Turkish Muse

Kaffeeklatsch, and The Brownies That Went With It

So remember last month when I returned home from pilates class one morning to find that a neighbor had invited me over for coffee? Except it wasn't just one neighbor, it was all the women in the building sitting in a well-appointed salon wearing nylons and heels? And I had rocked up still in my sweatpants thinking I could gracefully defer the offer for coffee and come back another time?

No? Well, you can read that story here.

Since then, I have joined the ladies in my building every other Friday for coffee and sweets, swapping my usual work attire -- which, because I work at home, consists of the above-mentioned sweatpants or pajamas -- for dressy pants and a blouse. I sit and listen, they sit and muhabbet sohbet (chit chat) while I try to keep up and say something useful every now and again.

Last Friday, it was my turn to host, an event I have been nervous about for over a month. I decided to make my Pumpkin Spice Bread, which was specifically requested after I had given some as a gift to a few neighbors.

But just in case someone didn't like the combination of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, I also decided to go for something chocolatey, so I turned to my need-dessert-in-a-hurry recipe: brownies.

These are the simplest brownies to make. All you have to do is combine this, stir that, plop it in the pan and bake. The ease of making them, though, belies the chewy and light wonderfulness that they become.

Walnut Brownies
Adapted from Hershey's

113 grams (1 cup) butter, melted and cooled
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350 F or 175 C. Butter a 9-inch (22 cm) square baking pan.

Stir together butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl. Add eggs, beat well. Stir together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Gradually add this dry mixture to the egg mixture, beating until well blended. Stir in chopped nuts. Spread batter evenly into prepared pan.

Bake about 20-25 minutes, or until the sides of the brownie begin to pull away from the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack. Makes about 9 big brownies or 16 small ones.

Afiyet olsun!

I apologize for only posting recipes with cup and teaspoon measurements. Next month we are going to the states and I plan to buy a scale so that I can actually measure out the weight of all these ingredients, which will make it so much easier to convert, for example, a cup of sugar into grams. Until then, you can use a Turkish water glass (which holds about 6-8 oz) as a cup and a cay spoon as a teaspoon.

What's Cooking: Pumpkin Spice Bread

*knock knock*

Anybody still out there? Yes? Oh good! I'm so glad you haven't left me after my little hiatus there. What have I been doing?, you ask. Oh, the usual. Drank too many martinis on Saturday night at a dinner party, which left me with absolutely no brain cells to write on Sunday. Then got caught up with work on Monday and had somewhat unexpected guests arrive at 8 am on Tuesday. 

But then I put on my cooking apron and decided to do something with the frozen pumpkin puree that's been sitting in my freezer for a month. Come hell or high water, I decided, something must be done with it.

So I searched my favorite cooking websites and found this, which seemed to be the perfect pumpkin spice bread. It got rave reviews from commenters and the pictures looked oh so divine. 

Sadly, however, I had to make several substitutions seeing as how I did not have canned pumpkin (yuck), sour cream or grapeseed oil. I used fresh pumpkin puree, yogurt and corn oil, respectively, in their places, and the bread suffered for it.

Oh, it smelled just divine, don't get me wrong. But the bread was soggy and mushy inside, a result, I think, of too much water in the puree and yogurt. And maybe I didn't bake it long enough. Who knows?

But oh the smells. All that fresh ground nutmeg and cloves and cinnamon....oh my goodness, I knew that I had to try again. And so I went out in search of another recipe, this time knowing that it couldn't have as much water in it, which meant that sour cream or yogurt was out, and preferably called for pumpkin puree, not canned pumpkin.

And oh, I found it. And it was wonderful.

Now, I've eaten pumpkin spice bread as a kid, and it is always good. But this....this is AMAZING. And it's all because of one single thing: fresh spices. They are the single most important part of this recipe.

I used to gripe that it's hard to find ground spices at the supermarket in Turkey, but fresh is so much better, even if I do have to go to three different stores to get enough spices for one recipe and even if I do have to look up what the heck to do with whole cloves online.

Be sure to buy fresh whole nutmeg, which you can grate down with the smaller side of a cheese grater. And purchase whole cloves too, which you can pound into powder in a plastic sandwich bag with a hammer. Or, if you don't have a hammer (and what expat does?) use the heel of a heavy boot.

