Turkey Travel-Log(ue) : Day 1

It has been 5 months since my parents and I visited Turkey (or Turkiye, its more poetic Turkish name) for a week-long (or short!) holiday. And worryingly enough, I havent had the happy union of time, energy and inclination to write an honest-to-goodness travelogue - the type that TAKES me back to the place I have just seen. Since the more I dilly-dally, the hazier the memories will become, I have decided to just post the scribblings/logs/notes that I had punched in into my Ipad and make do with that.

So here goes - Day 1 of my Turkey Travel-log(ue)


Istanbul Ataturk International Airport, 10:55 AM local time.

Just claimed my bag from baggage claim - got it within moments. The fact that I stopped for a leisurely bio-and-hair comb-and-refresh lipstick-and-get appalled by my black swan-like red eyes-break BEFORE heading to baggage claim might have had something to do with it. :)

The flight was uneventful, largely because the seat was quite comfortable. The past-by-date Valium I'd popped after takeoff didn't really work, and I slept fitfully for an hour or an hour and a half. The rest of the 8-hour flight was spent watching Harry Potter Part 7-2 and a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory. And yeah, random time was spent at the BEAUTIFUL air hostesses and sympathizing with the mother travelling with her baby a few seats ahead of me….the baby insisted on crying pretty much throughout the journey.

Breakfast was nice-the non-vegetarian version included some sort of a spinach moussaka, tasty mushrooms, a limp-but-tasty bread-and-ham concoction, a brownie and a surprisingly yummy salad- green and black salted olives (the first time I have ever tasted a buttery tasting olive!), sliced tomato and cucumber and 2 kinds of salty-yet-creamy cheese. Washed down with Tropicana orange juice, it hit the spot. :)

Now waiting for Ma and Baba's flight from Doha to land. The only glitch so far has been that I couldn't change the British Pounds that am carrying for Turkish Lire....apparently the notes I had were old. 300 pounds down the drain? Hope not!

And oh yes, this airport does not have wifi. :(

Our room, Lady Diana Hotel, Sultanahmet, Istanbul. 3:00 PM local time

After a looooooong wait at the airport (Ma Baba's flight was delayed by an hour) during which I met up with Jelal (the guy from the local travel agency which had arranged our Istanbul hotel stay and sightseeing) and had a nice get-to-know you chat with him, the parents showed up, looking slightly the worse for wear. We stepped outside the terminal into the dull gray day and cold bracing air. Brrrrrrrr! If this is the weather here, I can see a lot of walks coming up! :)

A half-hour bus ride later (amazingly comfortable Mercedes Benz 12-seater) through a cityscape that looked partly European (gray skies, cold weather, low streetside buildings) and partly Middle Eastern (kebab shops, crowds) we reached our hotel, the Hotel Lady Diana. Tucked away in a quiet nook within walking distance of the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace, the hotel has tiny rooms (our room barely accommodates the 3 beds) but free wifi. 

The quiet cobblestone road on which our Hotel is located

And even if the principal part of the view outside our window is that of a blank rear wall of the building next door, lean out a bit and you see the grey waters of the Marmara Sea framed by the leafless branches of a tree. And the occasional plump, as yet unidentified white and grey bird taking flight over the expanse of water. A mixed bag, in every way.....

Our room, Lady Diana Hotel, Sultanahmet, Istanbul. 6:00 PM local time.

Les parents were tired and cranky and the day was cold and drizzly, so I ventured out for a solitary stroll in the neighbourhood of the hotel. I enjoyed the cold for the first few minutes, but it started drizzling, and my toes started freezing through my open toed sandals.

The menu outside one of the restaurants near our hotel. The spellings might seem weird, but that can be explained when you take into account that Turkey adopted the Roman script for the Turkish language only in the early 1900s...and since it was a script that wasn't native, they adopted phonetic spelling, i.e. Spell as you speak...unlike English, but like Hindi or Marathi.

