. There i was served vegetable dishes, like the zeytinyagli ones, but expertly made and seasoned, vegetables prepared in ways i had never tasted. I have also been on a low carb diet for years, which is difficult to do in Turkey, where they think it is normal to eat potatoes, rice, makarna (pasta) and bread all in one meal. And they call whole wheat bread "diet bread" like you need to have a health problem to want to eat it. And I never liked borek, the ubiquitous multi-layered or stuffed pastry found at every corner. Until I had his mother's borek which is wonderful and has even converted a die hard carbo-phobic into eating several squares. I now even enjoy her dolmas, biber (green pepper) and yaprak (grape leaves) which are vegetable carb bombs, stuffed with seasoned rice. people here even stuff potatoes with rice! she makes very little meat, but her kofte are excellent and her ground beef stuffed eggplant is divine.
So I give credit to my husband's mother for showing me what there is to love about Turkish cuisine, and proving that the best Turkish food is served at home, not at the restaurants, because like most food, the most memorable & satisfying meals are made with love and attention and not at the hands of short order cooks.
But back to my dilemma. Having lived here now for 9 months, and having to cook dinner almost every night since i arrived in June, I am at a total loss for what to cook. I can attribute this to several reasons, one being the fact that I have never had to cook dinner every night, and find it tedious. In NYC even if you are married, you eat out at restaurants and order amazing take out, and maybe cook once a week, because you have the creative urge. You cook for dinner parties, not for dinner every night - this is a whole different ballgame. Secondly, I also need to cook mostly Turkish food for my loving husband, who's exposure to foreign cuisine it limited to dominoes pizza and pasta with ketchup & mayonnaise. When i first witnessed this distressing behavior (in Turkey, ketchup & mayonnaise are liberally used to smother french fries, plain pasta, AND pizza), I was in shock, and all I could say was that it was lucky that I am not Italian, or I would divorce him on the spot. That is how offensive I find it. I won't even try to figure out why or how this horrible custom came about.
Even though there is ethnic food available at restaurants, they are for the most part, very overpriced, not impressive, and sadly not very authentic. Leaving very little incentive to try new cuisines. So I don't blame my husband for thinking that his favorite restaurant, Me Gusto is Italian, instead of greasy, glorified bar food - since when are cheesy potato skins Italian? - How can you fully appreciate Italian cuisine, when you can't even eat pork?
Thirdly, I am pregnant, and just getting over my 1st trimester morning sickness, which is a bit of a misnomer, since it actually lasted the whole day, and left me nauseous at the thought of cooking dinner. And lastly, when you are used to having a different cuisine every day, and you marry someone who grew up eating the same rotation of dishes on a weekly basis, and is not even familiar with regional Turkish cuisine, and when you are afraid of shocking this person's system with all your foreign food, you get so bored with making dinner that you want to shoot yourself.
But I have to give my husband credit for being very supportive on my culinary mishaps in Turkish cuisine and for trying all of my foreign dishes and even liking some of them (I think). He has come a LONG way since the early days of our marriage, when I dutifully tried to make Turkish dishes from my cookbook, only to watch him refuse to eat because it wasn't the same as his mother made it. I once made yaprak dolma or sarma and he refused to eat them merely because they were too large, even though i had followed the recipe from my Turkish cookbook and they were smaller than i had seen at nearby cafes. But I had hunger on my side, and so as my Turkish cooking improved, with the help of a couple of lessons from his mother, his mind & palate expanded, to be more forgiving & willing to try slightly different preparations of the dishes he grew up eating, especially when he was hungry. I've learned all of his likes & dislikes, and insist on trying new dishes to push the envelope & satisfy my own homesickness.
But with dinner parties for relatives looming in the horizon, I am again struck by a loss of what to make. Normally planning a dinner party menu was an exciting prospect for me, one that i relished and would map out like I was catering an event for royalty.
