Chicken and dill pilaf

Dispose of your
chicken carcass
wisely...in a stock pot

This weekend I found myself hoking round Tesco's reduced section and gathered up some random vegetables, some of which gave me the makings of stock. One thing I did not get to eat on my holidays was my favourite bulgur wheat pilaf - the restaurateurs of Side preferred rice and orzo to coarse bulgur and vermicelli. So I dragged a chicken carcass out of the freezer and made a main course pilaf inspired by Turkey and Tesco's.

Chicken & Dill Pilaf

1 chicken carcass (or a pack of chicken wings)
2 onions, halved
2 carrots, cut into chunks
3 stalks of celery
Handful of parsley
Salt and pepper

Coarse bulgur (or rice if you can't find any)
3-4 stalks of celery, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 nest vermicelli (optional)
1 small bunch of dill, chopped

Take the first 6 ingredients, put them in a large pot and cover with water, bring to the boil, skim off the foam, simmer on low for a few hours. Strain the liquid off and measure it (I got 24 fl. oz.). Measure out half that amount of bulgur or rice (e.g. I poured the bulgur into a measuring jug up to the 12 fl.oz. marker). Pull any chicken meat off the carcass and chop finely. Take a large pan with a lid (I used a flat bottomed wok) and fry up the onion and celery in olive oil until it's transparent, then crumble a nest of vermicelli in, stir till the vermicelli is translucent. Add the bulgur and fry for a few more minutes. Then add the hot stock (there will be lots of steam!), add the chicken bits, bring to the boil, cover and turn the heat to medium. Leave without touching for 10 minutes, then turn the heat off and leave it to stand on the ring for 10 minutes (it will sit longer if needed). Do not touch the lid! No peeking, no stirring. Chop the dill finely and stir it through, check for seasoning and then leave covered for another few minutes for the flavour to permeate.

Whole lot of greeting going on



Took Sheba to the Greyhound Meet and Greet at the Pets at Home in Bangor today, the idea of which is to demonstrate to the public that sighthounds are lovely, lazy guys who are biddable, easy to care for and generally very nice to be around.

So they are, too. About a dozen of us were there, mostly with rescue greys and lurchers, and a very friendly and chatty bunch we were. Everyone's dogs behaved impeccably too....apart from you know who.

The noble Sheba in more relaxed form

 Yes, Sheba reminded everyone that she's a massive Dublin knacker and growled very loudly at every dog who came near her. At one point she was actually marching over to new dogs, wagging her tail, all smiles.....and then growling at them once she got close. The other dogs were, naturally, nonplussed. One of the owners suggested (in the nicest, most helpful way) that we invest in a muzzle until she sorts her issues out. She lent us one for a while and it was useful because as soon as Sheba was strapped into it, it was clear that she's not actually scared, she just likes to growl, because she promptly sat down and sulked.

So still work to do on my little gurrier, but if you are interested in adopting a dog please consider a greyhound or lurcher, they are such good dogs and so easy to look after.

On the way home we went to McKees in Craigantlet to get bones for the dogs and very happy they were too.

Old school savoury mince pie recipe

A lot of Saturday evening conversations go like this:

Me: What do you want for dinner?
Him: Lark's tongues in aspic (I exaggerate for comic effect, but you get the idea - some mad concoction you'd never have the ingredients for)
Me: I don't have the makings for that!
Him (sulking): Well why ask then?

Nice to hear him say he wanted an old-fashioned mince pie with boiled spuds and broccoli as I had all the makings to hand (Tesco having Jus-rol ready rolled puff pastry on special offer for a pound), so I made a pie so wonderful he says we have to have it at least once a week from now on. ;)

Best old school mince pie

1 pack of ready rolled puff pastry
350g lean mince beef
4 bacon rashers, finely chopped
1 onion finely chopped
1 small carrot chopped
1/2tsp dried thyme (I used some great stuff I brought back from Turkey)
1 dsp Bisto Best gravy granules
1 tsp HP sauce
Half a mug of water
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 200oC. Heat the frying pan till smoking, dry fry the mince and once it's browned, drain in a sieve to get rid of excess fat. Do the same with the bacon. While they drain, fry the onion & carrot at medium high heat for 5 mins to soften. Return the mince and bacon to the pan along with the Bisto, HP sauce, thyme and water. Cook down until it looks like pie filling (5 minutes?). Let it cool slightly and then make it into whatever style or shape of pie you like. Brush well with beaten egg, bake for 30 mins or so (turn the heat down if it looks like it's getting too brown). Serve with crinkle cut chips and beans for full old school effect. This is a powerful aphrodisiac and will make your husband adore you in a spectacularly demonstrative fashion, so be careful.

