Pizza in Fethiye…

Posted on March 9, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

While abroad it’s always nice to embrace the local culture, break out of your comfort zone and try something new… I love Turkish food and ate it a lot whilst I was there, but sometimes all you want is an easy, unhealthy, pizza!

My favourite place for pizza in Fethiye is PizzaTomato, it’s part of a chain of restaurants all over the country, similar to Pizza Hut. Obviously, they sell pizza, along with the usual things, garlic bread, chips, wedges, chicken sides… It’s totally unhealthy, and not traditional Turkish in the slightest, but it is very yummy.

It’s not advertised on the menus, but they always have a ‘buy one pizza get another the same size for just 2tl extra’ deal if you ask. Medium pizzas are around 22-25tl and there are lots of choices! Of course there is a bit of a Turkish twist to the way its served – with a jar full of pickled chili’s, you wouldn’t get that in the UK, or Italy, would you? The Turks do love their pickled vegetables.

Along with yummy pizza, the Fethiye branch has the added bonus of a particularly nice view! The restaurant has 3 floors, with a small childrens play area on the second, and if you go right to the top floor and get a window seat, this is the view you get…right out over to the statue of Atatürk towards the sea.

Another bonus is the air-conditioning…on more than one occasion we’ve planned to go into Fethiye for doner, pide or something else cheap for lunch and ended up taking a detour to PizzaTomato instead as eating in a building with air con was an offer we just couldn’t resist!

I see people complaining all the time about people going on holiday to Turkey and eating ‘English’ food (I know, pizza isn’t English…) instead of trying the local dishes, I see the point, but these restaurants aren’t only there for the tourists. In fact, in all the times we went to PizzaTomato I’ve only ever seen 2 other British people in there, and it was always very busy! The Turkish people love their fastfood as much as anyone else, in fact, in large cities like Denizli which has very few foreign tourists, they have Mcdonalds, Burger King, KFC, PizzaTomato, etc… and although I’d prefer a lovely traditional Turkish pide, sometimes it’s nice to indulge in something a bit different 😉

If you want to visit whilst you’re in Fethiye, it’s on the main street opposite the harbour and small Migros.

Dinner at Mancero Kitchen in Fethiye

Posted on February 17, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

It was VERY rare that we ever ate out in restaurants when I lived in Turkey, apart from our regular 3tl doner on market day! We hardly ever went out, sat down and had an evening meal together, in fact I can think of only three or four occasions, one of which was paid for by Berkay’s boss, and another was on half price night on the last night of the season!

On Berkay’s birthday we decided to break away from the norm and go out somewhere we’d never been to, but heard a lot about – Mancero Kitchen. Normally we wouldn’t have gone somewhere so expensive but as it was my last night in Turkey for a long time, and Berkay’s birthday, we thought we’d splash the cash a bit!

The location is brilliant – it’s in Fethiye along the promenade which is lovely to walk along no matter what time of day. In the day its nice to see the blue sea against the backdrop of the mountains and stroll along taking little breaks to sit on the benches and admire the view. In the evening with everything all lit up it looks even more beautiful, the palm trees had different coloured lights, you could look over to Fethiye and see it all lit up, and it all looked especially magical just after sunrise, with the multicoloured sky as the backdrop.

We had already booked, so we just walked in and got seated straight away, it was a chilly December night so it wasn’t particularly busy but I can imagine that it gets very busy in summer so I definitely recommend booking in advance.

The inside is what I describe as a ‘proper restaurant’, if you’ve been to other restaurants in Calis or Fethiye most of them don’t feel fancy at all, they have plastic tables and chairs covered with tablecloths and most seating is outside, certainly the inside areas don’t really feel decorated at all, but Mancero is. Huge glass windows allowing you to look out to sea, lovely rustic wooden tables and chairs, little booth areas, wine displays, even a little seating area with budgies in cages chirping to say hello! It definitely feels like a classy restaurant, but boy do you pay for the pleasure.

Before we’d booked I had asked a friend if it was expensive, “not really, around 130tl for 2 with a starter and wine”… 130tl, not expensive for a two course meal?! We’d only ever spent 50tl on a meal out for two in Calis, a diet coke and a chicken dish each and that’s our lot! Looking through the menu was painful, I swear I could see Berkay flinching at the prices as he went down the list. All the steaks on the menu were 40-60tl each, almost as much as we’d normally spend on an entire meal for two, but as I said, it was a special occasion, and our last meal together for a long time, so we settled on a couple of steaks and waited to see if it was worth it.