But when you are faced with feeding a group of picky Turkish people, who don't even agree on the same way to prepare the same dish, and are not interested in trying foreign cuisine, my safety net is taken away, and I am left with my not yet mastered Turkish dishes, that I have been served by these same guests.
And I think that I have been discouraged by my Christmas dinner that I made for his parents and grandmother. I tried so hard to make something that I thought they would like, yet I could tell that they appreciated my efforts, but not the food. I have never had anyone not rave about my dinners, so this was a heavy blow. I served spiced roasted nuts, plain mixed nuts, dried apricots & plums, and fresh mandarin oranges. I served mulled cider & sparkling cider (none of them drink alcohol) which i had to scour the high end supermarkets in far away neighborhoods to find. I made a red lentil soup, braised beef with mashed potato & celery root, roasted brussel sprouts, sunchokes, carrots, onions & chestnuts, plus roasted beets with garlic & thyme & balsamic vinegar. i made a cauliflower gratin with a shallot bechamel sauce that went untouched, and a mesclun salad with feta and walnuts and a shallot vinaigrette. I baked hazelnut cookies and pistachio shortbread, and a pear frangipane tart that was just beautiful.
Now this would be a much easier feat at home, but here, i had to figure out the correct cut of beef i needed for braising & try to communicate this, in Turkish, to the butcher, and stop him from slicing it up into "biftek" and then pounding it into schnitzel. Then I had to figure out how to come up with beef stock (which they only sell in msg laden cubes here). And at that point i had not yet mastered the fahrenheit to celsius conversion, and so the roasted veggies almost burned, and i had to do a lot of juggling to keep everything warm.
Not surprisingly, everyone liked the soup, since it was Turkish, except his sister, who came late, and who didn't want soup (no trying things to please the host). No one wanted a vinegar dressing on their salad, so i had to improvise a turkish one with olive oil, lemon juice and pomegranate syrup, even though, the mother and grandmother liked the beets which were marinated with the same balsamic vinegar from the dressing. I attribute this to the acidic vinegars available here (apple & grape - no mild red wine vinegars). The sister did not want meat, but liked the mashed potatoes, until i told her that there was celery root in them, which she doesn't like, but didn't notice previously. As i said, no one even touched the cauliflower gratin (again, no trying things to please the chef or broaden your culinary horizons).
I think one person tried one of my cookies, no one touched the dried apricots or mandarins, and everyone dutifully ate a thin slice of tart.
All i could think of was maybe it was just too different for them? Were their palates ruined by eating the same dishes over and over for their whole lives?
So now you can see, when I am faced with having to cook for my husband's family, I balk, not wanting to have a repeat of my Christmas feast, and not wanting to serve them inferior versions of the dishes his mother taught me to make, which would pale in comparison to hers.
I even tried to make pirzola (lamb chops) for them once and they didn't like them because they were not well, well done. I find it a crime to ruin expensive cuts of meat by overcooking it until it is dry and hard and resembles the texture of the sole of a shoe.
But this is what i am fed & I graciously eat it, even though I could still be chewing it now.
And I know it is family, so there is no need to be overly polite, but I always find I am the one who always tries everything and eats the most, to show my appreciation for the meal that has been made for me. And I can be pickier than most about the quality of my food, but I don't see any reason to not lower my standards on occasion when someone is taking the trouble to make a special meal. I have never met a country of such picky eaters! Honestly, I've come to realize that New Yorkers, like most denizens of large, international cities, are world class eaters, meaning they love to try & appreciate new cuisines, and even though we have our share of predilections when we eat out (such as dressing on the side or egg white omelets, although nothing in comparison with LA), we are gracious guests when we are invited to dinner and love to try & appreciate something new.