Another restaurant, serving shwarma, among other things. Linguistically - some words are very similar to their counterparts in Hindi/Urdu - e.g. lezzet - lijjat (flavourful), corba-shorba (soup). Alas, all restaurants near our hotel were closed on account of it being Sunday. :(

The church-like building opposite our hotel - never figured out what it was...but it certainly lent dignified old-world charm to the neighbourhood. :)

All streets in and around the Sultanahmet district of the Old City (where our hotel was located) are cobblestoned, with narrow sidewalks. You can see the Marmara Sea in the gaps between the buildings

 My walk was short- partly because it was freezing  cold and drizzly (my breath was coming in puffs of steam) and more because a strange guy approached me and asked me out- in Turkish. He was quite insistent and the road was pretty much deserted (Sunday means half the shops are closed and our hotel is in a quiet area) so I got kind of scared and headed back to the hotel. The anti climax was that he was about 60 years old.....

Anyway I visited 2 grocers shops to see what Turks buy and eat, and shopped at one. I bought Lays chips in a Turkish flavor, a jumbo 5-ltr can of drinking water and ate a grilled sandwich there......the feeling of biting into a piping hot meat and cheese sandwich in front of a heater in a tiny shop while it is cold and windy outside is beyond awesome! 

Istanbul is also famous for freshly squeezed orange juice that's available almost everywhere. I got juice and a grilled cheese sandwich for Ma and Baba so they were happy too. The juice was so bursting with freshness, yum!

Feeling kind of bad that I am cooped up in the hotel room instead of being out, but it's really cold. And that guy was creepy too....further exploration tomorrow...after the Bosphorous cruise. Besides, it's great to be ‘home’ with the folks too and catch up.

The mezzouin is giving the call for evening prayers now.....that plaintive yet sonorous voice on the air reminds one that this is not a cozy evening at home after all....it's a strange new land.

Can't wait for tomorrow to see this strange and beautiful city up close!

Kitchen Experiments : 5-minute Masala Upma

Whenever I am home the whole day (on a Sunday or any other holiday) I find myself feeling hungry way more often than I do while I am at work. Hunger pangs haunt me, and I either seek solace in some forbidden junk food, or sit down to a meal. :D

However on Sunday, the hollow, empty feeling in my tummy cried out for something more substantial than a fried snack. Lunch was still an hour away (!!!) and so I betook myself to the kitchen to fix a 'filling' snack. "I'll make upma, its healthy and filling", said I - one can always rationalise eating between meals by playing the "healthy" card! ;)

Considering that I was positively aching with hunger, I didn't have any fancy complex recipe in mind, but was too bored to whip up regular upma. So off I went - roughly chopped onion, tomato, and a green chilly, splashed some garlic-flavoured oil (couldn't find fresh garlic) in a kadhai/wok, added cumin seeds, turmeric powder, onion and green chillies. After a minute, added the tomato and gave it a brisk stir for another minute. Dumped in the semolina, stirred in the water (double the volume of the semolina) and some salt and a touch of sugar. Stirred away like crazy till the mixture bubbled and frothed and thickened to form a thick, sticky mass and the semolina was cooked through. Oh yes, and added a generous dash of my favourite Sriracha Chilli sauce along with the salt and sugar.

Served it (to myself, my parents were too chicken to try the mutant upma) garnished with some chopped coriander and an artistic (yeah, right!) drizzle of Sriracha sauce.

Yum.

PS: Looking at the sticky upma I had produced, Dad went - "Ummm...did you boil the water before adding it to the semolina? It needs to be steaming hot, else it forms a gluey paste - kind of like the one you have made." Ooops.

A new view of Mohammed Ali Road

 
This year was the third year running that I visited Mohammed Ali Road during the holy month of Ramzaan. Devout Muslims fast the whole day (not even a drop of water is allowed) and can partake of food and drink only once the moon rises at night. So Ramzaan nights are all about feasting, shopping, dressing up and catching up with family and friends  among  the brightly-lit bazaars and gullies. Muslim neighbourhoods like Mahim and Mohammed Ali Road come alive and sparkle like jewels duing the rainy Ramzaan nights.

After exploring Mohammed Ali Road under H’s guidance last year and the year before last, this year Agent J and I took a step away from the usual, and  retraced Allie’s (of the biryani fame) footsteps through a different section of Mohammed Ali Road. We ditched our cab (rather, our cabbie ditched us!) at the beginning of the Bohri Mohalla area opposite J. J. Hospital

Agent J and I strode along rain-splattered lanes and alleys, trying to locate the shop selling “the most amazing payaa” that Allie had very highly recommended. I don’t know if it was being in a different locality, or at a later-than-usual hour– nearer 10:30 PM – but the area seemed quieter, less crowded and the stalls seemed ready to shut down. But since Allie had told us that payaa shop started service only after 11:00 PM, methinks that this was the lull between when the tourist throngs milled around and when the locals got down to eat. Or maybe this area was not really frequented by tourists….

