Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Euro Spring 2015 Pictures - Day Two -The Great Good Tour

 Buffalo's milk clotted cream with honey sourced from Eastern Turkey


Three kinds of menem - soft egg dishes, one with cheese, tomato and onion, one with beef sausage, and one with pasturma, a pastrami like cured meet.
 

 The 'Pudding" store

A street of mehanes - drinking/eating places.  There were many of these streets

 Fish market in Besiktas

 The hundred year old bakery

 Inside the bakery - we've found the bread in Istanbul to very, very good

Inside the baklava/borek place in Besiktas.  These people hail from the Gazniap region of Turkey


 We didn't eat anything here but our guide told us this cart made the best sandwiches

I forget the name of this mosque but it was designed by Sinan one of the great Ottoman architects.



 On the ferry with our group going over to Asia and the Uskudar neighborhood

 The tourist central/old town Sultanamet seen from across the watter

A traditional Muslim cemetary

 Our guide, Benoit, taking us to the Alevite shrine

The meal shared at the shrine, just lamb and bulgar wheat.  The grains (including rice) seem to always be cooked in a broth which gives them great flavor.

On to the markets of Uskudar

 A store specializing in eggs

 One specializing in milk products

 Daughter #3 - A shop that sells only pickles they make themselves!!!

Roasted Sheep's head
There's plenty for everyone!

 Woman in the organ meat store butchering beef hearts.  
I don't think you want to be messing with her.

Our head ready to be disassembled
(I have a video of this that I hope to get up later)

 Dried vegetable shop.  These are mostly used for dolmas (which by the way means 'stuffed' so can be any stuffed vegetable not just the grape leaves we associate with the word)

 Woman/restaurant owner from Northwest Turkey making dolmas of dried, reconstituted peppers.
We were too early to try them :(
 
 But we did get here fondu like regional specialty which had cheese, butter, and corn which you ate like fondu with bread

A store with nothing but cheeses (feta like) from Northeastern Turkey and olives


 A cheese tasting from the store with cows, sheep and goats milk varieties
OMG!

 The honey shop - You would have loved this Dr. Debbie

 A honey tasting

In Kuzguncuk trying small fried fish - Yum

 A lot of the architecture of regular streets dates from the 19th century and with the hills is so reminiscent San Francisco and Oakland

 Above and below - Black Sea specialty shop with Bulgar, corn, chickpeas, dolmas of grape leaves and cabbage, bags of dried soup stock, various fruit molasses and preserves



 A Greek Orthodox  church


 The olive oil guy giving us tastings of an oil from green olives using a continuous press method and one of black olives using a traditional mill press method

Catching a shot of a pre-wedding day photo shoot

Artichokes for stuffing

 Inside another bakery

Muhalledi, a pudding of wheat, eggs and milk with preserves over it.

Turkish Coffee - of course

 The remains of the chicken breast pudding

 On old synagogue

 And back across the water



5 comments:

Renee Michelle Goertzen said...

It's hard to believe that you can eat that much food. It all looks terrific.

Diana and Steve said...

The pictures take us there - great insight. Steve and I particularly admired the spectacular array of fresh fruits and vegetables (the artichokes make ours look anemic).

alexis said...

looks like you guys had amazing weather too!

Bernice said...

I enjoyed the trip from afar. Thanks

de-I said...

Diana/Steve - I was pretty impressed with how they treated the vegetables too. I watch vendors carefully pulling off the browned leaf tips from lettuces. Also they stored their lettuces for display with the leaf side down and cut side up.