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.

Eggscellent!

When limited to a restrictive diet, one must get creative with the foods that can be tolerated…digestively speaking.  Eggs and most vegetables (cooked of course!) are usually tolerated by the average person with IBD.  But despite the numerous ways of incorporating eggs as a main ingredient, the available dishes are not limitless.  There are only so many times you can eat plain eggs, an omelet or a quiche.  Eggs are extremely versatile, and so we wanted to reincarnate eggs as more than just a breakfast food.  For this blogpost we want to focus on frittatas.  A healthier alternative to a quiche, a frittata omits a pastry crust (high in saturated fats) and milk usually replaces cream.  The frittata filling is also less custard-like, and has more of the consistency of a hardened omelet.

Non-Dairy Chowder & Purple Sweet Potatoes

Fish Chowda!

On a recent visit to our local supermarket, Marnina and I came to the conclusion that we were spending too much money for subpar produce and seafood.  For months we had been bemoaning the produce and fish section of the supermarket (as well as the entire store in general), but for some reason we could not muster up the courage to switch our allegiance to a new supermarket.  Every now and then we would supplement our shopping trips with some tastier-looking food stores such as Harris Teeter or Whole Foods, but we would do the bulk of our shopping at the less-than-appetizing local grocery store.  We thought we were getting a better deal on our produce and other foods, but in reality, we were paying slightly lower prices for mediocre (and sometimes rotten) food. 

Stuffed Tomatoes…and Stuffed Bellies!

Marnina loves to prepare stuffed foods.  If you haven’t seen the pumpkin we stuffed, or read about the stuffed Zuccanoes, then hopefully you will now understand Marnina’s love for stuffing.  For Shabbat dinner last week, we made Moroccan hamburgers, and stuffed tomatoes seemed like a suitable side dish.  We even found a Moroccan-inspired recipe that uses couscous, a grain staple commonly found in Morocco, as the base of the stuffing.  And on the topic of Morocco, Marnina and I are thinking of traveling there during the summer (any Morocco travel-related suggestions??).  Wherever we go, we will definitely report back about the cuisines that we encounter.