While we were waiting they brought out a bread basket and an olive oil and balsamic vinegar dip, which was really delicious, we even asked for extra!

After a short while (it was very quick service) our dinner arrived, and as seems to be the norm in a lot of restaurants nowadays, it wasn’t served on a plate but a wooden board. I can’t even remember which steak I had but know it was 50tl, Berkay had the fillet steak which was 55tl (280-300 grams according to the menu). Both were served with a small amount of potatoes and some fried vegetables (pepper, onion and courgette). The steaks were a decent size and definitely soft, not fatty, well-cooked and delicious. However, I’m not entirely sure the meal was worth the money, overall. You can see from the photos that it wasn’t a great amount of food for the money, and while it was lovely, I can think of many, many other restaurants where we could have got more for our money and still had a very tasty meal. Still, we enjoyed it and Berkay had a lovely birthday dinner.

After eating, we went and sat outside with some Turkish tea, it was freezing but thankfully they had a fire lit in a metal bin for people to sit around and keep warm, I love that part of winter, makes a difference to summer where all the restaurants have to have fans blasting out!

Overall, I was fairly impressed, Mancero Kitchen is a nice place to eat if you’re on holiday or have the money to spare, but for local people, or people on a budget I wouldn’t recommend it. It seems very popular with expats, or tourists, and I can only presume that is because they compare the prices to the UK, rather than to similar restaurants in the area. The food is nice, but just not special enough for the price it is, in my opinion. That being said, I’d like to go back there again on another occasion and try something different, it’s a nice place to spend a special occasion, a once a year kind of thing!

Have you been to Mancero? Let me know what you thought, or if you’re planning to go and try it for yourselves.

Berkay’s birthday, rescuing puppies and cake..

Posted on February 1, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

Back in December it was Berkay’s 24th birthday, it fell on the day before I was due to fly back to the UK.
He had arranged to have a half day at work, so we got to spend the afternoon and evening together. I woke up early to make him a special Turkish breakfast – eggs, cheese, bread, tomato, turkish sausage and çay, with balloons! I managed to hunt down a birthday card in Fethiye (why on earth are birthday cards SO expensive there?!) and Boncuk even wrote one for him herself, “to my human”.

Off Berkay went to work, and after a bit of packing I walked to the hotel to sit and have a few hours with Boncuk. Around lunchtime Berkay finished work and met us, we planned to take Boncuk out for long walk together but didn’t get far… 2 minutes down the road she stopped to sniff something in the grass, we went over to see and it was a tiny dog laying on a pile of twigs and rubbish, hardly moving. We tried to pick her up and see if she was ok but she yelped and wouldn’t stand…nobody knew who she belonged to, although a restaurant owner nearby said he had seen a truck dump her there the day before. We were really concerned about the poor dog and didn’t want to just leave her because she looked so sad and poorly, so we rang a local vet who we knew worked with street animals and provided treatment for them for free through the animal aid charity. We took her on the bus and she just laid on Berkay looking really scared and sad, I don’t know how anyone could dump her! The vet done some scans and xrays and found nothing much wrong, just a bit of fluid around her belly due to a dog bite which he cleaned up and disinfected, and a serious vitamin D deficiency which had resulting in the puppy’s legs being bowed, we suspect this is why she was dumped. Once he had treated the bite and given her some painkillers and vitamins we took her back, we couldn’t keep an eye on her ourselves as we had nowhere to keep her, so we asked a nearby cafe to watch her. I was worried they wouldn’t look after her but we went back a few hours later and they had given her a box with a tshirt in, a blanket, food and water. The best part was that someone else had seen her, fallen in love and arranged to pick her up in a couple of days! That was our good deed of the day done.

By the time we got home and I finished packing a few more bits, it was time to get ready and leave for the restaurant we had booked – Mancero. We got dressed up, hopped on the dolmus and went. We got off wayyyyy too early by accident, but it turned out well as it meant we could admire the beautiful view just after the sun had gone down. We walked along the promenade and the sea looked absolutely stunning with the yellow, orange and blue tint of the sky, a few fishing boats were out which looked lovely in the foreground with the multicoloured horizon behind.

