It's been a little while since my last dedicated food post (although food has crept into a few of the journey accounts recently, now that Ramadan has finished, and we can eat outside).

So, without further ado, let's start with desserts:


The dessert known as ashure has been in my sights since I read Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul (the chapter titles of which each reference one of the ingredients). Its other name is Noah's pudding (because it's what Noah made to use up the odd assortment of bits and pieces in the store cupboard at the end of the ark's voyage). It's notoriously a make-it-up-as-you-go-along pudding, so no two recipes are the same. I certainly had no complaints about the one we had (which included wheat, beans, chickpeas, dried peach, almonds, raisins, pomegranate, and probably lots more that I failed to identify):



We've been able to find pretty reasonable chocolate here. And today, as we walked down Istiklal Avenue, we happened upon a chocolate shop:



Now that Nigel is off medication, we feel able to judiciously explore a little of Turkey's wine world:




These all go excellently with the platters we usually make up in the evening, which feature a selection of tomatoes, olives, capsicums, cucumber, zucchini, or eggplant, plus omelette, cheeses, sausage, or pastirma (a slightly spicy kind of dried beef):


There are more types of borek than we're going to have the opportunity to try, unfortunately. But the other day, we called in at a local cafe for tea and su boregi (literally water borek, because the phyllo sheets are briefly boiled before baking). Reminiscent of a very light lasagne:


Ah, if only we were here longer...