Anatolia: Adventures in Turkish Cooking (2016)
MEZE
Every great food culture has a tradition of small tasting plates served with a national drink. The Italians have antipasto, the French have hors d’oeuvres, the Spanish have tapas—all washed down with local wines. The Chinese have yum cha, served with tea. The Russians have zakuski, served with vodka.
And the Turks have meze, served with raki (or occasionally wine or beer). Mezes are most likely to be served in a meyhane, which is a kind of bar/ bistro/pub where people meet for a chat and a drink and a bite from sunset until well after midnight. During the Ottoman period, the meyhanes were often run by families of Greek or Armenian background, because those cultures do not have the Muslim aversion to alcohol.
There’s an origin story for meze that sounds too good to be true. Supposedly the Ottoman sultans in the fifteenth century were a paranoid lot, fearful of being poisoned by foreign spies who sneaked into their kitchens, or by members of their own family. So they hired official food tasters, who would be given small helpings of every dish offered by the chef. They would have to be seen to swallow all of them and keep smiling before the sultan could begin his meal.
Other rich Turks thought they would look important if they followed the same ritual even when they weren’t in fear of death threats and couldn’t afford official tasters. So they started serving small quantities on small plates and called them meze, from the Persian word for ‘a taste’.
The reason I’m dubious about this tale is that there were meyhanes in the Middle East long before the Ottoman emperors built their kitchens. The eleventh-century Persian poet Omar
Khayyam wrote this line: ‘You say rivers of wine flow in heaven—is heaven a meyhane to you?’ The rivers of wine would have flowed through Istanbul, a thriving trade hub, before the Muslims started cracking down on alcohol sales. Smart meyhane-owners would have served salty high protein snacks to make their customers thirsty and to line their stomachs so they wouldn’t fall unconscious before ordering another drink.
The need for stomach lining became more pressing in the seventeenth century, when the favoured drink in meyhanes changed to raki. Raki, like wine, is made from grapes but, as it is distilled, it is much more alcoholic. Most people dilute raki with water, which turns it white and explains its nickname—’lion’s milk’. Meyhanes started boasting about the variety of meze they had available to keep the customer (relatively) sober.
The twentieth-century poet Nazim Hikmet wrote that a good meze table should feast the eye, the conversation should feast the brain, and the raki should whet the palate: ‘You can drink raki with spicy or sweet, with cucumber, melon or cheese, with water or without water, in winter or in summer, in joy or in sorrow—the only thing you cannot drink raki with is idiots.’
So here’s a typical night out for me during my student years. You decide to meet your friends at a meyhane (a decision that might take a while, because the second most divisive question in Istanbul, after ‘What’s your soccer team?’ is ‘Which is the best meyhane in town?’).
You find a table and order your raki (aniseed-flavoured), which arrives with a jug of water and a bucket of ice. A waiter comes around with a tray displaying cold meze—maybe melon and white cheese, yoğurt and mint, spicy tomato salsa, eggplant salad, marinated fish, braised vegetables, stuffed mussels—and you point at the ones you fancy. Musicians pass by and you might have to pay them to go away. Street sellers wander in and try to interest you in their wares.
After an hour or so, the waiter comes back and asks if you’d like any hot meze. He describes them, emphasising what’s unique to the establishment, and maybe points to a tank from which a fish can be scooped out and grilled. You pick a few tastes and you order another bottle of raki. Suddenly it’s midnight. You stagger out and buy some kokoreç (stuffed intestines that look like sausage) from a street stall to help you sober up.
This chapter gives you the tools to create your own meyhane, complete with cocktails. Turks think of meze as sharing food, to be placed in the middle of the table as part of a spread, but any of the dishes in this chapter could be served on its own as a starter or first course for lunch or dinner. We have suggested ingredient quantities that will make enough for four, when you want to serve the dish as a course by itself. If the dish is part of a meze platter or party table, then each guest is likely to take a smaller quantity. So if one of our ‘serves 4’ dishes is served as part of a platter of three mezes, for example, then you could say it will serve twelve (or six greedy people).
This is party food and party drink, served with conversation. The only thing you cannot serve it with is idiots.
A typical laneway meyhene in Istanbul, where friends gather to chat, sing, get tipsy on rakı and eat an array of mezes.
