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Expat fusion cuisine: combining foreign foods with favorites from home
Part of the fun of traveling is trying new and exotic foods. Many travelers try to eat only locally and eschew the familiar, though eating at American chain restaurants abroad can be its own experience. But when you make a foreign country your home, you have to adapt your tastes and cooking to what's available locally while craving your favorites from home. I'm lucky enough to live in Istanbul with an amazing food culture heavy on roasted meats and grilled fish, fragrant spices, and fresh produce. Some foreign foods like pizza and sushi have been embraced in Istanbul, but Turkish food has remained largely uncompromised by outside influences and passing trends. Convenience foods are still a new concept in Turkey but you can always grab a quick doner kebab or fish sandwich on the street if you aren't up to cooking.In my own kitchen, I'm learning to work with Turkish ingredients and dishes and mix in some favorites from home, creating some "expat fusion" cuisine. Meat-filled manti ravioli gets an extra zing with some Louisiana hot sauce. In the hottest days of my pregnancy this summer, I craved pudding pops from my childhood, making them more adult with some tangy Turkish yogurt. One ingredient I miss here is maple syrup, which is generally only produced in North America, and hard to find and expensive in the rest of the world (a small bottle in Turkey costs about $20!). One of my American friends brought me a bottle this summer and I poured it over pancakes (surprisingly easy to make from scratch when you can't get a mix) and my favorite Turkish treat, kaymak. Kaymak is a clotted cream popular on the breakfast table, served with a crusty loaf of bread and honey, available in most local supermarkets but best eaten fresh in a cafe like Pando's Kaymakci in Istanbul's Besiktas neighborhood. I draw a lot of inspiration from my friend and fellow expat Joy, who was a professional pastry chef back in Baltimore and now chronicles her mouth-watering cooking in her Istanbul kitchen on her blog, My Turkish Joys. She posts beautiful food photos and recipes with both American and European measurements to help US and Turkish readers recreate her dishes such as sour cherry pie. Afiyet Olsun (that's Turkish for bon appetit)!
Gadling readers, have you created any expat fusion foods with ingredients from your travels? Make us hungry and leave us a comment below!
Gadling readers, have you created any expat fusion foods with ingredients from your travels? Make us hungry and leave us a comment below!
Filed under: Food and Drink, Asia, Europe, North America, Turkey, United States
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MaryAnne Oxendale Oct 14th 2011 10:34AM
I spent 6 years in Turkey (4 of them in Istanbul) and approached cooking in much the same way you have- a little sumak and pul biber go well in a bolognese, doncha know? I've now been in Shanghai for just under 3 years and have had to adapt to Chinese grocery stores and Chinese kitchen equipment. It's a bit...different from Turkey. Huge re-learning curve.
I started a new blog to document my experiments in the kitchen here-- www.wokwithmebaby.com -- and a lot of expats here seem to really like finding out that it is possible to make bagels in a wok or chocolate cake in a toaster oven. I love the challenge of trying to figure out how on earth to make it work-- especially since my old hand-written cookbook was compiled back in 2004 with a Kayseri, Turkey kitchen in mind...
MaryAnne Oxendale Oct 14th 2011 10:42AM
I just realized that I did make my URL a live one with the http and all... let's try that again: http://www.wokwithmebaby.com -- the home of attempting to make non-Chinese food in China!
Joy Nov 3rd 2011 1:45PM
Of course, the latest recipe I made here in Istanbul for Balinese chicken soup was full of substitutes, but turned out very tasty. Just takes a bit more creativity in the kitchen to adapt things. Afiyet olsun!