We had a lovely dinner in Mancero, but I’ll write about that in another post! Then we headed back to Calis and to Hüner cafe, where we’d arranged to meet friends for some birthday cake.

Funny story about the cake.. Berkay rang up to order it, then I told him to ring them back and ask for it to say ‘happy birthday askim’…as if I had arranged it for him… because I thought it was cute but didn’t know how to ask them myself…hahaha poor Berkay ordering his own cake eh? It was delicious and we had good company, including our two best friends and their twin boys… Adorable… look at the teddy bear bums!

I love these photos of us, we look so happy.

We had a lovely evening, although there was a very sad atmosphere lingering over us knowing it was our last evening together… It’s funny looking back at these photos knowing it was 7 weeks ago! It doesn’t feel like that long ago, yet it does feel like years ago at the same time!

Our village adventure – Day 1

Posted on November 26, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

Berkay’s family have been asking us to visit them for a long time and it was just impossible during the summer, however, now that it’s winter and life is moving by at a slower pace, we had the chance to make the trip. His step-mum is quite ill and recovering from an operation so we were hoping our visit would cheer her up a little.

They live in a town called Beyağaç in the Denizli province, it’s a town 1.5-2 hours away from the city centre. Instead of travelling on the bus from Fethiye for 6 hours, we rented a car for a relatively cheap amount (150tl for 3 days) and made the journey in just 4 hours instead, even with the cost of running it taken into consideration, it doesn’t work out much more expensive than the bus tickets, that’s the plus side of having a car that runs on LPG instead of petrol.

We left Fethiye at 1.45 pm on Friday and arrived at the village at around 6.15 pm. I was really looking forward to the drive because I knew it would be beautiful and I wasn’t disappointed, we had amazing views of the mountains and it was a relatively easy journey with nice roads. That’s the beauty of Turkey, you can reach almost any city just by following a single road. When in one place you can see sign posts pointing in all directions, directing you to other cities hundreds of miles away. Imagine being in London and seeing a sign post for ‘Manchester’ – it would be weird, but it’s normal here. So simple.

As we were driving further inland, we began to feel a bit chilly. When we reached a town near Tavas and stopped to fill up on gas, we realised just how cold it was. Freezing. We had to turn the car heater on to defrost ourselves.

Eventually we reached the town of Beyağaç, it’s actually a lot larger than I remember, with a population of 7000 people. Driving through the main town centre I saw a few apartment blocks, a post office, police station, school etc.. and of course the customary Ataturk statue (there’s one of these in every single town in Turkey). It’s very much a working farming town – most of the businesses deal with fixing tractors, delivering and supplying coal, animal food etc..

Berkay’s family live a 5-10 minute car drive from the main town centre, up on a hill surrounded by fields and beautiful scenery. They have wooden shacks behind their house full of animals, sheep, goats, chickens and cows. They use the cows for their milk, eggs and meat. They even make butter from the cow’s milk. Almost every fruit or vegetable they eat they have grown themselves. Everything there is very simple, back to basics.

We went inside and were greeted by his step-mum (from now on I’ll just call her his mum, as he has never met his birth mum), aunt and brother. All gave me a big hug and kisses both sides of my cheeks, as is the norm here in Turkey! ‘Who is that?’ I said to Berkay referring to the neighbours sitting in the living room that also joined in the hugging, ‘no idea’ he said… You have got to love their friendliness! After the welcome greetings were over, I felt a little more relaxed, I’m always nervous about that first ‘hello’ – mainly because I always end up in a panic about the polite way to do it. It’s normal here when greeting someone significantly older than yourself, to kiss their hand and then raise it to touch your forehead. It’s polite and shows that you respect your elders. The only person who really expects this in Berkay’s family is his father (and elderly neighbours etc). As it happened, his father arrived later than us so I had time to prepare for ‘the hand kiss’, I seriously practiced with myself first…

After his father arrived it was time for dinner. Berkay’s aunt is the main carer of the house, she goes every day and cooks, cleans etc, mainly because Berkays mum is ill, but also because her husband died a few years ago and her daughter has her own husband and house to take care of. I think she enjoys going to other people’s houses to spend her time being useful and so that she’s not so lonely.