SUCUKLU HUMUS
POMEGRANATE HUMUS WITH SPICY SAUSAGE
A well-made humus is a wonderful form of comfort food. But it’s not Turkish. If you’re offered it in Turkey you’re probably in a place run by someone with an Arabic background. (This is not to say that I’m taking a side in the humus war. You won’t catch me making a declaration on whether its origin is Syrian or Israeli or Palestinian or Lebanese. All I know is it’s not Turkish.)
At my restaurant in Sydney, we try to change our menu every three months. The discussion with my cooks and waiters begins with me saying: ‘Lets lose the humus—it’s not Turkish.’ My manager, Fatih, always replies: ‘Leave it alone. It’s been seven years, and the customers love it.’ So I’ve compromised. I’ve turned an Arabic speciality into a Turkish dish by adding ingredients familiar to me— pomegranates to sweeten it, capsicum to colour it and sucuk (spicy beef sausage) to give it heat. My customers are right.
SERVES 6
HUMUS
200 g (7 oz/1 cup) dried chickpeas
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
2 garlic cloves
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) lemon juice
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
4 tablespoons tahini
½teaspoon salt
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) olive oil
½ teaspoon paprika
TOPPING
1 small cucumber
½ small red onion
½ red capsicum (pepper)
100 g (3½ oz) sucuk (or chorizo)
2 slices day-old sandwich bread
pide bread, grilled, or pita crisps, to serve
Put the chickpeas in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil over high heat. Boil for 1 minute, and then strain. Put the chickpeas in a bowl with the bicarbonate of soda, cover with water and soak overnight.
Strain the chickpeas and rinse under cold running water for 5 minutes. Transfer to a saucepan, cover with plenty of water, and bring to the boil over medium heat. Cook for 1½ hours until the chickpeas are soft enough to mash with your fingers. Put the cooked chickpeas in a food processor and blend into a smooth paste. Finely crush the garlic and stir into the chickpea paste. Add the lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, capsicum paste, tahini, salt, olive oil and paprika and blend into a smooth purée. Spoon the humus into a bowl.
Peel the cucumber and finely chop. Finely chop the onion. Slice the red capsicum, remove the seeds and stalk, and finely chop. Chop the sucuk very finely. Chop the day-old bread into small cubes.
Put the sucuk in a small frying pan over low heat and bring to a simmer, then cook until the fat begins to sizzle and emerge. Add the bread cubes and capsicum, and cook for 2 minutes until crisp. Remove the sucuk, bread and capsicum from the pan and mix with the cucumber and red onion.
Using a spoon, swirl the humus so it looks like a whirlpool, and then scatter the sucuk mixture into the swirls. Serve the bowl of humus with grilled pide or pita crisps.
FAVA
MUM’S BROAD BEAN PÂTÉ
My mother, who was a great home cook, became a professional restaurateur when I was sixteen. It was great experience for me to work in her meyhane as a kitchenhand while I was studying. I became the fallback cook every time she sacked her chef, which, on average, was about once a month. I got a crash course in meze preparation, barely having time to learn one new recipe from each chef before they disappeared.
One dish mum would never let anyone else touch was the fava, which she made with her own hands in spring, using a mixture of dried and fresh broad beans and adding black olive paste because she liked the colour contrast. She said fava should be like a cake—able to endure a long sitting at a meze table. If the cake collapses, it’s a dip, not a fava.
In this recipe I have used dried beans, so you can make fava all year round, but if you’re making it in spring, you could include fresh broad beans (double peeled).
SERVES 4
FAVA PURÉE
190 g (6¾ oz/1 cup) split broad beans
1 small onion
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
70 ml (2¼ oz) olive oil, plus extra for greasing
2 tablespoons black olive paste
3 dill stalks
TOPPING
1 red bullhorn pepper (or ½ red capsicum/pepper)
¼ red onion
8 black olives, pitted
2 tablespoons olive oil
Wash the broad beans and then transfer to a bowl, add 750 ml (26 fl oz/3 cups) of water and soak overnight.
Rinse the soaked beans under cold running water. Heat the beans, onion, salt, sugar, 50 ml (12/3 fl oz) of the olive oil and 750 ml (26 fl oz/ 3 cups) of water in a saucepan over medium heat for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring regularly. Remove the pan from the heat and purée the mixture using a hand-held blender (or leave to cool slightly and blend in a food processor). Spoon half the purée into a bowl, add the olive paste and mix together thoroughly, then set aside.
