Roasted Vegetable Enchilada Lasagna (It’s Gluten Free!)

I Be a fooDie has undergone some recent website changes and we are now back to our wonderful WordPress site. We have been busy cooking, studying, eating and doing everything BUT blogging.   Forgive us. We are in the process of moving over all of our recent blog posts but given how busy we are, it may take a little while.

Sultan’s Delight!

What’s on the menu today, Gutsy?

This past week, Marnina and I went on a Turkish kick.  We literally ate and prepared all things Turkish for lunch and dinner.  Marnina’s mother recently bought and sent us a signed copy of The Ottoman Turk and the Pretty Jewish Girl. It is a wonderful cookbook that should be on every foodie’s shelf (especially if you love Mediterranean cuisine!).  The pictures reminded us of our culinary journey through Turkey this past summer and left us yearning to recreate some of those memories in our kitchen.  While the recipes are simple and involve few and easy-to-find ingredients, most are not quick to prepare.  We had taken a cooking class in Istanbul and afterwards we had still not fully understood how many steps were involved in most of the dishes we had prepared.

Turkey: A Culinary Destination

I Be a fooDie takes a cooking class in Istanbul!

As foodies, we enjoy learning about different cuisines.  Our ethnic culinary adventures have ranged from experimenting with a traditional Greek food to popular Korean dishes.  Food was a big part of our travels this past July in Turkey and Israel.  We encountered new ingredients and new flavors, and we gained a new perspective on cooking, as well as a renewed respect for specific ingredients.  In Turkey, ingredients are simple and unadulterated.  There are hardly any incredibly complicated dishes.  The natural state of food is heavily emphasized, and this brought us back to the basics of cooking: using fresh ingredients.  The Turks often love to take seasonal and local ingredients and cook them with some olive oil and a few spices. This method of cooking brings out the flavors in a way that is not complicated or overwhelming, but just perfectly balanced.

The Well-Traveled Foodies

Dinner in Cappadocia

We recently returned home from our global travels, and in many ways our trip was a gastronomic tour of Turkish and Israeli cuisine.  We tried our best to sample as many mezes, main dishes, desserts, and other foods that we could fit into our stomachs within a 3-week time span.  We were able to stay relatively svelte and fit thanks to walking an average of 8 miles each day.   Our goal during the trip was to try all the authentic cultural foods that these two countries offer, and of course, to stay healthy.  At times, Marnina was forced to expand her diet either because: 1) a Crohn’s-friendly dish was not available; 2) the language barrier caused confusion that led to Marnina biting into a food stuffed with seeds; or 3) she could not resist the temptation of ordering an authentic dish that contained some form of food that might upset her GI tract.  However, thanks to proper plannning (over-the-counter medications, antibiotics, flushable wipes), Marnina was prepared for the worst.  Luckily, neither of us got sick from the food and water in either country.  It turns out that the water is unsafe to drink in Turkey (even for natives) so bottled water was incredibly cheap.

Greek Moussaka

One of the first things you might notice from this blog is our propensity to try dishes we have never cooked before, and to experiment with different cuisines.  Similar to the Shepherd’s Pie from two weeks ago, we decided to cook another culture’s traditional dish.  This week, we once again ventured outside of our comfort zone and cooked the most widely known variation of a traditional eggplant casserole dish – Greek Moussaka.  This eggplant based dish can be found in many Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries, but the most popular version is the Greek version, which traditionally has three layers: a bottom layer of sautéed/roasted eggplant slices; a middle layer of ground lamb cooked with onion, garlic, chopped tomatoes, herbs, and spices; and a top layer of béchamel sauce or egg custard.  Obviously those ingredients are inherently not kosher (mixing milk and meat), and so as usual we made some substitutions.  We hardly had to modify the dish to accommodate Marnina, but for those of you who have trouble digesting veggie skins and/or veggie seeds, we will explain how to make this dish more IBD-friendly.  The end result? An egg, meat and dairy-free conglomeration of healthy foods.

Our First Dish – Baked Eggplant Burgers with Tahini Sauce

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a silent disease that does not get a lot of press because of the unpleasant nature of the disease, and what it does to the people that are afflicted with it.  Many people are uncomfortable talking about their disease, while others are entirely open to sharing their story and experiences.  Marnina falls into the latter category.  She was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease (one of the two diseases that falls under IBD) at the age of 15.  Her story will be available to read soon.  In short, Crohn’s Disease sufferers have inflammation in some part of their GI tract, which can cause diarrhea, intestinal discomfort/pain, weight loss and other unpleasant symptoms.  Often, the symptoms can be so severe that patients require hospitalization and surgery.  Some IBD sufferers are tube-fed because their body cannot absorb nutrients from regular food, some follow a restricted diet and others can eat almost anything until their Crohn’s “flares.”  Marnina falls somewhere in the middle.