Stuff and Nonsense

The twilight zone

For the last 8 months or so blogging has been a sort of lovely lightweight distraction from the other more challenging/tedious/mundane parts of my life. I’ve been able to twitter on about anything and everything I’ve felt like on the day, experiment with a bit of elementary food-styling and photography, and generally be utterly self-indulgent.

But recently I’ve begun to feel the pressure of it as a crushing weight. I’m painfully aware that there’s been very little posting from my end over the last few weeks (actually, that should be months…). As regular Stuff and Nonsense readers will know, I’ve been overseas since the end of February researching a new book. So, yes, I’ve got plenty of excuses: travel IS stressful and time-consuming; I had to prioritise (don't you just love that word?) – by which I mean put the book ahead of the blog; and to top it all off, when I did manage to find the time to post a snippet, internet access in Turkey proved to be erratic and frustrating.

But I’ve been back home for about 10 days now, so I’ve certainly got no more excuses of the technical kind. The truth is, that since I’ve been back in Melbourne I've been existing in a bit of a spooky twilight zone (no, it’s not just the jet lag!). In fact I've been in a state of complete mental paralysis and utterly incapable of knowing where or how to start posting again, or to do anything very much at all…

It’s rather like the feeling one gets sitting down to a big important exam paper. You know how it is…you turn over the page, read the questions and, Whoosh! Everything you know – or think you know – is wiped from your conscious mind in a flash. You sit, frozen to the spot, pen shaking between trembling fingers as you desperately try to marshal some coherent thoughts – or indeed, any thoughts at all.

Or perhaps, rather, it’s more the sort of paralysis that comes from being faced with too many competing tasks, and simply not knowing where or how to begin. Instead of pausing, taking stock and then starting slowly to do ONE task at a time, it’s all too easy to panic and flap around ineffectually trying to do ten things at once. The net result? Nothing ends up being done very satisfactorily at all.

I’ve always felt that the main (perhaps only) virtue of working freelance is that it does, in theory, give you control over your working week. No longer is your life dominated by deadlines;  demanding insensitive bosses are banished; the stress of having to complete numerous projects, with limited resources and insufficient time is a thing of the past! As a freelancer, you get to pick and choose what you do and when you do it.

Which makes it all the more perplexing that I’ve allowed myself to be backed into this absurd, massively stressful corner.

This ramble is a rather long-winded way of me explaining that I’ve got quite a lot on my plate at the moment. Mainly, there’s the small matter of a book to put together. Greg and I have a punishing schedule to work to if we’re to get it to press on time and thence on the shelves for the commercially advantageous pre-Christmas shopping period. He’s got recipes to dream up and write and together we’ve got to test them – extensively – which means the Stuff and Nonsense household will be in chaos for the next few months. Then there are the (many, many) photographs from Turkey to be sorted through, endless discussions with designers and the publisher to be had and the food photography shoot to be planned, shopped and cooked for. But most challenging of all, I’ve also got to write the text for the damn thing in such an absurdly short time-span that I’m scared to write it down.

To be honest, I’m not sure it can be done!

A day at Petersham

If you've been following my rather sporadic posts over the last few weeks or so, you'll be aware that Greg and I were lucky enough to have been invited to Petersham Nurseries during our recent stay in London. It was one of those serendipitous events that the Universe occasionally throws one's way: I had fallen in love with head chef Skye Gyngell's lovely book 'A Year In My Kitchen', when it was published late last year, and she, coincidentally, had also been kind enough to say nice things about our book Saha. So when she heard that Greg was going to be in London she invited him to Petersham to present a workshop and cook a Middle Eastern banquet.

As Skye wrote in her column in last weekend's Independent newspaper, it was a pretty full-on few days for everyone involved in planning and preparing the workshop and banquet - lots of hard work into the wee small hours, but lots of laughs too. If truth be told, this kind of event is always a bit of a dance of diplomacy for all involved - for the guest and host chef especially - but I think that everyone enjoyed themselves immensely. While my participation was mainly a supporting role (assisting Greg in the workshop presentation) I know that he and I both came away from the weekend full of admiration for Skye and her team. Petersham is a unique and joyful place, and if you are willing to surrender to its quirky charms, utterly seductive.

Talented photographer Keiko Oikawa came to both the workshop and the lunch, and I was absolutely delighted to meet her there as I've been a fan of her beautiful blog, nordljus for a while now. Greg and I were absolutely blown away by her photos, which capture all the colour and movement and excitement of the event so brilliantly. For anyone who isn't familiar with her blog or her exquisite photography, then let me urge you to check out her pictures from the day here. She's created a remarkable record of what was truly a fabulous day; thank you Keiko! 

Postcard from Turkey

Dear everyone,

So much to see and do and eat, so little time to blog about it!

This trip is proving to be amazing: from super-stylish Istanbul, with all the hip people and expensive trendy restaurants, to the deliriously surreal landscape of Cappadocia, and now, Gaziantep, in the South-east of Turkey – a culinary wonderland!

We’re cramming so much in that I just don’t have the time to write about the extraordinary things we’ve seen and done, but here are a few visual highlights...

Lucy x

Breakfast börek

Merhaba from  Istanbul!

At last a few minutes breathing space after a whirlwind few weeks. I realised today, while looking at the calendar to make some flight bookings, that I’ve been away from Australia for two weeks with nary a post about my adventures so far.

So here you have it, a potted version of events so far, and even a recipe!