Hey, I'm all about working with what you've got.

The cinnamon I used was not fresh (that is, I didn't grate any cinnamon sticks for this recipe, but I think I will next time so I've specified to do so in the recipe), but it was fairly new so that helped.

The first loaf I baked of this pumpkin bread was a test one to see if the recipe worked. And huzzah! It did! I baked a second loaf to freeze for the Christmas party we're hosting this Saturday, but the bread wasn't 20 minutes out of the oven before I couldn't help myself, I had to slice into it and eat a big chunk off the end.

All right, I thought. Well, nobody has to know that the end is missing. Everyone will assume someone else at the party ate it.

Nah, I said. Who cares? Here's hoping the pumpkin man at the pazar has more fresh pumpkin for sale!

Pumpkin Spice Bread
Adapted from Simply Recipes

1 1/2 cups flour (210 grams)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar (200 grams)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup pumpkin puree (1/4 litre)
1/2 cup olive oil (1 dL)
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated cinnamon sticks

Preheat oven to 350 F or 180 C. Sift together flour, salt, sugar and baking soda.

Mix together the pumpkin, olive oil, eggs and spices with a whisk or a hand-held blender. Combine with the dry ingredients, but do not mix too thoroughly. Mix until just combined.

Pour into a well-buttered (don't skimp!) loaf pan (any size is fine, as long as it is shaped like a loaf of bread). Bake about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean and the top is browned and crackly.

After 10 minutes in the loaf pan, turn out the bread onto a cooling rack.

Afiyet olsun!

What's Cooking: Sugar Cookies

Sugar cookies are a staple in pretty much every American household during the holiday season. They're pretty, they taste good, they don't have any expensive hard to find ingredients and they're great fun for kids, who can use cookie cutters to make fun Santa Claus shapes and Christmas bells out of the dough.

In my effort to celebrate the Christmas season, two of the four above reasons cinched the deal for me on why I should make sugar cookies this year: they taste good and they don't have any expensive, hard to find ingredients.

In fact, you probably already have everything you need to make sugar cookies right in your kitchen. Technically, you can make these cookies year round, but I prefer to eat them only at Christmas.* I think it makes them more special that way.

Most sugar cookie recipes call for freezing or refrigerating the dough for a few hours before baking. This one doesn't and I think it's because this recipe is not necessarily meant for using with cookie cutters. I could be totally wrong about that, of course, so do feel free to try rolling this dough out and making neat shapes.

Me, I'd just rather eat the darn cookie than roll out the dough into snowflakes.

The one thing I noticed when I looked at this recipe was that it called for a lot more flour than sugar, which I thought was odd. Why not call them Flour Cookies, then? I guess that name wouldn't work, though, since in the end they really taste like sugar, not flour. Which is good, obviously.

Ingredients:
(Adapted from AllRecipes)

2 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon vanilla crystals (found in Turkish supermarkets)

Pre-heat oven to 375 F or 190 C. In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and baking power. Set aside.

Melt the butter and let it cool. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually add in flour mixture.

Using a teaspoon, making small rounded dough balls and place them evenly spaced apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Make sure the dough balls are small; the cookies will expand in the oven.

Bake 8 minutes in the preheated oven. Let cookies stand for 2 minutes on the cookie sheet before cooling on a wire rack.

Afiyet olsun!

*To jazz things up a bit, you could add a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon juice or lemon zest, or candy like M&Ms, to make these cookies throughout the year. I'm a simple gal, though, I like 'em plain.

A Story in Which I am Invited to the Ladies Coffee Club

They were dressed impeccably, in black velvet pants and nylons and shiny patent leather high heels. Their hair was done up, curled just so and their lips painted in various shades of rose.

Immediately, I flushed. Having just come from Pilates class, I was wearing grey sweats and a purple t-shirt with a red cardigan over it. I was also wearing furry brown slippers. In no way was I prepared for whatever this was.

Hesitantly, I stepped into the salon, waving feebly. I sat down next to one of the women and looked around. Everyone was looking at me, smiling politely.

