Category: Food & Drink

Sunshine Soup

Jo Parfitt runs Summertime Publishing, the company that is publishing Perking the Pansies. I’m in safe hands. Jo is an accomplished and successful author, mentor, journalist and publisher with 27 books and hundreds of articles under her belt. Jo is nervous, but why? Well, she has just released her debut novel, Sunshine Soup, Nourishing the Global Soul. Anyone who’s poured their heart and soul into a book will empathise with Jo. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Booker prize contender or the writer of a production line penny romance, your labour of love will have you biting your nails until they bleed. I know. Mine are already bruised and bloodied.

Sunshine Soup

Meet Maya, wife, mother of two and owner of a successful deli. Sunshine Soup whisks her away from her friends and a job she adores, to an uncertain life as an expat wife in Dubai. Next, transplant Maya into a fabulous new house, throw in an obsequious maid, send the teenage boys to school and the husband to work, add a potent mix of expat women and stir. What happens next is a colourful and poignant story of a woman who gradually grows into her strange new life but faces some difficult choices and uncomfortable questions along the way. Maya’s friendship with Barb, a colourful, experienced and seemingly confident expat wife, is a fascinating development. Things are not quite what they seem.

It’s impossible not to be drawn in to Sunshine Soup. The characters are strikingly drawn and developed, the plot is compelling and the exotic sights and sounds of Dubai form an evocative backdrop to a hugely enjoyable story of loss, intrigue and redemption.

“Maya picked up her coffee, slid the French doors aside, and stepped out. She would drink it slowly, savouring every mouthful. She rested her arms on the low balcony wall and looked out. Green parrots flitted between the palms and she heard their rough squawks as they dipped and rose. Inspired, her shoulders followed their lead. She raised each in turn coquettishly up towards her ears. Samir, the gardener, hunkered beside a squat palm, slicing away the lower fronds, now dry and pale, to reveal more of the emerging trunk. The blue water in the pool was smooth and glassy as the shadows shrank and the sun lifted towards what would undoubtedly be another beautiful day.”

More than anything, Maya’s story is believable. It is this reality that ultimately makes the novel an important addition to any bookshelf. And yes, there is an actual recipe for Sunshine Soup at the end of the book, along with 19 others – a very nice touch and some delicious recipes.

Sunshine Soup is hot off the press at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Tomorrow: an interview with Jo Parfitt

Love Thy Neighbour

After an long, exhausting day at the beach we returned home to a bit of a do. Our shared courtyard was ablaze with candles and Bubbly Beril was busily dressing her patio table. Moments later, the flamboyant Sofiya floated through the garden accompanied by a younger woman slapped up like Coco the Clown on a bad hair day. Beril turned to Liam and explained in broken English that she was throwing an impromptu al fresco dinner party and we would be joining them.  In five minutes. The menu was a generous selection of calamari and un-filleted fish.  This was Liam’s worst nightmare – he simply can’t do fish bones and tentacles are an absolute no no. I watched my husband attempt to keep his gag reflex in check, but he struggled. Eventually, he resorted to stashing cuts of rubbery squid in the pockets of his bermuda shorts. Oh the shame.

The evening was an eclectic mix of insults and complements, with Sofiya acting as the unofficial translator. Her companion was half cut from the start. She sat po-faced and aloof, only opening her mouth to demand more rakı. My attempts to engage her in a friendly tête-à-tête went largely unrequited. When she did speak it was to brag about her English – a result of a ten year stint in Texas (or Teksars, as she called it). Her pidgin dialect seemed little better than my Turkish, but I let it go. The miserable Coco became more and more inebriated. As her tongue loosened, the reason for her truculence became crystal clear – I was the problem. She unleashed an unprovoked broadside in my direction about foreign residents not speaking Turkish. Caught on the back foot, I attempted to placate her with a humble apology and a promise to do better. Dissatisfied, she continued to snipe. After an hour I could take no more and asked Sofiya to intervene  – she did so with grace and tact, as I would expect from an ex RADA girl. Sofiya’s friend delivered a theatrical but fake apology topped only by my own fake acceptance of it. She withdrew to the opposite end of the table to sulk and sup.