Leydi Kuafor, Side

You may as well make yourself
beautiful while you're here!

If you happen to be staying in the old part of Side, be sure to treat yourself to a threading and head and shoulders massage at Leydi Kuafor. It doesn't look like much, sitting right at the end of Gul Sokak opposite the Begonville Hotel at the intersection with Yasemin Sokak but they are super friendly and do great work at a very good price. I got comprehensively threaded (eyebrows shaped, moustache and a few stray chin hairs removed!) and a super relaxing massage for 10TL. Also in that street (Yasemin) and worth an honorable mention is the cobbler opposite (did a very tricky bit of work on a favourite belt absolutely perfectly for 20TL) and about 50m on up the hill on your right just after the big open air pottery shops but just before Ugur Kebab there's a tailor on the first floor who will do alterations on the spot! And charges about a fifth of what it costs at home (my dress was taken up 4" and pressed for 5TL!).

Happy teeth

Without Halile's help, this is how my
bedside table will look....

I have some stupid phobias (mainly regarding balloons) and a couple that strike me as eminently sensible - needles and dentists. I get the full works with these; uncontrollable shaking, weeping, flailing and woohooing. Frankly, doctors and dentists can't stand the sight of me and I don't blame them. Unfortunately this year I discovered that trips to the dentist are not optional but essential. I chipped one front tooth and a malevolent brown mark appeared on the gumline of another. My tongue also kept finding a jagged hole in a back molar that I couldn't ignore. I tried not smiling for a year (really!) but finally I had to admit defeat.

My dentist is a lovely woman, but rather stern and much given to sermonising. Every time I see her she lectures me on how my dissipated lifestyle is affecting my teeth. She is also patently unable to get near me to do fillings. She has neither the patience nor the necessary sedatives for the job. Every so often she would wearily point out that i needed work done and we'd do the traditional dance; chase me round the surgery with a needle, send me out sobbing to the waiting room to frighten the other patients, bring me in again, chase me round the surgery with a drill and so on, until she admitted defeat and sent me home in disgust. In all those years drill has never made contact with enamel.

But this time I realised I had no choice. The not smiling thing was really not my style. Then as I was trying to decide where to go on my hols I read a recommendation on a Tripadvisor forum. Halile the magical dentist was patient, kind and could work on the most nervous patients. People travelled from Istanbul to get work done in her space age offices in Manavgat, a dolmus ride away from Side.

Here was my chance, I thought. Foreign dentists would be much more on for a spot of sedation, which I was sure I needed. Well, no, it turns out. But Halile really is the best damn dentist in the world.

She was happy to tell me I was the worst patient she's ever had. Absolutely nothing to be proud of, but always good to know you're not a middling kind of phobic. Actually the whole experience was a bit Graham Greene. First she sat me in the dentists chair and of course I did my usual and immediately burst into tears and shook like an epileptic.

She moved me over to her desk a couple of feet away from the chair of doom and said "do you smoke?". I assumed she meant was that the reason my teeth were such a mess so I said yes, I used to. To which she lit a fag and offered me one! So I explained I'd rather not start again and she laughed and said "how about a whisky?". I told her it had taken me two glasses of wine to get to the front door so she sent the technician out for a glass of wine for me! I declined that, as the thought of being actually half cut during reasonably major dental work rather than just having a bit of Dutch courage didn't really appeal. Then she said "just imagine it's the hairdressers", told me she'd work really slowly and carefully and told me to put my hand on her waist and hold the nurse's hand while she did the injections!