My neighbor brought me a coffee and I took it eagerly, grateful for something to do, something to look at other than my fuzzy slippers next to my neighbor's sparkly black pumps.

Just 10 minutes earlier I had arrived home from my early morning workout when Hanife Hanim, the cleaning woman, (yes, I debated and decided to hire one) told me that my neighbor across the hall had dropped by to invite me for coffee.

Really? I said. How interesting. I've only seen her a few times and I don't even know her name. How lovely of her to invite me over.

I had to start work soon, though, so decided to stop by and say thank you for the invitation but could we please have coffee another time?

I knocked hesitantly on my neighbor's door and prepared for what I would say. When she opened the door, I was greeted with a hearty "Hosgeldin!" and a heartwarming smile. She ushered me inside with a "gel, gel".

I had just opened my mouth to speak when she put her hand on my shoulder and extended an arm towards the salon. I turned to look and saw three of my female neighbors sitting there sipping coffee.

It turns out that I had just been invited to the bi-weekly coffee club for the housewives in my building. Unbeknownst to me, they meet every other week for coffee and sweets and gossip, switching houses each time. Yesterday was the first day that I was invited.

Over the next hour, we chatted about how to make homemade facial creams -- rose water keeps away crows feet, apparently -- and how much one woman's husband loves to sleep.

After some of this lovely chit chat, I poked my head into the kitchen to tell the host that I ought to be getting back to my computer.

She waved her hand away. Just have one slice of cake, she said.

Well, I really shouldn't -- wait, is that lemon? Well, I suppose a few more minutes wouldn't hurt...

This led to a spirited discussion of where to get the best slivered almonds in Izmir, an item of concern for me as I need to find slivered almonds for a French chocolate cake I plan on making this month.

Eventually, I did slip away, with promises to see them all again in two weeks at another neighbor's house. I came home and told Hanife Hanim about how I had really just planned to be gone for 2 minutes but...

Have you never been invited to one of these things? she asked.

No, I said. I have lived in Turkey for more than two years and I've never been invited. Of course, I've always been in an office during the day....

As she turned away, I asked if she and her friends did something similar.

No, she said. We're always working.

Musings on Teaching Yourself

The life of an expat is many things. It is sometimes adventurous, oftentimes frustrating, more often than not quite exciting, and occasionally even glamorous.

But it can also be very lonely if you don't have a close circle of friends who have become your family.

This is the worst time of year for loneliness, right around the holidays. I am not necessarily hungry for turkey or stuffing or pumpkin pie this year -- although don't get me wrong, I would LOVE some right now -- but I am more hungry for time and knowledge, the kind that comes from interaction with people you love and spend time with on a regular basis.

Living abroad you learn many things about people, about life, and about yourself. But the one thing that I think I am truly missing out on right now is the kind of learning that you pick up during Sunday dinners with the family, the kind that is fluid and spontaneous and without form.

There is so much to learn from family, from close friends who have been there, done that. I told my stepmother more than once, for example, that if Jeff and I ever buy an apartment in Turkey, I want her to come for a few months and oversee the renovations. She's good at that kind of stuff, she knows how to lay tile the right way and can tell if the contractor is doing it wrong.

And my mother, she and my stepdad could write a book about how to tell authentic antiques from fake ones, and how best to refinish a dilapidated dresser, and which kind of rusted watch sold for $1 at a flea market will get you the big bucks on eBay. And sometimes I wish I could ask my dad about all the stuff he's got planted in the yard, what kind of flower grows best in the shade, how I can grow basil on my balcony.

So instead, I turn to the internet for nearly everything I need to know. And the internet....well, let's just say it's lacking in so many ways, especially when you're trying to learn how to cook, which I have been trying to do for a few months now.

In a piece I read today, of all days, in the New Yorker titled "What's the Recipe? Our hunger for cookbooks" by Adam Gopnik, he writes about how many cookbooks have turned into rote grammar books, whereby we don't actually learn how to cook but instead learn how to simply put together a recipe:

But is learning how to cook from a grammar book—item by item, and by rote—really learning how to cook? Doesn’t it miss the social context—the dialogue of generations, the commonality of the family recipe—that makes cooking something more than just assembling calories and nutrients? It’s as if someone had written a book called “How to Play Catch.” (“Open your glove so that it faces the person throwing you the ball. As the ball arrives, squeeze the glove shut.)

