Difference between Mid East and Turkish Food

(Food Photo shows Ali Nazik....
We went to San Diego today for John's Dr. appointment and picked up the San Diego reader, which comes out weekly. This restaurant review was so informative, I had to save it here, and the photo that came with the article...enjoy!


Gimme More Turkey
By Naomi Wise | Published Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Pasha Mediterranean Grill & Café
3614 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, 619-294-4444

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2009/jul/01/gimme-more-turkey/?print

Pasha drew my eye with an ad in this paper, including a coupon for a freebie appetizer platter. Hmm...a new bargain destination? Worth trying? I scurried to the website and found that the restaurant wasn’t just another generic Mediterranean eatery but specifically Turkish. Now that’s something fresh! (There’s also the charming Bird House Grill in Encinitas, and a doner-kebab joint downtown, but that’s about it for Turkish, far as I know.) The menu revealed standard Middle Eastern dishes, but also several distinctly Turkish specialties I’d never encountered before — two salads, three entrées, a dessert. Good enough for a start. And this would be third in a row for an exploration of new or newish restaurants serving various global forms of “barbecue,” after Southern and Japanese, and leading right in to July 4. Posse roundup time!

Several of my friends have traveled in Turkey. They’ve come back raving about their trips but not so much about the food. Still, knowing a trifle about Turkish history, I’m curious about the cuisine.

First off, Turks are not generic “Middle Easterners,” even if they share a common religion in Islam. They don’t speak Arabic (a Semitic language) but the totally different Turkish (a Ural-Altaic Turkic language, most closely related to Azeri and Uzbek). Their location and ecosystem tie them to Asia Minor (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc.), Persia, and the Adriatic Sea, rather than the Mediterranean Arab world — think snow, not sand.

And when the Ottoman Empire swept through the rest of Asia Minor en route to Greece, its military fell in love with Armenian food (same as me) and scooped up large numbers of Armenians to serve as army cooks while they were conquering the world. Greece gained an infusion of fresh recipes from Armenia, shaping the Greek cuisine we know today, but traditional Greek dishes also gained worldwide currency, especially their ancient masterpiece of stuffed grape leaves — now best known by the Turkish word dolma.

One end result of all this conquest was the settling of a huge Armenian population in the city of Izmir, which became the “cuisine capital” of Turkey, after a fashion, spreading its culinary influence (at least until the whole Turkish-Armenian thing went horribly tragic, as the empire rotted, but I’m not going to go into that in a restaurant review…).

What other influences did the Turks pick up in their conquests and meld into their own cuisine? Inquiring minds want to know.

When we arrived at Pasha, we found a medium-small room with dark tablecloths, paper napkins, walls painted a light terra cotta and hung with a spare but beautiful collection of Turkish handicrafts. The restaurant is owned by a youngish couple, the husband from Lebanon and the wife from Turkey. Both do some cooking and some serving. But the night we ate there, most of the Turkish dishes — the malatya (Turkish potato salad), the etli borek (meat pie), and the spinach borek — were all unavailable; they just hadn’t been prepared for a midweek night.

We began with the vegetarian meze platter, for which we had the coupon. Everything on it was very pleasant, especially the lively tabouli and the light, faintly smoky baba ghanoush. (A typo on the website spells it “Babagannosh,” which sounds like Turkish/Russian-Yiddish for “Grandpa’s getting a snack.”) None of the appetizers on the platter seems uniquely Turkish, or in any way different from every other meze platter in town.

Be sure to save some of the çaçik (pronounced “jah-jik,” the Turkish version of Greek tzatziki or Indian cucumber raita) and the garlic-yogurt sauce for your main courses, as dips for your grilled meats.