The village is very traditional, the women do not work, they just stay home, cook, clean and look after the children and animals. I suppose it’s like going back in time 50 odd years in the UK , when housewives were the norm, and not frowned upon like they are today (in my experience, stay at home mums etc are often considered ‘lazy’). If I were to walk around the town centre, I would stick out like a sore thumb and it would be very apparent that I’m not from the area, not because I’m a foreigner, but because I’m a woman. There are just no women wandering around there, ever.

Anyway, the dinner was lovely. We had rice, chicken (fresh from the garden), an aubergine dish, yogurt and some fresh crusty bread. It was served in the traditional way here, in big metal bowls on a large tray on a blanket on the floor. The whole family sits on the floor to eat and shares food from the same bowl/plate, although everyone has their own fork/spoon. I really like this way of eating actually, it used to be a strange concept but now we do it so often it’s normal. It works out well if you don’t like a certain food too, instead of being served a plate of something and feeling under pressure to eat it, you can avoid it and take spoons of something you do like instead, they’ll never even notice! I avoided the yogurt, as I’ve still not quite grasped the concept of having yogurt served with dinner, but very much enjoyed the aubergine as I have become addicted to that since living in Turkey this time!

After dinner, everyone sat down with a glass of Cay and had a gossip, I have no idea what they were saying as I find it really difficult to understand a word. When in Fethiye, I can understand a lot, but there in the village it was different, I don’t know if it’s the dialect or if they just speak at super speed, but I can’t keep up with it. I just sat taking the atmosphere all in instead.

We were then served another large tray of fruit, watermelon, oranges, grapes, apples etc, sunflower seeds, nuts and cake. I didn’t want any but it’s rude to say no so I ended up eating a whole bowl of sunflower seeds, as you do, it’s impossible to eat just one!

We were really tired after the day of travelling so as soon as the neighbours went home at 10pm we headed to bed. Berkay’s mum wouldn’t let us sleep on the sofas in the living room or the cushions in the other bedroom (there’s only one bed in the house)- she made us take her bed instead, even though she’s sick. Bless her. These people might not have much themselves, but they are very welcoming and would give you anything.

Part 2 of our village trip coming soon!

Taze Fasulye – Turkish green beans recipe

Posted on November 12, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

This is another one of my favourite Turkish dishes, so simple to make, cheap and perfect on a winters day served with crusty bread.

Vegetables are a big part of Turkish cuisine, mainly because meat is so expensive. Most typically Turkish families will eat very occasionally, perhaps chicken once or twice a week and red meat only on special occasions so they are experts at making delicious meals from few ingredients. taze fasulye is one of these dishes.

As always, the amount of ingredients you need varies depending on how many people you want to feed, this made more than enough for 2 of us, you can always make more and freeze it, that works well.

Ingredients:
fresh green beans (around 500 grams)
2 onions diced
2 ripe, juicy tomatoes diced
1 large red pepper chopped (optional)
1 heaped tablespoon of tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic (optional)
salt
olive oil
water

First, prepare the beans. Rinse them, then pinch off the top and bottom of the beans and string them. Then break them into smaller 1.5 – 2 inch pieces. Do this with all of the beans.

Add a good drizzle of olive oil in the bottom of a fairly deep non stick pan (it must have a lid too). Add the beans, making sure the heat is turned down low so they do not burn. Stir often to avoid the beans burning, you just want them to soften slightly.

After 3-5 minutes, add the diced onion (and pepper if you wish – it just adds a little something to the flavour) and fry until the onions are soft and translucent in colour.

Get a heaped tablespoon full of tomato paste (domates salçası here in Turkey) and stir into the pan with the beans, onions and peppers. Leave this to cook together for 1-2 minutes.

Then add the chopped tomatoes and garlic into the pan along with enough water to cover the beans. Add 1-2 teaspoons of salt to flavour. Cover the pan and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let them simmer for 30-45 minutes until everything is soft and the sauce is reduced.

Serve with rice or just on its own with fresh crusty bread. Berkay had his with a side bowl of yoghurt and hot, pickled chili peppers! We went through 2 loads of bread between us with this dish… but if you can avoid that it’s fairly healthy and delicious. It’s lovely when served cold too, a good side dish.

Enjoy!

