28.11.12

virtual tourism, continued.


View Istanbul in a larger map.

+++

The leetle friend Hilly the Poes goes off to Istanbul for work tomorrow and has had no time to do any research, so I did some real quick just now cos I used to be interested in a visit there myself, and cos I'm fast at researchin', and cos H the P does stuffs for me all the time.

Clicking on the little blue pushpins gives you further information, URLs and shtuff, but there's one pushpin you can't see because it's all off to the southeast in the Asian district: it's Çiya (seeya!), more detail here and also in the comments for this post, courtesy of the wonderfully helpful Zora.

+++

And now after looking at all that food I'm having terrible döner/shawarma/falafel/blo my dam head off with spicy stuff cravings. As a result, I will now try to make some of the hot-as-balls Yemeni thing called zhoug, plus some vitamin-rich omi houriya und some cooling tahini sauce.

+++

zhoug.

6 of them finger-sized spicy green Turkish peppers, basically like jalapeno hotness. Stemmed, not seeded!
1 cup of fresh cilantro, washed
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, washed, or just use all cilantro like I did
3 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp caraway seeds, crushed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp water
1/4 cup of olive oil, plus 2 tbsp
optional: 1/2 to 1 tsp raw sugar, use only if you're thinking that something's missing

Pretty sure this is what I did except for salt and pepper could be off. But it looks and tastes EXACTLY like Maoz' spicy green sauce, which is a great great thing to look and taste like.

+++

3 comments:

Zora said...

Send her to Ciya! (With a squiggly thing under the C.) Actually there are two or three Ciyas, but they're all on the same street. I like the Sofrasi one (as opposed to the Kebab one), because there's more variety. The chef has made it his mission to collect old obscure recipes from grannies all over Turkey. It's wonderful, and not expensive. And it's on the Asia side, in the middle of a veg market, so kind of a nice sightseeing outing.

MEM said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MEM said...

mere seconds ago was i out on the ol' gastronome that roves poking around in your archives (!)...
i'd already gotten the Çiya tip from sazji's eG foodblog (http://forums.egullet.org/topic/103125-dinner-in-istanbul/), but it is 5-year-old information by now so thank you very much for confirming its continuing goodness. you nice!