We also ordered the Turkish Shepherd Salad (coban salatasi) — diced tomatoes amended by cukes, scallion, onions, parsley, and bell pepper in a lemon vinaigrette, topped with a light snowfall of feta cheese. The tomatoes are under a lot of pressure to perform in this dish, and sad to say, they didn’t: They were nearly tasteless, hard supermarket-style globe tomatoes, and June is not yet their season. The dressing needed more acidity for “oomph” to compensate for their blandness. “This time of year,” said Marty, “the only tomatoes worth anything are little ones, cherry or grape tomatoes.” “Yeah, even if you leave the regular ones on the counter, they never ripen and sweeten,” added the Lynnester. Oddly, the leftovers of this salad improved greatly during two nights in the fridge, allowing the dressing to soak in and saturate the veggies.

The best of our entrées by far was a Turkish specialty, Ali Nazik. It features small, richly seasoned cubes of charbroiled beef served on a warm bed of tart, creamy patliçan (pronounced “PAHT-lee-jahn”) salad, mashed eggplant mixed with yogurt and plenty of garlic. It comes with grilled tomato and grilled slices of slightly spicy red pepper. It all works together, with a fine contrast between the chewy, salty meat and lush, garlicky eggplant. (The eggplant is also available separately on the meze list.) “I’d come back for this dish,” said Lynne, who lives nearby, and probably will do just that.

Shrimp kebabs came in second. The shrimps were well seasoned if quite salty, and reasonably tender. Like nearly all other entrées, they were accompanied by fluffy basmati rice, pita, hummus (standing in for the baba ghanoush promised on the menu with the seafood dishes), and the fine house salad, a lively mixture of greens, tomatoes, cukes, onions, and (in this plate alone) a few whole basil leaves.

The lamb shish kebab was flavorful with a marinade and charring, but dry and rather tough. It set Marty, Dave, and me to reminiscing about Sayyat Nova, an exquisite Armenian restaurant in Greenwich Village, way back when I was a teen beatnik, thrilled to taste this new cuisine with my dad and stepmom. That restaurant’s rendition had a subtle, garlic-perfused olive-oil marinade for large leg of lamb chunks charred outside but rosy inside.

At Pasha, the chunks are smaller and cooked medium (pinky-brown) inside, and the marinade is more assertive, possibly, judging by the result, including an acidic, tenderizing component like lemon juice. “I think the meat’s been marinated too long,” said Dave. “The texture on the exterior, just under the char, is a bit mealy.” “And the lamb doesn’t have much lamb flavor,” Marty observed. “I don’t know whether that’s because it’s cooked too well done or if the lamb itself is lacking.”

Unable to fulfill our hopes of a borek, we asked the owner whether the gyro meat in the Iskender (doner) kebab plate was house-made or bought. Bought, alas. Instead, the owner persuaded us to try a shawarma. Because this is a newbie restaurant with not much volume yet, the traditional shawarma of a huge hunk of flesh rotating on a vertical spit has proven impractical. “Instead, I cut it in slices, so the delicious marinade goes all through the meat, then I charbroil the slices,” he said. We chose beef shawarma over the alternative chicken breast, which dries out too easily. But the beef proved just as dry. “It’s almost like jerky!” Lynne said. “You can’t even taste the marinade, just the charring,” said Dave. Dipping the slices in çaçik or garlic sauce left over from the appetizer platter helped, but only a little.

There are two desserts. The house-made baklava is flaky and nutty (with both pistachios and walnuts) but sparing on the honey syrup — much less sweet than standard versions. “I like this a lot,” said Lynne. “It’s not overwhelming.” Kunafa is genuinely exotic, a large wedge-shaped pastry with delicate top and bottom crusts of crunchy farina flakes, sandwiching a filling of melted mild cheeses (mozzarella and Jack or Havarti, or another cheese of that ilk). It’s topped with crumbled pistachios, lightly dressed with fragrant rosewater-scented sugar syrup, and is barely sweet at all. It’s like a cheese course and a dessert all in one.