And I shit you not, I didn't feel a thing! Didn't stop me shaking and crying and wahaying like a loon for the first hour or so, but towards the end she could have suggested another four fillings and I'd have gone for it. OK that's pushing it but you get the idea. The woman is a genius. She even sorted the chip on my front tooth. She had to stop three times for a fag, god love her. My kind of dentist. So I'm sure you think I'm absolutely mental (and of course I am) but it worked for me and worth every penny.

Oz Adana, Side

Yasemin Sokak, with Oz Adana on the left.

The Oz Adana is on the same street as my pension and every time I walked past it was busy and had some damn fine smells coming from it. So today I had lunch there, hoping to find a worthy contender for the Best Kebab Contest (currently held by the Ali Baba Kebab Evi in Manavgat). No prizes for guessing what I ordered; the Adana kebab is the lovely flattened, spiced sausage one - done right it is juicy and fresh and moreish. You can make a real beast if yourself with an Adana kebab.

Oz has an admirable regard for food hygiene; I don't think I've ever eaten in such a spotless place anywhere. He favours cleanliness over presentation (which is where he and I would fall out) and serves his lovely crusty bread in tied plastic bags inside wicker baskets on the tables. You also get a plate of hot little chillies to nibble while you wait. I would have loved some olive oil to dip it in, but I'm just greedy that way.

This place is proper Turkish so very little English spoken or understood, but a glass of white wine was eventually got hold of and Adana kebab hopefully ordered.

About ten minutes later one of the waiters put a clingfilm wrapped plate of kebab and chips on my table. Not on my place, but opposite. He didn't acknowledge me and walked off. Huge confusion. Was it mine? Were they really that hygiene conscious? What were they afraid of? Bloody hell, it had all suddenly gone a bit Death in Venice.

A kebab with a hinterland at Oz Adana, Side

After five minutes I figured it must be mine as sod all else was happening at the table, so I gingerly lifted the clingfilm. Instantly four Turks start laughing their heads off and through the international language of mime I discover that that dish was a carryout destined for a nearby shop and mine will be with me shortly.

The real lunch is yogurt dip, roasted pepper and tomato, a salad of parsley, sumac, onion and lettuce, a big bouncy flatbread, rice and orzo pilaf, home made chips (yeooooo!) and an Adana kebab that would make grown men weep. Meatier and less juicy than the Ali Baba model but more going on. A kebab with a hinterland. Certainly the best thing I've eaten in Side all week so I'm splitting the prize. And I'm eating at Oz's for the rest of the week.

Ali Baba, Manavgat

Manavgat....kebab heaven not far from the bridge.

The Ali Baba kebab house is one of those quiet unassuming places; pictures of food on the menu, four parasols out front and Coca Cola logos plastered everywhere. Not the sort of place you take the missis, unless you're my husband, in which case you definitely do. What I'm driving at is that it's Not That Romantic.

It's one block off the main drag in Manavgat (walking away from the big fake waterfall, cross the bridge and take the first road on your right, the one lined with canopied shopfronts. At the end of the street is a dry fountain and the Ali Baba). The first time I ate their I had their Doner Kebab and it was great; really savoury and served with fantastic bread, the best I've eaten here.

Next time I went into Manavgat I thought I'd try somewhere different but I was nervy (this was just prior to the trip to the dentists) and more in need of comfort than adventure. They repaid my repeat business with some really good free appetizers; puffy lavash bread with dill and yogurt dip, chili tomato dip (not the ubiquitous gloop straight from a catering carton that you get everywhere, but really fresh, tasty stuff) and a dish of a hard, Parmesan style cheese with a pat of unsalted butter. The trick seemed to be to wipe some butter onto the lavash and then dunk it into the grated cheese until it was covered in crumbs of the stuff. Well that's how I approached it anyway and it was bloody fantastic! Made a bit of a beast of myself if I'm honest, but I figured I wouldn't be able to eat after the dentist so might as well.

I had the Adana kebab this time and it was just incredible, so juicy and bursting with flavour. I'd love to send McCartney's the butchers over here on a research trip cos if they could recreate that flavour it would be flying out of the shop as fast as their corned beef! I had two glasses of wine for my nerves and the whole feast was 24TL. As long as you're not fussed about the view (which is not great given the picturesque copper blue river is a block away) you couldn't fault this place. Very tempted to go back one last time.