Archive for the ‘Food’ Category
I’ve had some complaints about my lack of activity so in order to placate a vociferous minority here is another blog. I’m going to gloss over a lot of last year’s aspects, too much bad news for and from so many people and places for me to even start writing about it. I took a few photographs during the year and I’m going to include them and some stories about them in no particular order of date or importance.
You will have seen that a new water pipe was installed along the road and I was furnished with a new supply to it. I had to connect to this new pipe because the old supply from the other side of the road was severed when the trench was dug. Previously I had bought and fitted a new water pump to and the arrival of this new pipe made me think that I had wasted a lot of money by getting a very quiet and modern pump but it turned out that I inadvertently did the right thing because the pressure from the new supply can be too much for some of my water fittings. I’ve had trouble with some of the taps and valves being over powered by the main supply pressure so now I just let that keep my forty seven litre tank full and allow the new pump to supply the house from that tank.
Since I have lived here (17 years this year) I have found that having to cook for myself has meant I have grown to enjoy cooking and trying out new recipes. Successful pie pastry has eluded me though, at least until now. I have had to resort to the frozen millefeuille pastry which although turns out nice as seen below it’s not home made.
I must admit that my early attempts were failures but persistence pays off and although it has been a long time between attempts I think I have finally managed to make pie crust that I don’t need a road drill to get through. My goal is to make a raised pastry case pork pie, apparently this is one of the most failure ridden recipes but I will try. I will post more photos of my successes in due course. Until then this kind of pie crust will keep me going. I put all sorts of filling beneath it and especially in the winter months I find the pies not only tasty but comforting and they usually last for a few days too.
A young lady in Kaş brought me a kitten.
Cute little thing with very nice colour marking. It had been named Mayıs because she found it in May. There are a lot of unwanted or unplanned dog and cat births around here that considerable effort is made to try to control. A very difficult task for local veterinarians made harder by the natural wish of the local people to let nature be nature. Consequently there are always lots of puppies and kittens who are being put up for adoption and I find it quite difficult to refuse sometimes. This kitten, however, caught my attention and I relented. She even came with her own bed. She’s a very exuberant little thing and has caused me a number of scratches and wounds and reminded me that I cannot leave things lying around if I expect to ever find them again. The dogs are trying to avoid her too, even big Wolfie will go out of his way to avoid walking within talon’s reach of her.
The tortoises in my garden have come in for some attention but they don’t move quickly enough to hold her interest for more than a minute or so.
Talking of dogs I was very upset recently to lose my favourite dog Minnie to the curse of the Leishmaniasis disease. She had been with me for 12 years since joining me when I was taking two of my previous dogs for a walk up the road near my house. They started looking around behind them and in the end I stopped to look too.
This little brown dog was following us and eventually when we got to my gate and went in she carried on down the road. About fifteen minutes later when I was having a coffee on the patio she came trotting up my drive. I gave her some water and then some food and she stayed ever since. I never had to put her on a lead, she always trotted right behind me everywhere we went.
I’m really sad to have lost her, just wish there was some medication that cured this rotten disease but no-one has found one yet.
This is the time of year when we get nice skies and beautiful sunsets. I need to go to the other side of the hills to get the sun going down past the sea horizon but I’m not allowed out that late during the day for now. I’ll post the good ones that I get from my patio for now.
That’s all for now folks, I’ll post some more soon. Hopefully I’ll have no more complaints, you know who you are, hee hee.
Had a ride over to Finike yesterday (Saturday) afternoon on the Beemer.
It was hellish hot every time I had to stop for traffic lights (only four or five times thankfully) but enjoyable. Bought a few things in a shop there then on the way back I stopped at Volkan’s beach restaurant in Suluklu Beach, Demre for a cold drink and something to eat.
By the way, that is not me in the green shorts.
Nice couple of hours out, saw a few other bikers around too.
Standing at the kitchen sink this morning doing a bit of washing up and I spotted this pair of birds that are new visitors to my garden. In the twelve years I’ve lived here I haven’t ever seen any of these before. They are called White Spectacled Bulbul or Yellow Vented Bulbul for obvious reasons. That water they are bathing in pretty cold this morning but the sun is quite warm for them.
I’ll bet they don’t have any trouble following each other.
I like making curry but one of the spices used in some of my recipes is Coriander leaves. Well I had a hard enough time finding any Coriander until somebody told me about the spice shop in town, only been there a couple of years, why haven’t I noticed it before you may ask, I asked the same thing myself. Anyway I was only able to get ground Coriander and seeds so I planted some, didn’t really think they’d be viable but nearly all of them germinated. Very pleased with that, three pots of them are in the sun on my kitchen window sill now.