The Turkish coffee was strong and a little bitter, with all the “mud” hiding at the bottom of the cup. It comes unsweetened. We stirred in sugar with our fork handles (no spoons provided — yeah, it’s still a start-up).
Bottom line: Pasha is indeed a bargain. With the coupon for a free appetizer platter, the bill came to $28 per person total, all inclusive. But I feel the restaurant isn’t making the most of its greatest potential strength. Generic Middle Eastern restaurants are a dime a dozen, some cheaper than this and some offering easier parking. In order to compete, the Turkish dishes that distinguish Pasha from the crowd should be available all the time, and I’d also like to see more of them, if the Ali Nazik — outstanding hit of our dinner — is any example. Then there’d be a reason to come back over and over and explore what could be a unique menu. Hey, flaunt it if you’ve got it, baby!
Pasha Mediterranean Cafe & Grill

** (Good)

3614 Fifth Avenue, Hillcrest, 619-294-4444, themediterraneancuisine.com.

HOURS: Tuesday–Sunday 11:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m.

PRICES: Soups and appetizers, $5–$22; salads, $7–$13; sandwiches, $8–9; entrées, $9–$25 (most $13); lunch specials, $6.

CUISINE AND BEVERAGES: Middle Eastern (Lebanese) menu with several Turkish specialties.

PICK HITS: Vegetarian meze platter, ali nazik (Turkish beef cubes over eggplant salad), patliçan salad (eggplant salad, if not ordering ali nazik), shrimp kebabs, baklava.

NEED TO KNOW: Loads for vegans, including three entrées (two always available). Unisex bathroom, marginally handicapped accessible. No alcohol. Halal (Islamic version of kosher) ingredients.

Highy recommended product!

John orders this box of packets of crytals that you put in a glass of water...the flavor is so so yummy (I do love anything citrus, though.) It is great with ice cubes in the tallest galls you can find! So refreshing...and all that vitamin C ! Here is the site:

http://www.luckyvitamin.com/item/itemKey/49639

treat

I need to think of a good name for these. Any ideas? You melt 63% dark chocolate chips...then place tablespoons of this melted chocolate onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Then you place 3 pieces of dried fruit/nuts on each one., so the pieces sink into the chocolate. I used dried fruit and nuts from Costco called Fruit and Nut Medley.
Then put in fridge for it to harden.
The result is a delicate dark chocolate wafer with intense taste of whatever dried fruit and nuts you put on. My favorite is dried pineapple and dried banana and a piece of walnut.

Discovering Coconut Oil !!!!

While we were in Utah, Doug's Aunt Claudia introduced us to Coconut Oil. She made popcorn with coconut oil, using Amish blue popcorn. Eating it was a unique experience....for the popcorn was very slightly infused with a coconut flavor.
She showed us the book, Coconut Cures and I read it through and was amazed. Coconut is the king of foods, plus you can benefit by rubbing it on your skin.

There were many stories in the book about people being cured from certain ailments by eating coconut. John received coconut macaroons for Father's Day (made by Kelsy) and he reported they cured his diarrhea.
I could go on and on, but get the book and read it yourself!
We are converted to it.

Benefits of Ginger

From the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-nausea15-2009may15,0,3500051,print.story

Studies find two new methods for curbing nausea of chemotherapy
Ginger, a home remedy for helping an upset stomach, and a cocktail of anti-nausea drugs both reduced vomiting and sickness in cancer patients.By Shari Roan

May 15, 2009

Chemotherapy could soon become less grueling.

Simply adding about half a teaspoon of ginger to food in the days before, during and after chemotherapy can reduce the often-debilitating side effects of nausea and vomiting, a large, randomized clinical trial has found. And a newer type of anti-nausea drug, when added to standard medications, can help prevent such side effects as well.

The ginger results will be presented this month at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting; the drug study was published this week in the Lancet Oncology journal.

The findings are significant, cancer experts say, because about 70% of chemotherapy patients experience nausea and vomiting -- often severe -- during treatment.

"Chemotherapy has come to be the thing cancer patients fear the most," said Dr. Steven Grunberg, a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study in the Lancet Oncology. "We've made a huge amount of progress, but we haven't completely solved the problem."

In the ginger study, 644 patients, most of them female, from 23 oncology practices nationwide received two standard anti-emetic medications at the time of chemotherapy. They also were given a capsule containing either 0.5 gram, 1 gram or 1.5 grams of ginger, or a placebo capsule. The patients took the capsules containing the placebo or ginger for three days before chemotherapy and three days after the treatment.