Fethiye, waffles & saying goodbye to summer..

Posted on November 2, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

It was Berkay’s last day at his summer job on Thursday and although he is already looking for work elsewhere, we are enjoying a well earned few days together.

The hotel is now closed which means Boncuk has taken up residence inside the grounds once again, she absolutely loves being free to wander around, explore and keep the hotel guard company. After breakfast this morning we went to visit her and spent an hour playing fetch and running around, she even had a little swim. She was so happy and kept doing excited little bunny hops. I made a short 1 minute video of clips of her bouncing around and having a dip, click HERE if you want to watch that. I just love how she’s sitting on me with her paws crossed, so elegant!

In the afternoon we caught the bus to Fethiye and headed straight to a place I’d been wanting to try for a few weeks. One of my friends mentioned a few weeks ago how she loves the waffles they sell in Turkey, and I never even realised they existed here or were so popular. Then I saw a new waffle cafe had opened in Fethiye and I knew I had to pay a visit! It’s near the blue culture centre in the Fethiye town square area, and is called ‘Renk Waffle’. They had a small menu to chose from but I’m sure you could adapt the toppings to suit your taste. Berkay chose a waffle covered in chocolate spread with kiwi, banana, strawberries and chopped hazelnuts, drizzled in chocolate sauce, and I had one covered with pistachio spread, banana, kiwi, walnuts, pistachio nuts and drizzled in caramel sauce. They were absolutely huge but delicious, and very unhealthy, probably a lot more than half a days recommended calorie intake! They were priced at 8tl and 8.50tl, which was reasonable considering the size of them. We washed them down with a glass of freshly made lemonade/limonata, and then sat for a while with a glass of Turkish tea. We had a lovely view of the town square where children were playing and people were skateboarding and rollerblading.

After recovering from our huge calorie intake slightly, we thought we best work some of it off so we went for a walk around the marina and through the Paspatur area of Fethiye, along all the little back streets. We once again found ourselves looking up at the brightly coloured umbrellas and taking photos, they are just so beautiful even if they are now a bit faded and battered from recent storms. Some of the umbrellas had even been closed up, I suspect they’ll take them all down soon, sadly – they really brighten up the place.

We made a quick stop off in LC Waikiki as I was in desperate need of some warm clothes as I have none here with me. I only bought a long sleeved jumper and a pair of jogging bottoms, but both will be very useful as I am definitely feeling the change in weather lately, especially in the evenings. Brr. We then took another detour, this time through the fish market where Berkay was hoping to find work in one of the restaurants. He didn’t have much luck, although he did hand out his name and number to some of the bosses, so fingers crossed a position opens up, unsurprisingly nobody really wants to take on new staff during the winter period. While we were there they were unloading some new crates of fish, check out the size of this one! It had the most beautiful, shiny scales, I felt quite sorry for it really… but not too much as we bought a few of his friends for our dinner.

The trees have started to change colour here now, yellow and orange leaves are starting to form and drop, they made a perfect frame for the mosque and I couldn’t resist taking a photo as we were walking back to the bus station.

I say this at the start of every month, but I really can’t believe it’s November already. This time next month I’ll probably be back in England, and in just 3 months time Berkay will be heading off to the army. Let’s just hope the next year passes as quickly as this past one has eh? I suspect it won’t.

Celebrating Kurban Bayram in Calis…

Posted on October 5, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

This weekend marked the start Kurban Bayram, a 4 day religious holiday here in Turkey.

Kurban Bayram is the festival of the sacrifice, where millions of people sacrifice an animal to commemorate the Islamic prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God. Animals such as cows, goats and most often, sheep, are sacrificed. Once sacrificed, the meat is shared out, some is given to the poor, some is kept for the family, and some is given to other relatives, friends and neighbours. Of course Kurban Bayram/Eid isn’t just celebrated in Turkey, it is celebrated by Muslims all over the world. In the UK the holiday is known as Ed-al-Adha.

While lots of people have time off from work for the holiday period, most people working in tourism will not have any time off at all, making it difficult for them to travel back to their families to celebrate, as they often live hundreds of miles away. Berkay is one of those people who works throughout the holiday and it is actually one of the busiest times at the hotel, so this weekend really just felt like any other!