Pick the leaves off the dill and discard the stalks. Fold the leaves into the remaining broad bean purée and leave to cool to room temperature.
Brush four teacups (or rice bowls) with the remaining olive oil. Half fill each cup with the broad bean-dill purée and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Remove the cups from the fridge and fill the rest of each cup with the olive paste mixture. Refrigerate for a further 30 minutes.
Now make the topping. Slice the bullhorn pepper and discard the stalk and seeds. Finely chop the red onion. Finely chop the black olives. Mix the chopped ingredients in a bowl with the olive oil and then set aside.
Remove the cups from the fridge and upend each one onto its own plate. Use the back of a teaspoon to dent the top of each dome, spoon on the topping, then serve.
BORANİ
POOR MAN’S SAFFRON AND CARROT DIP
A meal in a meyhane usually starts with an assortment of cold plates, designed to sit on the table for hours. Most customers are there primarily to drink alcohol, and they may just pick at their food, expecting it to taste as good at midnight as it did when they sat down at 7 pm. Borani is a model of this kind of meze. The centrepiece is braised carrot, which lines the stomach nicely. I’ve called this a dip, but it’s denser than the usual dips made with yoğurt and coloured with beetroot, chillies or parsley. This one is coloured with turmeric—known in Turkey as the poor man’s saffron because it provides visual impact without the exotic fragrance.
SERVES 6
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
4 carrots
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) olive oil
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 garlic cloves
200 g (7 oz) plain yoğurt
2 dill stalks, finely chopped
pide bread, to serve
Toast the caraway seeds in a frying pan over medium heat, shaking frequently, for about 2 minutes until fragrant.
Peel and grate the carrots. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the grated carrots and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the caraway seeds and turmeric, sauté for 5 minutes more and then remove from heat.
Crush the garlic and mix it in a bowl with the yoğurt. Add the chopped dill and spiced carrots and mix together. Serve the bowl of borani, warm or chilled, with pide bread.
ANTEP EZME
CHILLI AND CAPSICUM SALSA
I’ve translated the word ezme, which literally means ‘crushed’, as ‘salsa’ because it’s chunkier than a sauce but runnier than a dip, and because it contains the New World ingredients chillies and tomatoes. The secret to making a great ezme is never to use a food processor. Instead, you should chop it finely just before you take it to the table.
Ezmes are served in kebap houses to lubricate the palate before the meat arrives. The waiter just plonks a few small plates on the table when you sit down, and you spoon them up while you discuss what kind of kebap you might order. The spiciest ezmes are made in Gaziantep.
SERVES 6
6 ripe tomatoes
4 green bullhorn peppers (or 2 green capsicums/peppers)
1 bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
3 red onions
3 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon isot (or chilli flakes)
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) pomegranate molasses
100 ml (3½ fl oz) extra virgin olive oil
juice of ½ lemon
1 tablespoon sea salt
pomegranate seeds, to decorate (optional)
pide bread, grilled, to serve
Score a shallow cross in the base of the tomato. Put in a heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for 30 seconds, then plunge in cold water and peel the skin away from the cross.
Cut the peeled tomatoes into quarters and scoop out the seeds. Slice the peppers and discard the stalks and seeds. Pick the parsley leaves and discard the stalks. Preferably using a mezzaluna, finely chop the tomatoes, parsley, peppers, red onions, garlic and parsley together into a chunky purée.
Drain off any excess water from the chopping board and then transfer the purée into a bowl. Add the isot, capsicum paste, pomegranate molasses, olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt, and stir well to combine.
Decorate with pomegranate seeds, if using, then serve the bowl of antep ezme with grilled pide.
PATLICAN SALATA
CHARRED EGGPLANT SALAD
If you’ve been in Turkey for more than a day, you’ve had a version of this salad, which would have arrived automatically when you sat down for lunch or meze. It’s a candidate for the title of National Dish.
The flesh of the eggplant has a lovely texture but does not have much flavour of its own. It’s a great carrier of flavours, though—particularly the smokiness that comes when the skin is burnt on a barbecue or char-grill or open gas flame. The other key flavour here is apple cider vinegar.