All of the patients receiving ginger experienced less nausea for four days after chemotherapy, said lead study author Julie L. Ryan of the University of Rochester Medical Center. Doses of 0.5 gram and 1 gram were most effective, reducing nausea by 40% compared with the patients on the placebo.

The study is the largest to examine the effect of ginger, already widely used as a home remedy for an upset stomach. One gram of ground ginger is equivalent to about 1/2 teaspoon. Ryan cautioned that some foods labeled as ginger, such as ginger ale or ginger cookies, may contain only ginger flavoring.

Researchers don't know why ginger seems to help, Ryan said. But, she added: "There is other research showing it has a potent anti-inflammatory effect in the gut."

In the study led by Grunberg, 810 patients were given two standard anti-nausea drugs, dexamethasone and ondansetron, that work by blocking a neural pathway in the brain that controls nausea. This two-drug regimen is most effective in preventing nausea and vomiting in the first 24 hours after chemotherapy.

One-third of the patients also received a one-day dose of the new drug, casopitant mesylate, while one-third received a three-day dose and one-third received a placebo.

Adding casopitant mesylate, the authors found, helped control symptoms in the so-called delayed phase of nausea that occurs beyond the first day after chemotherapy. Of patients receiving the standard two-drug regimen, 66% experienced no nausea or vomiting in the five days after chemotherapy, compared with 86% of patients taking a single dose of casopitant mesylate.

Casopitant mesylate probably adds extra relief from nausea because it acts on different nerve systems than the standard drugs, Grunberg said. Dexamethasone and ondansetron are in a class of drugs known as serotonin receptor antagonists; casopitant mesylate blocks the so-called NK1 pathway in the brain.

"NK1 antagonists work better for that later period," Grunberg said. "This study reinforces the value of this family of anti-nausea agents."

It also appears that the three-drug combination can be given on the day of chemotherapy without the need for additional doses, he said.

"That is a huge convenience for the patient, if we can give them all the drugs they will need for this period on the day they come to the clinic for chemotherapy," Grunberg said. "Our whole goal is maintain the highest quality of life during chemotherapy."

shari.roan@latimes.com

Pizzaiolo:The Italian Word For a Male Pizza Chef

DIGGING IN: Ferran Adrià samples the pizza in Turin, Italy. His goal: an honest interpretation of the Italian dish.

I liked this quote from this article in 15 May 2009 LA Times. Ever sionce I saw Big Night (the movie) I realized how passionate Italians are about their food.

"You don't become pizzaiolo, you are born pizzaiolo."


El Bulli chef wants a piece of the pizza pie
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-adria13-2009may13,0,3804512.story
Ferran Adrià's plan to learn pizza making and open a pizzeria in Barcelona isn't going down too well with Italians. It is their dish, after all.

By Phil Gallo and Linda Di Franco
May 13, 2009

Ferran Adrià, the internationally acclaimed chef whose El Bulli in Spain is revered as the world's premier outpost of gastronomic inventiveness, has ventured to Italy to learn a more humble art, pizza making. And perhaps not surprisingly, some Italians have a problem with that.

Ferran and his brother Alberto, the pastry chef at cutting-edge El Bulli, plan to open a straightforward pizzeria in Barcelona, apparently one that will be gimmick-free. They insist their goal is to create an honest interpretation of the Italian specialty, not to wheel out chemicals, liquid nitrogen and other experimental cooking methods to alter toppings, the sauce or dough.
In order to do that, they are scouring Italy to unearth secrets. "We'll learn to make it well, this national dish of yours," Alberto told La Stampa, the daily newspaper in Turin, during his recent visit to the city in the northwestern region of Piedmont.

He had earlier visited Italy to learn how to make panettone, the light Christmas sweet bread, but says he had too much respect for the original to go into competition. But pizza, Alberto Adrià said, is another thing. "Ferran likes it too much. So we asked ourselves: 'Why can't we have a decent one in Barcelona? We should be the one to try.' "

Vincenzo Mansi, a world-champion pizza maker from Capri, is skeptical. Despite the successes that Mario Batali and Wolfgang Puck have had in the U.S., in Italy the idea of a fine-dining chef suddenly turning into a pizza maker is not just foreign -- it's preposterous.

