Graduation Fear and Spiced Orange Shrub

I have been in Turkey for almost three years now. I've studied Turkish on and off since shortly after I arrived. I did three levels at one school then stopped for over a year I think. Wow now that I am thinking about it that was a long time. Then I took two more classes at a different school and quit because I thought I was leaving. Then when I wasn't leaving I had to wait for there to be enough students to make a class for the level I was in. Since about February though I've been steadily taking courses and last week I, along with my class friends, graduated. 

So I guess that means I speak Turkish, right? I graduated. I've finished. There are no more courses. Ergo I speak Turkish. I am so not ready to graduate!!

Aslan & me-ready for our close up!

Deli Kedi-how I feel about graduation

Ugh, no! Not ready!

Like many establishments in Istanbul, street cats are pretty free to make themselves at home at Turkuaz (which I highly recommend if you're interested in learning Turkish!) and there are many familiar faces among them. There's the cat that's always dirty and slightly sick but who just lays about sleeping. There's the deli (crazy) cat who constantly meows, zips around, and demands attention. And there's Aslan (lion) who I named when she first started hanging out with us this summer. Her paws were just so much bigger than she was and I thought she looked like a lion cub. She crawls around all of us during class wanting pets and cuddles and disturbs our note taking by trying to play with our pens when we're writing. She has a purr that's about three times her size.

 

No scurvy happening here!

My clever segue into alcohol is that a) my Turkish is always a little better after a few drinks and b) the thought that I now have to function in Turkish (since I no longer have the excuse that I'm just learning!) really makes me want to drink. Frankly so does the Turkish language. It's fracking hard! Like really, really hard. I know hard languages. I took five years of Russian,  three years of Mandarin, one in Taiwan, and a year and a half of Arabic. Turkish falls somewhere in the middle of all of those for degree of difficulty. The words just don't end, especially the verbs. You can pile suffixes onto words - INCLUDING THE VERBS - pretty much forever. I'm a little horrified even talking about it.

Cheap Turkish wine, vinegar...same thing really

Shrub, which is basically fancy drinking vinegar and is often made out of overripe fruit can be drunk on it's own or mixed with liquor and/or soda. E got really into making shrub over the summer. I think she made one peach and one strawberry. She likes things rather less sweet than do I so hers...needed to be cut pretty significantly. The first one I tried was sooo vinegary that my face did that thing where it basically caved in on itself. You know what I'm talking about...like when you taste something super sour and your mouth tries to retreat into your face, you wrinkle your nose, and squeeze your eyes shut like if you can't see it you can also no longer taste it.

Most people view shrub as a summer thing but I found a great recipe for spiced orange shrub. Call me crazy but the combined scents of oranges, cinnamon, and clove have always smelled like Christmas! What better flavor for making Christmas and New Year cocktails?! It's a bit sticky in the making and I've had to sponge off my counters so many times they've probably never been this clean...

In the end, absolutely worth all the stickiness. I like to mix it with vodka and sparkling water. And after it's been strained the orange slices make nice garnish!

Recipe (adapted from Cooking Stoned):

• 1 pound oranges
• 1 cup sugar
• 1-1/12 cups champagne vinegar*
• 5 black pepper corns
• 3 cloves
• 3 cinnamon sticks

Special equipment:

• quart-sized jar of some sort 
• sieve
• mortal and pestle (or other poundy tool)
• another jar, bottle, something

Preparation: 

1. Wash and dry the oranges. Quarter them lengthwise then cut crosswise about 1/4 inch thick.
2. Alternate layers of orange slices and sugar in the jar. Close it up and shake until as many of the orange slices as possible are coated with the sugar. Set aside for FIVE hours.
3. While you're being patient, crush the bejesus out of the pepper corns, cloves, and cinnamon sticks. Enjoy the scent because it smells great-the addition of the black pepper is surprisingly nice.
4. ....Five hours later add the vinegar to the jar, seal it really well, and shake the crap out of it to dissolve remaining sugar. Then add the crushes spices. shake it up a bit more, and store in a dark space for day.
5. Strain  the liquid into another jar, a bottle, a whatever.
6. Enjoy!

*I can't get champagne vinegar at my Carrefour. Or white wine vinegar. Just regular white vinegar which is far too astringent for this. Instead I used Sava brand white wine (which let's face it is basically vinegar anyway) and a few tablespoons of white vinegar.

Turkish Wine of the Week - Chamlija 2014 Riesling

A friend of mine was in town not too long ago and I met her at her hotel for a drink. Normally I'd have suggested Solera or one of the other wine places I like so much but she was staying at Soho House and I couldn't not go.

