Category Archives: Chef Spike
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Something simple from the freezer
16Sunday 21 February, 2016 by Uncle Spike
With three freezers full of homegrown produce, it’s a pretty regular occurrence that I delve into their depths with not …
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Preparing that slow goat stew
15Saturday 23 January, 2016 by Uncle Spike
I was asked by Janey In Mersin (an Aussie expat in southern Turkey) about my method of creating that slow-cooked …
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Wordless Wednesday ~ Very very slow cooked goat
8Wednesday 20 January, 2016 by Uncle Spike
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Drying hot peppers
8Tuesday 08 September, 2015 by Uncle Spike
Here in Türkiye, we use a table condiment called Pul Biber on a daily basis. Basically it is red pepper …
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Broad bean leaf salad
19Thursday 30 April, 2015 by Uncle Spike
I’m busy tomorrow, so scheduling in advance. This was gonna be about my roses again, but feeling rather peckish…. And …
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Peppers & Yoghurt
11Saturday 21 March, 2015 by Uncle Spike
One of my favourite side dishes are hot peppers served with yoghurt – very traditional fare and my treat. My …
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Excellent for salad
8Tuesday 17 March, 2015 by Uncle Spike
One of our best natural ingredients we have for a fresh salad are from the broad beans. . . We …
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Homemade Bread
12Saturday 14 March, 2015 by Uncle Spike
I have no home phone or internet this weekend, thanks to a nine hour storm that knocked out the local …
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Turkish Style Spinach
14Sunday 01 March, 2015 by Uncle Spike
Popeye had a point…. Spinach IS an excellent source of nutrition, but to be honest, I’d never really fancied it, usually …
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Red Lentil Köfte
27Sunday 22 February, 2015 by Uncle Spike
One of the meals favoured by the Spike tummy is what is known in Turkish as Mercimekli Köfte (pronounced Mer-ji-mek-li …
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Aşure (“ah-shu-reh” in Turkish)
11Sunday 15 February, 2015 by Uncle Spike
You may have heard of this dish, Ashure (as it’s spelt in English) as it’s famed in cultures and religions beyond the …
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Them Chooks Named ‘Soup’
14Tuesday 13 January, 2015 by Uncle Spike
As you may recall, all our spare roosters in the pen had the name ‘Soup’. Someone even asked me why …
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Juice Time
5Sunday 04 January, 2015 by Uncle Spike
With fruit hanging off every tree in sight, we are rarely short of fruit juice, that’s for sure. Never do …
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Spike’s Caramelised Baby Clementines
18Thursday 01 January, 2015 by Uncle Spike
Here’s something a little different from my kitchen… In the orchards we have mostly clementine trees, which are ‘in harvest’ …
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Table Olives – Salt Cured (part 2)
6Thursday 04 December, 2014 by Uncle Spike
In a previous post, we got as far as preparing table olives by layering them with salt in a large tub …
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Table Olives – Salt Cured (part 1)
11Saturday 29 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
In some previous posts, we looked at how olives for table use are cured using water, salted, and then preserved in …
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Table Olives – Water Cured (part 2)
11Tuesday 25 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
In a previous post, we got as far as preparing table olives by soaking them in water. Now we continue the …
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Dried Foods: Other Stuff
11Tuesday 25 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
In addition to drying aubergines/eggplants in various forms, and of course peppers, we also have a few other foodstuffs that get dried and kept in the …
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Peeling a Pommie
32Sunday 23 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
Another question I am often asked, is how the chuff does one peel a pommie (that is, pomegranate to normal …
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Deniz Börülcesi
6Sunday 23 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
What the heck am I on about? Well, Deniz Börülcesi, as we call it in Turkish, is a salty, seaweedy …
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Table Olives – Water Cured (part 1)
6Saturday 22 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
In a previous post, we looked at how olives for table use, rather than oil production, are picked, sorted and prepared. …
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Dried Foods: Peppers
13Thursday 20 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
Peppers are one crop which I know I can grow really well from early summer (May) right through until the …
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Dried Foods: Aubergine
9Monday 17 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
We often dry foodstuffs for use ‘out of season’, especially where we have a good crop of something or other. …
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Table Olives – Picking & Sorting
19Sunday 16 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
. Picking olives for oil production is one thing, but for table olives, that is, the ones you want to …
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Homemade Wild Sour Pomegranate Extract
10Saturday 08 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
Regional palettes vary worldwide, with every corner of the earth claiming certain culinary favourites that locals simply take for granted. …
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Plentiful Pepper Preparation
27Saturday 01 November, 2014 by Uncle Spike
I am often asked about what the hell we do with all the fruit and veg that we grow. Well, …
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How to make Turkish Coffee
32Thursday 30 October, 2014 by Uncle Spike
Hands up, how many of you have been to Turkey? Ok, so not many. All right, how many have had …
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Homemade Pasta Sauce
28Sunday 12 October, 2014 by Uncle Spike
Another of the end-of-summer jobs each year is to make our annual stock of tomato based pasta sauce. To be …
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Grape Concentrate
10Saturday 04 October, 2014 by Uncle Spike
One of the end-of-summer jobs each year is to make use of the late grape harvest. We have a vine …
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Hello Basil!
19Friday 01 August, 2014 by Uncle Spike
Every summer I grow a patch of black basil for drying. . . Which ends up spread across the guest …
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Stuffed Vine Leaves
25Saturday 26 April, 2014 by Uncle Spike
Stuffed vine leaves are a national dish here in Turkey, and certainly one of our favourites. They keep in the …
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Dark Nights & Fresh Yoghurt
6Saturday 07 December, 2013 by Uncle Spike
Now there’s a daft blog post title if ever I saw one – see, I know what you’re thinking…. 🙂 …
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Pommie Processing
17Sunday 03 November, 2013 by Uncle Spike
After more than 2 months of visitors (literally one set after another, sometimes 3 lots at once), we finally had …
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