And that is EXACTLY what I have been doing. I do the same thing with food blogs (cookbooks are too expensive here) by finding ones I trust and like and go back to again and again when I want to make something. But by doing that, I'm really not learning how to actually cook anything.

My friend Chole is one of those people who can look at a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and judging by how many eggs there are or how much sugar it calls for can tell what kind of cookies you're going to get. When I told her last year that I wanted to make thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies but that every recipe I was trying produced flat ones, she found me a recipe that produced exactly what I was looking for. How? She knows that more brown sugar and egg yolk will produce thick and chewy cookies.

Now, I do all this stuff by trial and error which means that yesterday I boiled the lasagna noodles because the recipe I'm following says to EVEN THOUGH the box says NOT TO. But you must follow the recipe! Indeed! The recipe will show me the way!

I've got a kilo of pureed pumpkin in my freezer that I am terrified of using because I have no idea what to expect with any of the recipes I've found. Spicy Thai soup sure does sound great, but will it be so spicy that Jeff won't eat it? And what about all those pumpkin cupcake recipes -- which, first of all, would mean I'd have to buy a cupcake pan -- that call for cream cheese frosting? I don't know about those either.

I guess what I would rather do, what I feel I am really missing out on, is being able to call someone and say, hey, have you ever made pumpkin soup before? Come on over to my house and let's do it together. Oh, and bring an eggplant over, will you, because I have yet to learn how to broil one.

That'd be so much more fun than following a recipe off the internet.

You'll Never Know if You Don't Ask

So yesterday I'm having lunch at the Bostanli pazar, a farmers' market/flea market that converges on my neighborhood every Wednesday, when I notice an old man sitting next to an cart full of chickens.

The cart, which was set upon two rickety wheels and encased in chicken coop netting, had a umbrella attached to it with rope. The fact that the old man's "shop" was set up a ways away from the main selling area made me wonder just what it was he was doing with those chickens.

I slowly ate my gozleme and sipped my steaming cay as I watched the old man. He fidgeted with his bright blue wool cap and watched the scores of people go by. I hoped one of the passers-by would do something, anything, to give me a better indication of what it was the old man was doing there, but nobody seemed the least bit interested in him or his chickens, except for a naughty little boy who tried to poke one of them.

It occurred to me that the only was I was going to find out the particulars of this man's business was to ask him myself. I mean, I'm not entirely stupid; obviously he was selling the chickens. But how? Live? Dead?

I thought about how I might ask these questions in Turkish without appearing like an idiot. In the end, I gulped my tea down and stood up. Here goes nothing, I thought.

"Excuse me, may I ask something?" I asked tentatively.

"Of course," he said.

"Are you selling those chickens?" I asked.

"Yes" came the reply.

I paused. Okay. We've established what I already know.

"Well...how are you selling them? Like this?" I gestured weakly towards the chickens to indicate that I mean alive.

"However you want. You can buy them alive, or I can cut them. However you want."

I assumed that by using the word "cut" he really meant "kill." Now for the hard part.

"Okay....where do you cut them?"

The old man jerked a thumb behind him, but all I could see was a dilapidated bicycle and a dirty white tarp. He squinted up at me and I could tell that the furrow between his eyebrows wasn't only because of the afternoon sun. He must have been wondering why I was asking him such dumb questions.

"Where's your farm?" I said.

"In Izmir, not far."

I stared at the chickens a moment. Here it is staring me in the face, everything I'm always reading about sustainable living and organic this and free-range that. Here it is, complete healthy chickens from a local farm and I'm all squeamish because I can't stomach the thought of one of them being killed under a dirty tarp and then having to take it home how? In a plastic bag? What would I do with the feathers? Yech. I decided to stop asking questions.

On the other hand, he did say I could buy it alive, and a live chicken would be a great play mate for my cats.

How To: Get Food (and Booze!) Delivered to Your Door

It was well over a year after I had arrived in Turkey that I finally discovered the glory that is Yemek Sepeti. I don't think it was until I started making expat friends that I heard about this website, this wonderful website that delivers food to your door. Well, the website doesn't, but you know what I mean.

