Parsley gets treated as decoration, pushed to the side of the plate and left there. In my kitchen it does actual work, and the difference between using it well and using it as a garnish is significant. Flat-leaf, not curly Flat-leaf parsley — Italian parsley — has real flavor: green, slightly peppery, clean. Curly parsley […]
Plums are one of the few fruits that work as well in savory cooking as in dessert, and dried they become something else entirely — deeper, almost meaty. Here is how I use both. Fresh plums Choose by feel, not color. A ripe plum gives slightly at the stem end and smells like a plum. […]
Everyone has found sprouts on a potato at some point. Potatoes and onions both do it when they sit too long, and since they are the two things most people buy in quantity, it happens regularly. So can you still use them? Here is the short answer and then the reasoning. When it is fine […]
Pears are more difficult than apples. They ripen from the inside out, they go from hard to mushy in about a day, and most of the pears people buy get eaten either too early or too late. Here is how to handle them, and what to do with them. Buy them hard and ripen them […]
Popcorn is what movie nights and match nights run on, and it is also one of the easiest things to waste. A bowl left out overnight turns soft and chewy — whether it came from a bag or you popped it yourself. It does not have to go in the bin. Stale popcorn is not […]
A blender is one of the most used appliances in any kitchen, and one of the most misused. None of these mistakes will break the machine, but each of them costs you results. Loading it in the wrong order Liquids first, then soft ingredients, then hard ones on top. Most people tip everything in together, […]
Ice cream is one of the few things in a kitchen that is genuinely technical. Everything about it — how soft it scoops, how smooth it feels, how fast it melts — comes down to a small number of variables, and once you understand them you can see why some ice cream is good and […]
İçli köfte belongs to southeastern Turkey, where nearly every province has its own version. It is one of the handful of Turkish dishes that has genuinely travelled — its closest relatives are in Arab cooking, where it is known as kibbeh. It is usually either boiled or fried. Both are good, and they are different […]
Mantı is one of those dishes everyone in Turkey loves, from children to grandparents. It takes work — hours of it if you make it properly — and both the making and the eating are an event. In some regions rolling mantı was considered a skill a woman had to have, and there are stories […]
This comes from Adana, and it is the easier cousin of içli köfte — the same bulgur shell and spiced meat filling, but layered in a tray instead of shaped by hand. All the flavor, none of the shaping. If you have ever wanted to make içli köfte and been put off by the work, […]