I do accept that my lack of ear for languages will hinder a meaningful engagement within my host community. However, to be dressed down by an old sop who, after spending 10 years in the USA, could hardly string a few simple words together in English was a bit rich.

You might also like:

Old Money, No Money

Tarty Chic

What’s Your Poison?

Heart Attack, Anyone?

Hardly a week goes by without being told that this is bad for you, that is good for you, what used to be good for you is now bad for you, eat more of this, eat less of that, blah, blah, blah. What’s a boy to do? We’ve already abandoned terribly important jobs with responsibility and status (or so we thought) and we’ve jettisoned the Gü Puds. Jobs and puds were the instruments of our undoing. On the minus side we’ve developed a unhealthy weakness for strong liquor and failed miserably to pack in the fags. The cigarette variety, obviously; hell will freeze over before I give up the other brand. Yet despite our various vices, Liam and I have lost weight, feel infinitely less stressed and our blood pressure has dropped. In Liam’s case, it’s so low that I keep a vanity mirror by the bedside to check for breathing in the morning.

I’m not promoting an entirely degenerate existence but ponder this:

Domestic Gorgon

This woman is 51. She is a TV health guru advocating a holistic approach to nutrition and health. She promotes exercise and a vegetarian diet high in organic fruit and fresh vegetables. She recommends detox, colonic irrigation and multiple supplements. She advocates regular faecal examination like some kind of scat fetishist. She’s painfully thin and looks ill, even in makeup. It’s enough to make you anally retentive.

Domestic Goddess

This woman is 51. She is a TV cook who eats nothing but meat, butter and lots of desserts, all washed down with top-brand vodka, single malt scotch and a bottle of good wine every day. She’s voluptuous, sexy and licks a spoon like a porn star.

I rest my case.

Perhaps you’d also like:

Oh Woe is Me

Emigrey Arms

Thank you Nikki for the inspiration for this one.

The Organ Grinder

This afternoon, Liam decided to try out a new recipe: fig tart with crushed almonds. Yum. As he ground the almonds, Liam asked me if I’d like a cuppa. I replied ‘I’d rather talk to the almond than the almond grinder.’  How we laughed.

What do you do with figs?

You can read more on Liam’s developing culinary skills on:

Life in an Hermès Scarf

That’s all Folks

Strictly by the [Guide] Book

Today’s post is hot off the press from Kirazli Karyn at Being Koy, veteran jobbing blogger and top drawer freelance writer. When I say veteran I mean prolific not aged. Karyn is a mere slip of a girl. She normally writes passionately and evocatively about her Turkish village idyll. It’s all true. We’ve seen it with our own eyes. Today she vents her spleen at the travel guide industry.

Karyn

One of my friends visited Cirali recently, I suggested it, I thought he would find the ruins slowly collapsing into the forest beautiful, the tree houses were his sort of thing and as far as I was concerned seeing the flames of the Cimera on Mount Olympos was one of those big “things to see in Turkey”.  Turns out I was right, he loved it; he loved the whole hippy vibe, sitting around a campfire jamming on a battered guitar, swimming in the dramatic coves and camping in the trees by the side of a dirt road to the beach.  It was indeed, just his thing, but he got a bit nervous on the way there.

Cirali

On the bus from Konya to Goreme to explore Cappadocia before heading down to the coast he hooked up with some Japanese travellers, none of whom were going on to Cirali, in fact they’d never heard of it.  It turns out this is because it wasn’t in their guide books and if it isn’t in the guide book, specifically in your demographically tailored, distinctively marketed guidebook, it doesn’t exist.

Some locations that used to be popular have disappeared from the guidebooks altogether despite the fact that they are beautiful and interesting and unique and others have appeared for no better reason than they are considered “off the beaten track” by some gung ho backpacking writer who has cottoned on to the fact that being a reviewer for some obscure guidebook is a glamorous sounding job and gets you laid more often than pretending to be a BA pilot and part time dolphin trainer.  This makes up for being paid a pittance to go to shit places and eat rubbish food and pretend they’re great.

