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The first in the ‘Virtual Chef’ project series, we went on line to Poland, where Marta Marucha instructed us how to cook Canneloni, a favorite dish of both her and her mother.
About a week before the meal, Marucha gave us a list of ingredients we would need to get. It was our challenge to find these ingredients, or substitutes for them, here in Istanbul.
We were able to find most of the ingredients – the spinach, garlic, mushrooms, cream and olive oil from Carrefours, the French supermarket chain, and the feta cheese and pepper from the market next door to the space.
We were not able to find the right kind of noodles however. Turkish people generally tend to use small pasta products, not the large and stuffable ones used in other countries. I found the biggest ones I could find, though hardly able to hold the cheese and spinach combination we were going to make. I found out later that there is a market in Nisantisi that imports practically every kind of noodle you could imagine. We’ll check it out for next time.
We also couldn’t find Rockpol cheese and had to substitute a mystery cheese from the market next door. In the future we take more time to source the correct cheeses.
Once the ingredients were gathered and the connection made, we started to cook. cutting the garlic, cooking the spinach, melting the cheese in the cream, and boiling the noodles.
Unable to stuff the rather small pastas, we cooked it all together in layers, roast style in our small oven.
We bought way too many mushrooms and decided to cook them up with some garlic as a side dish.
