Turkish Cookbook

http://www.turkishcookbook.com/

This is a site that we, mostly her, frequently visit to use Turkish cooking recipes.

It is a very well maintained site, with recipes nicely categorized and illusturated with pictures. The author, Binnur, lives in Canada, so she uses ingredients that one can easily find in Canada or US. For similar sites maintained in TR, it is usually harder to figure out what to use when you don't have an exact match in US. We highly recommend this site if you like cooking Turkish food or if you wanna give it a try. Currently, Sahin and Merve are making Karadeniz Pidesi using a recipe from this site, and I just can't wait for the Maghrib to ingest a few of them.

Patlican yemegi

Malzeme:
800 gr patlican, 1 buyuk sogan, 1-2 biber, 2 domates

Patlicanlar kup kup dogranir (8-9 cm^3) ve tuzlu suda bekletilir. Sogan, biber ve domatesler yemeklik dogranir. Yemeklik derken, gene kup kup, ama daha kucuk. 3-4 yemek kasigi zeytinyaginin ustune sogan ve biberler konur. Ustune 1 sira patlican, sonra domates, sonra kalan patlicanlar, en ustune kalan domatesler konur. Bir iki cay kasigi tuz eklenir. Bir cay bardagi suyu ya tek basina ya da salca ile karistirarak ustune gezdirilir. Kapagi kapatilip orta ateste pismeye birakilir. 10 dakkada bir kontrol edilir, karistirilir. Takriben 30-40 dakkada piser.

Afiyet olsun.

The Cafe 2011, Philadelphia

This is a cute little place on Walnut and 20th in Philadelphia (http://www.thecafe2011.com/). We went there twice. The first time, we had intended to go there after reading some good reviews online. Both of us ate one of the daily specials and drank a beer. The second time, we ended up there after checking out 3 Turkish restaurants and looking for a restaurant in eastern parts of the city for more than two hours. We didn't like the appearance of the first Turkish place. The second was closed due to an ongoing renovation work. The third one was closed, probably because it was late, around 10pm maybe. While searching for something else we found Little Fish restaurant, which looked like a must go place (http://www.littlefishphilly.com/). We hope to check it out sometime. We were heading back to Walnut and 42nd, hoping to find Chipotle open. While driving on Walnut, we recalled The Cafe place, and went right there. Once again both of us ate a different daily special and drank Martinis. Mine was called Beethoven... I don't remember what you drank, do you?

Anyway, the service in this place was great. Both times we sat on the table by the window. The size of the servings were just right. The food was delicious, and the sides are especially good. You should check it out if you are looking for a place to eat around 20th and Walnut.