Current Fixations — October 2014

Between the journey to Turkey and the last-minute trip to New Orleans, the last couple of months have been a blur (read: no September fixations post). But not to worry: I have more than enough things I'm fawning over this month to make up for that. Here are a few I can't stop thinking about. 

New Orleans. "I hate New Orleans," said no food lover EVER. My first trip to NOLA couldn't have been more of a revelation. It's a city full of soul, and you can taste every bit of that in the food. (Pictured above: chicory coffee and beignets from the iconic Café du Monde. Not pictured: the snowfall of powdered sugar that was all over my shirt when I finished eating them.) 

Next Issue. This is an incredible magazine subscription service for digital devices. For $9.99 a month (less than the cost of a cocktail!), you get access to 135 different magazines, including their back issues. Spend $5 more and you'll be able to read more magazines, including weeklies like The New Yorker. Just about every periodical I want to read is at my fingertips (so far, the only mass-market magazine I haven't been able to access through is Martha Stewart Living). It's a fantastic way for a magazine obsessive like myself to keep up with issues without accruing clutter. Best of all, you can try it for 60 days free. 

Jeff Mason's "Kinda Niçoise" sandwich. Jeff Mason recently moved his sandwich pop-up, Pal's Takeaway, to a new location in the Mission, but it's just as good as ever. If you spot his Kinda Nicoise sandwich ($11) on the menu, don't think: JUST GET IT. To me, a  Niçoise salad, with its lettuce, tomato, and lean tuna, is anything but comforting to me. But this sandwich is different — the ingredients are top-notch fresh, yet the dish doesn't feel precious, and it feels transporting, as if you'd be eating it in some European café. The Josey Baker bread, cold-poached albacore, homemade mayo, and creamy hard-boiled egg get me every time.

Brian McBride's pickled farmstand tomatoes. I made these years ago for YumSugar and recently rediscovered them. They're more complex than any other pickle I've ever had, thanks to the addition of cumin, mustard seeds, turmeric, cayenne, and brown sugar. It's the perfect way to make the most of any very-last-of-the-season tomatoes. 

Pho. I'm going through a pho phase (a phose?) and can't stop, won't stop. I'll take it with rare steak, gelatinous tendon, or even vegetarian (the New York Times has a wonderful meatless pho recipe). Ah, the spiced broth, the sweet, anise-y Thai basil, the crunch from mung bean sprouts, which I usually hate but love in this exception... My go-to spots are Soup Junkie for vegetarian pho and Out the Door for clean beef pho. But sometimes you just want a divey bowl, in which case, I head to Good Noodle. (Don't say I didn't warn you about the dive part.) Am always looking for new spots, so if you know of any, chime in!

Cajun boudin. Apologies for the less than appetizing photo, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include Cajun boudin in my roundup of current obsessions. I tried this spicy pork, rice, and vegetable sausage in New Orleans and fell for it, hard. It's creamy and starchy, a meat- and carb-lover's dream. This is Donald Link's version from Cochon, and I will dream of it until I die. It was served with homemade grainy mustard and the crispiest, crunchiest sandwich pickles I've ever had the pleasure of eating. Next time I'm in New Orleans, I'm going to buy as many packs as I can, smuggle them in my carry-on, and eat them in between trips to The Big Easy.

Any objects, food or otherwise, that you're currently smitten with right now? If so, I'd love to hear more about them. 

A Field Guide to Turkish Food

This is part 1 of a 5-part series about my recent trip to Turkey. 

It's been a few weeks since I returned from my visit to Turkey, but the food that I ate there is still seared into my memory. Consider the deep roots of both Asian and European cuisines, then cross-pollinate them — that's what eating in Turkey is like. 

As I traveled throughout the country, I discovered that many of the dishes were highly regional, and I'm sure I've just barely scratched the surface in my eating expeditions. But here's a sampling of iconic foods you'll likely encounter if you travel there. 

Turkish breakfast

A Turkish breakfast will be reason alone for you to get out of bed in the morning; it's a full spread that offers a little bit of everything. No matter how shitty your hotel is, you're sure to be delighted in the morning with an assortment of sweet and savory provisions. At minimum, breakfast will entail bread, tomatoes, butter, honey, jam, olives, cheese, and some form of eggs. You'll often find yogurt, cucumbers, peppers, fresh fruit, bologna or frankfurters, bagel-like simit, pastries, and cake, too.