old world vs. new world

i've decided that even though my young, Turkish husband is ostensibly very modern, chiefly for being interested in marrying me, a Korean/American from NYC, and for his interest in travel, his open mind regarding race, religion, his liberal & leftist political leanings, and his natural ability with computers, software and technology, he is still "old world" at heart.
Because now after living together for several months, i know that he prefers me to be at home rather than work outside the house (ie: have a career), and loves being greeted with dinner ready when he returns home from work everyday, and complains when the house is messy. I realize that he still values having a Turkish housewife, someone who will pick up after him, keep a spotless house, always be ready to whip up a turkish meal, and never complain about having to hang the laundry or iron his socks. Traditions can run deep, especially in Turkish culture.

I am sadly only qualified in the cooking dept. and feel the need to justify my dinner responsibilities, by calling myself a "personal chef & nutrition counselor." and i have never aspired to be, nor will i ever be his fantasy Turkish housewife (ie: his mother). Of course i can scrub the toilet and bathroom scum from the shower doors, and degrease the kitchen hood and vacuum obsessively, but after a few times, it gets old pretty quick. I get bored of housework, which some could claim makes me a lazy person, but I have never been a couch potato - with a busy career & social life in NYC, you don't have time to watch Sex in the City at home, you are too busy living your own life, which can easily become quite complicated, leaving no time for mundane chores or sitting around watching TV. Between working full time, exercising regularly, meeting friends, attending various meetings, exhibitions & openings, traveling for business & just opening & shredding all your junk mail, there is hardly enough time for housekeeping, which is why less important tasks are happily outsourced. your free time is precious, why spend it scrubbing grout, especially when it will ruin your new spa manicure?

I can handle the light maintenance cleaning & picking up, but feel it is wiser to leave the deep cleaning to the professionals, and have always preferred to pay for this service. Why would I want to spend more than half of my life cleaning the same 500 sq.ft over & over again when i have creative outlets to pursue and business plans to hatch? I'm already at a loss for what to cook for dinner, having exhausted all the Turkish recipes i have semi-mastered. I have a University degree and had a successful career, and do not find it stimulating, but rather mind-numbing to clean the apt day in and day out, pacing around like a caged tiger.

So here is a recent example of an old world vs new world clash: A few days ago, as I was washing the dishes from breakfast, the sink stopped draining. I had noticed that it was draining slower and planned to use some drain cleaner this week, but it was too late, i had just poured out the remaining juice from a jar of pickled beets, and had a sink full of soapy, magenta water that wouldn't drain. Upon further investigation under the sink, I stared at a ridiculous mess of jury-rigged PVC that all ended in a flexible tube that was being forced to bend at an impossibly acute angle, causing a kink that was stopping the flow of water.
I tried to unbend the kink, only to find that the connecting pipe at the top was not securely attached and it came loose, causing a pink waterfall under the sink that flooded the kitchen floor, pooling under the refrigerator. Since i don't own a mop (but i do own a swiffer!) i tried to feebly mop it up with a towel, wringing out the pink dishwater into a pail. After mopping most of it up, i decided to wait until my husband came home so that he could help.
After exclaiming, "What have YOU done?" we finished cleaning up the flood & he went out to buy a replacement part for the cracked and clogged flexible hose. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out how the mess could be streamlined so that it didn't have so many unnecessary twists & turns & extra pipes - it seemed like they just used whatever they had lying around & just stuck it all together. When my husband returned with the new flexi hose, he got really irritated that i had taken the pipes apart and started complaining that i was making a mess & there was nothing wrong with it, so why was I messing around with it?
which brings me to my conclusion that the Turkish mentality definitely operates under the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I have been told that if there is a problem, the Turkish will find a way around it rather than a solution to fix it. In America (the new world) we embrace challenges and always take the opportunity to improve on something and make it better. Change is good. In a competitive capitalistic society, you must change & evolve to survive.

Which is merely what i was trying to do. But my husband got really angry at me for this, not seeing the innocent goodwill in my intentions, calling me a "know it all" just because i happen to know more about proper plumbing than whoever rigged the make-shift set-up under the sink. Being a homeowner, I have spent extensive time at Home Depot, and had to remove a food disposal unit and replace the whole sink drain myself.

I never thought i was an expert at anything...until i moved here.

Besides, by training, i strive to make things more functional & aesthetically pleasing, so since i have no current outlet for my skills, i was just trying to apply them to the current situation.
So old world won this small battle, but i wasn't worried, because in the end, the new world will prevail.

