An Aegean Thursday

After 40 days of traveling, I am back in Buenos Aires. Even though I did not want to leave family and friends---and the beatiful heat of summertime--it is good to be back home, to a new apartment and a new era.

In order to celebrate my new apartment I decided to make a special dinner for the comilones: samples from Bozcaada cuisine! Bozcaada is the western most point (literally) of my homeland, an island famous for its vineyards, beaches and windmills. I could not bring wine with me to Argentina but my suitcases were packed with spices, hot pepper paste, olive oil, olive oil paste, and some other ingredients for my meze sampler.

I started with Sevgi Teyze's (a corky character whose house we stayed) breakfast special: triple tomato extract with walnuts, parsley, spices, olive oil and of course, garlic! With some help from Federico, I prepared the eggplant salad; then made stuffed grape leaves with seasoned rice; mum's favorite leek and parsley salad with dijon mustard dressing; beets salad with mayo and coriander dressing; carrots in garlic yogurt and the main course: Tutmac Soup from the Aegean region. It was my first time making almost everything, hoping I was true to what they really taste like. Comilones seemed satisfied, and my only turkish invitee gave me a thumb up!

Once again we forgot to take pictures of the food! We were busy filling ourselves with it and drinking a lot of wine ;)