We have no family at all here, they all live 4-5 hours away, so there was no chance to visit them. Instead, our old landlord invited us to go to their house for a BBQ. We used to live in the apartment above them so it was so weird being back there and seeing it all again. I used to love that old house, although walking back there yesterday made me realise how inconvenient it was, you can see that it is in the middle of lots of fields, there are sheep, goats, cows and chickens in the gardens and it was very much like a farm. From looking at the photo, you’d find it hard to believe that the tourist resort of Calis is just a 15 minute walk away.

We arrived at 11 o clock and missed the sacrificing of the goat, which I was thankful for. I stood on our balcony and watched the sacrifice 2 years ago, and although it was peaceful and the animal didn’t suffer for long, it was upsetting. We live in a day and age where we are truely spoilt, and are able to buy meat all cleaned up and neatly packaged in the supermarket, we see it as an item, and don’t consider that it was once an animal trotting around a field somewhere… I have nothing whatsoever against the sacrificing, I would be a hypocrite if I did as I enjoy meat far too much to be a vegetarian, however, sometimes ignorance is bliss. The good part is that none of the animal goes to waste, they use the skin and wool, and every edible part, including the tongue and brain (yuck). I suspect that a lot of the population of Turkey will be eating sheep, or goat, for breakfast lunch and dinner for the next few days!

While we were sat in the garden waiting for the BBQ to heat up, lots of people came to greet us with an ‘iyi bayramlar’ and a handshake, or when greeting people significantly older than ourselves, it’s our job to take their hand, gently kiss it then raise it to touch our foreheads as a sign of respect, something I still struggle to remember to do! Traditional bayram ‘seker’ or sweets were also handed out to us.

Once the BBQ was warmed up, a massive bowl of VERY fresh goat meat was plonked in front of us ready to be cooked. A wonderful spread of salad, aubergine salad, yaprak dolma (vine leaves stuffed with meat, rice and herbs), bread and of course lots of fresh meat, was laid out. Other neighbours, friends and relatives of these people came over and everyone shared the food. It was absolutely delicious. I really wonder why people don’t eat goat more often!

We stayed for around 3 hours then headed back home, Berkay went to sleep for the rest of the day, then straight to work at 8pm in the evening, no rest for the wicked! Whilst out walking Boncuk, I saw these two sheep in a garden near our house, I know their fate isn’t good, I was half tempted to go and rescue them! Instead I settled for patting them on the head. They’ll be somebody’s dinner tomorrow probably…

Although people may criticise ‘resort life’ as not being a true Turkish lifestyle, during holidays like this alot of people go back to their roots and participate in these old customs, at least this my experience here in Fethiye. I love taking part in their customs and traditions during days like this, I think I was more excited about it than Berkay was honestly!

Bayram continues until and including Tuesday, with banks, schools and government offices opening again on Wednesday. We won’t be doing anything else to celebrate, but tomorrow we are borrowing a friend’s car for the day and going for another BBQ, we have a fridge full of goat ribs given to us by Berkay’s friend, so it would be rude not to really, wouldn’t it?

Click HERE to read how Berkay celebrated bayram last year, although be warned that it does contain photos of animals during the sacrificing process that may upset some people.

Perfect Turkish Rice..

Posted on September 26, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

I’m not a great cook, never have been and probably never will be, but for the past few months I’ve been cooking more often and trying my hand at some Turkish dishes after being ‘trained’ by Berkay. He rarely compliments my food, it’s never salty enough or oily enough, but a few days ago he told me my attempt at Turkish rice was great, and that’s good enough for me! ‘Turkish rice’ as I call it, is a tough one to master but I think I’ve nearly got it. I know it’s a favourite of some so here’s our version!

Ingredients for 2-3 people:
1 cup white rice ( In Turkey, we use Baldo rice, you may be able to find that in certain supermarkets in the UK but if not, basmati rice will be ok)
2 tablespoons şehriye (This is like a thin pasta, if you’re in the UK look for ‘orzo’ pasta which is almost identical)
A knob of butter
2 cups of hot water
half a chicken stock cube
salt and pepper to taste
+ a shallow saucepan with a lid

Firstly rinse the rice in cold water, then you need to soak the rice in HOT water for around 30 minutes before cooking. After the 30 minutes, wash the rice again in cold water, the water should run clear. Drain it well.