DIY Turkey

I've come to the realization that Turkey is the perfect place for DIY types, but not the glossy made for TV types-you need to be more a cross between the die hard loyal Martha Stewart type and Survivor, because even though there are Home Depot knock-offs here, called Bauhaus (the reference being totally lost on my husband - despite Turkey's strong ties to Germany) and Koctas where you can find basic building supplies and maybe a glue gun, but there are no craft stores or places to buy the unusual art, building or sewing supplies that you see on the DIY website or shows like While You Were Out.
You have to be more hard core than the weekend fan to try to search for what you need for your projects and may even have to make your own tools and will have to expertly substitute freely when you can't find what you need.
But DIY here is not only for interior design or small home projects. It most often extends to everyday tasks and modern conveniences that people in the Western world take for granted. Compared to NYC where Convenience is King and there are countless time-saving products lining the supermarket shelves to suit one's hectic lifestyle, here women mostly don't work, so there is no one willing to pay the extra price for prepared anything, especially when you still have your mother around who is always ready to come by with a tray of borek or dolmas. The only saving grace to all this extra work is that one gets to actually utilize all one's skills that have been acquired over years of obsessively becoming an expert in the hobbies you have chosen.
For example, after I had finally figured out how to ask in Turkish, to both the local and supermarket fishmongers, to please clean & fillet my fish, and watching in dismay as they lobbed off half of my expensive, imported, albeit farmed, salmon (no wild salmon here) that had already been weighed & paid for, and neglected to remove the pin bones, I resigned to continue to DI Myself at home, dissatisfied with their lack of skill, and somewhat perplexed, since this was their chosen profession. The same held true for de-boning chickens, and unless you want your meat pounded to a few millimeters in thickness, you need to stop them and take it away from them before the meat pounder falls. Besides butchering, I now make my own pastry shells, puff pastry, hummus, yogurt with live active cultures, cheese, curtains, duvet covers, grow my old herbs...the list goes on and on.
When you can't find something, or more importantly, when you can't find something at the taste level that you like, you must resort to making it yourself.
Yogurt is a great example. For a nation that eats every meal with yogurt and probably consumes more plain yogurt than any other country in the world, buying it by the 1500gr tub, none of the commercially available yogurts are organic, antibiotic or hormone-free and the most distressing, none contain live yogurt cultures, which are so important and beneficial to our digestive systems and one of the most compelling reasons to eat yogurt. There is Danone Activa, but it comes in tiny 4 pack thimble size containers that cost the same as 15x the amount.

But to be fair, most of my need to DIY comes from my foreign tastes. Within Turkish cuisine there are convenience foods available, such as all types of kofte, boregi, spice mixes, and strange pre-made dry cake, etc, but once you venture into foreign food territory, the choices are non-existent.

foggy Istanbul winters

Except for my 2 week holiday in december 08/jan 09, this is my first Istanbul winter, and although it snowed last year around Christmas, this year there was only a few flurries that didn't stick and it was very mild, mostly raining. Driving around Istanbul at night, you can see a blanket of fog on the streets and highways which is not from the rain. It took me a while to figure out what this was, until after several visits to my husband's parents' apt in Bagcilar, I was exasperated by this fog as i waited outside by the door as he parked the car within centimeters of the ground floor apartment's window bars. I am a few months pregnant and my nose is on overdrive, overly sensitive to all the smells around me. So I started complaining about the horrendous air quality in Istanbul, imagining it choking our 11 week old baby inside me, and blaming the truck & mini bus exhaust and the lack of emission standards here.
Then my husband told me something far worse - "it's from the coal" he said. Yes, they still use coal in many neighborhoods to heat the buildings, because it is cheaper than natural gas, and cheaper than converting to a more environmentally friendly system. "What is this, Victorian England?" I exclaim, wondering how Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would handle this problem, instead of the apathetic (or pathetic) Turkish government. Some of the political parties even hand out coal to the people to curry votes. Then i imagined my husband growing up in this neighborhood, oblivious to the detrimental effects of burning coal (such as the release of lead & mercury into the air), and was thankful that our neighborhood buildings were mostly heated by gas. I suppose the air is cleaner if you live near the water, something we will have to look into when we move house in 2 years (insallah!).