Collected in Kalkan Restaurants

A little something to warm you up as temperatures start to dip.


Food on fire:

Lamb at Iso's.

Oh, you want video?  We can do that too.

Steak at Coast.

Ways to Help

Our thoughts are with all those affected by the earthquake in the Van province of Turkey.  Survivors are currently desperately in need of shelter and aid with winter not far away:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15470596

If you would like to make a donation to help the survivors of the Eastern Turkey earthquake, here are some links that you may find useful:

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: donations can be made from many countries to the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund.

ShelterBox: donations will help ShelterBox, working in conjunction with Turkish Red Crescent, provide shelter and aid to quake survivors.

Easy Entertaining - Kalkan Style

Impromptu barbecues (or planned ones, for that matter) are a great way to spend an evening in Kalkan, especially if you're staying with a group.  It's as simple as:


1: Making a trip to the butcher - who, most days, sells ready-to-throw-on-the-grill chicken skewers, lamb skewers, and lamb kofte (they look like mini-lamb burgers to me).  We like this guy:

Bulent, the butcher - located just past the Tesko roundabout.

2: Throwing said meat (or seafood - maybe you like seafood instead?) on the grill.  Even if your accommodation lacks a grill, it's easy enough to pick one up (along with coals and lighter fluid, and beer - what is a BBQ without beer?) at most supermarkets:

A selection of grills outside of Kartin Market.

And 3: Inviting over a group of friends, acquaintances, or those people you just met on a boat trip...


Besides feeding them and keeping their glasses filled, here's an easy way we've discovered to keep BBQ guests entertained.  First, grab an iPod - yours or someone's who's hopefully got a similar taste in music.  Then, sync it with one of these:

The Jambox from Jawbone, which you can also find here, among other places.  This nifty little speaker connects to devices with Bluetooth and will fill up a room with sound - we were really surprised at the amount of good sound that comes out of such a little speaker.  Tiny and light enough to fit in your hand luggage (though it slightly confounded some of the security staff when we took it into Dalaman Airport), we've discovered it's a great way to listen to our own music when we're on holiday.  And it makes entertaining in Kalkan just that little bit easier!

Bringing Kalkan Home

I was trying to come up with some clever way to introduce this post, but after sitting here for a while, drooling over the pictures that I was trying to decide between, I decided just to post the pictures and go from there.

And because you can't really see everything that's going on there, here's another one:

And just in case you still can't tell, that is a waffle.  Covered in a (white) chocolate spread.  And bananas.  And caramel ice cream and chocolate chip ice cream.  And caramel sauce.  In a word, delicious.  In more words, I want one right now.


However, since I'm currently not in Kalkan, I am not able to wander over to Fener Cafe (AKA The Lighthouse Cafe, located on the harbour-front - you'll recognize it by the large green lighthouse) where the smell of baking waffles wafts over diners and passers-by, enticing them to order one.  So, instead, I'll bring a little of Kalkan to me with....


A waffle iron!  Here are a few options I've been looking into:
This one looks like it will do the job...
But, oh how much do I want this one.

Fener Cafe, by the way, serves way more than waffles - more to come on that later...

A Turkish Find

Remember the goats?  OK, so there has been some discussion as to whether they are goats or actually sheep, but either way, I shot the video more for the sound of the bells than anything else.  It was a beautiful sound to wake up to.  However, it seems that those goats (or sheep) are only around Kalkan in the off-season, because I haven't seen or heard them at all in the summer.  So no pretty bells to wake up to.  But, at the Sunday Market, I heard the bells again.  Looking around, I couldn't locate any goats, or sheep for that matter, but I did find these:

Goat (or sheep) bells!  A little hard to see, I know - they're hanging next to the hammock.  As soon as I make it back to Kalkan, a set of these are coming home with me.  They'll be packed right next to my trivets.

Signature Dish: Ada Patisserie

A brief note about Signature Dish.  Kalkan has its fair share of restaurants, and each year many new restaurants pop up beside the classics that remain season after season.  To create our Signature Dish posts, we have partnered with restaurants in Kalkan to discover not only what their signature dish is, but also how the dish is prepared, where ingredients are sourced, and a bit of the chef’s and/or owner’s philosophy on food, cooking, and the restaurant experience.  Signature Dish will be a recurring feature on Turquoise Collected.

Your chef: Nuray (the first female chef to be featured on Turquoise Collected!)

