Being in and around the San Diego area for a while now, I’ve come to know three markets where I can source not only halal meats, but all of the Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Turkish, Balkan, Persian and Indo-Pakistani products that I like to use in my cooking.
Here are the ones I know and shop:
Balboa International Market is located at 5905 Balboa Avenue, San Diego, CA 92111; tel. (858) 277-3600. They do have a halal meat section, but there is also a separate area where the cheese and other non-halal meats are located. One of my favorite things about this market are the Persian breads in the produce area. They’re freshly made daily. They even have pizza made with the breads but I’ve never tried them. One of the main reasons I go to this store is because it’s the one place where I can hear Turkish on the radio as well as find lots of Turkish products like Turkish brands of cheese, sucuk (cured meat), olives, and even mineral waters. Actually, the languages in the store vary from Turkish to Arabic, Farsi and Urdu- maybe even others. I love that it’s small but international. If you’re craving freshly made baklava and lokum, you can get that, too, on the way out at the stand right across from the cashier check-out.
Kizilay Turkish Mineral Water with Magnesium, available at Balboa International Market in San Diego, CA. I found both lemon and sour cherry flavors there.
Bosnian Cabbage Leaves at Balboa International Market
2. Harvest International Market located at El Cajon located at 733 E Main St, El Cajon, CA 92020; tel. (619) 442-0413. I came to this market by accident as I was in El Cajon since I heard there were a lot of Middle Eastern markets and restaurants. I looked around at other markets that were a little smaller, but this one inspired me the most. Their meat counter is so nice and fresh and they carry a lot of bones I can use for broth as well as offal (i.e. lamb, beef and chicken intestines, heart, kidneys, etc.), which is what I was looking for since I’ve arrived in San Diego. The other thing I love about this market is the freshly made Iraqi style breads baked right in the store, making the entire store smell so nice. The produce has always been nice and fresh when I’ve visited. Sign up for their weekly ad and get discount offers texted to your phone.
Fresh Yellow Dates at Harvest International Market in El Cajon, CA
Italian Eggplant at Harvest International Market in El Cajon, CA
Fresh Baked Iraqi Style Bread at Harvest International Market in El Cajon, CA
Arabic Bread at Harvest International Market
Iraqi Style Tahini at Harvest International Market in El Cajon, CA
3. North Park Produce is located at 12342 Poway Rd, Poway, CA 92064; tel. (858) 391-9100. This market is attached to a bakery and grill so you can shop and eat in the small restaurant before or after, which is nice. The market is large, but the meat section is small. They carry a large variety of nuts and dried beans, of Middle Eastern and Balkan products, lots of Turkish brands of rice, bulgur and pastas, which is great. They do have a good size fresh produce section, too.
Turkish cheese products from Harvest International Market in El Cajon, CA
If you know of any more places where good quality Halal meat can be purchased, please drop those in the comments section below.
I’m a huge fan of yogurtfor a whole host of reasons- and not just eating a small cup of flavored yogurt a day, but eating it as part of a healthy diet in as many ways as possible. When I buy a tub of yogurt, I find all sorts of ways to finish it off because I see it as a valuable health food that I’m grateful we have so readily available to us. That said, from a halal perspective, nowadays you have to read labels to know if there is any gelatin in your tub of yogurt. Yes, gelatin. Which can come from either beef or pork, but could also come from agar agar, a sea-derived gelatin. Either way, if it’s made in a homemade style, it is not made with any of those. The reason it’s often done in the food industry is that it helps to keep the yogurt conformed in the tub or container and to withstand varying temperatures during transport.
One solution to that is to buy a halal-certified yogurt and there really aren’t many brands on the market to fit that category, however, I have been consuming and developing many wonderful recipes with Mountain High Yoghurt, a halal-certified brand available at many stores- widely available in the Western states, but I find the larger tubs available at my local Costco store just outside of Chicago. It’s nice and creamy, smooth and clean of any ‘funny stuff’ or doubtful ingredients. They make it without any gelatin, which I believe is how yogurt tastes best anyway. I have been delighted by this new find!