Eggs are big morning fare in Turkey, and you'll see them at breakfast hard-boiled, hard-scrambled, and fried over-easy. But they put their best foot forward in the dish called menemen, a mess of eggs scrambled gently with tomatoes, green peppers, and olive oil. The version above was particularly wonderful thanks to the addition of a feta-like Turkish cheese known as beyaz peynir. 

Another common breakfast food is börek, a family of baked or deep-fried pastries that you might recognize if you've ever eaten food from Eastern Europe, Greece, Israel, or Northern Africa. (Check out my friend Camilla's ridiculous-looking meat-filled Slovenian burek.) But börek actually has its origins in the Ottoman Empire, and is still ubiquitous today. Some of the most popular are ispinak börek (filled with spinach and beyaz peynir — my favorite), sigara börek (shaped like cigars, and filled with various things), and su böreği, which are multilayered with cheese, and cut into squares like lasagna. Check out the cross-section of my favorite ispinak börek from the trip. Just count those flaky layers, I beg of you!

Meats

Turks absolutely love their meat. Two common categories of meat dishes are köfte (meatballs) and kebap (roasted meats). Unlike the singular, dish of round, tomatoey meatballs we have in America, there are hundreds of different types of meatballs in Turkey. Köfte (roughly pronounced "KOOF-tuh") might be cooked or raw, made with beef or lamb, just ground meat or mixed with fillings like grains and vegetables. Walk into any basic köftecisi (meatball shop) and the plate above is typical of what you'll get: ground meat, shaped into oblong pellets, served with pickled peppers and a red pepper paste on the side. I like to wash all that heat down with a buttermilk-like yogurt drink called ayran. 

There's even more selection to choose from when it comes to kebap, or roasted meats. Sure, you'll see şiş kebap, a.k.a. shish kebab, which is just roasted or grilled cubes of meat (like the chicken version above). But then there's meat that's been minced and hand-shaped onto skewers (adana), ground meat that's skewered and wrapped in lavash (beyti), sliced meat roasted on a vertical spit (döner), meat that's cooked in a clay pot with vegetables (testi kebap). 

If you worry about missing pizza in Turkey, fear not. They have something similar and equally delightful: pide (pronounced "PEE-duh"). They're footlong, football-shaped flatbreads topped with melted cheese, vegetables, and meat toppings, then baked in a brick oven, and they're abundantly and cheaply available at street carts and restaurants everywhere.

One of my favorite dishes from the trip was lahmacun ("LAH-mah-joon"), a thin, air-pocketed, crispy-crusted flatbread that hails from Gaziantep, a town near the Turkey's Syrian border. It's topped with minced beef, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs before a short visit to a brick or stone oven. It's light yet deeply satisfying at the same time — something I could eat every day. 

Meze

Meze — small dishes — are another hugely popular food category throughout Turkey. You can eat them for any occasion: alongside meat or fish, as an appetizer before the main event, or as a meal in its entirety. In Turkey, meze platters often contain things Americans would easily recognize — olives, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, strained yogurt, cheese — but they also just as many you haven't seen before (lentil croquettes, carrots with yogurt and garlic, spicy pickled beets. If you eat meze for a meal in the evening, be sure to wash it down with plenty of rakı ("RAH-kuh"), Turkey's famous anise-scented apéritif.

This dish, a mixture of tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, and onions known as shepherd's salad, is everywhere. Think of it as the house salad of Turkey. It's dressed with nothing but a little lemon juice, olive oil, and salt.

Eat piyaz, or bean salad, as a meze when you order meatballs. 

Fish

Fish is another huge component of Turkish cuisine, and sadly, I didn't photograph enough of it. But one dish I particularly enjoyed was the simple, clean balık ekmek ("bah-LUK EK-mek"), or fish sandwich. I spotted them everywhere from waterside on the Galata Bridge to along the alleyways of coastal towns. The premise is ridiculously elemental: take a seasoned fresh fish (mackerel and whiting are popular), pan- or deep-fry it, then drop it into a split torpedo roll with romaine and thinly shaved onion. Add a squirt of lemon; devour.