This is Nuray's first season working in Ada's kitchen and she was kind enough to let us watch her whip up Ada's signature dish: Turkish Breakfast.


This whole concept of <insert country name here> Breakfast is still relatively new to me.  There is no "American Breakfast" like there is English Breakfast or Irish Breakfast.  And while I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around those (I just don't think the American palette was built to enjoy black pudding...), after watching Nuray prepare Turkish Breakfast (and then devouring it hot from the kitchen), I can say I've found a country whose breakfast I like in all its parts.


As with English and Irish Breakfasts, Turkish Breakfast varies from place to place and region to region.  Ada's typical Turkish Breakfast features the following items:

A little behind the scenes action of Nuray plating the (cherry, strawberry, and aubergine!) jam.

A note about the fruit and veg: if you go to Ada for Turkish Breakfast in March, you may not end up with the same exact fruit and veg you get in, say, July.  The reason?  Ada only serves seasonal fruit and vegetables - sourced from Kinik where the family of Ada's owner, Cihan (pronounced Gee-han) owns 10,000 square meters of greenhouses.  So, if you want fresh-squeezed orange and pomegranate juice - which, believe me, you do - you have to go in March.


Breakfast also features bread, including simits baked on the premises (post to come!).

This is all served alongside the main attraction - the eggs.

That's eggs, fried in butter and oil, with a type of Turkish sausage called sucuk (pronounced soo-jook).  




We have been trying for months and months, in two different countries, on two different continents, to recreate this dish, but without the Turkish sucuk, it just never comes out exactly right.  The sucuk has a slightly spicy flavor, and it also doesn't seem to release as much fat as the American and English sausages we've tested in our faux-Turkish Breakfasts.  Despite all of that though, we keep trying, because even without the exact flavors, the general concept of a Turkish Breakfast makes for yummy eating, day or night.


Ada Patisserie is located on the Kalamar road and, along with Turkish Breakfast, serves sandwiches and salads, coffees and teas, and tons of freshly baked (on the premises) baked goods.

Day Trip: Kaputaş Beach

A lot of steps...

About 188 (give or take a few - some are smaller than others).  But the pay-off?

Worth it.

Kaputaş Beach is about a ten to fifteen minute drive from Kalkan.  

Want to skip the steps but still want to visit this secluded beach?  Some of the boats leaving from Kalkan Habour will make a stop at the beach, depending on the weather - check with your captain.

The Lilo, Part II

Remember the lilo (float, Americans)?  I neglected to mention an amazing feature I discovered once we had inflated ours.

The perfect spot for this:

Not sure if this is what the designers had in mind when they added this feature, but to me, it seemed the perfect fit.  You could float around for hours without having to run inside for a top up!

Oh yeah, works for these too:

Collected on the Harbour Front

First item on the menu?  Beer.

My kind of ice cream shop.

Balm to My NYC-Missing Heart

I left New York for Kalkan just as street fair season was beginning in Manhattan.  From May (sometimes you'll even see a few pop up in April) until September (or a little into October), weekends in New York City are filled with street fairs.  I always loved leaving my apartment on a Saturday morning and having my plans foiled because as I approached Broadway (or Columbus, or Amsterdam), I would happen upon a street fair.  But, because I won't be back to Manhattan until mid-September, I'm pretty much missing the whole street fair season this year.  Fortunately, I was introduced to the Sunday Market in Akbel, located just a little bit outside of Kalkan.  It's like a street fair, a flea market, and a green market all rolled up into one!


Want inexpensive t-shirts, plastics kids' toys, fly swatters, batteries, kitchen equipment - you name it, they have it!

Need clippers, saws, BBQ grill covers, saws, shovels, knives, fry baskets?  You can get it all from one stall!

Turkey's version of a food truck:

Even Michael made an appearance:

But, our purpose in going to the Sunday Market was to pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables.  Lucky for us, we found this stall:

Aydin, left, and Mehmet, right

Aydin, our market lady, had a great selection of fresh fruit and veg, but won me over with her potatoes - to me, the best looking potatoes in the market that day (they later ended up in an improvised-by-ingredients-we-had-on-hand potato salad - post to come).  The super-reasonable prices didn't hurt, either.  You can also find Aydin at the Thursday Market in Kalkan and the Friday Market in Kaş (pronounced "kash," a town about twenty minutes drive from Kalkan).


All-in-all, for someone missing New York City, the Sunday Market provided a little taste of NYC in Turkey. 