By the way, I also found out recently that in America Coriander is known as Cilantro, a good discovery because I’ve never known that and I have a few recipes calling for Cilantro. It’s also known as Chinese Parsley, something else I didn’t know, of all the things I didn’t know I didn’t know that the most. Thanks Bob.
I was down in Kaş this afternoon enjoying the warmth when a big cloud came over the horizon to sit right on top of me. Just as I pushed the door to the bank to pay my monthly Social Security Health payment my phone rang. I saw that it was a friend of mine in my village and when I answered she had bad news for me. My white dog, Molly, was round at her house and had been chased there by a very angry village woman shouting and screaming.
Dogs that upset the local domestic animals don’t last long here, so I was dismayed to hear that Molly had been caught red handed, more correctly yellow mouthed by the owner of chickens. It seems she had discovered where the chickens laid their eggs and had been seen with yolk dripping from her mouth. Normally she looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and won’t touch anything edible in my house unless I first put it in her dinner bowl or physically give it to her.
She has made a serious error of judgement this time.
Luckily the woman who owns the chickens (her name is Safiye) is a neighbour and friend of mine and I have bought some eggs to replace the ones eaten. I don’t know how many Molly ate but I bought a couple of dozen so hopefully that will placate Safiye and compensate her for the eggs.
Molly is going to have to have some training in order to teach her to leave the eggs alone, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, hopefully I can find some ideas or lessons on the internet but if not I’ll just have to come up with something myself. Wish me luck.
While I’m talking about dogs I thought I’d update the story last week about Aslan. I took him to the vet in Kalkan a few miles away for some tests and it was found that he has a disease called Leish Maniasis. This is a particularly nasty disease that dogs can suffer from and if not treated it can kill them. All the symptoms that he had are typical of the disease and Hasan the vet had no trouble in diagnosing him, he even had a little blood test specifically designed to confirm it. That was very disappointing but I bought the necessary medication from the pharmacy and started him on it then took him back to my neighbours and showed them how to administer the pills. There is sufficient medication to last for a month and I’ll get some more, it’s not expensive, when this lot runs out. We’ll just have to wait and see how he does.
A bit of catching up to do here, been distracted by a few things recently including power cuts and storms that dampen the enthusiasm a bit. One of the things I like about the weather here is that it will rain like hell for a few days then clear up and be sunny and warm(ish). Today started well but it looks as though some rain is going to arrive before long.
A while ago I got a little Sony Vaio computer, a bit like a net book but not, if you see what I mean. Well now I have my Samsung smart phone I can get emails and access the internet anywhere there is a mobile phone signal so I was wondering what to do with the Vaio. Then I had an idea and hooked it up to my guitar amplifier and accessed BBC Radio 2, now I am sitting here having the delight of listening to Terry Wogan. Some may not be as delighted as me.
Three weeks ago I harvested the olives, I have two trees but only one had olives in it, the other one is too small yet. I got 1.6kg off it and asked Suleyman’s wife Hatice how to prepare them to be edible. I tried one once straight off the tree and nearly made myself sick. So they are now marinading in salt and with another couple of changes of salt to come they should be ready in another six weeks or so. That’ll save me buying any this year.
My New Year’s resolution this year is to take more photographs so I had a drive down to Buyuk Çakıl (Big Pebble) beach to take a few. It looks quite inviting but the water was pretty cold, a couple of the bars/restaurants were open though. Afterwards I went over to the other side of the town to the theatre.
I’ve been told that I shouldn’t call it an amphitheatre because they are completely round and the semi-circular type are correctly called theatres, I didn’t know that. Well ours has had some restoration work done on it since I last saw it, a few people were very upset and disappointed to see concrete in the restoration and let the world know about it too. Personally I don’t think it looks that bad, at least they used white concrete which fits in with the rest of the colour and at least it’s safe from falling down and hurting someone. Actually I doubt many people would even realise it was concrete.
Yesterday I made a couple of cakes, banana and yoghurt. The flour looked a bit unusual and upon inspection it turns out that I should pay more attention when I pick up things in shops because it wasn’t ordinary flour but wholemeal. Both cakes turned out well although with a bit more of a texture than they would normally have. Actually I think I like it more but I need an independent tester to check them out for me before I rewrite the recipe, any volunteers?