One of my closest friends is vegetarian by choice and allergic to eggplant. Life in Turkey is difficult for her.
SERVES 6
EGGPLANT SALAD
2 large eggplants (aubergines)
1 large red capsicum (pepper)
½ bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
2 spring onions (scallions), finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
POMEGRANATE TOPPING
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
20 pomegranate seeds
Pierce the eggplants with a fork and char the skins by placing the eggplants directly onto the flame of your stove. Using tongs, move the eggplant around to evenly blacken and then remove from the flame. Peel off the skins and put the eggplant pieces in a colander to drain for about 10 minutes.
Blacken the skin of the capsicum over an open flame in the same way. Put the capsicum in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap to sweat. Leave to cool. Once the capsicum is cool enough to handle, peel off the skin under cold running water. Discard the stalk and seeds.
Pick the parsley leaves, discard the stalks, and finely chop the leaves. Wash the spring onions,
remove the roots and tough outer leaves, and finely chop. Roughly chop the eggplant into a chunky purée. Finely dice the capsicum. Mix the vegetables and parsley together in a salad bowl. Add the salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon juice and apple cider vinegar and mix thoroughly.
Mix the pomegranate molasses and olive oil together in a small jug (pitcher). Serve the patlican salata at the table for people to help themselves. Swirl the pomegranate dressing over the eggplant. Decorate with the pomegranate seeds.
ZEYTİN PİYAZI
GREEN OLIVE AND WALNUT SALAD
This dish appears on every meze table near the Aegean Sea. It’s best made with what we call ‘scratched green olives’ (early harvested and lightly crushed before being soaked in salty water). They come from the Edremit area in the northwest.
The world’s first known edible olives were cultivated in Anatolia 6000 years ago, long before anybody talked about nations called Greece or Turkey. These days Turkey is one of the largest olive oil producers in the world and arguably the most enthusiastic eater of olives in the Mediterranean.
The word piyaz in the Turkish name comes from Ottoman times, and suggests a salad that contains onions. In fact, the onions are the least interesting part of this dish.
SERVES 6
125 g (4½ oz) green olives
2 garlic cloves
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) extra virgin olive oil
½ bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
4 spring onions (scallions), chopped
50 g (1¾ oz) walnuts
½ green apple
1 red bullhorn pepper (or ½ red capsicum/pepper)
juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
½ tablespoon dried thyme
Slice the olives into quarters, and remove the seeds. Squash the garlic cloves and remove the skin. Put the olive slices and garlic in a small container with half the olive oil, and leave to marinate overnight.
Finely chop the parsley leaves. Wash the spring onions, remove the roots and tough outer leaves, and finely chop. Roughly chop the walnuts. Slice the apple. Slice the bullhorn pepper, remove the seeds and the stalk, and finely chop. Transfer the olives from the garlic marinade into a large bowl. Add all the other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Serve the bowl of zeytin piyazi at the table for people to help themselves.
ÇIĞ KÖFTE
NIMROD’S VENISON TARTARE
Çiğ köfte (raw meatball) is usually made with veal because of its low fat content. But I’m suggesting you try venison because it is hallowed by history (and has an even lower fat content).
Let me take you back 4000 years to the city of Şanlıurfa in southeastern Anatolia. As the story goes, the ruler at the time was a man named Nemrut (translated as Nimrod in English) who was a great grandson of Noah. Nimrod became paranoid after a dream in which he was told he was about to be replaced by a leader named Abraham, who would try to persuade Nimrod to worship one god. So he ordered his solders to collect all the wood they could find so they could burn Abraham at the stake. When a hunter returned home to his village after killing a deer, his wife was unable to cook it because she, of course, had no wood. Instead, she chopped the raw meat and kneaded it with spices and bulgur— thereby presenting a new dish to the world. (And God saved Abraham by turning the fire to water—the site of which is recognised today by the famous pond in the middle of Şanlıurfa, full of sacred carp.)
