Food Bites

This is a blog for foodies only about the culinary highlights so far.
The photos are of a fantastic dinner we had in Kayseri at a very plush, very cheap restaurant.
From top to bottom:
Flatbread with a savoury tomato flavoured mince with a yoghurt dip
Walnut and tomato salad with onion, parsley, cucumbery and a zesty pomegranate dressing
Kayseri Manti- tiny ravioli in a tomato sauce, smothered in yoghurt, parsley and chilli
Spicey kayseri sausage baked with eggs
a pudding oozing syrup topped with clotted cream (nearly did for me!)
also we had turkish coffee, fruit juice and a local health drink which tasted of cranberry and wet dog
Anyone who has never tasted clotted cream, it is awesome, gooey and sticky like no other dairy product!
The serves were actually very large, which you don't see from the photos, and it came to around $30.

Turkish delight here is fantastic. It is softer and less gelatinous than the imitation stuff. The flavoured ones are boiled down from real fruits and retain a fruity flavour
which isn't sickly sweet. There is also the white variety which has a marshmallowy flavour but with a denser consistancy and covered in coconut.
So far my favourite is the kind with a fruit layer and a white layer rolled up together in a little spiral of deliciousness. There are also many varieties with nuts inside and coating the outside, Clive likes the pstacio kind.
Different areas have different varieties so it changes as we travel. We bought about a kilo for $8 and half of that was the top shelf stuff. And it wasn't all for us either!

Baklava and pastries are also a cut above what we get in Oz. The pastry is lighter, it's more heavy on the nuts and the syrup isn't as sweet.
It's a more subtle collection of textures and flavours than the old baklava brick we are used to!
Partries, bread, puddings, cakes and biscuits are all sold fresh from Pastanesi. There can be up to 20 varieties of biscuits, which you buy by weight,
similar to shortbread in flavour and some chocolate dipped or covered in nuts.

We've eaten quite a few kebabs here. Not as big and less variety in the fillings but the meat is wonderfully flavoured and they are prepared with a lot of care and it only costs $1.50 from most places.
The same goes for toasted sandwiches, usually with cheese, salami, salad and gherkins.

The worst food we had was in Goreme the tourist rap town. Not horrible but boring, expensive and small sizes. That said, there was a buffet on one of our tours which was really delicious!

That is the culinary journey so far...