Oh!  And what visit to the market would be complete without a stop by:

The sheep and goat truck.

Signature Dish: Restaurant at the Likya Hotel

A brief note about Signature Dish.  Kalkan has quite a fair share of restaurants, and each year many new restaurants pop up beside the classics that remain season after season.  To create our Signature Dish posts, we have partnered with many restaurants in Kalkan to discover not only their signature dish – the dish that best represents the restaurant it is made in – but also how the dish is made, where ingredients are sourced, and a bit of the chef’s and/or owner’s philosophy on food, cooking, and the restaurant experience.  Signature Dish will be a recurring feature on Turquoise Collected.


Your chef:  Yilmaz Yel

Yilmaz has been a chef for sixteen years - and he's only thirty-one!  At the age of fourteen, he joined his father, also a chef, in his restaurant.  From the age of eighteen on, Yilmaz went on to work in six five-star restaurants in Antalya, where he was born.  He holds many awards for his cooking, having competed in national cooking competitions in Istanbul.  2011 marks Yilmaz's third season as chef at the restaurant at the Likya Hotel.


On to the food!


When I began speaking with chefs and restaurant owners about their signature dishes, what I was not prepared for was that it would be so difficult to get them to choose just one dish.  When I asked Yilmaz if he could, please, choose just one dish to represent his restaurant, his response was (paraphrased), "Asking me to choose one dish is like asking a parent to choose their favorite child."  Basically: impossible (unless you're my mother, of course - hi Ma!).  But then I thought, "Let them make two dishes if they want!  It means I get to eat more!"  So, here they are, the Likya's Signature Dishes.


For appetizers!

Beetroots with a cheese-y mousse and pine nuts.

Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph the second signature appetizer (I was probably too busy shoveling the first one into my mouth.  Forgive me?), but here is a shot of it being prepared:

Shrimp and asparagus in a cream sauce garnished with croutons and a salad.

This was my second time for the shrimp as I had ordered it the first time we went to the Likya, before I even met Yilmaz.  Points to me!  I ordered a signature appetizer without even knowing it!  Both appetizers were nice and light - a good way to start a meal.


For the main course(s), Yilmaz chose on the following:

Lamb fillet served with mushrooms.

The lamb in this dish comes from the Burdur region of Turkey.  As this area is home to many nomadic people, the lamb travel with them, and feed only on the grass from this area.

Grouper served with risotto and fresh vegetables.

This grouper was freshly caught, as is all the fish served at the Likya.  This was a light, yet filling, flavorful dish.


And if that weren't enough, here's dessert:

An apple and pumpkin concoction, left, and pineapple pan-fried in sugar, right.

But wait, there's more!  This showed up between the appetizers and the main courses:

A frozen concotion made with lemon, mint, and vodka.

When you're sitting in the hot sun, this makes for a very refreshing treat.  Overall, this was a meal that was lovely to look at and yummy to eat.


But with Signature Dish posts, I want to focus not only on the finished product, but also the preparation of these dishes.  Going through the photographs I took in the kitchen, what stood out to me the most is the great delicacy Yilmaz displays when cooking.  Nearly every photo I took looked like these:

Every dish he prepared featured this graceful touch and attention to detail.


But enough waxing poetic!  This is what you came to see, right?  The kitchen pyrotechnics:

Collected in the Old Town

Jimmy from Gironda making a house call.

To the Market We Went...

A shot of yummy from the Sunday Market:

Total price?  7 Turkish Lira (roughly £2.50, or $4).

The Lilo

Or: "I Learned a New Word Today"

And no, it was not a Turkish word.  It was an English word!  Or, perhaps it would be better described as a “British” word.  British readers will recognize the word “lilo” as referring to what American readers know as a float.  As in, one of these:

We bought one!  We also bought one of these:

To inflate it.  Wee little one of these:

To inflate RATHER LARGE ONE OF THESE:

Seems like it would take a while, no?  And we were losing the sun!  What to do?  There was nothing for it but to give it our all and hope that the foot pump would hold out for the duration.  Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly – we are fit people after all.  Fit for what?  I have no idea, but anyway…), we had the lilo (pool float, American readers) inflated and conveying us around the pool in twenty minutes!