"The secret of the pizza is inside the blood," Mansi said. "You don't wake up one morning and improvise yourself as a pizzaiolo. I've been doing this for over 18 years, and I still don't feel like I've mastered it. You need to know how to touch the dough. You need to know how to deal with the ingredients. You don't become pizzaiolo, you are born pizzaiolo."

The Adrià brothers have not announced whose pizza-making advice they are soliciting, but they have been photographed enjoying slices in Turin and Padua. They have neither a date nor a specific location for the Barcelona pizzeria.

The first inkling that Ferran Adrià was looking into pizza came in October during the Salone Internazionale Del Gusto food exhibition in Turin. He requested authentic pizza and was sent to Pizzeria La Cozza, where one of the pizzaioli is Aldo Brandi, a descendant of the inventor of the Margherita pizza 120 years ago.

Hold the foam

Giulio Ferrari, owner of Pizzeria La Cozza, said he was thrown by the news of Adrià wanting to get into pizza. "I hope he's not going to deconstruct it too much and turn it into a foam," he said.

La Stampa broke the news that the brothers had begun their great pizza hunt. It also exposed the likely reasoning: profit. The 50-seat El Bulli, located in Roses, Spain, overlooking a bay in Catalonia, is widely reputed to be a money-loser. Famous for being open only six months of the year, it employs 70 people and serves 8,000 diners, but rumors of its closure have been swirling in the restaurant world.

"We are able to continue because El Bulli is a strong brand," Alberto told students at the Istituto d'Arte Applicata in Turin. "But I don't want to cook for just a few people. And what's simpler than a disk on which one lays the ingredients of a pizza?"

Still, the idea that the Adriàs could bring pizza into the haute cuisine world sent the Italian food blogosphere reeling. While some took pride in Ferran Adrià turning his attention to Italy's cuisine, most posting on La Stampa's website, Massimo Bernardi's well-respected Dissapore and Paolo Massobrio's blog Bar Babietola responded with resentment over a foreign celebrity chef trying to redo an Italian classic.

Another champion pizza maker, Claudio Paduano of Pizzeria Madison in Nocera Inferiore near Salerno, has a more positive outlook, noting it is an honor to pizzaioli that a great chef would consider kneading and tossing dough, making sauce and creating pies.

"There is a lot to learn," Paduano said. "Nature is not constant, you need knowledge and experience in how to deal with the ingredients."

Fueling the antipathy toward Ferran Adrià was a recent weeklong series about molecular cuisine on "Striscia la Notizia," or "Slither the News," Italy's equivalent of " The Daily Show." Max Laudadio, host of the satirical program, ambushed Adrià at an April book signing in Milan and grilled him about his use of chemicals and funding he has received from chemical companies.

Adrià acknowledged he received 25,000 euros from Inicon, a project financed by the European Union to promote additives for the kitchen.

Challenged
Food journalist Jörg Zipprick was on the show, contending that food additives must be labeled in packaged foods but not in restaurants that clearly use them, such as El Bulli.

Veniero Gambaro, a professor of chemical analysis in Milan, also appeared on the show and, after examining the ingredients of one dish from El Bulli , said, "Not all, but some of the ingredients found in this composition could be considered synthetic products. These are chemical additives that are used in certain processed foods and are usually regulated."

On the other hand, maybe converting the Spanish to pizza isn't such a great idea after all. Shortly after the Adriàs made their Italian tour, the American chain Pizza Hut announced it would soon close 100 of its 134 outlets in Spain.

food@latimes.com

A 2 Pound Grapefruit

I bought about a dozen of these giant (pink fleshed grapefruit) from a place called Clark's Nutrition center in Loma Linda ...a most awesome store..huge...with the most amazing food products, books, health and beauty department, etc....

These picture do not do justice to the actual appearance and heft of these big babies. Whta a pleasure it has been to eat these...