Where am I?

These days there are guidebooks for everywhere and every type of travel and traveller and if these were not enough now the guidebooks are supplemented by websites and forums and even apps for your phone, so the brave voyager need never again make an uninformed decision during the whole of their adventurous trek – that’s really character building.  Places once considered off the beaten track are now, as a result, definitely middle of the well trodden road.  If Leonardo de Caprio now jumped off that waterfall to find The Beach he’d have to push aside 200 tourists tweeting about their experience on their iPhones before he could surge into the water in a sexy and manly way.

This year my little village Kirazli made it into Lonely Planet, it gets mentioned as worth a visit, and the little paragraph about it bigs up a restaurant that is at best, mediocre.  It used to be good, five years ago, it is now ok.  I can think of three other restaurants in the village that are better and cheaper and have nicer staff.  So basically this village gets mentioned for something it isn’t very good at and all the things it is really good at don’t get mentioned at all.  This is typical of guide books really and is why they should be treated as a jumping off point for your journey, not a step by step instruction manual. Sometimes they’re wrong and sometimes you just need to turn off your iPhone, talk to a real person on the same road as you or take an unplanned turning, because getting off the beaten track is actually a state of mind not a place you struggle to and you can do it with a single step or a single conversation, you can’t do it with a multi million selling guidebook, that’s a contradiction in terms.


This is Karyn’s second guest post. Her first was Shaken, Not Stirred.

London Calling

The weather in Blighty has been challenging to say the least. Bright warmish sunshine has been rudely interrupted by frequent squally showers. In between the inclemency we enjoyed an all too brief sunny interlude that provided an opportunity for a congenial picnic along the side of the Mall in St James’ Park. It’s an annual indulgence and we were joined by a choice selection of our London life friends. The royal parks are the lungs of London and St James’ is arguably the prettiest. The imperial pile of Buckingham Palace was our al fresco backdrop. The Royal Standard wasn’t flying so Betty was out. We feasted on deliciously calorific M&S fare, washed down with Pinot Grigio Blush. Clive and his civil partner, Angus, presented us with an unexpected gift, a DVD of the second series of Glee. Liam’s eyes lit up like a bush baby on acid. He’d devoured the first series in two sittings and hungered for more. The riots seem a long time ago. Broken Britain? Not from where I’m sitting.

You might also like Tales of the City.

No Tea and No Sympathy

My Blighty life friend Philip is a treasured old soul and the Imelda Marcos of scarves (the wrap-around-the-turtleneck kind, not the bad hair day kind). He never travels by open top car for fear of being strangled like Isadora Duncan. He and I worked together for donkey’s years. I managed him for a while, though I was always left wondering who really worked for whom. His innate intelligence is beautifully blended with creativity, wit and style – and the ability to drink me under the table. He’s one of two guest bloggers that I actually know in person (Karyn is the other). How sad is that.

You can catch more of Philip’s excellent foody tales on his marvelous blog, What’s for Tea Tonight, Dear

Philip

Whenever I think of Jack and Liam’s great adventure, and once my envy of their chosen life subsides, I often think of what I’d miss if I were to similarly uproot myself and transplant to pastures new. And being the glutton that I am these thoughts most often turn to food. Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel and a large slice of that affection belongs to the opportunity to try new foods and even whole cuisines. A trip to Cambodia last year for instance was quite an eye opener – from the fragrant markets all the way to the fried tarantulas! But these are usually just holidays, and knowing that my familiar comforts will all be waiting at home makes it all the easier to go native, culinary wise, with gay abandon. I’d be lying if I said I’d never eaten a “full English” on some hot, hung-over morning somewhere round the Med, but if that’s all you can think of when travelling abroad then stay at home with a tin of baked beans, a packet of sausages and a sun ray lamp, I say. Eating what those around you eat, sharing that most basic daily form of what defines a people or an area (i.e. their food!) is the quickest, most accessible and often most enjoyable way of beginning to understand your local culture, however temporary the arrangement.