One of the things I like about being here is that we don’t get too much food imported from all around the globe all year round so the different seasons bring different foods. At the moment quince and green apples are in abundance so I decided to make some quince chutney. I made some a few years ago and it lasted for two years but I made a few changes to this year’s batch. This is a great addition to meat or cheese sandwiches and goes well with roast chicken and most curries too.
This is how to make it:
Ingredients:
2½ kilos of quince finely diced or coarsely grated.
700g of soft light brown sugar (Esmer Tozu Şeker)
1 level teaspoon (tsp) Cumin seeds.
2 heaped tsp Coriander seeds.
12 Cardamom pods.
1 level tsp Cayenne pepper (Tatli Kirmizi Biber).
1 level tsp ground Turmeric.
110g fresh root Ginger (Zencefil) peeled and grated.
1 level tsp ground Cloves
800ml Vinegar.
8 cloves of Garlic peeled and crushed with 2 tsp Salt.
2 Spanish type onions finely chopped.
Notes:
I prefer my chutney to be more finely cut so I use a coarse grater on the quince rather than chopping it.
You can use malt vinegar if you like, I prefer to use apple vinegar but experiment with others if you wish.
If you chop the garlic then mix it with the salt and crush it with the side of a big knife it makes a paste which blends into the mix well and doesn’t cause any exciting surprises.
You could use the same recipe but substitute green tomatoes for quince.
This picture shows the mixture at the start of the simmering process.
Day One:
Peel and grate/chop the quince. Put in a large bowl with the sugar and turn to distribute and mix it all well. Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.
Day 2:
Preheat a small frying pan and dry roast the cumin, coriander and cardamom. Crush or grind and put into a large preserving pan or saucepan add the quince and bring to a gentle simmer and let it simmer for 3 hours stirring from time to time. The liquid will turn to a thickish syrup. Remove from the heat and let it cool for 15 minutes or so then ladle into warm sterilised jars. Leave in a cool place for 8 weeks minimum.
I’ve been doing a bit of sightseeing in the last couple of weeks, places that I should have been to but haven’t. I was introduced to a visitor from America who is going to a lot of places around the world photographing and writing about them. She wanted to have a look at some of the archaeological sites near here so I decided to take a few days off from my labours, drag out my camera which hasn’t seen any proper work for a while and accompany her. Arykanda was the first place we went. There is a main road which goes north from Finike but the coast road is such a trial to get there I thought we could do it more quickly heading north from Demre which is a lot nearer. It wasn’t until we got lost up in the mountains and needed help from the maps that I noticed that a section of one of the roads was indicated on the map in orange colour, the rest were all red. Well we toured around a lot of dirt roads until we came close to getting bogged down and I decided that going back a few miles was the bravest thing to do. We could have been stuck in mud up there for a long time and we hadn’t seen anyone to ask the way so we turned round and retraced our steps until we saw a sign and followed that road. The signs up there are very few and far between.
This is an abandoned school on the road into the mountains, people have moved away from a lot of villages into the towns and cities for a less hard life so the countryside is often deserted apart from a few goatherders.
Anyway we eventually found the right road and carried on until I saw a sign for Arykanda in my rearview mirror and stopped to have a look. The sign that should have been facing our side of the road had a truck parked in front of it blocking my view so we went up a little lane and found the place.
Arykanda was discovered by an English traveller and researcher Charles Fellows, one of the first travel writers of which there are now legions trotting around the globe. It was seen by other travellers during the following years but remained largely forgotten due to the difficulties of getting there.
Arykanda appears to have been inhabited from the end of the late Calcolithic Age (Copper Age beginning in the late 5th Millenium BC) and survived because of it’s easily defensible location with a huge rock cliff behind it and thick forests in front. Even now it is barely visible from the road and is easy to miss if you don’t see the signposts. After a string of earthquakes necessitating major rebuilding each time the inhabitants moved to a place a little way away.
The city is now being conserved and tourism is being encouraged although there were only a few people there when we visited. There are temples dedicated to Helios and Trajan and the remains of other temples as yet of unknown dedication. Here are a few photographs to whet the appetite.
This is the bath complex from the rear and the front respectively.
The centre of one of the mosaics, the photograph doesn’t really do the whole thing justice.
There are lots more things to see, and the setting below the huge cliff is stunning, it is well worth a visit.
On the lane up to the site there is a very nice pension and restaurant where we had something to eat and met Mustafa and Aysel who own and run it. A very pleasant watering hole after clambering around ruins and getting lost in the mountains.
Next will be Patara, Xanthos and Letoon.
I hope everyone had a Happy Christmas and is now looking forward to making (and keeping) some New Year’s resolutions, I’ve made some but I’ll only tell you one of them. I’ve resolved to have more fun and adventure in 2011.
