Market Day in France

One of the things I really like "on the continent" are the markets. The array of fruits and vegetables and just "stuff" is amazing. The markets here, at least the ones near us, are dedicated to locally grown fruits and veggies and locally produced products, so most of the stalls are prepared foods. The prepared foods (and cheese....I love the cheese!) we've found to be excellent. However, there really aren't a lot of oranges for instance, grown in the U.K. so I've come to the conclusion that I really can't rely on the markets as a source for produce. Whereas the markets in Belgium a couple months back, and France a couple weeks ago, were a cornucopia of fruits and veggies from all over the E.U.

Hard to Cook French Without Garlic

Biggest Artichokes I've Ever Seen

Piles and Bowls of Apricots

Scarves With an American Twist

Sausages and More Sausages

Scenes From a Delhi Night Market

Took an evening stroll through the R. K. Puram Friday night street market in New Delhi.

Food Stall - New Delhi, India

Sari

Puffy Fried Bread Thingies

Watermelons

Glittery Things

Tomatoes and Broccoli

For the last couple years, my standard answer to people who have asked "What will you do when you retire?" has been:
"Grow tomatoes."
Some success so far this year with broccoli (which I love) in the little garden plot makes me think my new answer might be:
"Grow tomatoes and broccoli."


My Broccoli Harvest

Organic...NOT! (at least temporarily)

I noticed this label on a lot of the produce today. I hope no one minds the parsley in the stuffing tomorrow was temporarily not organic...from what I can tell, it is not plastic either. (at least the stuffing will be made with real butter!)

Not Organic Parsley

Christmas Cranberries

Getting ready for a little Christmas dinner tomorrow with friends. Elesa is fighting a nasty cold ... and now the fire alarm is going off, it is telling me I'm apparently burning down the whole building...

Cooking Cranberries - Christmas Eve

been very busy....

and blogging isn't what pays the bills (somehow, I don't suspect that surprises you).

Finally got a break in a very long weekend and I took the opportunity to start working on my photos from our trip to Istanbul. Still have a way to go, but I've worked through the food and market themed photos... here are a few:

Carpets - Istanbul, Turkey

Lamps - Istanbul, Turkey

Schawarma in the Making - Istanbul, Turkey

Turkish Delight - Istanbul, Turkey

The Evil Eye - Istanbul, Turkey

Butter, Lost in Translation

Churn the corn milk and get...Butter! I'm not guessing when I say it wouldn't pass my sister's taste test...the sign used to just say "Homemade Butter", but now they've come clean and defined exactly what they are churning here.
"Butter"???

English Muffins

One thing you can't get here, but would be legal if you could (unlike alcohol, and pork) is English muffins. We've had family successfully mail us some packages during the cooler portion of the year, but the packages certainly wouldn't survive the current temperatures. So a few weeks back I started looking into making my own and found a promising recipe at Allrecipes.com. (I highly recommend the site, anything with 4+ stars has been very good)

Yesterday I tried the recipe out for Elesa's discriminating English muffin palate. She liked them...they aren't perfect, some don't seem to have the bigger "nooks & crannies". I'm sure that most of that is due to technique, which I'm hoping will get better with practice.


Homemade English Muffins

Never Too Far From Home

Apparently there is a market here in Kuwait for Kroger brand Worcestershire sauce....this figures to be about $2.30 for a 15 ounce bottle.

A Long Way from Cincinnati - Kuwait

Diversity in Beans...

yet they are all beans...

Dinner was Quite Tasty Tonight

look what I'm reduced to....you'd think I was on Flickr or MySpace...

Chicken and Broccoli with Oyster Sauce at Sunset

Bosnian Cooking, Jeff Style

A follow-up to this past entry. Today I tried my hand at making "Jeff's Gourmet" version of pita...Bosnian pie. I didn't make my own phyllo, but I made up my own filling recipe. Shelby was quite aghast..."Burek doesn't have walnuts in IT!". But I was not to be deterred. I followed along similar to the zeljanica we did in out little class a while back. but....no spinach. Instead I added chicken, gorgonzola cheese and walnuts to the egg/cheese filling mixture. It was quite tasty if I do say so myself. Ema, who had joined Shelby in teasing me about my recipe, did ask for a bit more :) and Carl seemed to like it.

Jeff's Gourmet Chicken Gorgonzola Pita with WalnutsOn the left, ready for the oven, on the right fresh out of the oven

Cooking, Bosnian Style

Today was a busy day. There was a little group of us that got together a couple times to learn some Bosnian terminology related to cooking. We especially went over recipes for Bosnian pita (pie). Specifically the spinach (zeljanica), ground meat (burek), potato (krompiruša) and zucchini (tikvenica) versions of pita. Today was the culmination of those gatherings. We were shown how to make not only the fillings, but homemade phyllo dough (jufka). I tried my hand at rolling it out and stretching it thin. I think with a little bit of practice I may get the hang of it.

Making the Phyllo



The Results - Zeljanica