PicoBlog

Nothing in life that gives me innocent pleasure can come within the limits of my regret zone. Eating good food is one of those.

My mom cooks the best meals in the world. She’s the queen in cooking. I'm not exaggerating. I've yet to meet a friend who hasn't been blown away by my mother's cooking and then doesn't constantly rave about it.

We call "mother's dishes” in Turkish for meals that are cooked at home, which you won’t possibly find in restaurants. When you say to someone the word "mother's dishes," everyone in Turkiye usually thinks of delicious, juicy meals with meat and vegetables cooked in a pot with a thick sauce and a variety of spices.

Turkish cuisine is as diverse as its geography. From the Black Sea coasts to the Mediterranian, this is a country bordered by Greece, Bulgaria, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The cultural diversity of the historic societies who once lived in this land is regarded as well, the food culture is as wide and diverse as possible.

Although kebabs, lahmacuns and baklava are the most well-known ones, the home-cooked pot dishes of mothers’ are much tastier, although they are not famous.

While eating the mother’s dishes, after the meat, vegetables, and legumes are spooned out, the sauce, which is the most delicious layer of the meal, remains on the plate. All the flavor is lying in this sauce, and you’ll never be content to leave it on the plate. It’s the real reward, the crown of the queen, top level of pleasure.

You dip the pieces of your bread into the sauce, devour the whole thing with care and pleasure. At the end, your plate does not even need to be washed. Unless, of course, you are in a fancy restaurant.

Bread dipping is common in Turkish culture, but in Italy, which is also a Mediterranean country and not far from Turkiye, they gave it a rather sympathetic name.

Fare la scarpetta.

Scarpetta actually means "small shoe." "La scarpa" is shoe; "la scarpetta" is small shoe in Italian. But as an idiom, when you say fare la scarpetta, it means to devour the sauced portion of the meal left on the plate with bread.

My husband and I spent our honeymoon in Italy. Before wedding, I had lost five kilograms in two months by starving myself to neatly fit into my wedding dress. But I regained those five kilograms in five days in Rome and Florence by drinking glasses of house wine at every lunch and dinner, by eating pasta and pizza, and licking a large gelato twice a day without fail. Of course, even though I didn't know the Italian name at that time, fare la scarpetta was very effective in this shameful success.

Anyway, now it's lunchtime and I'm at home. No need to say, I'm going to carry out the inevitable scarpetta action right away, without hesitation or feeling of committing a sin.

Long live eating for all.

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