Soho House is a private club/luxury hotel with locations around the world. A new location was recently opened in Istanbul in what was the American Consulate here. Now the American Consulate is far outside the city it might as well be in Bulgaria. It's a gorgeous building and Soho House has done a lot of expensive renovation on it. Interestingly enough it's still owned by the Consulate (there are some rules as to what one can and can't do with things owned by embassies) but Soho House has leased it for something like 99 years. Since I don't have an impressive enough bank account nor am I cool enough to get membership, I can only get into Soho House with a member or guest of the hotel.

Inside it's all muted lighting, semi uncomfortable furniture (sure I'm a little overweight but I don't usually have a problem getting my rather non-existent hips into an armchair!), and hushed voices. Use of social media at the hotel is forbidden as are making phone calls (in the club) and taking pictures. They even go so far as to put it on the coasters (one of which I nabbed).

Seriously

What does this have to do with wine? Just reaffirming that I would rather be home drinking some Turkish wine than hanging out in a club that's too cool for me with prices reminiscent of my DC days (cocktails ranged from between  35-40 TL).

Even though summer is over and I generally only drink white wine in the summer, I couldn't resist any longer the Chamlija Reisling I bought at the end of the season. I generally like Riesling and since I have yet to meet a Chamlija wine I don't like I thought that this would probably be 90 TL (from La Cave) well-spent. I was right.

Rieslings are fruity, aromatic wines that can run the gamut from super sweet to dry. If you're looking for a particular style but the label doesn't describe the sweetness level you can tell by the alcohol content. Generally the lower the alcohol content the sweeter the Riesling is. Chamlija's 2014 Riesling, at 13.5% ABV (alcohol by volume), was on the drier side.

A beautiful pale to medium lemon, this Riesling has a delicate and beautiful nose of possibly jasmine, honeysuckle, grapefruit, cantaloupe, and green apple. Rieslings have a fairly wide range of possible flavors the most dominant of which depend largely on whether the grapes are from cooler or warmer climates. Chamlija's vineyard is only 120 kilometers from Istanbul which I guess puts in somewhere in the temperate climate area? I really must find a friend who doesn't mind squiring me around though because as close as Chamlija is, it might as well be on the other side of the country to someone like me who doesn't drive.

In the mouth it's smooth and clean with zesty citrus, honeysuckle, green apples, and cantaloupe; super lovely. With medium high acidity it's also quite literally mouth watering! It's so rare that I like any white wine that's not sweet so I'm over the moon when I do. Chamlija has scored for me a couple times now; once with their Viognier-Narince, with the single varietal Viognier and now with this. I really do heart Chamlija.

Not only are Chamlija wines gorgeous to drink but their labels are beautiful. I believe that the daughter of the current vintner designs all of them. I think I should like a print to hang in my apartment. Perhaps one of these days when I make it to winery!

Turcaken and Bacon Vodka

Taking a break from my posts on Turkey to write about something equally interesting...Turcaken and bacon vodka. A few months ago, a friend sent me an article about a bakery (I think in Philly) that was pioneering pie inside a cake, and she gave me my mission: make this. Challenge accepted. Unfortunately between summer and winter there's a dry spell for birthdays at work so I had to wait some time before I could fulfill said challenge. But when the time came I was prepared.

Well, almost prepared. I started to make the filling for the pumpkin pie and ran into a wee problem. I got the pumpkin, heavy cream, and eggs in the bowl and realized...I had no brown sugar. Sigh.

So I put the bowl in the fridge and poured my freshly made coffee in a travel mug so I could run accross the street to the mall where the greatest store ever live...Target.

I got myself some brown sugar (and a few other things...there always seem to be other things you need while at Target) and hurried back as quickly as the newly fallen snow would allow me on unsalted sidewalks. I added the sugar and spices to the pumpkin mix and whisked everything together.

Unfortunately time constraints dictated that I couldn't make my own pastry dough and I couldn't find sheet pastry at the store so I hade to use frozen premade crusts for the pies.

Pumpkin pie:
1 3/4 cups canned pumpkin                                   lots of cinnamon
1/2 cup heavy cream                                             slightly less nutmeg
3 large eggs                                                          wee pinch of ginger
1/2 cup packed brown sugar                                 at least 1/4 each teaspoon allspice and clove

Whisk everything together, pour in pie crust and bake at 350 for about an hour.

