All posts tagged: bread

Imeretian Khachapuri, Georgian Bread With Cheese Filling – Expat Style

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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!

Gluten Free Thursday – Banana Bread With Buckwheat Flour

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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!

Gluten Free Thursday: Cornbread – Fresh Out Of The Oven

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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.

Crusty Bread Rolls With Walnut and Dried Cranberry – And A Little Gloomy Day

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It is a cloudy autumn day in the middle of the week and I am at Johan & Nyström now, in Katajanokka. My new favourite place. My new favourite neighbourhood. One day when I have tons of money, I will move my kitchen here. I am actually having a rather down day, it might be the cloudy Helsinki or it might be because I didn’t sleep much last night. But then right before I left home to come here, I received a postcard from one of my dearest friends living in the UK and I smiled again. Hold on to your friends, always. They will take you up to the surface when you hit the bottom.

Corn Bread – Or Should I Say “Corn Cake”?

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I admit, I wanted to make another type of cornbread – the flat type that my mother makes on the frying pan, on the stove. I had a long phone conversation with her just for that but I gave up on her when she could only give me eyeball estimates for the measurements. Then I tried my aunt, she was better with measurements but she had a vital information (something my mother also emphasised): you can’t do that flat cornbread with regular corn flour, it has to be roasted flour. Well well, they were right, that flat cornbread turned out horrible.

Tsoureki – Greek Easter Bread / Pastry

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  This bread reminds me of my childhood in Istanbul, when we did not think of anyone’s religion, ethnicity or how “different” s/he was; my childhood in Istanbul when we lived together with our neighbours of Greek, Armenian, Kurdish, Turkish, Circassian, Georgian, whichever else ethnic background without questioning them and just caring about who they were, not “what” they were. The bread itself was named as “Easter Pastry” and I never really knew what Easter meant actually. Still, living in Helsinki where there is a public holiday each year for it, I forget the existence of “Easter” until the holiday comes. But I never forget the taste and smell of this bread freshly both from a bakery in Istanbul…