SERVES 4
250 g (9 oz) venison loin fillet (or veal loin), trimmed
2 onions
5 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons capsicum (pepper) paste
½ tablespoon tomato paste
4 heaped tablespoons isot (or chilli flakes)
1 tablespoon pimento
1 tablespoon cumin
½ tablespoon cinnamon
½ tablespoon salt
½ tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
450 g (1 lb/2½ cups) very fine bulgur
15 ice cubes
5 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks
5 mint stalks
3 spring onions (scallions)
lettuce leaves (or pita bread), to serve
Finely cut the venison. Put the meat in a food processor and blend into a coarse paste, then transfer to a round baking tray with indentations on the bottom (or a mixing bowl). Finely grate the onions. Crush the garlic cloves. Add the capsicum and tomato pastes, onion and garlic to the meat and combine. Stir in the six dry spices. Knead the meat mixture for 10 minutes to make a smooth paste. Add 90 g (3¼ oz/½ cup) of the bulgur and three of the ice cubes, and continue to Knead until the ice has melted. Repeat with the remaining bulgur and ice cubes until all the bulgur is well combined with the meat.
Pick the parsley and mint leaves and discard the stalks. Finely chop the leaves. Wash the spring onions, then remove the roots and tough outer leaves. Finely chop. Add the mint, parsley and spring onions to the veal mixture and knead for 10 minutes until it holds together as a large ball.
To make the çig köftes, take a handful of the mixture and squeeze tightly in your fist to make a log about 3 cm (1¼ in) across and 6 cm (1¼ x 2½ in) long. Repeat to make about thirty patties.
Place about three köfte in each lettuce leaf and serve on a platter for guests to help themselves.
MERCİMEK KÖFTESİ
RED LENTIL MEATBALLS
Here’s another dish with history. The Bible tells how Esau, a hunter who normally ate venison, saw his brother Jacob eating a bowl of red lentils and was so hungry he offered to give up his inheritance for it.
This is a rare vegetarian version of köfte, which is normally associated with raw veal or lamb, and is a staple winter dish in the eastern half of Turkey. Even if you love it as much as Esau, be careful not to overload, as bulgur will continue to expand in your stomach.
SERVES 6
410 g (14½ oz/2 cups) split red lentils
175 g (6 oz/1 cup) fine bulgur
2 onions
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, for frying
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
6 spring onions (scallions)
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon chilli flakes
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 cos lettuce
1 lemon
Wash the red lentils in cold running water, then place in a saucepan with 1 litre (35 fl oz/4 cups) of water and bring to the boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, with the lid partly closed. Put the bulgur in a large mixing bowl and pour over the hot lentils and the cooking water. Rest for 15 minutes, covered, to soften the bulgur.
Finely chop the onions. Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan over medium heat and then add the onion. Cook for 5 minutes until the onion is translucent. Meanwhile, mix the capsicum and tomato pastes in a small bowl with 1 tablespoon of water. Stir the mixture into the pan and cook for 3 more minutes until the whole mixture is mushy. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.
Pick the leaves from the parsley, discard the stalks, and finely chop the leaves. Wash the spring onions, then remove the roots and green outer layer. Finely chop.
Once the bulgur has softened, stir in the parsley, spring onion, cumin, chilli flakes, olive oil, salt and onion mixture. Knead for 3 minutes and then divide the mixture into about twenty-four balls, using your hands. Slightly flatten each ball.
Wash the cos lettuce, and break it up into leaves. Place three köftes in each lettuce leaf.
Cut the lemon into 6 slices. Place on a platter with the köftes for guests to help themselves.
KISIR
BULGUR MINT AND CUCUMBER SALAD
This salad is associated with southeastern Anatolia, but it has spread all round the country, with regional variations. In my mother’s restaurant in Bodrum I learned to include pickles and pickle juice to add saltiness and contrast to the sweetness of the molasses. The trick here is to use just the right amount of boiling water—too little and the grain will be crunchy, too much and it will be mush. The Turkish name is strange—the word kisir literally means ‘infertile’, which is hardly the case here.
SERVES 8
200 g (7 oz) fine bulgur
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon capsicum (pepper) paste
3 large tomatoes
1 long green chilli
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
2 pickled cucumbers or gherkins
10 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks, picked
10 mint leaves, chopped
5 spring onions (scallions)
2 tablespoons gherkin juice
1 teaspoon white pepper
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon pomegranate molasses
Bring 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) of water to the boil water over high heat. Place the bulgur in a large bowl and pour over the boiling water. Leave to rest for 15 minutes. Stir the olive oil, tomato paste and capsicum paste into the bulgur.