The foot pump, sadly, did not fare so well:

So now, the challenge!  When in Kalkan, go out and purchase a lilo of your own (most shops you pass will sell some form of inflatable pool gear) – don’t forget your pump – and see if you can inflate and be relaxing on your lilo in twenty minutes or less.  The prize?  Satisfaction!  What?  We’re a new blog and don’t have sponsors with fun things to give away.   Yet…

A Turkish Find

When I left NYC for Kalkan and beyond, I was faced with the challenge of downsizing my life to fit into five, count 'em, five suitcases (yes, there are six there, one belonged to my mister):

Sorry for the poor picture quality, but it was about 4AM and we had to get all of this to the airport...by 5AM.

After eleven years of living in New York, I had accumulated a lot of stuff.  A lot of stuff which, unfortunately, had to go.  I was able to bring some things to my mom's in New Jersey (you know, important stuff - art projects, kitchen equipment, shoes), but a lot of it, I just had to say goodbye to.  One of the little things I was sorry to see go was a beautifully decorated blue and white round trivet that a friend gave to me as a gift years ago.  I will admit, when I first got it, I didn't know it was a trivet, let alone what a trivet was.  But it was lovely and unique and it sat on a table looking lovely and unique.  It was only after I started baking that I realized I could set hot-out-of-the-oven dishes on it - and then I loved it even more.  But, it had to go - it was a bit too heavy and impractical to waste any of my 115 kilogram (that's roughly 250 pounds, Americans) luggage allowance on.


So you can imagine my profound delight when, walking around Kalkan's Old Town one afternoon, I stumbled upon these:

Rows upon rows, boxes upon boxes, piles upon piles of trivets.  

I think I even spotted an exact replica of the trivet I was forced to leave behind! 

And they are oh-so-reasonably-priced.  The only thing that stopped me from scooping up a bundle was my 20 kilogram luggage allowance.

Signature Dish: Gironda

A brief note about Signature Dish.  Kalkan has quite a fair share of restaurants, and each year many new restaurants pop up beside the classics that remain season after season.  To create our Signature Dish posts, we have partnered with many restaurants in Kalkan to discover not only their signature dish – the dish that best represents the restaurant it is made in – but also how the dish is made, where ingredients are sourced, and a bit of the chef’s and/or owner’s philosophy on food, cooking, and the restaurant experience.  Signature Dish will be a recurring feature on Turquoise Collected.

(Another quick note from me:  For years, I've been saying that I'd love to be a food photographer.  With the creation of Turquoise Collected, and more specifically, the Signature Dish feature, I basically gave myself the go-ahead to let loose and pursue that dream.  Well, I may have let a little too loose, because after shooting for these posts, I discovered that I had taken rather a large amount of photos.  I'll try to keep these posts from being too photo-heavy, but really, who doesn't love looking at food?)


And now, without further ado, Signature Dish: Gironda.

Your chef: Bayram

After finishing high school, Bayram went on to train for a year in cooking.  This was followed by over ten years working his way from restaurant kitchen to restaurant kitchen (along with an eighteen-month stint in the army as personal chef to a three-star general) studying and mastering many different styles of cooking including French, Italian, and Mexican.  2011 marks Bayram's first season at Gironda.


But enough of that, on to the food!  Gironda's signature appetizer:

Grilled Calamari with Fried Haloumi Cheese - be still my heart.

As Jimmy, Gironda's owner, notes in the video below, what makes this a signature dish is that instead of frying the calamari, as many other restaurants do, Gironda grills the calamari for a much lighter dish, making this an excellent choice in the warmer weather that can occur in July and August.

And Gironda's signature main course:

Chicken Gironda
(That lovely dappled light, by the way, is created by the rather large, rather beautiful, fifty-five (!) year-old mulberry tree, located in Gironda's central courtyard.)

Chicken Gironda is a stir-fry of chicken (marinated and fried) and vegetables (julienned red and green pepper, carrot, zucchini, and onion) which makes use of a mix of sauces and ginger to give the dish its signature flavor.

The chicken and vegetable mixture is served atop a bed of hand-mashed potatoes (with a little cheese smashed in for extra flavor).

I want that whisk!

After working hard in the kitchen and preparing their signature meal, Bayram, Jimmy, and some of the kitchen's staff very obligingly posed for a picture.

Bayram on the left and Jimmy on the right with the kitchen staff.

Gironda is open for dinner everyday.  Diners enjoy views of the harbor and Old Town from atop one of two rooftop terraces.  Reservations are recommended.


And finally, the obligatory kitchen pyrotechnics shot:

Stir-frying the vegetables for Chicken Gironda.