But for the long-term emigrey (to borrow Jack’s term), however much you immerse yourself in the cauldron of your local cuisine, there must always be tastes of home for which you hanker. For years now It’s been something of a running joke with the Shopkeeper and I that as soon as we buckle our belts on an outbound flight we’ll turn to each other and say “Ooh, I can’t wait to get home and have a decent cup of tea!”. I’m a bit of a fussy tea drinker at the best of times and, after countless (and why always glass?) cups of lukewarm water in which a helpless bestringed bag of Liptons struggles in vain to radiate even the smallest tentacles of its brown beauty, I have entirely given up on drinking tea whilst abroad.

Cheese on toast is my other immediate must have just as soon as I’ve paid the taxi driver from Gatwick or Heathrow enough to replicate the holiday from which I’ve just returned. Having a cheese shop takes care of one principal ingredient, I’ll usually call ahead to make sure we have supplies of the other. And within a week, whatever exciting recipes, ingredients and ideas have come home with me, I will always be found making a roast dinner with all the trimmings.

So I wonder, for those who have taken the plunge, what foods do you miss the most? And how do you manage to fill the voids? Trips to the mother land with an empty suitcase just for food? Insistence that any visitors bring necessary supplies in exchange for board? Or maybe even local supper clubs where you can huddle over the latest import? I’m dying to hear you stories.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Grab and Grunt with Dickie

The guns have fallen silent on the eastern front. The constant heated arguments between our neighbours have mercifully abated. Whatever they were rowing about appears to have been resolved, for the time being at least. Lazy days on their side of the proverbial fence have become one long languid banquet. They eat constantly. I appreciate freshly prepared Turkish cuisine is  less calorific and much healthier than most Blighty fare, particularly the convenience variety. Even so, if I shoved that much food into my mouth I’d be as big as the house. Perhaps this is why those pretty, slim young things with impossibly tiny waists and bums like two plump puppies in a sack develop into wide-bodied wrestlers. Not the steroid enhanced Yankee WWF kind. I mean the saturday afternoon grab and grunt kind that I used to watch on ITV’s World of Sport in the 1970s, brought to you by Dickie Davies. I realise this analogy will fly right over the heads of my non-Blighty readers.

Turk Season

July is Türk sezon and Bodrum is crammed with a richness of middle income people of all generations drawn from across the country taking their annual holidays before the start of Ramazan. The narrow streets are grid-locked and the air is filled with the piercing sound of cross monotone horns. We wandered out into the sticky evening to imbibe the ambiance and sink a few jars. We ambled behind the multitude of multi-generational families promenading along the marina. We headed through the bazaar, past the cheap boys with their cheap goods and snaked along Meyhane Sokak. Miraculously, we found a free place at one of the tall tables outside the semi-gay bar we’d stumbled across the previous year to enjoy the good-humoured scene around us. Alcohol consumption, particularly by women, is generally frowned upon in wider Turkish society. However, there was little evidence of this in the tequila slamming crowd. We had a ball.

Irfan the Slut

During our stay we strolled down to Yalıkavak for a spot of dinner and a trip down memory lane.  We had a few snifters in the bar where last year the pretty stripping barman had danced around us prettily. He was nowhere to seen so we assume he’s moved on to greener pastures where the dancing is more profitable.

I spotted Captain Irfan sitting alone and beckoned him to join us. He did so enthusiastically and ordered a fresh round of Rakıs. Conversation was subdued as Irfan’s grasp of English has barely advanced beyond the ‘enjoy your meal’ stage and our Turkish has remained deplorable. Irfan leered at every bit of skirt that passed by, regardless of age. His lewd behaviour pressed me to exclaim ‘Irfan, you are a slut’ to which he enquired ‘What is a slut?’ My explanation drew the broadest of grins and the proud response ‘Yes, I am a slut!’

Irfan doesn’t really get us. In his world man on man action is, at best, a minor sideshow to the main event. Despite this he makes an affable, protective host which prompted Liam to depict him as the village muhtar (head man). Mighty Irfan was mightily flattered by the accolade. Finally, as the bar entertained the dregs we returned to the house for a final glass of red and a naughty skinny dip.