Cooking and other things.

I like vegetables, but there are some that do not really appeal to me. Brussels will never ever appeal to me, corgettes, spinach and aubergine are not on my list of favorites, but thanks to Ozlem, I have been making some recipes using the latter. My favorite by far is the Spinach. When buying veg here you can forget those tiny bags of spinach already washed with the stalks removed. The chances are, as you walk around the market, that the spinach on sale was, that very morning, still in the field. Every vegetable you buy here has to be washed thoroughly, each leaf of spinach has to be washed under a running tap or you are liable to get a mouthful of grit. Anyway, back to Ozlems recipe.

A handful of Bulgar wheat or white rice
a large onion cut into thin slices
as much chopped spinach as you like
Tablespoon of tomato puree
salt
tablespoon of Olive oil
As much or as little Chilli powder to your taste
chicken stock cube
3 garlic cloves

So you start by frying the onions in the olive oil until translucent
Add the chopped spinach and bulgar wheat/rice
stir in the tomato puree, add the salt and chilli powder
add about 3/4 of a mug full of water, but keep your eye on it as you may have to add more to stop it sticking to the bottom. Crumble in a chicken stock cube, cover and leave to simmer. while it is cooking, pound the garlic with some salt in a pestle and mortar, when the dish is cooked turn off the heat and then add the garlic. This is a little trick Ozlem has shown me, the garlic infuses it's flavour as the dish cools without tasting bitter.  It should end up looking like this.

Now I know it doesn't look appetising, but believe me, it is delicious.I like it hot and it can be reheated but it also tastes nice cold. 

The recipe for the courgettes is simply fry some onions in olive oil then just add 2 grated tomato's, tomato puree and some chilli flakes and salt along with the sliced or diced courgette. simmer until cooked then add the pounded garlic after turning off the heat. Grating tomato's isn't the easiest thing to do by hand, because they get slippery and bits of tomato splash your clothes, but the difference in taste as opposed to tinned tomato makes it worth the effort. 

Having come from a part of London that was a 10 to 15 minute stroll to the Olympic park, I was quite spoilt as far as parks go. I loved it there, it had this informal and relaxing atmosphere, so now, Fethiye Belediye have started to develope a park on the last remaining piece of land that joins the Calis seafront with the Fethiye seafront I was interested to see what they planned. I'd seen small windmills going up as we drove past and then we stopped somewhere yesterday and I saw these.

These are the drawings on the hoardings of the planned park, I like the look of it and in a lot of ways it reminds me of the Olympic park, albeit on a smaller scale. It looks informal and interesting. I have read when it is going to open but have forgotten and it's no good asking MHTTB as he's not bothered about it. I am really looking forward to the opening and will definitely be blogging with photos of the real thing soon I hope.