After the pumpkin pie came the pecan pie. Luckily I had all the ingredients for this one on hand.
3/4 stick butter                                                   1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar                          3 large eggs
3/4 cup light corn syrup                                      2 cups halved pecans
2 teaspoons vanilla

Heat butter on the stove until it melts, then add brown sugar and whisk together until smooth.

Remove from heat and whisk in corn syrup, vanilla, and salt.

Whisk the eggs in a bowl then add the sugar mixture and whisk until smooth.

 Fill the pie crust with the pecans and pour the sugar/egg mixture until it covers the nuts. Then bake at 350 for about 50 minutes.

I don't have a picture of me doing it...but I might have eaten the leftover mixtures of both the pumpkin pie and the butter/egg mixture.

Next there must be cake! I made a carrot cake fairly recently but with a tropical twist. This time I went for a more traditional carrot:
2 cups flour                                                     1 1/4 cups canola/vegetable oil
2 teaspoons baking soda                                 4 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt                                                3 cups grated carrots
lots of cinnamon and nutmeg and clove             1 1/4 cups chopped walnuts
2 cups sugar

First whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. The actual recipe calls only for one teaspoon of cinnamon...and nothing else. Seriously?! What is wrong with the people who write these things. I invariably use at least twice the cinnamon called for and always toss in nutmeg and maybe some clove.

In a separate bowl, whisk together oil and sugar then the eggs one at a time.

Stir in the flour mixture. And if you're me then get flour absolutely everywhere while you're at it.

Then stir in the three cups of carrots and the walnuts. I have to say...I love my food processor. I made a carrot cake a few years ago for my mom for her birthday and had to hand grate the carrots. That was...annoying to say the least. With a food processor you just put the carrots in the little chute, turn it on and viola!

Pour the batter in 3 9 inch greased and lined round cake pans and bake at (you'll never guess!) 350 for about 30-35 minutes.

Then I took a pizza break.

When everything was baked I set them all out to cool while I put together the frosting. Easiest and tastiest frosting recipe that comes courtesy of our friend KMac:

2 bricks cream cheese
1 stick butter
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

At this point what I have is one layer cake in the making and two pies. Now you're asking yourself...how does this become a turcaken? Well I'm glad you asked. It starts out fairly normally with one layer of cake and some frosting.

And then you plop on the pecan pie. I started with the pecan versus the pumpkin figuring it was probably the more sturdy of the two and would hold up the full weight of the cake a little better.

Next I took a second, prefrosted cake layer and put that frosting side down on the pie.

I frosted the top of that cake in preparation for the pumpkin pie. Then I faced an unexpected dilemma. You know how those frozen pie crusts come in an aluminium tin for baking? Have you ever tried getting a whole pie out of one? The pecan was actually pretty easy. Because it is so solid I just inverted it and tapped the bottom like I do the cake layers but I couldn't risk doing that to the pumpkin lest it fall apart. In the end what I did was pry down the sides of the tin as much as I could then worm our most flexible spatula under the pie until I could safely lift out the entire thing.

And the final layer was another prefrosted cake round.

If I ever do this again, and I think I may, I will have learned some valuable construction lessons:

1. Take the time to either make pastry dough or find the premade sheets.
2. Use a tarte tin rather than a pie pan. Less crust and the sides of a tarte tin fall away for easier access.
3. If you have to use regular pie crusts cut of the edges of the crust.

I often say that whatever I've made is the ugliest cake I've ever done and I'm pretty sure I was right this time. I ended up making another half batch of the frosting but could have used another full batch on top of that to completely hide all the holes. But then it would have been a frosting cake and while intriguing, that was not the point of this exercise.

In an effort to make it less ugly I covered it with ground pecans and walnuts. It, um, didn't really make it any less unatractive.

Happily it's appearance in no way detracted from its flavor and my utter and complete awesomeness. Gaze upon the cake and drool.

It was five layers of tasty turcakenness. The flavors blended beautifully and I was especially pleased with the pecan pie layer. I shall begin plotting flavor combinations for my next creation.

And no I'm not forgetting about the bacon vodka. I have a friend who is mildly obsessed with bacon. I made candied bacon ice cream for her for her birthday. In searching for the perfect Christmas gift, our boss stumbled accross bacon vodka.

Pay no attention to my messy desk on which this tower of strange wonder sits. We all partook of the vodka at the office on Friday. It smelled very much like bacon bits and tasted...very much like bacon. Now, I love bacon myself and I also love the vodka but I'm not so enthralled with the bacon vodka. We decided that as a mixer it was probably great and a bacon bloody would probably be fantastic. I think she and I were the only ones to really drink the entire pour we had...and we both did it by pinching our noses and tossing it back.