London was a mixed bag of experiences and emotions: bitter-sweet time spent with family and friends (it’s always SO hard to say goodbye again), the hard slog of work (a series of demos, workshops, banquet lunches and meetings), the fun of playing tour-guide to GK and the stepson – and all of it made harder by a punishing jet-lag.

We arrived in Istanbul a few days ago after a slightly nerve-jangling journey. Having risen, bleary-eyed at 4 am to make it to Luton airport for our EasyJet flight to Istanbul, we discovered roadworks on the motorway (which meant that the last 5 miles took 20 minutes) and we were pushing our luck making final check-in time. When we finally rushed, panting, into the terminal we found it heaving with bad-tempered passengers. It turned out that the main baggage conveyor belt had broken down, causing a massive backlog at the check-in counters and we virtually had to load our own bags onto the plane. As the surly businessman behind me in the queue snarled ‘Welcome to the pleasuredome’.

And now here in Istanbul everything is so full-on, so in-your-face, so frantic that I’m finding it impossible to step back and think about anything else at all. The weather has been pretty wild too: yesterday, the coldest winter day the city's experienced this year, (as you might be able to tell from the photo above), bone-chillingly cold with a squally wind and lashing rain. 

Then today, splashes of blue sky between the cloud masses, the air coldly bright and sunny.

We’ve been here 3 days now and I finally think I’m managing to orientate myself. We’re staying in Sultanahmet – the old part of the city that sits on the eastern side of the Golden Horn. The last few days have involved plenty of sightseeing - the Blue Mosque, the glorious Aya Sofia, the Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar. We've eased our way (seamlessly, I like to think) into the jostling crowds to board the ferry that crosses the icy Bosphorus between Asia and Europe.

Naturally it’s also been non-stop eating and I'm sorry to say that it would be impossible to share everything in one post. So here’s a little taster to start off with. This afternoon I stumbled into the hotel lobby (after a spot of forraging in the Egyptian Spice Market) to the welcome sight of Deniz in the open-plan kitchen making börek for tomorrow’s breakfast. Börek is an Anatolian dish – a little like lasagna, but only in that it’s made from cheese-filled layers of fine pastry sheets and baked to a rich golden brown. It’s a popular snack and breakfast dish, sometimes filled with spinach or meat instead of cheese. We’ve been stuffing it down over the last few days, and I’ve been really loving the flavour of the strong white Turkish cheese, spiked with a chilli buzz and sweet dried mint.

 

Börek
There are many recipes for börek and language difficulties made it impossible for me to get accurate quantities for Denis’ version. I’ve made a guestimate for quantities – if you feel brave, give it a go and let me know how it turns out!

The pastry for börek is an egg-based dough – again bit like pasta dough. It’s rolled with a super-long rolling pin into large circles, around 25 cm in diameter. These are first boiled before being baked in the oven. For ease, many people (like Deniz) use good quality purchased yufka pastry (or filo at a pinch), which makes it super quick to knock up.

If you can’t find Turkish white cheese, I suggest using a mixture of fetta, haloumi and perhaps a tasty cheddar.

3 large sheets of yufka pastry
melted butter for greasing pan

Filling
4 eggs
100 ml vegetable oil
100 ml milk
250 g Turkish white cheese, grated (or use a mixture of fetta, haloumi and cheddar)
1 teaspoon dried mint
½ teaspoon chilli powder
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon nigella seeds

Place the eggs, oil and milk in a blender and whiz for a few minutes to make a thick sort of custard. In a separate bowl, combine the grated cheese with the mint, chilli and black pepper.

Brush a medium-sized baking pan with melted butter and line with 1 sheet of the pastry – it should drape generously over the edges of the pan. Spoon in a third of the cheese mixture and drizzle on around a quarter of the custard mix. Arrange another sheet of pastry on top and add another third of the cheese and more of the custard. Top with the third layer of pastry and add the remaining cheese and a more custard.

Now bring the two short sides of pastry up and over the top, and fold the two long sides up on top of them. Pat into the tin fairly firmly and smear the rest of the custard over the top and down the sides. Sprinkle with nigella seeds and cover with cling-film.

Denis leaves the börek in the fridge overnight and bakes it just before breakfast time. It takes about 40 minutes in a 160ºC oven. The top should be a gorgeous golden brown. Take it out of the oven and turn the borek out, upside down onto a platter. Slide it back into the pan and return it to the oven for another 10 minutes or so to brown the bottom.

Cut into wedges and serve hot. Otherwise reheat it just before serving – it will keep for several days.

I'll try to get down early for breakfast tomorrow to get a shot of it hot from the oven. But frankly, as I've scarcely risen before 9 am for the last few days I'm not making any promises!

Loose ends

One quick post before I board the midnight plane – not to Georgia, mind, but for London, where I believe it is freezing cold (so plenty of warm tights and polo necks in the suitcase).

The last days have been a bit hectic tying up all sorts of loose ends. Somehow, despite last minute dramas, things always seem to come together one way or another.

I’ve signed off on the French recipe book…

Bottled my first batch of vinegar (infused with a few sprigs of our rather miserable rosemary)

Enjoyed a wonderful ‘Arabesque’ lunch at the gorgeous Stones winery at the weekend – far too much to eat, but then that’s half the point of Sunday lunch, isn’t it?

Collected my smart new glasses  just a few short hours ago

And just in the nick of time, the missing croc has returned. Found deep in the undergrowth when GK was laying the new drip watering system in the garden

So now, I’m truly ready to go! I’m going to do my very best – depending on internet connections – to write about some of our adventures over the next 5 weeks.

So watch this space!