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Three months after our Mediterranean cruise, I give you the last installment of our two-week vacation: Istanbul, Turkey. Spain, Italy and Greece were wonderful, but the place I was most excited to visit during our cruise was Turkey. I have a slight obsession with Middle Eastern food and culture, and was so looking forward to spending time in Istanbul. And I have to say, the city did not disappoint. We had a fantastic time there and it’s definitely some place we’d like to return to for a longer stay.

In two days we were docked in Istanbul, we visited the Basilica Cistern, the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and, of course, the Grand Bazaar. Two days was certainly not enough time to really get to see the city the way we would have liked to, but we are so glad we at least had the opportunity to visit. It’s always been a dream of mine to visit a Muslim country, and I thought Turkey was so beautiful. The mosques were simply breathtaking. From the outside, they were stunning, with the minarets pointing into the sky. But it wasn’t until we stepped inside that we experienced the true beauty. The Blue Mosque  in particular (above) was an almost cavernous-like space, with thousands of handmade ceramic tiles and hundreds of stained glass windows.

Hagia Sophia (below) was equally as awesome. Initially built as a church in the 1st century AD, it was converted into a mosque in the 1400s. It too had amazingly high ceilings, but otherwise, it was very different from the inside of the Blue Mosque. Everything had a bronze-gold hue to it. I think the most interesting part of the inside of Hagia Sophia were the disks inscribed in Arabic. I was just fascinated by their beauty.

We heard that you could get lost in the maze that is the Grand Bazaar, and we’re here to tell you, it’s true! It’s so easy to turn one corner, and then another, and then have absolutely no idea where you are. I loved getting lost in winding alleys filled with textiles, lamps, ceramicware, jewelry, leather goods and more. I ended up leaving with a beautiful silk pashmina and a lovely set of two ceramic bowls.

We came this close to purchasing an authentic Turkish rug. B and I both thought that despite the hefty price tag, it would be a lovely investment for our home. After humming and hawing and negotiating the price, we ended up walking away from a beautiful burgundy wool and silk-mix rug, because I just couldn’t get myself to spend that much money. In some ways I regret not buying it, because who knows when we’ll get that opportunity again?

For dinner the night we were in Istanbul, we ate at an amazing banquet, filled with the most delicious Turkish cuisine ever. I loved it because there were so many vegetarian options: biber dolma (stuffed peppers), yaprak dolma (stuffed grape leaves), patlican dolma (stuffed eggplant) and a lentil salad were just some of the things we feasted on.

Of course, I couldn’t bypass the sweets table. Unfortunately, they weren’t as tasty as I had expected them to be. I did take a smidgen of everything on the table—and I do mean everything—but some things I just didn’t finish. My favorites were the little honey-soaked cakes (maybe a semolina pudding?) and a berry-filled spongy cake. Does anyone know what they might have been?

And finally, the world-famous loukoum, or Turkish Delight: a chewy, jelly-like confection dusted in confectioner’s sugar. My favorite is the kind containing pistachios—in fact, we bought four boxes to share with family when we returned home.

Sadly, that ends my four-part blog series on our amazing summer vacation. We had such a wonderful time, and I hope that one day, we’ll be able to return to some of the places we visited!

Other stops on our Mediterranean cruise:

• Barcelona, Spain
• Taormina, Sicily
• Athens and Santorini, Greece (We went to Greece last year too, and ate so many yummy things!)

If there is anything I always have in my refrigerator, it’s Fuji apples. I love how sweet and crisp they are. So I was excited to see that Dorie suggested them for her flaky apple turnovers. It’s not often that you see a sweet variety of apple as the star of a pastry-enveloped treat. Usually, pies and such call for tart apples… which I can’t stand.

But while the apples were stellar, alas, my flaky apple turnovers were not. Actually, I take that back: They were delicious… but in a crumbly-pie-crust sort of way. They were not flaky.

I did have a lot of trouble with the dough. It never really came together for me. And rolling it out was another mess. By the time I’d gotten the dough cut into circles with my cookie cutter, the butter got pretty soft—and I know that soft butter is not good if you want a flaky crust. Then I couldn’t fold the dough over the apples, so instead, I just put another circle of dough on top of the apples and pinched the sides. What should have been a beautiful, light and flaky apple treat ended up being a heavy, apple-filled hand pie.

Oh well. Another Dorie fail for me, *sigh*. That’s OK though—B, my sweet little garbage disposal, said he liked them!

Thanks to Julie of Someone’s in the Kitchen, who picked this recipe this week. Sorry I didn’t do them justice! If you’d like to try your hand at Dorie’s Flaky Apple Turnovers, the original recipe is below!

[Get the recipe →]

It’s almost fall, and I still haven’t posted about all the amazing ports of call we stopped at during our two-week Mediterranean cruise earlier this summer. One of the places we were most excited to visit—or revisit, I guess I should say—was Greece. B and I gorged on great Greek food when we vacationed there last summer, and we were thrilled to be headed back—almost exactly a year ago to the day.

In Athens, we skipped the Acropolis, since we already toured it last year. But did visit the newly opened Acropolis Museum—more on that later. First, we took the Metro from the Port of Piraeus and headed back to the Athens Central Market, where B and I walked through a maze of raw meat, poultry and seafood. Very gross and very stinky, but also really fascinating.

We’d only been at the market for an hour when B complained that he simply had to have a gyro before he passed out. I’m not exaggerating when I say that B has dreamed about authentic Greek gyros almost every single day since our vacation in Greece last year. We’ve eaten in Chicago’s Greektown many times since then, and none of the restaurants or dives make a gyro even remotely close to the ones he had in Greece.

So… we headed to the Monastiraki Flea Market to find a gyro for him. I remembered the exact location of a place we ate at last year. He wolfed this giant gyro down in just minutes… even though it was only 10 in the morning.

