House & Garden's Istanbul Slideshow

House & Garden has up a beautiful slide show of images from Istanbul. Turks have a talent for making simple look grand.

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BBQ at Acar Kent

While we were in Istanbul, the city experienced some of the hottest weather in 30 years. On one of those sweltering nights, some friends invited us to their home for a BBQ.

Turkish cuisine's appeal is in the simplicity of its flavors. They highlight a few key ingredients and let them shine. Meats are simply dressed and grilled. Salads are served dressed with olive oil and Italian parsley or dill. Vegetables are prepared in olive oil or served pureed as appetizers.

Our hosts served a very refreshing, delicious potato salad. This salad was unlike anything I've ever tasted before, a combination of potatoes, cucumber and yogurt. And, they just sent me the recipe:

Summer Potato Salad*:

1 cup of yogurt
1 clove of garlic, finely diced
1 tsp salt

4 Russet potatoes
1 cucumber, grated
Salt to taste

Combine the yogurt. garlic and salt in a small bowl and stir well. Place in the refrigerator.

Boil the potatoes until cooked through. Cool, peel, and mash. I used a food processor and added a little milk. Add the prepared garlic yogurt and grated cucumber and stir until smooth. Add salt to taste. The salad is good right away, but for the best taste, let it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours.

SOUNDTRACK:
"Stop Me," a reworking of the Smiths' track by Mark Ronson.



* Thanks to Erman and Burcu for the hopitality and the recipe.

Club Cruising the Bosporus

We went to Turkey to attend the wedding of our good friend Burak. Not only was he planning his wedding, he was also nice enough to put together a few activities for his friends from the states. So on the night before the wedding he planned for us to board a large passenger boat for a floating party called the White party. Note: you were supposed to wear white.

We spent the early afternoon with another couple of friends on Baghdad Street, the main shopping drag of the Asian side of the city. We planned to cross the bridge back to Europe to change clothes and board the boat at 7 pm, but we had not budgeted our time well.

At 6 pm, we were still waiting in traffic, not even close enough to see the bridge, much less cross it. Luckily, the boat party was planning a stop on the Asian side to pick up more passengers. After a few phone calls, we all planned to meet at the second stop and Burak, the world's best host, was on his way to get white T-shirts for all of the hopeless traffic castaways.

We arrived at the boarding point at 7 pm in three separate cars. Right on time, except that it wasn't the boarding point. Or at least, that was the consensus at the time.There was a lot of discussing in Turkish and then we drove to another boarding point. No, that one wasn't the boarding point either. And so we returned to the original point in a mad rush, parked and ran through a city park filled with picnickers, strays, and fishermen to catch the boat at the shore of the Bosporus.

Even though it was 7:15, the boat had waited. We later realized that this was because the party that was designed for 200 or 300, was attended by only 50 or so. The early boarding time meant that people couldn't make it from work in time. Friday traffic in Istanbul is incomprehensible.

So we took a nearly private cruise of the Bosporus that night to the loudest mix of 80s and Salsa you can imagine. As the natives around us danced, we watched the city slink by, absolutely amazing, shimmering with light, and dotted with glorious, crumbling bits of history.

SOUNDTRACK: "Big in Japan"

The best Alphaville song I'd never heard. But if you're in Istanbul, you'll hear this at almost every club.



Image: "Bosphorescence" by icemanigation.

Back from Istanbul, Stories to Follow

We just got back from 18 days in Istanbul, where we were attending a wedding (some of the celebrations pictured left).

I'm planning to type up some of our travel tales this weekend. I'll post them to the blog for anyone who's interested.

Things to do in Istanbul when it's 100 Degrees

Yesterday and today have been two of the hottest days in Istanbul for the last 30 years. There was even talk of closing offices today because it will be 100 degrees Fahrenheit. For comparison, the highs are usually in the upper 80s, so most homes don't need air conditioners and don't have them. So what to do when it's too hot to do anything?

Luckily for those of us who know only a little Turkish, there are many American movies playing in English in air conditioned theaters. So I've now seen Hoax and Oceans' 13. We've also been to some lovely cafes, including Leb-i Derya in Taksim (this photo is the view from their dining room).

But tomorrow will be a better day. The high is predicted to be 87. Hooray.

Breakfast by the Bosporus: Menemen

Yesterday, we went to a cafe on the Bosporus to eat breakfast. We got a table against the marble railing, looking out over the water to the the other side of the city.

We ordered a very typical Turkish breakfast called menemen. It's a modified scrambled egg, mixed with tomatoes and peppers and served in a metal pan.


Menemen Recipe:
2 small tomatoes
1 small green bell pepper
1 spicy green pepper (such as a Hungarian wax pepper)
1 tablespoon olive oil
4-5 eggs

Peel and cube tomatoes. Then dice the other ingredients. Sautee in small pre-heated skillet with olive oil until slightly wilted. The peppers should still have some crunch.

Over low heat crack eggs into the skillet and scramble in the skillet cooking until eggs are fairly firm but the entire dish is slightly moist due to the vegetable juices.

Serve with a white, French-style bread.

Istanbul and Zara Home

We're spending the next few weeks in Istanbul visiting family and friends and attending a wedding.

The weather here is beautiful, about 90 degrees during the day and 70 degrees at night. And other than a puny mosquito (at least by Texas standards) that keeps tentatively buzzing by my ear, I have not a care.

I've already had the chance to do a little shopping. I was finally able to see Zara Home first hand. You can read more about my shopping experience on Shak in Style.

I'll be updating whenever I get the chance with photos and stories from Istanbul.

This is the view from our balcony in Tarabya. During prayer time, you can hear the calls of three different mosques mingling together and surprisingly harmonious.