Score a shallow cross in the base of each tomato, then transfer to a heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for 30 seconds, then plunge into cold water and peel the skin away from the cross. Cut the tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. Finely chop.
Slice the chilli and remove the stalk and the seeds. Finely chop. Finely chop the cucumbers, parsley leaves, mint leaves and spring onions. Add all the chopped ingredients to the bulgur and mix well. Finally, add the gherkin juice, pepper, lemon juice and pomegranate molasses. Stir and serve the kisir in the bowl for people to help themselves.
TOPİK
ARMENIAN CHICKPEA DOMES
Topik is a vegetarian dish originally consumed during Lent by the Armenian community who are Orthodox Christians. Now it’s one of the most treasured delicacies to go with a bottle of raki in Armenian meyhanes. As a child I fell in love with topik when our Armenian neighbours invited me to stay for supper while I was playing with their kids. I rediscovered it as a teenager in a meyhane called Madam Despina, which was opened in 1946 in the multicultural suburb of Kurtuluş by a Greek lady whose signature dish happened to be Armenian. She’s been immortalised in a nostalgic folk song, which goes: ‘Set the table, Madam Despina. Are we tipsy again? Did you just run out of topik? We love you anyway.’ Madam Despina died in 2006, but she’s still a hot topik in Istanbul.
SERVES 6
SHELL
400 g (14 oz/2 cups) dried chickpeas
3 potatoes
½ tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
100 g (3½ oz) tahini
FILLING
10 onions
100 ml (3½ fl oz) olive oil
30 g (1 oz) currants
30 g (1 oz) pine nuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon sugar
250 g (9 oz) tahini
½ tablespoon cinnamon, to serve
juice of 1 lemon, to serve
Bring a large saucepan of water to a rapid boil. Add the chickpeas and blanch for 1 minute. Transfer the chickpeas into a bowl, cover with fresh water and leave to soak overnight.
The next day, start making the filling. Finely slice the onions. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 10 minutes until translucent and slightly caramelised. Reduce the heat and simmer for 2 hours with the lid partly closed, stirring occasionally.
Strain and rinse the chickpeas, and then rub in a rough cloth to remove as much skin as possible. Place the skinned chickpeas in a large saucepan, cover with plenty of water (at least three times the volume of chickpeas) and boil for 1 hour, without the lid. Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool. Once the chickpeas are cool enough to handle, remove any more skin, using your fingers, and then set aside.
Cut the potatoes in half, place in a large saucepan, cover with salted water and bring to the boil. Cook for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender, then drain well. Leave to cool and then remove the skin.
Place the potatoes, chickpeas, cinnamon, salt, pepper and sugar in a food processor and blend to make a thick paste. Transfer to a mixing bowl, add the tahini and combine. Knead the mixture together for 2 minutes to make a smooth paste. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave to rest for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, place the currants in a bowl, cover with warm water, and leave to soak for 15 minutes. Toast the pine nuts in a frying pan over medium heat for 3 minutes, shaking often. Remove the onions from the heat. Strain the currants and then add to the onions. Add the pine nuts, cinnamon, salt, pepper, allspice and sugar. Stir in the tahini.
Cut twelve 30 cm (12 in) squares of plastic wrap.
To make the topik, put 4 tablespoons of the chickpea mash in the middle of a square of plastic wrap. Flatten the mash into a round about 15 cm (6 in) across, pushing outwards so the centre is thicker than the edge. Put 2 tablespoons of the onion mixture in the middle of the mash. Lift one corner of the plastic wrap and fold the mash over the filling. Bring the other three corners up to meet the first corner and fold the other edges over. Pull the four corners of plastic wrap together and form the mixture into a ball. Twist the corners of plastic into a strand. Tie a knot in the strand just above the ball. Repeat to make twelve balls. Place the parcels on a tray and refrigerate overnight to set.
When you are ready to serve, snip off the top of the plastic wrapping (below the knot) and take the balls out of the plastic wrap. Sprinkle a little cinnamon on top, and a few drops of lemon juice, then serve.
The Aegean village of Türkbükü, where geese, normally confined to fresh water, have been breeding in the salt water since they were left at the beach by Somer’s stepfather in 1995.
