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).