Cheese Grommet! Cheese!

Well It has been quite a while since I have posted on this blog but I recently discovered the name of my favourite Turkish cheese or peynir. It's called sepet peyniri. Translated it is actually basket cheese and man alive is it ever tasty! Depending on what I search I've come up with Arabia and Italy for origin points but I imagine that a lot of European countries have their own unique version of basket cheese.

Traditionally, basket cheese was made from cow goat or sheep's milk or a mix of all of them. The cheese was then pressed into, you guessed it, baskets. Because it took such a long time to dry the aged sepet ended up with a distinct flavour. Apparently now a-days sepet is often made in plastic containers which dry out quicker resulting in a loss of flavour. I don't know how Thunder, (our cheese guy) makes his, but it ends up in rounds about a foot across and 5 or 6 inches deep with a pattern of rectangles around the outside from whatever he aged it in. 

This is a piece of cheese which we got from Thunder on Saturday. Its about the same hardness as medium cheddar in Canada. We usually buy Yarim Kilo or half a kilo of it because it makes good sandwich cheese. The cheese usually has a couple of centimeters of saltier, stronger cheese around the outside getting milder towards the middle.

If there is anything I'm going to miss about Turkey besides the newness of everything and the friendly people, its going to be the delicious cheeses.
Maybe I could get a recipe from Thunder.... Failing that at least there's a recipe in that link below!

Images from: http://www.cheesemaking.com/BasketChz.html

If you feel inclined to try it out let us know how it goes.

Afiyet Olsen! (enjoy your meal or bon appetit)

Corlu Road Trip

We tagged along with Cam today.  He had to take the car to the dealership for service.  The appointment was for 10:30 am which meant we had to be on the road no later than 8 am.  It's 200k from our door to Corlu and it takes a little more than two hours. He bought the vehicle in Ankara (8 hours from our home) so that his employer's business manager could help him with the transaction: payment, licensing, road tax and insurance. The nearest Nissan dealership to our home is the one at Corlu.

Cam dropped us off at the Orion Shopping Mall.  Malls in Turkey are a relatively new shopping alternative. Most cities, towns and villages still hold weekly or biweekly market days when vendors set up tables in the city center. You can buy everything from socks and underwear to fruit and vegetables. The malls often have many "brand name" stores like Nike, Polo, Adidas, or Pierre Cardin. However the goods they have for sale don't seem to be any better quality than the ones you might find at the local market (pazar in Turkish).  One nice thing about the mall however, is that if you're trying to buy "socks and underwear", you won't be waited on by a tween boy and his dad, like you might be at the pazar!

We had lunch at the food fare. Johanna, Nicole and I chose to eat Turkish pide from "Sampi", while Sam opted for a McDonald's cheeseburger and fries. Pide is a rectangular flat bread covered in meat and vegetables - like a pizza but without sauce and sometimes without cheese.  It's cooked while you wait.  The girls had sausage and cheese.  Anytime sausage is on the menu it is typically what we would think of as a cocktail wiener served whole or sliced. Today was no different.  Because I'm not eating much dairy any more, the girls ordered my pide with ground meat (beef I think) and finely chopped onions.

The best part of the food fare experience, from my perspective, was standing at McDonald's with Sam and watching the young male waiters at the Doner/Pida place swan around the girls.  All the activity died away once Sam and I joined them at the table, but it was fun to watch.

Cam picked us up about 12:30 pm and we zoomed home.

Tuesday Pazzar

    The Tuesday Pazaar is an interesting sight; especially when it finally stops raining. The sellers are selling and the buyers are buying or walking around looking. It gets crowed very fast. Sixty percent of the people are talking. The other forty are walking around with their hands full of groceries, not really caring if they bounce their potatoes off your knees. Not that you can complain, it was your idea to go to the pazaar today. 

     

Some of the venders are quiet, they let you come to them and they help you when you arrive. Some are loud, they shout about what a great deal they have or what they are selling.  All the venders have their spot, for instance, all the times we have gone to the pazaar our favourite cheese seller is in the same spot.  And it’s like that with everybody. It’s handy because you know where you have to go to get the things you need.