MİDYE DOLMA
STREET HAWKER’S STUFFED MUSSELS
If you wander through the Istanbul suburb called Beyoğlu, you’ll soon encounter men carrying circular aluminium trays full of mussels stuffed with spiced rice. Give the first man you see a lira and you’ll get three or four mussels and a slice of lemon on a paper plate. You’ll then become addicted, and feel compelled to go to the street called Nevizade where, with any luck, you’ll find a meyhane that will serve you mussel dolmas sitting down.
When I came to Sydney, I met an Armenian lady named Bercük Anne, who made mussel dolma far superior to any I’d found in the streets of Istanbul. Her recipe had a lot of onions, spices and herbs, and very little rice. So here’s how you can make the true Armenian mussel dolma better than any you’ll find in the streets of Istanbul.
SERVES ABOUT 4
(5 MUSSELS PER PERSON)
5 onions
100 ml (3½ fl oz) vegetable oil, for frying
30 g (1 oz) currants
30 g (1 oz)pine nuts
110 g (3¾ oz/½ cup) short-grain rice
2 tomatoes
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons pimento
1 teaspoon cinnamon
5 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks
3 dill stalks
20 black mussels
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons capsicum (pepper) paste
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 lemons, cut into wedges, to serve
First make the stuffing. Finely chop the onions. Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Place the currants in a bowl, cover with warm water, and leave to soak for 15 minutes. Toast the pine nuts in a frying pan over medium heat for 3 minutes, shaking often.
Wash the rice under cold running water and then add to the simmering onions. Increase the heat to medium. Grate the tomatoes over the rice. Strain the currants and add to the pan. Add the pine nuts, pepper, pimento and cinnamon, and stir. Simmer the mixture for 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and leave to cool.
Pick the parsley leaves, discard the stalks and finely chop the leaves. Finely chop the dill. Mix the parsley and dill into the stuffing, then set aside.
Now, open the mussels. If you’ve bought the mussels in a vacuum bag, open the bag over a bowl to catch any liquid inside. Scrub the shells clean. Using a blunt knife, carefully force the point of the knife into the gap at the pointy end of each mussel, and slice through the meat so the shell opens with half the meat attached to each half shell—once you cut through the thick, round connecting muscle at the bottom of the mussel, it will be easy to open. Pour the juice into a bowl. Snip off the beards and, using your finger, remove any grit at the base. Spread the half shells to tear the muscle of the mussel, but leave the two halves connected. Put 2 teaspoons of the stuffing into the middle of each mussel and push the half shells together again.
Place a bread and butter plate, face down, in the bottom of a saucepan about 25 cm (10 in) wide.
Place the mussels in the pan, with the tips pointing outwards towards the edge of the pan with the shells slightly overlapping (to prevent them opening). Build a tight spiral of shells in the centre of the pan. There should be one layer of mussels. Strain the mussel juice through a sieve lined with a double layer of muslin (cheesecloth) three times, to remove any grit.
Mix 250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) of mussel juice in a small bowl with the tomato paste and capsicum paste. Pour the mixture over the mussels. Splash on the olive oil. Place another bread and butter plate over the mussels, then put the lid on the pan. Place the pan over medium heat and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Remove the mussels from the heat and leave to cool to room temperature. (You can also keep them in the fridge overnight.) Serve the midye dolma on a big platter with lemon wedges for guests to help themselves. The best way to eat them is with your hands, using the top shell to scoop the mixture out of the bottom shell.
SOMON PASTIRMA
SALMON PASTIRMA AND BABY ZUCCHINI
This is an example of the new Turkish cooking. When you say pastirma to traditional Turks, they think beef. But the word simply means ‘pressed’, so there’s nothing to prevent you from wrapping the wonderful paste around any form of protein.
Since the process involves leaving the protein to dry for at least a week, you need to be careful if you’re using seafood. For me, the fish that works best is salmon—it can absorb the flavours of the paste while retaining its own.
Unlike beef pastirma, soman pastirma is kept in the fridge during the drying process, which means the coating will stay moist and crumble away when you’re slicing the salmon. This is a good thing—it’s the salmon you want to eat, not the wrapper.
Because somon pastirma has a strong taste, I decided to accompany it with the simple freshness of raw zucchini.
