Cooking With Gas

I beg you not to judge Engrish and me.  Yes, during our time in Turkey we ate with the enthusiasm of a Mormon singles' ward at a break-the-fast potluck.  Or a Muslim at Iftar.  Or, if those metaphors hold no meaning for you, we were a two-girl horde of locusts, devouring everything in sight.  Because here's the thing about Mongolia in 2022: we're between a rock and a hard place.  China's closed their borders.  Russia's off playing king of the mountain.  Meanwhile, we can't just go to the store and buy things.  Admittedly, when I first came to Mongolia ten years ago, the rule of thumb was to buy rare items when you found them, because there was no guarantee they'd be there when you came back.  However, it was never to this extent.  Back then, we were talking about cherry coke...now I'm lucky if I can buy a can of coke.  I haven't seen flour tortillas in probably six months.  Hell, Korean food was one of the things I could always count on, but these days I can't even seem to find sesame oil.

So that's the situation.  For an entire, glorious week, nobody told us "bahkwei."  (I knew I was well and truly back last weekend when I tried to go to LaRosa for dinner and left without eating because they didn't have anything I wanted...and I tried to order three different things!)  Instead, each dish was more delectable than the last.  However, no meal we ate the entire trip was as tasty as the one we cooked ourselves.

Okay, let me back up.  After returning to Hidden Cave from our balloon ride, we chilled a bit before being picked up again, this time by Tolga, who whisked us off to his family home in Ayvali.  Their family business is a restaurant called Cappadocia Home Cooking.  And they very kindly let you be the chef!  Sure, they did most of the hardest parts of cooking, like grocery shopping and washing the dishes, but still.  You know me - I'm kind of addicted to this sort of thing.  But I feel like I should get some points for getting Engrish hooked on it, too - not only did she buy the family cookbook, but when we got back to Istanbul, she stopped us at a shop along the street to pick up a Turkish rolling pin.  Now that's dedication!

When we got to their home, they treated us to tea and these amazing little...heaven help me, I'm going to sound like a pretentious British git...biscuits (sorry, there's really no better name for them - cookies just isn't accurate), dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon.  After chatting with us they brought us to the kitchen, which was huge and made of stone - like a barrel vault?  I actually know pretty much nothing about Turkish architecture.  There were plenty of jars of canned, home-grown produce - they actually own these huge apricot orchards.  It felt really inviting - they told us, "Our home is your home!" (I'm not that easy to fool, guys - if this was my home it would be a huge mess - but thanks for playing!)

Over the course of two hours they showed us how to make SO many dishes.  As we cooked they let us in on a lot of little secrets, like not adding the garlic til last (otherwise it overtakes the other flavors while cooking) or peeling the eggplant in stripes (although I can't remember the reason for that one).  By the way, I just want you to recognize the restraint I'm showing in holding off on eggplant jokes, in spite of how often Engrish ordered it on this trip.  Probably because I need those jokes for tomorrow's post, but I digress.

The dish I was most interested to learn was the so-called Turkish ravioli.  It was amazingly simple to make, WAY easier than Italian ravioli.  I'd actually eaten it the night before at Seten, but it was just okay.  It was served warm, rather than hot, and the sauce just didn't wow me.  Well, Tolga explained that dishes that are served with yogurt - Turkish ravioli, for example - have to be cooled off before you put it on, or else you end up with a big, runny mess.  As far as I could tell, though there was no excuse for the sauce - Cappadocia Home Cooking tossed theirs in butter with some paprika and...maybe some parsley?  Something delicious.

When we finished our chores, they brought us back into the dining room where a host of dishes was already laid on the table, including the tastiest vine leaves of the whole trip.  We were both a little worried that they'd want us to eat everything...we'd had to finish the biscuits earlier, although they were so tasty that I, at least, wasn't complaining...but they didn't, and somehow we managed to make it all the way through dessert.  It was scrumptious, but I could hardly move when it was all over!  I doubted we were going to need our dinner reservation that night, after all.

That trip 14 years back was the first time I went to a cooking class, at Petra Kitchen in Jordan.  Since then, I've learned to cook Nepalese, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Indian...not to mention all the dishes taught to me by my OG masterchef, Bronte.  Over the years learning to cook has become one of my most favorite traveling activities.  There's something about food that is so fundamental to who a people are.  There's something about cooking together that draws people together.  Oh, and there's the fact that my family is a little more understanding of my rock-and-roll lifestyle when I come back ready to cook tasty meals for them.