Heat the butter in the pan on a medium heat and once melted, add the şehriye. You need to keep an eye on it and keep stirring so that it doesn’t burn. Wait for it to change to a darker, toasted color.

Once it has changed colour, add the rice into the pan and stir thoroughly for a couple of minutes, again make sure the heat is on medium so that the grains do not burn.

Now add the hot water, half the chicken stock cube and a little salt. Stir a few times, turn up the heat and bring to a boil.
Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to low-medium and cover.

Leave the rice to simmer for 8-10 minutes. Now, if there’s one thing Berkay has taught me it’s to NOT lift the lid to check if the rice is done, this is apparently very important. How do you know if it’s done if you can’t open the lid? Well, give the pan a little shake, judge the best you can and/or just turn off the heat and hope for the best! It’s difficult to judge – it can either end up soggy, stuck to the pan or perfect and there is very little time between each stage. I find that 10 minutes is the perfect amount of cooking time for 1 cup of rice with 2 cups of water.

Turn off the heat and keep the pan covered until you are ready to serve, again this is apparently very important!

Use a fork to fluff up the rice and serve. Berkay puts black pepper on his to spice things up a little.

Enjoy!

Do you like this ‘Turkish rice’? Have you mastered it or found a better recipe? Let me know (:

Kuru Fasulye – Turkish white bean stew recipe

Posted on September 14, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

I really like Turkish food, and this is a delicious, easy dish to make. I posted a photo on Facebook earlier this week and a few people asked for the recipe, so here is the version I follow…

Please note, we judge things by eye, we don’t really measure things, you’ll need to adjust the recipe based on your taste. This recipe is more than enough for 2-3 people, we had leftovers.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of dried white beans. (Dried cannellini beans is the name I believe, you can buy them in supermarkets in the UK – I checked).
1 or 1.5 onions, chopped
1 heaped tablespoon of tomato paste
olive oil
salt
red pepper flakes
water

First, you need to soak the beans in water for around 12 hours, or overnight the day before you plan to cook them.

When you’re ready to start cooking, drain and rinse the beans then put them into a large saucepan/cooking pot with 4-5 cups of fresh water, bring this to the boil and then turn down to a low heat. Leave this to boil gently for around 45-60 minutes, but keep checking back and topping up the water as required. You need to cook the beans until they are soft, but not quite fully cooked.

Once they reach this stage, you can begin to prepare the other ingredients, but don’t turn off the heat on the beans.

Add a little olive oil to a frying pan and saute the onion with the olive oil for around 3-5 minutes or until soft, don’t let them burn. (If you wanted to add meat, you could at this point, diced red meat works well. You could also add peeled, chopped tomatoes and/or peppers if you wish – we didn’t).

Then add your tomato paste, stirring it into the onions. Once it is all stirred together and soft, add this mixture to the beans and water and stir gently. You can add salt and red pepper flakes, we like this dish both salty and slightly spicy, so we added quite a lot of both.

Leave this on a low heat to simmer for around 20-30 minutes, or until the beans are soft enough for your liking, there’s no set time and cooking times vary according to the appliance, just keep an eye on the beans and keep testing them until you’re happy with the taste and texture.

The result is a delicious, hearty bean stew. We serve it with a plate of rice and fresh, crusty bread, which is perfect for dipping in and mopping up the ‘juice’ – yum! Berkay eats his with a quarter of raw onion covered in salt, I never understand that, it must be a Turkish thing!

It’s such a cheap and easy dish to make, it’s filling and really warms you up too so it’s a very popular winter dish here. We don’t make it too often as it uses up a lot of our gas bottle due to the length of the cooking time, but you can easily make it in bulk and freeze the leftovers. It’s also possible to skip the first 2 steps and use canned white beans instead, which greatly reduces the cooking time.

I’m always a little nervous posting recipes, I’m not a very good cook and all these Turkish dishes I learnt from Berkay so I’m hoping he knows his stuff and is teaching me well – it’s difficult to learn when he’s not very specific on exact measurements! Let me know if you try this recipe, or perhaps suggest a different version? Have you tried the dish before?

I’ll be posting a Turkish rice recipe soon.. (:

Football, Fethiyespor & icecream…

Posted on September 5, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

On Sunday we had a rare evening together and went to a football match – Fethiyespor v Menemen Bld.Spor. Berkay arranged to go into work 3 hours later than normal so after dinner we headed into Fethiye town centre.