After 10 minutes of walking around in circles through the confusing network of gullies, J and I were getting a bit irritated. Why do people give directions when they aren’t too sure about the place, anyway? Finally, bugged at J’s reluctance to cross-check directions  (what is it with men and directions, anyway?)  I stepped up to ask some old gentlemen about Valibhai’s Payaa shop (Valibhai Payawallah) – and lo behold – it was a stone’s throw away, in  a small alley which I am pretty sure we had passed earlier. Perhaps Valibhai’s shop is like mythical Brigadoon – it only appears once in a while. :)



Valibhai’s is Spartan in décor, with formica-topped wooden tables, green-tiled walls and a huge coal/wood fired stove by the door with -  get this -  NINE pots (handis) gently bubbling away.

 

The place looked deserted - business was yet to start - but as J and I made ourselves comfortable at one of the tables, the cook started pulling out long bones (gulp!) from one of the handis – their job (of donating bone marrow to the nalli nihari) was done! Right on cue, people started trickling in one by one and the waiter started taking orders. We ordered the Paaya (stew/gravy dish made of lamb/cow trotters) which the shop was named after and the sukkha mutton with lashings of nihari. We’d ordered the “Chhote ka” paaya, i.e. stew made of lamb trotters/shanks as against “Bade ka” i.e beef. The unusual thing about the joint was that they only made the curries there – the rotis/bread  were procured from a neighbouring eatery.

Within 5 minutes our food was plonked sown in front of us – a big bowl of the Paaya, a slightly smaller bowl of the mutton topped with rich gravy and a HUGE puffy tandoori roti, bigger than a dinner plate. 
 





That roti was the stuff of dreams – incredibly light, a tad yeasty and soft yet crisp. We tore of pieces of the roti, dipped them in the gravies and ate, and ate and ate. My personal favourite was the mutton – slow cooked to melt-in-mouth tenderness, with a sparkling-with-spice gravy. The Paaya was milder and richer, and while tasty, wasn’t as tongue-tingling as the mutton.

Conscious of the fact that there were more delicacies to sample, we didn’t order any seconds, and walked out in search of Tawakkul, a famous sweetshop nearby. Luckily, we found it without any effort. At Tawakkul, malpua productionw as on in full swing and I watch mesmerized as the cook poured HUGE ladlefuls of malpua batter straight into the  kadhai, and it spread into a sunny yellow disc. 
 

We picked up one of the smaller malpuas  (saucer-sized) to eat while we waited for our phirnis to be packed. The malpua was nice, not too sweet, but not as crispy-on-the-outside-and-pillowy-soft-in-the-centre as the one at Suleiman Usman. But the phirni – oh, my! My parents and I had it the next day for breakfast and it was deliriously delicious. Served in earthenware bowls, it had the perfect almost-set consistency, the perfect amount of sweetness (not too much)  and the alluring, delicate scent of rosewater. Totally drool-worthy and most definitely worth a second trip to M.A.R.

After the malpua, Agent J was ready to call it a day, but I didn’t want to leave without sampling some sort of kebab. Unfortunately, it was past midnight and all the roadside stalls selling kebabs were shut. So we trekked a bit southwards to Shalimar (recommended by the kindly old owner of Tawakkul) to get our fix of kebab. Shalimar was a disappointment – it served Chinese food alongside Mughlai food! – but it made up for this with its zingy mint chutney and the glistening-with-fat spicy seekh kebabs.
 

We also ordered half a tandoori chicken, which was alright, nothing rave-worthy. Not delicious enough for us to ignore our full stomachs and plough on.

In short (or long!), this exploration of a whole new part of Mohammed Ali Road was just as rewarding as our earlier jaunts with H. Finding something new is always exhilarating, and Valibhai and Tawakkul were finds worthy of euphoria. May every trip to Mohammed Ali Road yield such treasures!

Simple Pleasures : A day off, and croissants from City Bakery

Today has been the day of simple pleasures - those little jewel-bright moments of joy which might not make the headlines or the photo albums, but which make life ever so pleasant and rewarding.