Next stop in Athens was the new Acropolis Museum, which we had wanted to see last year but couldn’t, because they kept postponing the grand opening date. The Acropolis Museum finally ended up opening to the public just a few days before we arrived this year, and they were running an admission special—only 1 Euro to get in! The museum was fascinating—it houses every artifact found on the Acropolis and the building itself is stands above ancient ruins, which you can see through a glass floor. Very cool.

At about 1pm, I was starting to get hungry myself. The summer sun in Athens can be brutal, so again, we opted for a restaurant we visited last year, where you sit outside under a canopy of trees and fans blow mist at you. It was lovely to catch a break, people watch and eat great food. I myself was dying to have a Greek salad. I know Greek salads seem easy to put together, but believe me when I say you’ll never find a better Greek salad than the ones you find in Greece. The Greek salads in Greece have only bell peppers, red onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, Kalamata olives and a fat slab of feta, sprinkled with oregano and drizzled with olive oil. There’s no lettuce, no capers, no chickpeas, no nothing else. And even though all Greek restaurants automatically serve you bread, and then charge you for it, nothing beats a true Greek salad with a lovely hunk of carb on a very hot day. Yum.

Although it had only been three hours since he ate that ginormous gyro, B ordered a chicken souvlaki. As I said, he really missed authentic Greek food.

And if you really don’t believe me, take a look at this photo. Taken about two hours after eating his chicken souvlaki, we found ourselves back at the same gyro stand in the Monastiraki Flea Market. We had to hurry back to our cruise ship before it left the port, and he wanted to make sure he got his fill of gyros… even though we’d be in Santorini a few days later (where he again ate gyros, oye)!

Finally, I leave you with this photograph of one of the most beautiful, peaceful and magical places on earth. A few days after we left Athens, our cruise ship stopped in Santorini. We hiked the caldera again—but this time, we hiked only the 6.5-mile path from the port town of Fira to Oia, on the northern tip of the island, instead of the round-trip hike. It was lovely, just as we remembered it. I wish I could say when we’d be there again. Hopefully once more in our lifetimes…

Other stops on our Mediterranean cruise:

• Barcelona, Spain
• Taormina, Sicily
• Istanbul, Turkey

Hmm… what did I do wrong? I’m so sad that Dorie’s Espresso Cheesecake Brownies didn’t come out that great for me. While they were beautiful—quite possibly the most beautiful Dorie creation I’ve created to date—they just didn’t come out tasting good.

The brownie layer was fantastic, but the cheesecake layer tasted, well, eggy. And the weird thing is, I’m normally a fan of eggy. I love flan and custards. But when you bite into something that you expect to be creamy, and instead you get eggy… it’s not a good texture sensation.

Could it be because I used egg substitute? My sister, who hates it when I make substitutions, will say, I told you so! You shouldn’t mess around with recipes! And OK, OK, this time I’ll admit it—I shouldn’t have strayed from Dorie’s original. So instead of posting my version of the recipe as I usually do, you’ll find the real deal below!

[Get the recipe →]

Taormina sits high on a cliff in the eastern province of Messina on the Italian island of Sicily. It is a charming little town… exactly like what you’d picture a quaint European village to be. Dozens of cafés, bakeries, gelato shops and restaurants line the streets, as do small clothing boutiques and stores filled with little trinkets.

We arrived in Taormina after visiting Mt. Etna, just 30 miles away, where we climbed a crater bed and marveled at the view. After a while on Mt. Etna, we were tired, cold and coated in dust and dirt from the crumbly volcanic rock. We loved the hike, but by that point, we were ready to spend some leisure time in Taormina, eating sweets and browsing shops.

The first thing I wanted to do when we arrived was to find a cannoli. A big, fat, crispy-on-the-outside, creamy-on-the-inside cannoli. Maybe dipped in chocolate, maybe not. I stepped into dozens of little pasticceria, and always thought to myself, These look great, but let me check out the next place, just in case!

I don’t know why I thought one particular bakery would be better than another… pretty much everything in every place I stepped into looked so delicious. Mini apple tarts, chocolate puff pastries, pies, biscotti… I wanted to eat everything!

When it comes to food, Sicily is known for frutta martorana, which are traditional marzipan sweets hand crafted in the form of fruits and vegetables. Americans know marzipan as a sweet, thick, moldable almond paste used mostly in candies or rolled out as a type of icing for a cake (like fondant). In Italy, marzipan is slightly less sweet and often molded into different shapes.

You wouldn’t believe how realistic these candies are! The details of the leaf and stem on an apple, the seeds on a strawberry, the rind of a watermelon—they look like the real thing!

Last stop on our walking tour of Taormina: La Bottega del Buongustaio, a fabulous little pasticceria selling everything from wine to pasta to jams. But the real beauties there were the cookies in the display case. Almost all the cookies were variations on paste di mandorle, or almond paste (though this is not to be mistaken for marpizan—they’re different). Some were orange flavored, others were studded whole almonds, and still others were topped with little dried fruits.

I left Taormina not with the cannoli I’d hoped for, but rather with one of the most delicious cookies I’ve ever eaten in my life. Studded with pistachios and sporting a beautiful green hue, this cookie totally captured my attention as I peered into the bakery case at La Bottega del Buongustaio. But it wasn’t until I bit into it that I truly fell in love. Extremely chewy on the inside but with the contrasting crunch of the nuts on the outside, this cookie was an explosion of flavor in my mouth. I can still taste it now… and I hope to someday create this little masterpiece in my own kitchen!

Other stops on our Mediterranean cruise:

• Barcelona, Spain
• Athens and Santorini, Greece (We went to Greece last year too, and ate so many yummy things!)
• Istanbul, Turkey