Local ingredients

[Inishta]

Hi XJim................Tempting.............I feel a barter coming on.

I have used pomegranate juice in a marinade (not sauce). It needs to be remembered that it has a sourish taste so needs to be balanced with something sweet. Good for gamey meat or brush the sauce as a glaze directly on meat.

[Xabia Jim]

There are so many different options, it's really like wine.

I just found out that our spanish friends here produce their own oil. Last year's was a dark green, this year it's more of a pale yellow. They have a few containers excess they sell.....now how do I get 5 liters home in my suitcase??? I've done it with the tins, but not the leaky plastic jugs!

Oh, and how about a fancy container to serve it?

[Inishta]

We are indeed blessed with a profusion of goodness. I buy my 'really good' olive oil from a friends harvest. We go to the olive oil factory and watch it being pressed. The option is to pay for pressing or leave a percentage for the coop to sell. Hikmet pays and we buy a 20 litre carboy from him. The other oil we need we buy from the coop at £2/$4/4.46 aus $ a litre, same as we pay for the best oil.................

[Inishta]

Where would we be without yoghurt. Claimed to have been created in Turkey it is versatile and beneficial to the health.

We eat it as a meze called cacik (pronounced jajik) or as a drink called Ayran a salty concoction similar in taste to buttermilk we used to drink in Ireland. I personally enjoy yogurt best with honey at breakfast. There are all sorts of yogurt but the one we buy is thicker and creamier than the normal dairy company product.

[Xabia Jim]

Rosemary...grows in the backyard!

with friends...cilantro, chives, sage, thyme, basil, parlsey....

[Xabia Jim]

Inishita, it seems like these are just our EU ingredients!

[DrakeRemoray]

Nice thread!

In Colorado, we have nothing in the winter except great skiing. In the summer we have some of the best corn anywhere (olathe), excellent western slope peaches (I was a Georgia peach fan until I tasted a Colorado peach) so juicy they run down your chin. Also excellent cantaloupe also from the western part of the state. Snow on the ground again this morning. The summer farmer's markets still seem pretty far off...

Drake

Thought of one more, we have an excellent local goat cheese (Haystack Mountain).

[Xabia Jim]

Drake, I don't know what happened to the cheese club co-op but that Goat cheese would make a nice contribution....we just love goat cheeses!

I'll trade you for a paella pan!

[Inishta]

Turkey is the second largest producer of honey in the world, after China, with 4 million hives and around 70,000 tons of production. In our area, Mugla province, pine honey or cam (pronounced jam) bal is famous. It is also known as honeydew. As well as the commercial apiarists thousands of families earn a living from bees. Cicek (pronounced jijek) bal is flower honey and comes in a vast array of unifloral (honey made from one flower type) and multifloral types. There is a lot of Narenciye Bal or citrus honey in my area as we are a major grower of oranges , lemon and grapefruit. It can be bought in jars or direct from the hive in the comb, known as Petek Bal. Delicious

As reported earlier I love it with yogurt for breakfast but use it a lot in glazes for roasting and BBQ'ing and as a sugar replacement.

[Xabia Jim]

For some reason I'd rather have the honey from Turkey....China get's a lot of bad press about their food production....we try and boycott but they're becoming the supermarket to the world!

We do get all sorts of different honey's here too....Almond, eucalyptis, rosemary, lemon, orange, wildflower.....way cool.

Anyone want the WFO biscotti recipe with almonds?

XJ