I'd taken the day off to spend some time with my cousin who's moving base to the US. And so the day began with that wonderful lazy feeling of utter well-being when you wake up to your alarm, switch it off and go right back to sleep! Monday morning blues were replaced by Monday morning bliss! :)

Yawning and stretching, I finally got up, only to see that breakfast was a manna from heaven - a cup of my Mom's special chai and a golden, flaky croissant from City Bakery at Worli. This croissant is stuff of dreams - golden-brown crusty top flecked with sesame seeds, and layer upon flaky layer of progressively softer bread till you reach the heart of the pastry - the softest, most buttery pillowy mouthful ever. What's more,  City Bakery has managed to retain the heavenly buttery taste and gorgeous looks of this croissant for several decades now - that's consistency for you!




City Bakery does a variety of breads, cakes and biscuits and opens its doors at 6:00 AM sharp every day. Biting into one of the first croissants to come out of their oven at 6:00 AM is one of the un-missable experiences of any food-lover in Mumbai. It also is one of the few affordable luxuries you can still regularly
indulge in - the croissant is priced at a paltry Rs 11. Yes!! While fancy aspiring-to-be-French bakeries are serving small, tightly-packed puff-pastry-like corissants at Rs 60,  here is a honest, hard working, no-frills bakery which focusses on quality and taste rather than ambience and airs.

Drive down to Worli some rainy morning with a thermos of hot tea or coffee, and bite into a fresh-from-the oven croissant  to understand what the French mean by joie de vivre!

Quick-Fix Meals : 10-minute Prawn Curry

I just love those times when inspiration strikes so loud and clear that "inventing" a dish is simply a matter of following the clear directions appearing like magic in my mind.

The other day was just like that - when the "recipe" for a quick-n-easy prawn curry just popped into my head. I simply followed its lead and found my way to simple yet sublime deliciousness. :)

So here's the recipe for my 10-minute prawn curry:

Ingredients:
1/2 kg medium-sized prawns, shelled, cleaned and de-veined
2 green chillies, chopped (adjust to taste)
2 handfuls/ cupfuls loosely-packed coriander leaves
1/2 inch piece fresh ginger, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped, and 2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 small lemon, or 1/2 a big one
2 cups thick coconut milk (tinned, or made from powder is absolutely fine)
1/2 flat teaspoon each of turmeric powder, red chilli powder and salt
Salt, to taste

Method:
Sprinkle the 1/2 teaspoons of salt, turmeric and chilli on the prawns and mix well with your fingers. Leave aside.

In a mixie (the small chutney or coffee grinder), place the coriander, chopped chillies, ginger and garlic, lemon juice and a touch of salt. Whiz to a chunky paste. Do not throw the grinder into the sink or dishwasher, and do NOT rinse it. (Yes, that's right, and no, I am not crazy. Just wait)

Smear the green chutney onto the prawns, and keep aside for 5 mins.

In the meantime, if you're using coconut milk powder, dump the powder in the grinder (the one used for the green marinade), add the required amount of water and whiz. You'll get lump-free coconut milk AND extract every last bit of flavour from the chillies, coriander and garlic. :)
If you're using tinned coconut milk, just swill it around in the grinder.

Heat 1-2 teaspoons of oil in a pan. When hot, add the sliced garlic and the prawns, up the heat and briskly stir for 30 seconds or so.

Add the coconut milk, lower the heat and cook for a further 1-2 minutes - till the prawns are just-cooked (they go opaque) and the curry sauce is thickened to a perfect drench-rice-with consistency. Do not let it boil.

Adjust the seasoning and serve piping hot, with mounds of fluffy steamed rice. And enjoy the gorgeous fresh-yet creamy taste of the easiest prawn curry ever!

Cook's Tip #1:
Use fresh prawns, not frozen ones. The intensity of flavour just cannot be matched.

Cook's Tip #2:
To up the ante, you can increase the quantity of the coconut milk (adjust quantities of the green marinade as well, since that is what flavours the curry) - basically have more curry sauce at hand.

Take out the extra sauce (full of flavour from the  prawns, coconut and the zingy marinade), dilute it with some water, add some salt, and cook the rice in this flavoured broth. You'll be rewarded with plump butter-yellow grains of rice, fragrant with coriander and prawns, with a hint of sweetness from the coconut in the background. Yum!