Have you ever bought a tub of yogurt and then got to the last part of it and wondered what you could make or bake to finish it off? I make a conscious effort to never throw away any food, and yogurt is something that can easily be incorporated into so many dishes so that you never waste a drop. After all, the barakah, or blessings, are in the last part of any vessel…
In this case, when I’m looking to use the last drops of yogurt in the tub, I think of sauces- sauces on meat, sauces on pasta- either purely yogurt or mixed with something else, both of which can be amazingly delicious. I remember the first time I ever had yogurt on top of pasta with red sauce because a Turkish friend of mine in college had poured it on top of my plate. I felt as though it was a mortal sin to do this, having grown up in a Sicilian family where the only thing that went on a plate of past was some sort of Italian hard or soft cheese, that’s it. I didn’t want to be rude to my host, so I ate it. And absolutely loved it, so much so that I kept this way of eating pasta my very own secret for a very long time. Eventually, I found myself making pasta with yogurt more than with red sauce, as my best friend often made macarna (macaroni) with yogurt for her kids and we would sit at the table with them together often and eat this up as though it was the new comfort food, at least in my life. I guess food memories really do create the bond we have with certain dishes, don’t they?
(share with us how you #finishthetub by using that hashtag and tagging us on social media)
This recipe is a whole new spin on my love for Middle Eastern meat dishes. It combines a whole lot of flavors I love and piles it all on to one plate, which is fantastic, in my opinion. When the combination of beef and eggplant is mentioned, I’m in for pretty much whatever dish it is, having first been lured into its greatness by my dear friend Inci who would present Ottoman-style dishes at my door when we were neighbors many moons ago. She would explain their history and tell me how she made the stew cuts with the eggplant so silky and soft, but I could never quite replicate the texture or taste. To this day, it’s the one thing I ask her to make when I see her, as I really love her dish the most, especially when served with the perfectly-formed buttery rice with strands of toasted vermicelli. How spoiled I’ve become over the years having excellent home chefs as friends…
Anyway, I first heard about this particular ground beef dish while listening to an episode of Nigella Lawson’s cooking show. I had never really watched her before and all of a sudden I started to watch her programs with interest because of the variety of Turkish and Lebanese recipes she was showing how to make, using many of the ingredients I also cook with and have on hand much of the time at home. One dish that stood out, in particular, was her recipe for Fatteh, something which she also called Middle Eastern nachos- and it’s true- they do look and feel a bit like making a nacho dish although here the meat is flavored with Middle Eastern spices instead of Mexican ones. Genius. I thought I’d give it a go and ended up making dishes for a couple of weeks, experimenting in my own way and coming up with a style and format I love so much I’ve served it to my guests who also loved the yogurt sauce on ravioli, which you’ll see at the end.
Here’s how the Middle Eastern Beef is spiced up, the eggplant is made and of course the yogurt-tahini sauce, which to me tastes a lot like something you’d find on a certain halal cart somewhere around the country. I’ve been asked so often for that yogurt sauce recipe and this is the one way I feel as though it tastes the closest to the cart.
First, I make the yogurt sauce, although you can do the beef and eggplant first instead. If you like the yogurt sauce warm when eaten, do it last. If you don’t care, then it won’t matter when you make it.
You need to use a double boiler or make one as I’ve done here. A pot of water on the bottom and a stainless steel bowl on top where the yogurt, tahini, garlic cloves and salt will go. Also the lemon juice at the end.
I warm the yogurt first, as the water in the bottom pan has come to a boil.
Then I add crushed garlic, tahini sauce, salt and the juice of half a lemon.
It’s whisked all together and warmed gently, then taken off the heat.
Next, I dice up the eggplant to make sure all the pieces are about the same size so that they cook evenly. Since they soak up oil quite a bit, I use grapeseed oil to saute them in first, then once fully cooked I move them out of the pan and onto a plate, set aside until the ground beef is done. The ground beef is cooked in the same pan with the cumin, coriander and dried parsley.
Prepare some pita chips, either store-bought or make your own.
Use the pan or dish you’re going to serve the meal in to line it with the pita chips. I actually keep the center hollow of any chips if I don’t have enough to go around, and it’s fine.
Now come the added ingredients that if you have can be great, but if you don’t you can skip them, but find something crunchy to put on top, as well as something picante, or hot.
Like Aleppo pepper flakes or Urfa biber. I bought some on my recent trip to Turkey and the others at the Spice House in Chicago and it’s excellent.
