Turkish Walking Tour at Auburn- Gourmet Safaris

Recently my friends and I joined a walking tour in Auburn, a suburb of Sydney well known for its Turkish community. 

The tour was run by Gourmet Safaris (an offshoot of Maeve O'Meara from the televsion show Food Safari),  they offer many tours in Sydney and beyond, I do suggest you take a look! 

Our hosts for the day were these lovely sisters Serap and Serpil who were part of the families who originally travelled from Turkey and settled in Australia.

Turkish Tea

They were amazing ladies who had a real passion for food, had an obvious love for their home country and an undeniable passion for this country they now call their own.

Dried Eggplant

I enjoyed the day so much I wanted to share bits and pieces through some of the photos I took, I hope you like them.

Dried Apricots and Sweet Sucuk

We are so lucky to live in a city where we sometimes only have to travel a few kilometres to become immersed in another culture.

Halva

Simit

The bakeries were full of delicious bread and biscuits, this was the first time I tried Simit and it wasn't long before I was back in Auburn to buy some more.

Sucuk

 Turkish sausage, sucuk, is full of incredible flavour.

Chocolates

I was most excited to visit the Turkish Delight shop and I was not disappointed.

Turkish Delight

yum!!!

Happy Easter.

Turkish supermarket, Gima

I was so excited to visit the supermarket, you felt like you became privy to the secrets of the cuisine and what is actually in all those bottles!

Acuka

 Serap referred to Acuka as 'Turkish vegemite', it is an intense flavoured paste of tomato and capsicum, I loved it.

Apple Tea

Biscuits at a Bakery

Turkish bread cooked in a 'tandoor' style oven

 I loved being let in the kitchen to see the baking of this bread.

I think these may have been preserved walnuts?

Dips!

 For lunch we were presented with a feast, I was most excited about the dips.

I have just shared a few dishes we ate.

Kofte, savoury lamb mince inside a bulgar wheat casing.

Eggplant

Chicken, incredibly moist and full of flavour.

Pistachio Turkish Ice Cream

 The ice cream had an incredible texture, almost chewy? It was so delicious. Apparently the texture comes from dried orchid roots!?

Gallipoli mosque

The tour concluded with an optional visit to the mosque, it was very informative, learning not only of the history of the mosque and its community but also a little about Islam.

  

The interior of the mosque was beautiful

 I returned to Auburn to buy this delicious bottled eggplant, it had the prefect balance of smoky flavour and Serap so kindly showed us how to make a delicious baba ganoush.

Well my baba ganoush was not as prefect as Serap's but hey it still tasted good!

And also to add the lovely Suzy from Gourmet Safaris has shared some of my photos over on the website.