Dessert, coffee, and tea

One can't really talk about Turkish cuisine without touching upon the famous coffee, tea, and sweets. Turkish coffee isn't so much a type of coffee as it is a style of preparation that involves finely grinding the beans, boiling them with sugar, and serving it in a small, concentrated cup, grounds and all. (The grounds are not ingested.) But don't think that Turks are drinking this every morning on their way to work: regular coffee and espresso drinks are equally popular, so when Turkish people drink Türk khavesi, it's often savored after a meal.  

Far more ubiquitous is Turkish tea, or çay (chai). You're offered tea when browsing at a shop, when sitting down to a meal, when grabbing a seat at a streetside cafe — just about anywhere. Never say yes to the apple tea version (it's completely artificial and designed to appeal to tourists only!) and reach for the black tea instead. The best versions will be smooth and flavorful, so pleasant that no sugar is necessary. (Milk is out of the question!)

Candy shops and bakeries are everywhere, just in case you're in the mood for a sugary snack. I tried many versions of baklava, and I have to say that most of them were not as fresh as I'd hoped, even at stores that were purported to be the best in town. But I was delighted by the sheer variations of phyllo, nut, and honey pastries everywhere: round, square, triangular, stuffed with walnuts, topped with pistachio. 

I was surprised to learn how many people have never heard of Turkish delight, or lokum, in the States, because it's such a popular treat in the UK. These gummy gelées — available in flavors like pistachio, rose, lemon, and bergamot — are made with starch and sugar, cubed, and then dusted with powdered sugar (shown above at the far left). But we also saw lokum (pronounced "loh-KOOM") prepared the Ottoman way: sweetened with honey, formed into long logs with corners, rolled in pistachios and other nuts, and sliced off as needed, like a loaf of country bread.

Now that I've made myself sufficiently hungry, I'm going to go hunt down a sweet snack. I'm pretty sure I still have some lokum saved especially for this occasion. 

Forget Your Presumptions and Check Out The San Francisco Meadery

Aside from sleep, one of the first things I did when I hopped off the plane from Turkey was attend a preview of the latest menu items at The Ice Cream Bar. It was fun to try the shop's fall cocktails, like the SF Honey (below), but my favorite thing turned out not to be the ice cream or the cocktails at all. 

I learned that the Ice Cream Bar's also started carrying a line of meads, or honey wines, by a small company called The San Francisco Meadery. At the party, mead maker Oron Benary was on hand to pour samples — and they were fantastic. 

Oron and his wife, Sarah, only source ingredients and materials locally — we're not just talking apple cider from Sonoma, but also packaging from Oakland. (The farthest-sourced ingredient is their orange blossom honey, which comes from Ojai, CA.) They also own another label, Brothers Drake Meadery, out of Columbus, OH, and only use Ohio ingredients for those meads; his goal is to eventually open more meaderies, and expand to become a national brand with local production and sense. 

The San Francisco Meadery has three different meads. The Orange Blossom ($19.99) is named as such because one third of each bottle is made of orange blossom honey; it's aged for over a year for dry, light, and aromatic attributes. The fuller-bodied California Gold ($29.99) has only three ingredients — honey, water, and yeast — but comes across like an elegant semi-dry sherry, in part because it's been aged for two and a half years. And The Apple Pie ($19.99) is sweeter, with 8 percent residual sugar; it's made from Sonoma apple cider, as well as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. With such warming spices, it's a nice drink to get you in the mood for fall. 

Until this point, all of the meads I'd tried had been too sweet and one-dimensional, but I could actually see myself lingering over each one of these, the California Gold being my favorite. "I'm pretty much a winemaker who uses honey instead of grapes," Oron told me. He and winemakers have at least one thing in common, though: he uses wine yeast in his fermentation process. Those who enjoy wines but have reactions to sulfites, however, can rejoice: these meads are sulfite-free. 

Oron and his wife hope to eventually sell throughout the state, but currently they're only selling in the Bay Area. You can visit The San Francisco Meadery at its tasting room in the Bayview, or find the meads at Bi-Rite, Rainbow Grocery, The Jug Shop, and Northern California Whole Foods stores.