Gone were the days when I had to actually call a restaurant and -- gasp! -- speak to a human being to order my lahmacun. Now I could go online, click the dishes that I wanted and yippeee! 30 minutes later somebody brought it straight to my door.

The best thing about Yemek Sepeti, I think, is that you don't enter any credit card information online. You simply pay the delivery guy with cash or a debt card or whatever when he shows up with your food.

You totally need this in your life.

The first thing you want to do is go to Yemek Sepeti's homepage. From here, choose your city.

What's Cooking: Homemade Mac and Cheese

Ooooh, boy, you are going to want to try this! After our discussion last week about what kinds of foods from the homeland you keep stashed away here in Turkey, I was hankering for some old fashioned homemade macaroni and cheese. Not the kind from a box, mind you, but the kind with a crunchy baked top oozing with gooey cheesy goodness on the inside.

I had made mac and cheese once before, back in Istanbul, and it turned out okay, but it wasn't good enough to justify the insane cost of the all the imported cheese I used. I decided yesterday to look again at some of my favorite food blogs to find a recipe I thought would be worthy of the 13 TL imported Parmesan I can find at my local grocery store.

This recipe calls for 500 grams (1 pound) of cheese, and really, you can use whatever kind of cheese your little heart desires. I decided to go with a mix of kasar, Parmesan, smoked Gouda and Danish blue cheese. Jeff was a bit worried that all the different cheeses would be too busy, but I suspected they would work out just wonderfully and indeed they did.

Homemade Mac and Cheese
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman

4 cups (500 grams) elbow macaroni (called Pipette in Italian, or Bukle in Turkish)
1/2 stick (57 grams) butter
1/4 cup flour
2 1/2 cups (500 ml) whole milk
2 teaspoons mustard
1 egg, beaten
200 grams kasar peynir
100 grams blue cheese
150 grams Parmesan
100 grams Fume sade (smoked Gouda)
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 teaspoon black pepper
Optional: cayenne pepper, paprika, thyme

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit/175 degrees Celsius. Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish.

Cook the macaroni until very firm, about 5 minutes. You want to macaroni to be "al dente", that is, not quite ready to eat plain. Drain and set aside.

Grate all 500 grams of cheese and set aside in a bowl.

In a large pot, melt the butter and then sprinkle in the flour. Whisk together over medium-low heat. Cook for about five minutes, whisking constantly so it doesn't burn.

Pour in the milk, add the mustard and then whisk until smooth. Cook for about five minutes until the sauce becomes very thick, almost gravy-like. (If the sauce doesn't become gravy like, add a few teaspoons of flour to get it going.)

Add 1/4 cup of this mixture into the beaten egg, which you set aside earlier. Immediately begin whisking the sauce and egg so that the egg doesn't cook. This is called tempering. Once the egg and sauce mixture has cooled, add it back to the sauce.

Add about 1/2 to 2/3 of the grated cheese to the sauce and stir to melt the cheese. Add the salt and pepper.

Pour in the drained, cooked macaroni and stir to combine all the cheesy goodness with the pasta.

Pour into a buttered baking dish (a 9x13 inch pan will work great) and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the top is brown and crispy.

This mac and cheese is so awesome you won't even need to put ketchup on it.

Afiyet olsun!

Good Eats: Beyti Sarma

So. It's Saturday morning around 8 am as I write this and I am in a piss poor mood. I'm tired. I'm groggy. My head is swimming because I have finally weaned myself off my depression meds and let me tell you, it doesn't matter how slowly you do it, the few days after you take your last one-fourteenth of a pill are a real bitch. I feel like I'm hungover and my brains are sloshing around inside my skull.

So today is all about the sofa and the down comforter and episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty for me. Oh, and The Philadelphia Story because I watch that movie pretty much twice a month regardless of whether I'm happy or sad or sick or healthy. It's like my wet blanket.

So today for lunch I want you to do something for me. Eat beyti sarma. Make sure you're good and hungry first.