Dry roast the pine nuts in a pan, without any oil or water (which is why it’s called dry roast). Do this for about five minutes or less, on low. Keep a careful eye on it and pull it off the heat when they’re mostly browned. Don’t skip this step; it makes a huge difference on this dish.
And…ripe pomegranate seeds.
They’re not really in season right now, so I was realized that only when opening mine. The color was really light; otherwise, it’s nice and dark. I love the way they burst with flavor in your mouth in this and any other dish where fresh pomegranate seeds are used. If you can’t get these, you can add my other favorite ingredient here: grape molasses. Actually, I used both in this dish because of the grape molasses which adds a sour flavor, and I love it. You can get most grape molasses products in a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern stores in the honey aisle or where they keep Turkish products. Pile it all on top and add fresh parsley. I love the color combo, don’t you? Naturally, I had to plate this in my copper pans brought from Turkey; they’re perfect for this dish.
Now, there is one variation you can make here. If you don’t have eggplant, just use the beef, or lamb, or ground chicken or turkey- although I feel this recipe tastes best with either lamb or beef. The point is, you can make it with eggplant and I realized this the first time I made the dish and forgot to add that important ingredient, but it was fine. It was totally fine and even quicker to make!
One other thing you can do to #finishthetub is to put the yogurt-tahini sauce on top of cooked ravioli. This particular dish below is made of butternut squash ravioli and then creamed spinach on top, then topped with the yogurt-tahini sauce. You can warm just the yogurt if you don’t want to add all the other ingredients and then put the toasted pine nuts on top.
Either way you make it, you can #finishthetub in tasty, quick ways. How do you do it?
One thing I love to do in Ramadan is to experiment with super simple ways to serve dates for Iftar. This one was inspired by my desire to make yogurt cheese, or labneh instead of creme fraiche or mascarpone cheese. I didn’t fill the middle of each date with any nuts, but you can if you want. Aside from pitting the Medjool dates, this was just so very easy.
To the top, I added crushed pistachios, light Acacia California honey, and a sprinkle of bee pollen just because I wanted to get those into my diet. If you have allergies to bees, you might want to be careful adding bee pollen, plus it doesn’t have the most desirable taste, but I’m used to it (I put it in my cereal).
To make your own yogurt, check out my quick-to-prepare recipe here and here.
Either way, this is so incredibly easy and quick to whip up for your guests or just for yourself at home. I think they’re pretty, too. Ramadan Mubarak!
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Last year I received a copy of this book, Summer Kitchens: Recipes and Reminiscences from Every Corner of Ukraine by Olia Hercules. I posted it to my Instagram account, as I was super excited by the gorgeous contents of this cookbook. Not only do many of the recipes look so tasty, but they are also very interesting to my discerning eye. Admittedly, I don’t have much experience with Eastern European cooking other than experimenting with a few products in my favorite grocery store in Chicagoland or because of receiving edible gifts from friends and neighbors from Hungary, Croatia, Russia, and Lithuania. I found them to have a simplicity in their presentation and very, very earthy in nature, with lots of root vegetables, fresh herbs, and pickled vegetables- all of which are not in my own family’s culinary heritage yet appealing to my desire to learn how to pickle, ferment, and preserve in the way that they do.
In Summer Kitchens:Recipes and Reminiscences from Every Corner of Ukraine, Olia takes us through a culinary food tour of the summer season in the countryside of Ukraine, her home country. She shares stories of local artisans, old traditions of preserving food by drying, fermenting and pickling and even making sourdough bread from scratch.
Considering the deeply saddening current situation in Ukraine, I thought this would be a good time to bring some awareness and appreciation for the place and its people who are going through the unthinkable right now. Our community is no stranger to this type of distressing, painful event so it’s an opportune time to
Olia Hercules has written more cookbooks about Eastern European cooking:
A celebration of the food, flavors, and heritage of Eastern Europe—from the Black Sea to Baku, Kiev to Kazakhstan—Mamushka features over 100 recipes for fresh, delicious, and unexpected dishes from this dynamic yet underappreciated region.
Olia Hercules was born in Ukraine and lived in Cyprus for several years before moving to London and becoming a chef. In this gorgeous and deeply personal cookbook, she shares her favorite recipes from her home country with engaging and loving stories about her culinary upbringing and family traditions.
Featuring personality and panache, Mamushka showcases the cuisine from Ukraine and beyond, weaving together vibrant food with descriptive narratives and stunning lifestyle photography. From broths and soups to breads and pastries, vegetables and salads to meat and fish, dumplings and noodles to compotes and jams. You’ll also find some of Olia’s favorite dishes, like a Moldovan giant cheese twist and garlicky poussins, to sublime desserts such as apricot and sour cherry pie and a birthday sponge cake with ice cream, strawberries, and meringue.
Including new flavor combinations, vibrant colors, seasonal ingredients and straightforward cooking techniques, Mamushka’s earthy dishes appeal to home chefs everywhere. Join Olia on this delicious and diverse culinary tour through Eastern Europe.
In this gorgeous cookbook, Olia Hercules shares more than 100 dishes that celebrate the food, flavors, and unique culinary heritage of the Caucasus—Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Russian, and Turkey. Kaukasis charts Olia’s exploration of this unfamiliar area and introduces its wonderful cuisine that combines European and Middle Eastern ingredients in ways that are fresh and new.
How You Can Help Ukrainians in Need:
World Central Kitchen is a non-profit organization started by famed Spanish Chef Jose Andres that has been feeding those in need around the world during natural and man-made disasters. I first learned about WCK when Chef Andres was in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the deadly hurricane just a few years ago. They are now serving thousands of fresh meals to Ukrainian families fleeing home as well as those who remain in the country. Use the hashtag #chefsforukraine and #cookforukraine if you’d like to promote their work on social media. To read more about their efforts and donate your support, go to: https://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraine .
Zakat Foundation is a Chicagoland non-profit organization headed by Turkish-born Halil Demir that is quick to respond with humanitarian aid in disasters all over the world. They are, of course, also helping Ukrainians in need now, too. To read more about their efforts and donate your support, go to: https://www.zakat.org/#spotlight.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Self empowerment is defined as an individual being “in control of his or her life and views the trials they face in life in a positive way. It’s also about building self-esteem and confidence.”
This little dish of Pasta with Bechamel Sauce represents the exact reason why cooking for oneself is not only an act of self-care, but also an experience in self-empowerment.
Why?
Because it embodies the art of knowing how to survive and thrive on less. Less money, less stuff (in this case, ingredients), fewer cooking tools & gadgets, and more time for the things you actually want to do.
Since I’ve relocated to Turkey, I’ve had to learn to manage quite a challenging cooking situation. I know this isn’t the case for everyone who moves abroad, or everyone who moves to or lives in Turkey, per se. This is just my experience and mine alone.
First of all, I left most of my well-used kitchen gadgets back in the U.S. I only brought the ones I couldn’t cook without (i.e. my trusty lemon juicer, a microplane, a mini grater(more useful than you might think), kitchen shears, immersion blender, spice grinder), I couldn’t bring what I really needed, such as my blender and food processor. I thought I would be fine without them- and I am, however, it has made the cooking process longer. I try to take it all in stride and call my intense chopping sessions my ‘cooking therapy’.
Second, prices are higher here for convenience/processed food items that are relatively cheaper back in the US: frozen foods, imported foods, and gourmet foods like Parmesan cheese, all of which were normal parts of my grocery budget back in the U.S.
Since I was an avid Trader Joe’s shopper in the U.S., I got everything I ever wanted to cook with for what I considered fair and good prices. That goes without saying that for whatever else I needed to fill in the gaps, select places online (i.e. Amazon) was a treasure trove of goodies I could tap into quite easily- and why not, with Amazon Prime‘s free shipping and all.
Needless to say, Amazon Turkey has a lot of catching up to do in that regard, but they are well on their way. Heck, online shopping overall is amazingly good in Turkey and I did use it for things I couldn’t readily find. Keep in mind, I did not live in a big city like Istanbul, so my access was slightly different. I wasn’t anyplace remote, either, but Fethiye is definitely not the size of Antalya, Izmir or Ankara, either.
Now that I come to think about it, my sudden withdrawal is probably the reason for all the thoughts I’d been having about shopping for shredded coconut, tubs of hummus, and alcohol-free vanilla extract at my local Trader Joe’s…
Instead all of that was replaced with the likes of some of best local fresh markets I’ve ever seen in the world. I had nothing to miss and everything to gain, really.
As a result, I’ve had to substitute for ingredients I simply can’t find very easily like my local Tulum for the Italian Parmesan cheese, which is very similar in texture but not exactly in taste, however it does the job. I have to stretch fresh seasonal vegetables from one market day to the next or until they come up in my balcony garden because they are also way pricier and not nearly as good quality in the larger grocery stores here like Migros, a common grocery chain all over the country. The grocery store produce is still a lot better quality than most I’ve seen anywhere else, though.
In the U.S., of course you can find fresh organic food products in many reputable grocers, but at a very steep price. On top of that I now realize that it sometimes makes it more tempting to overstuff the fridge with fresh things that will quickly go to waste before you can use them all up. On the contrary, here refrigerators and freezers are generally smaller than the American ones and mine is particularly small, so we don’t have the massive capacity to store so many frozen items or even the fresh ones plus all the added goodies (mostly those processed jars of condiments), either. I actually don’t mind it. Sometimes I think, “How much food was I hoarding back in the U.S.?”
What I’ve also learned from this experience is that there is an ease of living with less, but it doesn’t mean that the quality of life is less. In fact, I felt so much lighter. I was able to make lemonade out of the lemony feeling I got from many months of being a tad irritated, a little worried and allowing myself to spiral downward into the abyss of thinking my cooking career would be over without access to a million and one different and unique branded food products and cooking gadgets.
My true inner chef has come alive again. Just like driving a manual car versus an automatic one, I get to cook with my whole body, my imagination; I get to touch and feel and smell all of the ingredients again, rather than pour things from a bottle or pouch or jar – which happens not only when you’re busy, but when you’re presented with a slew of amazing and beautifully packaged ‘organic’ goods. Ask yourself, are you really in touch with the earthiness of those foods? With their real essence? Their smells, texture, and quality? Are you really in tune with their nature and how they’ll perform in the dishes you plan to create?
I say not…
As a result of the challenges to my cooking, I tapped into my authentic inner cook, the actual chef inside of me who has had the opportunity to come alive again and get the machine running as it should be, the way I first learned to cook when I was just eighteen years old and traveled to Italy for the first time, seeing the open markets and bringing the freshest ingredients home where my aunt taught me the beauty of pushing your sleeves up and getting down to the nitty gritty of cleaning fish, peeling onions, crushing garlic, cooking tomatoes for sauce, choosing the best basil from the pots outside in the garden, and tasting what it really feels liketo cook.
That’s also the first time in my life I felt empowered to truly take charge of my cooking.
I had lost that feeling in recent years. I’d lost it to the disease of busyness. I’d lost it to the idea that I needed to try a gazillion and one products and gadgets to be considered a modern cook. And I wasn’t happy. In fact, I was miserable. Deep down, I knew that all I wanted was to be back to nature, back to the earthy goodness of those fresh air markets where I could physically touch and inspect the ingredients that I would bring into my home and create the art I was meant to do. Coming face to face with the vendors who sell those ingredients makes me feel more accountable about using up the entire product a real human being worked so hard to plant, care for, harvest and bring to market so that I can cook with and nourish my body with it. Coming here gave me that gift of conscious cooking, even though I couldn’t see it right away.
There’s also an economic impact to all of this. Knowing how to cook has always saved me from spending money on eating out, eating food I don’t enjoy, or even snacking instead of having a proper meal; and instead using my self-taught cooking skills to be creative and a master of stretching the food budget while never sacrificing on taste. Now that is empowering.
The Béchamel recipe I referred to earlier is just an example of a time when I was very limited on ingredients at home and was actually craving pasta alfredo. Since both recipes are in my head, I was able to churn out the Béchamel quickly, something that anyone can do if they simply put their minds to it and learn.
You don’t have to be a professional chef to empower yourself with these same skills.
But wouldn’t you feel like a Master Chef at home if you made something like this for yourself, without fuss, and took back your time, your money, your kitchen space and more? It’s doable, I promise you. And you don’t have to move abroad to get there.
Both recipes and easy instructions for making Alfredo and Béchamel can be found in the My Halal Kitchen cookbook and only require a few essential base ingredients: flour, butter, milk, salt, black pepper. Red pepper flakes on top make it moreTurkish, but you can leave those out and add some fresh herbs or nothing at all. It’s your dish, so you do you.
Have you ever bought a tub of 
Pile it all on top and add 
Naturally, I had to plate this in my copper pans brought from Turkey; they’re perfect for this dish.
