I am sitting alone in my apartment. It is February 12th, 2016, 23:05. It is just a regular winter night. A Friday night. Last year this day was a Thursday night. And it was a night when I was feeling very happy, completely unaware of what was about to come. That moment, that feeling I had was real, although, it wasn’t.
Celeriac. One of my favourite vegetables. When I was a kid I was one of the pickiest little brats in the whole world possibly. But I always ate the strangest things without any problem, like okra, or eggplant or celeriac. I say strange things because in my family only me and my mother would eat those vegetables, the others would always find something to hate about them. With celeriac, it was the smell. But for me, celeriac’s smell is the best part of it!
As I grow older, I feel closer to Black Sea than Istanbul, even though I lived in Istanbul for most of my life. It is the people, the stories, the food and the nature that affect me. Most of my father’s family live in Sinop, my real home by the Black Sea coast, and my childhood is filled with stories about Circassians, Laz people and Georgians; I am half Circassian through my father, and I always loved those stories. So it felt only natural and familiar when I prepared this dish from Georgian cuisine today; Georgia, our next door neighbour. I ate this dish only once more than a decade ago in Istanbul when a Georgian friend made it for me. This one is a very “expat” version, as I cannot find the real cheese that should be used with it, but I tried to get as close as possible to the real thing. We can at least think that it is a delicious inspiration from Georgian cuisine if not 100% real thing!
I am so happy that after a bad flu attack and then a busy work schedule, I can write a new blog post now! And this one comes with a new video recipe! Yes, I have a YouTube Channel now and I already published one video there – the video for my last gluten free recipe. It will get better eventually, so please do not judge me too much for the quality of my videos!
A bad, bad flu… I am writing this blog post in bed, because I’m sick. I think it was expected, no? I mean, weather forecast being around -25C last week? I tried to avoid that and stay at home but there is a limited time you can stay at home – the girl’s gotta work. And so this week, since Monday morning, I’ve been in bed, knocked out. Added to this, David Bowie died, there was yet another big explosion in Istanbul.. Yes, I feel bad.. But let’s move on to the recipe, shall we?
December 26th was my birthday. I prepared this cake for my birthday – the idea was to take it to Hietaniemi Beach in Töölö (Helsinki) with a bottle of sparkling wine and eat it there with some friends. But… Of course there had to be something like a storm that day – and then came snow towards the evening, the first real snow of this winter. So it was eaten indoors. This is my destiny – unless I move somewhere in Southern Hemisphere, I will always freeze in my birthday and never have a beach celebration.
In my family, five o’clock tea has always been a must during the day because we are very British. No, we are not, but isn’t five o’clock tea, which started in Britain, a very much international habit now? So yes, we love this too, and we love having a few snacks to go with our well-brewed tea. One of the most common snacks in these tea sessions is salty and savoury cookies in various shapes and tastes. These cookies are generally sold in patisseries in Turkey and you can find at least a couple of different types in each patisserie. There are also sweet versions too of course, but in this recipe I will focus only on savoury versions.
This is a recipe that I have been planning to do for a long time. Not necessarily this particular gluten free version though, what I mean is that I have been planning to bake banana bread with one or more slices of banana(s) on top. I shared another banana bread/cake recipe with pecans before here, with white flour and cream cheese frosting. Today’s banana bread recipe uses buckwheat flour, vegetable oil instead of butter and is lighter yet tastier! If you have problems with gluten choose this one!
Christmas is here, my adventures with gluten free dishes continue, my birthday is in 2 days, I’ll be 36 and a friend that I met for the first time in person on Monday was amazed to hear my age – he thought I was 28 at most (uuuuu!). After all, I am still asked to show my ID in Alko when I buy alcohol! It’s been a tough year for me… But well, this post is about this delicious soup which makes a great pair with last week’s gluten free cornbread.
Today I am going to share a delicious, simple, gluten free corn bread recipe with you. The taste and texture of this bread reminds me of the corn bread that my mother and my aunt make with only 3 ingredients: roasted corn flour, water and salt. They make it in a pan on the stove and use a little bit of oil to cover the pan so that the bread does not stick. That bread goes very well especially with fried European anchovy. This bread, in this recipe, is made in the oven and has quite many ingredients than my mother’s, but it somehow tastes similar.
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