Shudder

Oh one last thing. I had some leftover carrots from the cake so Lauren suggested that I make one of the greatest salads ever. Learnt from our university Russian professor, the carrot salad is simple and powerful. Shredded carrots, shredded garlic, and a little mayo.

The amount of garlic in it will knock over you and any vampire within a five mile radius. Yum.

Tropical Carrot Cake

I am the self-appointed director of the lido deck at work and one of my duties is to arrange the birthday celebrations for everyone in my division. Other than the mad summer rush when I've got a birthday every week for seven straight weeks I enjoy it. I love baking and this gives me the chance to try out lots of different recipes and (usually failed) decorating techniques. Sometimes there are cakes that I don't like but I'll make them anyway if there's a request. Like the Guinness ice cream cake and the lavender cheesecake. *Shudder* Tomorrow is the first birthday we've had in months and just because the birthday boy has been temporarily assigned overseas we did not see any reason why we shouldn't have cake! We'll send him pictures.

Tropical Carrot Cake:

As always you need to start with your ingredients.

2 1/3 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 cup sweetened coconut
1 cup macadamia nuts (I used walnuts because I think their flavor holds up better)
3 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
A tiny pinch of clove
2 1/2 teaspoons baking power
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups sugar
1 cup veg oil
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups finely grated carrots
2 8-oz cans well drained crushed pineapple

Now that you've got everything set out your first step is to preheat your oven at 350 degrees then combine 1/3 cup flour and the coconut and nuts in a food processor or blender until the nuts are finely ground.

Then whisk the remaining flour and dry ingredients together.

Using an electric mixture, combine sugar and oil then beat in eggs one at a time making sure to let them blend in before adding the next egg.

Next, add the whisked flour mixture.

Stir in the flour/coconut/nut mixture. Be prepared to use a little elbow grease because the mixture right now is very thick and dry.

Now we're going to stir in the carrots then the pineapple which is going to help make the mix easier to work with.

Pour the mix equally into three 9 inch pans that have been greased and lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350 for about a half hour. I rotated them at 15 minutes since I couldn't fit all three pans on the same rack level. Now you've got a few free minutes to do a mid baking clean.

Sigh.

Now, very important...do not throw away the pineapple juice that you drained. The juice is key. In addition to the ingredients mentioned above you also need this:

Vanilla and passion fruit vodka and cherries. And no you don't mix all of them together. Ew.

Pineapple Martini:
Two parts pineapple juice to one part vanilla vodka. Put a cherry or two in the bottom of a chilled martini glass, shake until mixture gets foamy then pour into glass. Dribble a little grenadine syrup or cherry juice down the side.


Tropical um...Drink:
Not sure if this has a name or not, we decided to see if it tasted good and it does so, you know, cool. Again two parts pineapple juice to one part passion fruit infused vodka. Mix and pour over ice in a tumbler. Passionate Pineapple, that's what I'm calling it.

When the cakes are done (clean toothpick test) make sure to totally cool them before starting the frosting.

Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting:

What you need:
3 8-oz packages cream cheese
1 1/2 sticks softened butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Bare 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract
3/4 - 1 cup cream of coconut

Despite how gross it looks, cream of coconut is a glorious thing.

Combine cream cheese and butter until smooth, add the powdered sugar (slowly unless you want it to explode!) the extracts, then the cream of coconut. I love cream cheese frosting and I love cream of coconut so I thought this was pretty genius.

(me tasting the flavor of genius)

Let the frosting chill for about 30 minutes and start to construct your cake.

Place the first cake on the plate flat side up (i.e. upside down) and spread about 3/4 cups frosting on it before adding the next layer (also upside down). Spread on another 3/4 cups frosting and add the final layer, curved side up (or right side up).

Cover the entire cake with a thin layer of frosting and chill for for a good hour or so then add more frosting.

To decorate I powdered walnuts in the food processor. You want to be careful with that and stop your processing before you start getting walnut butter. Then I covered the cake best as I could. If anyone reading knows how people get the sides of cake covered so nicely with nuts please tell me! I resorted to taking pinches of the walnut dust and kind of throwing them at the cake. Which was amusing to say the least but was also messy and not terribly effective.

Now I ended having a fair amount of frosting left over. It is really good frosting but I'm on a diet so I immediately threw out the rest of the frosting and cleaned the bowl.

Um.