We had been trying to get tickets for the game in advance but they kept telling us to ‘come back tomorrow’ – much like everything else in Turkey it was very unorganised! In the end we just gave up and got them from the gates on the day. We got the cheapest seats which we only 5tl… bargain!

After getting tickets from the stadium (just behind the Tuesday market area) we walked back in to the main town and sat down in a little cafe for some ice-cream. It’s real Turkish icecream and if you’ve ever eaten it you’ll know what I mean when I describe it as slightly chewy – it’s delicious and really filling. We got 4 scoops for 2tl which is an absolute bargain. I’ve heard horror stories in recent weeks of people being charged £10 for one ice cream in resorts – even 10tl would be extortionate! This was a massive ice cream, I got a mixture of lemon, blackcurrant and chocolate chip…dipped in chocolate sauce and nuts. Yum. They have so many different flavours to chose from too.

After that we took a slow walk through the park in Fethiye and managed to catch the sunset – click HERE for my previous blog post for photos of that. I love this park and it’s so much nicer to walk around in the evenings when it’s cooler and the sun isn’t directly overhead.

Berkay popped to the shop to stock up on sunflower seeds for the match (you’ll see why if you keep reading) and then we headed off to the stadium again.

I was suprised by how much security was outside the stadium. There were stewards searching people and police with guns and truncheons, it was really quite intimidating. I used to have a season ticket for Chelsea FC and considering the massive difference in the standing of both clubs, there wasn’t an awful lot of difference in the security measures in place, the only things that were missing were police horses! At Chelsea games we were allowed to take our bottles of water inside the stadium as long as the lids were thrown away (or hidden in our pockets – shhh) but here they didn’t allow any kind of bottles – strange.

Once through the turnstiles we searched for our correct seats, but failed to find them. The numbering seemed to be totally illogical – I ended up sitting in seat 245 and the seat next to me was numbered as ‘407’ – go figure! It didn’t matter, because despite the speaker on the tannoy announcing that everyone should stick to the seat number stated on their ticket, very few people actually did.. at least not in our stand. There were very few stewards inside the stands, I can’t actually recall seeing any.

There was a small snack place to buy food in, none of the usual hot dogs, burgers, pies and pints of beer though – toasties, chicken doner kebabs only. There was also a crate full of packets of sunflower seeds for sale which seemed to be everyone’s snack of choice! Turkish people do love their salted sunflower seeds, they eat them like a little chipmunk or something – it’s quite a skill to master or you end up with a mouth full of cardboardy shells. Bleugh. Literally everyone was eating these, and none of them seemed to care where they disposed of the shells – look at the massive pile Berkay made on the floor!! After all the salt we needed a drink of water so had to buy one from the young boy selling them from a massive ice barrel in the corner of the stand – they were 1tl each, for a tiny little carton.

It was soon national anthem time, something the Turkish people take very seriously. Everyone stood still with their hands by their sides singing along. Nobody moved a muscle apart from the photographers!

I enjoyed the game, although it was very frustrating as neither team managed to score and boy did they have a lot of chances! Even my Fethiyespor themed nails didn’t bring them luck.

The match was pretty much the same as any other game of football I’ve been to, passionate fans, jeers, swearing and booing at the referee, fights on the pitch leading to red cards and players diving all over the place. Oh, the beautiful game eh? Don’t get me wrong, I do love football. I thought it was interesting how they had a ‘water break’ 23 minutes into the game due to the hot weather, something that is certainly never necessary in England.

There are a very passionate set of Fethiyespor fans in one of the other stands, they’re the hardcore, season ticket holders. They were singing and banging drums for much of the match – I found it so funny how most of their chants were to the same tune as the football chants I’ve heard at Chelsea – different words, different language, same tune!

The match ended in a 0-0 draw which was disappointing, but it was a good evening regardless. As soon as the full time whistle was blown we hurried out of the stadium, got on the dolmus and headed home, Berkay went straight to work. I wish he’d get a full day off sometimes, he’s not had one day off since the end of May and isn’t likely to until the season is over in November. I’m thankful that his boss and his colleagues are flexible and will allow him to make up hours if he asks to go in late.. that’s better than nothing (: