Best kitchen invention (+ recipe for chicken)

This may sound ridiculous, but I had to come to Kurdistan and befriend a couple of Turks before I was able to discover the best kitchen invention ever. The item I am holding in the picture above is a package of oven roasting bags imported from Turkey - essentially just big see through plastic bags for roasting food in. Many of you may already be familiar with them, and many more of you may think that it is an apalling atrocity to shove something you are going to serve loved ones into a eco-unfriendly unnatural synthetic item where it will stay potentially absorbing anti-nutrients for an hour, but I challenge you... It is a potentially life-changing discovery! The advantages of using the bag is that there is almost NO CLEAN UP and the chicken stays moist. So far, I just cut up potatoes into wedges and throw these along with some garlic cloves into the bag under the chicken. But recently I began experimenting and would like to share a recipe with you:

Zanmei's Pomegranate (or other fruit?) Roast Chicken

1. Clean chicken, take a lemon or two, grate off zest, cut into halves and stuff into cavity of chicken.
2. Combine a few diced shallots (or one small onion) and local savory shredded and chopped herbs (I use basil and thyme) and some pepper. Take half of this mixture (or as much as you need - 2 Tbs?), loosen the chicken skin with a paring knive and rub the mixture between the chicken and the skin on breasts and thighs. Rub a little olive oil on the outside of the chicken and slip it into the roasting bag.
3. Put remainder of herb mixture in a bowl and add about 1-2 Tbs of honey, 1/2 cup of pomegranate (or cranberry or orange) juice and 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Pour this into the bag with the chicken and tie off the bag.
4. Place the bag into a glass or ceramic baking tray and put into oven (high heat - gas mark 6 on my oven) and roast for about 1 hour until skin is crispy-looking on top.
5. Serve with rice. I do a mixture of wild rice and barley cooked in chicken stock. Start by lightly sauteeing onions in olive oil, add dry wild rice and barley until grains are coated with the oil, add chicken stock and cook until done. Then after cooking, toss tegether with pomegranate seeds, toasted pine nuts, lemon zest (that you grated off the lemons stuffed into chicken) and a couple of Tbs of chopped parsley. Veggies roasted on a piece of tinfoil are also a nice no-clean-up-required addition. Zuccini slices instersperced with onion slices sprinkled with olive oil, red pepper flakes and thyme roast up nicely as do halved cherry tomatoes. You can add a little balsamic vinegar on the tomatoes after roasting.

Please let me know if this works for you. I tried this in Canada and there was too much water from the chicken and I thinked the juices that ran off the chicken in a pan with a bit of flour. Alternatively you could just add a dusting of flour to the bottom of the bag before adding the juice mixture.

PS. Apparently you can cook loads of stuff in these nasty-looking, but oh so useful bags. I will try fish when I return to Canada next.

"The Place to be CHARMED"

This is the slogan of the Lebanese Beauty Center in Shoresh. And indeed, the Lebanese Beauty salon is impressive enough that (although I had formerly eschewed all local beauty clinics - preferring to travel all the way to Istanbul for a hair cut), I think I am finally ready to get my next hair cut right here in Hawler! Why the change of heart? This is an easy one. I went for eyebrow threading and entered a room that was neat, clean, comfortable and completely stocked with enough disposable supplies & disinfectants to put one's mind to rest about the accidental transfer of communicable diseases! In fact, it was so clean, I would like to bring the staff of Erbil's medical establishments here for a quick lesson on how to avoid infection. You get to lie on a sterilized chair on top of a disposable sheet to get a leg waxing at the beauty salon (as opposed to lying on a dirty table covered by a dirty sheet and rubbed with a wand that hasn't been cleaned after the last 4 patients to get an ultrasound at the hospital). If like me, you are a bit of a compulsive shopper, your first trip might prove to be expensive as there is much to spend your money on at the salon: Swartzkopf, Wella, L'Oreal, Clarins... Haircare, Skincare and make up! I was sorely tempted as during the month of Ramadan, a $200 purchase earns you a free massage. Luckily I avoided temptation as I had only brought enough for my $10 eyebrow threading, which wasn't considered a purchase anyway.
Today I took a cab for a 11:30 appointment, arriving at the same time as the first staff members! (It is Ramadan and schedules change to accommodate those who are fasting). I got out of my taxi just after Bakery & More (in front of Casa Flora) and walked in with the staff through the back room of the flower shop to get to the staircase leading to the salon. The room pictured above is the one you first enter where whoever is at the desk will check your reservation and direct you to the waiting room (below) where you will be served a beverage of some type. I opted for cappuccino.
Luckily I didn't have to wait long, which is good as there are more magazines in Arabic and French than in English.

My reccommedation so far? Ask for Nina if you want eyebrow threading. Radha's waxing techniques are quick and relatively painless. And all of the manicurists seem to be skilled. They can even add little decorative flourishes to your nails (as tasteful or as garish as you wish) at no extra charge...

What's wrong with this picture?

Although I have been back a week already and have unpacked and put away all my things, a bag from Lily Whites still sits in my hallway. A request from Mu. Before leaving on vacation, I had asked all my friends staying in Erbil over the summer what they would like from overseas. K asked for a bag of decaffeinated coffee and Mu asked for nothing. Then on the last day of my vacation, Mu calls asking for running shoes - any brand but Adidas in size 41.
I was busy, but headed to the largest sports center I know in London - Lily Whites in Piccadilly Circus. Although there were shoes on sale for 27 GBP, I headed upstairs to the running section as I was informed that if the recipient would be using the shoes to run on concrete, I should really invest in a better pair. They were ALL ugly, but I guess that is the nature of men's running shoes. I asked the sales clerk to check carefully that the shoes in the box were both size 41 as the recipient would not be able to try them on until I arrived in Iraq. She assured me that they were both size 41. What she did not tell me is that the shoes had more than that in common... they were both for the LEFT foot. While there are some that might say that Mu has two left feet, I don't think they would mean it LITERALLY. I am a little annoyed and have included the bag in the photo so that all of you from the UK will know to check your purchases from Lily Whites carefully before packing them for travel... better yet, before leaving the store!

Eating Out

Where has the time gone? I have now been back in Erbil for a week... and surprisingly, I have only been out to dinner once! The night after I returned, there was a little dinner held at Marina in Ankawa - home of the best hummus in Kurdistan. It was really quite the event as staff member who usually never come out not only said they would come, but actually came! Kr (one of us English staff) who is rather enigmatic in that she travels on weekends to visit secret friends (how has she managed to have a private life actually unconnected to any of us colleagues?)! Another often absent colleague in another department (along with her husband and new baby) also joined us. Enjoying lovely company and dinner at one of the best restaurants in Erbil absorbed much of the shock of being back and having to go back to work.
The top picture is included because the truth is most of us don't know how to direct the taxis to Marina. Only we know it is in Ankawa beyond where we do our shopping and can be located by the massive neon sign that can be sighted way before you are anywhere near the restaurant. But note that if you just drive towards the sign (as we did), you will get caught on a lot of little dead end roads and have to backtrack a bit.

One more thing...

This year (as part of a resolution to live more healthily), I have decided to do more cooking at home and less eating of greasy foods in the cafeteria. Hence I brought back a goodly selection of my favorite commercial sauces (yes, I do know they are packed with salt, sugar and preservatives) for marinating meats to make the cooking the more complicated foreign dishes easier. (I believe they are OK used in moderation... Ex. I use only 1 generous tbsp of Patak's Vindaloo paste for marinating the meat; I then use fresh ingredients and spices for making the curry).

Yesterday I reached for the bottle of black bean sauce (see above) that I bought at a little Chinese-owned corner store in Saint John, New Brunswick only to find that it didn't exist. Then I remembered... it was packed (so as to keep the glass bottle from breaking) into one of those supersoft slippers pilfered from my FedEx shipment. So to any of my colleagues who haven't returned to Erbil yet and think I deserve a little present... this is a big HINT! (It would pretty much guarantee you an invite to dinner sometime).

Stopover in Stockholm - Highlights

As some of you know know from my blog (and other ways), there are now direct flights to to Stockholm for $620 USD return from Erbil! Not a bad deal... Never having been to Stockholm before, I decided to include a stopover of sorts on my way to Vancouver. (Note: If you are continuing on to London... it is actually cheaper to switch airlines as SAS and Virgin fly return to London cheaper than the extra $280 it would cost to continue on Viking. Viking's advantage? An extra 5 kgs of luggage)

"Why Stockholm?" many query. It seems strange that there exists a direct flight to and from Erbil! And no, I don't think it is because the Kurds are related to the Vikings... or that it was created just to faciliate easy travel for all the famous Kurds living in Sweden (among whom, I am only familiar with pop star Zakaria) . Or maybe it is loosely related to the latter. Wikipedia says that about 50-60 thousand Kurds live in Sweden and that there are areas where it is recognized as one of the parent languages. In addition, in many public places, Iraq Kurdistan (or North Iraq as it is called in Turkey) is referred to simply as "Kurdistan." However, that said, what I would like to share with you here is not the Kurdish connections with the city... But rather the things I enjoyed here that were unlike Erbil... I saw this as a transitional place- a place to relax and enjoy a few vacation-like moments before going to face the many tasks I had to do in Canada.

Day 1- Wining & Dining

I was so tired by the time I got to Sweden after having spent the whole night (not sleeping) in the Erbil airport, that I just wanted to go to my hotel and rest before dinner. The kind staff at the reception of my hotel in the old city of Gamla Stan made a reservation for me at Matbaren in the Grand Hotel. I crossed a little bridge to the Grand (Stockholm is made up of about 14 little islands -the downtown part all connected by bridges). Dinner was amazing! I started off with seafood! Herring arranged in a line next to neat line of halved new potatoes and topped with a line of roe. This was followed by tender slices of duck in a nest of ginger buckwheat soba . And of course I couldn't resist finishing off with coffee and the highly recommended dessert listed as "baked chocolate" which sat next to a tiny scoop of toffee ice cream sitting in a dollop of sour cream and decorated with a flag-like shard of carmelized sugar. The women sitting beside me were dining on equally magnificent-looking dishes and were friendly. Must remember to find their business cards and send an email.

After dinner, I wandered further North into Norrmalm, past the Hauftbahnhof (central train station) to the Nordic Sea Hotel (home of the Absolute Icebar-see below). After a couple of overly sweet Absolute cocktails served in blocks of ice, I headed back to Gamla Stan for a good night's sleep in my teeny tiny (but comfortable) room.

Day 2- Sightseeing

I started early on Day 2; walking back past the Grand and along the water to Djurgården, the island which is home to Grona Lund or Tivoli (a 100+ years old amusement park) along with a number of beautiful musems. Not having time for everything, I stopped at a few museums, entrance included on my handy Stockholm card, including the Vasamuseet which houses the world's only remaining 17th C ship... (pictures of the actual ship on Facebook). I also visited the SkansenOpen Air Museum where I had a hearty lunch of Swedish flat bread & butter, salad, new potatoes with a slice of sausage... and ale. (Yes, I was still all about the food on Day 2!)
After lunch, I walked to another island, Skepsholmen, to visit the Moderna Museet (think Tate Modern in London). By this time I had finished touring the galleries, I was pretty exhausted (my feet hurt) and hence went back to rest for dinner at Gondolen. Dinner (lucky to get in without reservation) was in a lovely room high about the city filled with locals out on dates. I opted for seared scallops followed by reindeer round steak with lingonberry gravy). Excellent! Note: reindeer more tender and less gamey than venison - which I don't like.

Day 3 - Shopping!

I started my day in the south of the city -SoFo (south of Folkungagatan) an area on Sodermalm Island. I started with a coffee at Rival Hotel (owned by members of ABBA - No ABBA memorabilia, but does have cool retro bar)! This hotel overlooks a little park where local people gather to play a game I was informed was called boules.

I then wandered around in the eclectic collection of funky boutiques located here until I had dropped a significant amount of money for very little merchandise.... which in the end, turned out to be not Swedish, but Danish. I then headed back down the street (pictured below) to the Stadsmuseet (one of Stockholms 80+ museums that happened to be FREE!). I then returned by subway to Gamla Stan for lunch and a quick tour of the Nobel Museum before finally going north to the central shopping district for window shopping (no more money) in Åhléns Department Store - the place where it seems all of Stockholm shops. I am afraid to say that I didn't have time to make it to Stockholm's IKEA- apparently the biggest in the world. Is this a good enough reason to return to Stockholm in future?

I covered even more distance than the half marathon I covered on Day 2, but saved my feet a little by using my Stockholm card not so much for Museum entrances as for mastering the public transportation system.

Unfortunately, that was all the time I had in Stockholm, but a coworker who went a month before I did and stayed much longer will hopefully be able to give me some tips for next time. He had enough time to leave me a postcard at my hotel! Sweet.

Iftar

The dinner is ready, the table is set, the stove is turned off... and yet the food sits on the table getting cold.
"What time is it?"
"I don't know. About 6:48?" I reply.
"Are you sure?" My dinner guest gets up and turns on the TV - Hotbird sattelite, channel 1: Kurdistan TV. The screen is nothing but a background image of a dust colored sky. Praying begins. "OK." My guest returns to the table and drinks a glass of water.

Although I have a lot of Muslim friends and family members, I have never really hosted dinner over Ramadan to guests who were fasting... For me as a non-Muslim (except to those who insist that because my father is Muslim - I therefore must also be Muslim), Ramadan in Erbil mostly just means that I will see fewer women out on the street, that more of the female staff and students will come to school wearing head scarves, that I should take even more care not too expose too much inappropriate skin (no short sleeves, no hemlines above ankle)... and that the cafeteria and my favorite convenient lunch spots will all closed and I should plan ahead (if I intend to eat lunch) by packing something I can eat discreetly in my office.

But for many (including my uncle in Toronto), Ramadan is a time for prayer, restraint and purification through fasting from sunup until sundown and refraining from anything excessive or ill-natured... although I have noticed that many who consume no water or food all day are ill-natured by early afternoon! My first year here, some of the older women in the Bazaar - those garbed entirely in black - hissed at some of us Western infidels, presumably for walking around with our heads (and possibly even forearms) uncovered during the Holy Month of Ramadan.

Anyway, Muslim or not, I believe in the benefits of fasting ... and so to make things easier (as I like to have company for dinner), I have gone to Kok supermarket and picked up an Iftar calendar so that I can time my evening mealtimes to coincide with Maghrib (sundown) prayers or Iftar (the breaking of the fast) this year. I am not starting my meal with dates (only one of those suckers is 66 calories... and I could eat a whole box!) or praying, but the timing does seem to make logical sense. During iftar, the entire city turns into a ghost town as everyone (shopkeepers and park gate attendants included) are away from their posts to begin eating. I might as well be eating too!

What do these things have in common?

Just add a 4-pack of replacement Venus razor heads (and note that my bottle of Benadryl was the non-drowsy Cold & Flu remedy -preferable for asthmatics- and that the BBQ sauce was President's Choice) and you would be looking at the list of things missing from the boxes of personal items I FedExed myself from Canada. And no, razors and medicine (not to mention Lululemon yoga tank tops and Supersoft slippers)are NOT among the items not allowed into Iraq (or Kurdistan) by customs! I checked... and the FedEx customer service in Canada and the US checked. Nothing was confiscated by customs anywhere. (I mean, come on... how could a pair of slippers be against customs regulations anywhere?) My customs bill came to $20.00 US and included no customs charges, but rather a fee for receiving, checking and stamping the forms on my boxes. The missing items? Your guess is as good as mine...

Although I do realize my losses weren't that great, and that I will likely never see these things again, I still feel the need to complain. I am sure that in my posts I have made the point that people you meet in the streets here are very honest. If you forget your purse in a taxi or drop something valuable in the street, it is likely to be returned to you; unlike in large Western cities like London where your mobile phone can be snatched from you as you open it to receive a text message (this really happened to me). However, it then seems contrary that shipping/courier company employees here would think that taking what they please from boxes they are inspecting could be a "perk" of the job. I resent having to pay a fee of $20.00 to a person for the task of sifting through my things for something that catches their fancy.

PS. If you are reading this, shady FedEx/Falcon Express box-checking employee in Erbil, you missed something! The ultra-rich body lotion from L'Occitane that you left in the box is WAY better (and more expensive) then the Aveeno dry skin anti-itch lotion that you took! The Aveda Shampoo & conditioner; however, good choice!

Back in One Piece - Viking Airlines OK

Yes, the map above is stolen from the Viking Airlines website. Viking being only 6 years old, and brand new to Erbil, lots of people are wondering how my trip out (and back in) to Erbil was... (And if it isn't really a local company - Atrosh Air- with nothing to do with Vikings or Scandinavia)... which it isn't.

In all honesty, the flight out was a bit of disaster (I wasn't informed by Miran Aviation - I will buy ticket online from Aer Olympic next time - that the flight was not actually leaving at 7:00PM, but at nearly 2:00AM the next morning.... then I discovered after check-in that the flight time was delayed by another two hours... and then two hours more... By the time we were in the air, it was already 6:00am! But on the way back, the delay was truly only 2 hours and I expect that is probably about what to expect in future.

On the up side, while there was no in-flight entertainment and no complimentary alcohol with meal service (I heard someone bitterly complaining about this - I swear it wasn't me), the seats were slightly larger than some other airlines (I don't care if it was because the plane was older) and the flight attendants spoke Swedish, English... AND KURDISH! Fabulous. There weren't any passengers pushing, occupying the wrong seats or wandering around in confusion as all received the same courtesies (like instructions in one's native language) that one should be able to expect travelling to and from one's home country.