roasted tomatoe soup and twice baked potatoes

Eilidh and I made brunch on our snow day Wedndsday last week.  It included the typical western fare, toast, poached eggs, homefries and a couple very British additions; roasted tomatoes and fried mushrooms.  I remember these breakfasts well, the little caf at the bottom of my street served up delicious breakfasts that included these things and also beans and bacon (I skip out on British sausages and black pudding).  I discovered on Wednesday how much I love eating roasted tomatoes.  And they're dead easy to make; just cut your tomatoes into quarters, throw them onto a pan, drizzle with olive oil and some herbs and shove them in the oven.  Their juices cook and sort of carmelize into a sweet tomatoe-y liquid.

So tonight, while sprawled on my couch with my kitty laying on my belly, I rediscovered another very British thing: Sophie Dahl.  Sophie is famous children's book author Roald Dahl's granddaughter, and she is a chef.  I'd seen her program once before while living in London and was thrilled when I saw 'The Delicious Miss Dahl' listed on my Digiturk guide.  On 'The Delicious Miss Dahl', Sophie makes comfort food that reflects her mood.  Today, Sophie was feeling nostalgic, and made the English comfort food she craved while she was living in New York.  She made a very English meal; roasted tomatoe soup and twice baked potatoes, and 2000 miles away, in my little Turkish-ly decorated flat in Ankara, I felt nostalgic for a little taste of home cooking as well.  'Roasted tomatoes?' I thought, 'Why, that's my new favourite thing!'  I threw the tomatoes, onions, garlic and herbs in a pot to roast and ran down to Eilidh's to borrow a hand blender to make my soup.

Now, my supply of fresh vegetables is running quite low, but I always keep potatoes, onions and garlic on hand and buy fresh tomatoes and other veg fresh every week.  So, I had just what I needed to make this delicious recipe.  What I noticed tonight about Sophie Dahl is that she's unbelievably calm and zen when she's cooking.  She's relaxed, and doesn't seem to be too bothered about time or dirtying lots of dishes.  Mind you, Miss Dahl is a professional chef and works in a professional kitchen studio.  I am a teacher who's worked all day long and cooks in a small, windowless kitchen with very limited equipment.  Did I mention that I have only one mixing bowl?  This is pathetic, I know, but I wasn't exactly cooking much until recently.  I think I'll invest in a few more cooking things.

I have been on a roll with cooking recently.  I made a delicious pizza this Friday, breakfast on Saturday and bruchetta on Sunday.  Will let you know what's cooking tomorrow.

Twice Baked Potatoe and Roasted Tomatoe Soup, recipe courtesy of Sophie Dahl

i've never been so clean!

Today was the ultimate girls day for Colleen, Stephanie, Eilidh and I.  We hopped the super-posh Bilkent bus into Sihhiye, where we found this adorable little restaurant that had a gorgeous waterfall as a backdrop, which conviently provided mist for us during our brunch.  We all ordered a delicious traditional Turkish breakfast plate, which consisted of two types of cheese (one being Bayir Penir, which is incredible), olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, salami, little sausages, bread, jam and honey.  Yum-O, as Rachel Ray would say.  I'm getting the impression that Turkish food is very fresh and simple, and I like that.

We caught a cab to the Tarihi Sengul Hamam, in the conservative (and slightly poorer) area of Ulus.  The hamam was a very interesting experience for us Western chicks.  While I consider myself to be a pretty liberal woman, there's just something about walking around topless in a room full of women that unnerves me.  So, we change into our bikinis and go into the bathing area, a gorgeous, square, marble room in the middle of which is a huge heated slab where women are lying and being scrubbed down by other women.  Around the perimeter of the room are a bunch of marble sinks and taps.  The idea is, you bring your own soap and shampoo, sit by this sink give yourself a little soaping (friends soap each other) and rinse yourself with a little bowl from the water in the sink.  Now, we have no idea whats going on, really.  A kind Turkish women who spoke a little English ordered our services for us at the front desk and told the host lady what we were getting.  So we left it up to the Turkish hamam ladies to lead us around.  I was first led to a massage table where I was instructed in Turkish to lay down and this women pulls off my bikini top.  Ok.  She takes this cloth mitt and start vigorously rubbing at my body.  This is meant to get all of the dead (and not quite so dead) skin off your body.  Well, let me tell you it worked.  I have never seen such gross dead skin all over my body, and I actually exfoliate at home!  I felt like a grubby little kid - I have never felt so clean in all my life, and my mother can attest to the fact that I spent many hours in the bathtub as a teenager.  Nothing compared to this.  After my scrub, I was lead to the hot marble slab in the middle of the room where a woman scrubbed me down with soap.  This treatment was lovely, and even better was what followed.  I had the most dedicant Turkish coffee massage, where coffee grinds were massaged into my body.  It smelled heavenly, and even left my skin with a nice tan tint.  Once us Westerners got over our initial shock of taking off our tops, we relaxed and had a great time.  I will definately be returning to this hamam, and I'm hoping to go at least once a month.

After the hamam, we walked through Ulus and bought real Turkish delights (honestly, they are nothing like what he have in Canada).  These Turkish delights (actually called lokum) are soft, gummy, sugary and coated in powdered sugar.  The guy who we bought them from was so nice, and the man from the shop across the street gave us pretty keychains that had the Turkish symbol on them.  It was really sweet.  The girls also bought spices and wheat grains from a merchant.

We found our way to the Ulus metro station and hopped a train to Kizilay, where we found a cute restaurant for supper.  I'm actually starting to orient myself in Kizilay, and I'm enjoying shopping and eating there.  We even found a bus that goes to Bilkent!