Let’s see… It is clean, clear, cool, not too salty.. Well, I am talking about The Black Sea. The best sea that I ever swam in. But what’s even better is that it is home to the most delicious and special fish: European Anchovy aka Hamsi in Turkish.
A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling a little sick – something like flu with a bad feeling in my stomach. I called my mother and asked: Mom, just tell me what I should cook to feel better, my brain is not functioning. And she told me to make this soup – but of course, why didn’t I think of that? This is the ultimate cure!
I’m pretty sure almost all of you have one thing (at least) you did not like at all to eat when you were a kid, but grew to like as you get older (and wiser? maybe..). In my case, there are many, as I was not a kid who was keen on eating basically anything (except for okra!). And actually, I did not particularly like this bun when I grew older either, because the one that you find in Turkey always has raisins in it, and I do not like raisins in a cake etc. (but I do like eating them just by themselves..).
It was around 2002-2003. My friend Reyhan and I would go out every Friday, we would go to a bar in Taksim / Istanbul (mostly Akdeniz or Gizli Bahce) to drink and to dance, with some other girl friends. Every Friday was a girls’ night out. Gee, I was young.
Did you know that if you mix tahini and molasses, you get a fluid and deadly sweet & gorgeous dessert? You can just dip your bread in it and bamm! You would probably get less sweet if you actually inject sugar in your veins… And my mother used to just spoon this whole thing, without making the sweet taste even a bit milder with the help of bread.. I’m hoping she stopped doing that (since she is 72 years old with a weight problem…). Ok but that was not the thing I was going to talk about!
A friend of mine sent me a text message two weeks ago: Hi dear, one of my students (she gives private Turkish courses) discovered your blog and baked “simit”. She said that she loved the blog and that the recipes were so easy to understand. I told her that I would tell you immediately, to make you happy. And yes, I WAS happy!
In my family, it was always, but always my mother who cooked. We, the kids, were all supposed study and make our homework and do not interfere with her work in her kitchen. This is why I didn’t know how to cook anything at all for a long time.
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