Christmas dinner was nice this year, I was invited to Joe and Tricia’s house here in the village along with other friends and we had a lovely meal. That’s Joe and Tricia at this end of the table.
The tone of the party was set by the ‘Party Angels’
In the traditional manner dinner was rounded off by ‘flaming’ the pudding
and then we had played Trivial Pursuit in which both teams knew the answers to each other’s questions but struggled with their own, is it ever thus?
Best wishes to everyone for a happy, peaceful and healthy 2011.
To continue from my last post, the bat was hanging from my bedroom ceiling so I left it there with the door and windows shut to stop Stanley the cat taking too much of an interest in it and I went down to Kaş for breakfast with some friends at Küçük Çakıl Plajı (Small Pebble Beach). It really is small too, the actual beach is only about five or six metres wide.
The breakfast at the Derya Beach Restaurant is an excellent creation consisting of lots of little portions of typical Turkish breakfast foods all washed down with copious quantities of tea. Here is what it looks like…
There was also a basket of home made sweet bread buns which came later.
The Küçük Çakıl Beach area at the eastern end of the town is where most of the hotels are situated. There are only two big hotels though, the majority of accommodation in Kas is provided by smaller, boutique hotels like these.
The western end of the town has more small hotels and pensions which cater to backpackers and those with a more limited budget.
When I returned from breakfast the bat hadn’t moved so I left it alone for the rest of the day. I’d been invited to dinner with some friends in the village so in the evening, before I went, I opened the bedroom windows in the hope that it would find it’s way out after the sun had gone down. I also hoped I didn’t end up with a colony of bats in the bedroom! After a very nice meal and some good conversation I got back home to find the bat gone. Success! I hope it was none the worse for it’s experience.
Walking up the goat track near my house the other morning I thought about how many times I’ve wanted to come up here. My neighbours , the çobanlar (goatherders), make their winter camp just up the road from my house and it sits astride the track so I’ve never wanted to disturb them by bringing the dogs through. Recently though, their camp has been abandoned for the summer and just the frames of their shelters are left standing like so many skeletons. Quite eerie.
They have taken their goats up to the yayla, the mountain pastures, for the hot period of the year. There is more to eat and it is cooler up there. Past their camp is a track to a large open area with a big tree in the middle of it.
You can see it on Google Earth and with the naked eye from the top of the mountain at Phellos. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to take the dogs for a walk there.
This fallen tree looks reminiscent of elephants to me, the shapes and greyness of it create that kind of feeling I think.
This rock with a hole eroded in it caught my eye too.
Kurabiye is a kind of small sweet bread similar in appearance to a Hot Cross Bun in England. The texture is firmer and they’re not quite as sweet but the new bakery in Kas makes very nice examples. As I’ve mentioned previously Hanife’s milk is so creamy that I let it stand to separate then skim off the cream. Well this afternoon I had Kurabiye with whipped cream and strawberry jam, extremely indulgent of me but it was lovely.
I had cream left over and later in the evening I had a look in the fridge and found some strawberries that I had forgotten about for a few days. I felt very guilty for about a nanosecond and then thoroughly enjoyed them. The strawberries were beautiful, really tasty.
A strange sort of shuffling sound woke me in the middle of last night. When my cat, Stanley, gets something in his ear he shakes his head rapidly and it makes a sort of soft shuffling clapping sound and that was the closest I could come to the sound that had woken me. But this time it kept repeating and going on for longer and longer. I sat up in bed, turned on the bedside light and saw a bat fluttering around obviously trying to find a way out of the bedroom. The windows had been open till about nine last evening and the bat must have come in looking for moths or maybe even for a place to roost. I opened a window for a few minutes but the bat didn’t find it and I didn’t want to invite mosquitoes into the house so I closed it and we both went back to sleep.
This morning I looked around and eventually found it behind a curtain, as I tried to photograph it away it flew up to the ceiling. I don’t want to chase it out into the sunlight now so I’ll let it stay there and leave the window open again this evening in the hope that it finds it’s way out and back to it’s normal roost. It’s a dear little thing and they fly around outside a lot in the evening at this time of year, there are thousands of big moths around so they must find food quite easily. This one looks very well fed doesn’t he?
If he doesn’t find his own way out this evening I’ll have to try and catch him but catching a creature as quick and agile as this without hurting it won’t be easy.
I’m going down to Kas for breakfast at the Derya Beach Restaurant with some friends this morning so I’ll post a couple of photographs of that later and let you know how I got on with the bat.
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