Are you hungry? I mean, are you really really hungry? Because you have to be to eat an entire plate of beyti sarma. This dish is not for the faint of stomach. Ground lamb patties wrapped in tortillas, then covered in tomato sauce, melted butter and ground pistachio, beyti sarma is a whole lot of gooey goodness, especially if you order it with melted cheese. It's served alongside bulgur and yogurt, and often some grilled tomatoes and peppers, which are also coated in melted butter. If you haven't ordered this dish yet, go. Go now. Or better yet, wait four hours until you're really hungry, then go. Trust me, it'll be worth it.

Just do me one favor. Don't eat this for breakfast. I did that once -- last week in fact -- and it gave me such bad heartburn. Except I didn't know it was heartburn. I thought it was a heart attack and I almost managed to give Jeff one because we don't have health insurance yet and we didn't even know where the nearest hospital was and oh my god, seriously, just don't eat this for breakfast. Bad idea.

 

I'm off to make an entire pan of homemade mac and cheese now. Anybody know of any good recipes I can try?

Afiyet olsun!

My American Stash

There are some things that I simply can't live without: my husband, my cats, fresh air, clean water and a roof over my head.

Then there are the things that I truly can't live without: chocolate chips, pure vanilla extract, brown sugar and black licorice.

Every expat has their own must-haves, the things they fill their suitcase with when they travel outside of Turkey. Some people I know fill their bags with bacon and sausages on their return from the UK, and other people bring boxes of instant oatmeal home from the US. Other people buy a certain brand of potato chips abroad and then cross their fingers they don't all get crushed in their return to Istanbul.

Me, I'm a simple gal. I have long gotten used to being without good Mexican food here in Turkey and Hershey's chocolate kisses. That doesn't mean that I don't miss those things, of course, just that other things are more important to me.

Take, for instance, brown sugar. No, not raw sugar, which is also brown but is vastly different from the brown sugar sold in the US, which is white sugar mixed with molasses (another thing you can't get here in Turkey).

I use brown sugar to make cobblers and chocolate chip cookies and certain cakes. There is, I don't think, no substitute for brown sugar. Turks don't use it in their baking, so it isn't sold here, which is why anyone coming to visit me must bring a bag of brown sugar with them. Since my mom was recently in town, my stash is doing pretty well right now.

 

Another thing I make sure to keep on hand is pure vanilla extract. You can find powdered vanilla flavoring in Turkey, which I think is just disgusting. It simply doesn't have the depth and concentration of flavor that pure extract does. (I can't be sure, but my guess is that the reason Turkey doesn't sell pure vanilla extract is because it is made by extracting vanilla beans in an alcoholic solution, usually vodka, which is frowned upon here.)

 

And of course, you can't forget chocolate chips. This is probably a silly thing to keep bringing back from the US. I mean, it's not like you can't find chocolate in Turkey; it's just that you can't find chocolate chips in Turkey. At least not the kind I grew up with. And if I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies with brown sugar and pure vanilla extract, then darn it, I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies with real chocolate chips!

Last weekend I had a friend in town and while we were shopping in Alsancak, we stumbled across a store that sold products from the US. You could tell, however, that the products were not meant for export because there was absolutely no foreign language writing on the packing. I suspect that the products in this store had been purchased from the American commissary associated with the NATO base here in Izmir, then sold to the shop at a mark up. (I've read that kind of thing happens often here.)

You wouldn't believe what they had in there: marshmallows, evaporated milk, Quaker oats, Oreos, pure vanilla extract, Duncan Hines cake mixes and canned frosting. I was in heaven for about 3 seconds before I discovered the prices of these things. YOWZA!

But I did walk away with something....

 

I know, I can hardly believe it myself. I mean, of all the things on offer, I bought a box of taco shells, which in all likelihood, aren't even made of real food? I can make the exact same thing from scratch with tortillas, homemade salsa and diced lettuce and tomato, but it wouldn't be the same! The white corn and water shells totally make this dish!

Was it worth the 14.50 TL I paid for the box? Hell no. Jeff and I would have been better off ordering kofte in.

Would I buy it again? Probably not for a loooong time, if ever.

What about you? What things do you stock up on abroad that you can't get here? Or have you found a place in Turkey to get your fix at reasonable prices or discovered any substitutes?