SERVES 6
CURED SALMON
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) sashimi-grade salmon fillet
1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) rock salt
440 g (15½ oz/2 cups) caster (superfine) sugar
15 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons ground fenugreek
3 teaspoons cumin
2 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 tablespoon hot paprika
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
ZUCCHINI AND DILL TOPPING
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) small zucchini (courgettes)
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) extra virgin olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
4 tablespoons dried yoğurt cheese (or crumbly feta)
2 dill stalks, picked and chopped
Place the salmon (which should already be skinned and filleted) on a board and remove any small bones, blood lines and white pieces of fat.
Spread a tea towel (dish towel) over a cake rack (or steamer tray or large colander). Sit the rack on top of a baking tray or large pan. You will use this for the drying process.
Mix the rock salt and caster sugar together in a bowl. Spread half the rock-salt mixture onto the towel-covered rack, about 1 cm (½ in) thick. Put the salmon fillet in the middle of the rack and cover it thoroughly with the rest of the rock salt mixture. Fold the muslin cloth over the top of the salt. Place a flat-bottomed tray over the salmon with a 3 kg (6 lb 12 oz) weight on top (using anything from a bag of potatoes to the Oxford Dictionary), to flatten out the salmon as it dries. Place the baking tray in the fridge and rest for 2 days.
Take the salmon out of the fridge, wash the salt off and plunge in iced water. Rest the salmon (in the water) in the fridge for 1 day.
Remove the salmon and pat dry. Put the salmon on a rack with a drip tray underneath and refrigerate for 24 hours. Turn the salmon over and return to the fridge for one more day.
Meanwhile, make the paste. Mix the garlic and spices and salt together in a blender to make a thick paste. If the mixture seems dry, drizzle about ½ teaspoon of water into the mix.
Remove the salmon from the fridge and coat it with the paste, making sure every part is completely covered. Put the salmon on the cake rack with the tray underneath, but without the muslin cloth, and return to the fridge for at least another 48 hours.
When you are ready to serve, finely slice the zucchini lengthways. Place in a bowl and toss with the olive oil, lemon juice and yoğurt cheese. Finely chop the dill and then add to the zucchini mixture Thinly slice the somon pastirma, diagonally, to make at least 24 slices, and serve with the topping.
VOTKALI LEVREK
VODKA AND MUSTARD-CURED BREAM
This is another of my mum’s specialities, perfected in her restaurant in Bodrum, where the visitors love their vodka cocktails and the favourite fish is levrek (normally translated as ‘sea bass’). At my restaurant, we use sea bream. I like using vodka as a curing alcohol because it has a neutral taste, which does not interfere with the hints of ginger, bay leaves and dill in the votkali levrek.
SERVES 4
20 whole black peppercorns
1 tablespoon sea salt
3 fresh or dried bay leaves
2 thin slices ginger
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) vodka
100 ml (3½ fl oz) lemon juice
1 tablespoon mild French mustard
4 fillets deep sea bream (or another firm white-fleshed fish, such as snapper or cod)
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) olive oil
3 dill stalks, finely chopped, for decoration
Mix all the ingredients, except the fish and olive oil, together in a bowl.
Place the bream on a board and remove any small bones and blood lines. Thinly slice each bream fillet into five ‘leaves’. Place the fillet pieces in the bowl and cover with the marinade. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, put in the fridge and leave for at least 6 hours (ideally, overnight).
Remove the fish from the bowl and place one fillet on each plate. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle on a little dill and serve.
AYVALI KEREVİZ
BRAISED CELERIAC WITH QUINCE AND ORANGE
It is thought that the Greek island of Samos, very close to the Turkish mainland, is where the ugly celeriac first grew. On that island, fossil remains of celeriac were found in a grove sacred to the goddess Hera created in seventh century BC. We’re entitled to speculate that the warriors on both sides of the Trojan War were eating it. Homer writes in The Iliad that the horses of Achilles’ soldiers were eating what we assume were wild celeriac leaves.
In Turkey, celeriac is better known than celery (which tends to appear mostly as sticks in bloody marys). It’s often cooked with sour apples, but I agree with the Ottoman cooks in preferring to use quince if it’s in season.
SERVES 4
½ lemon
1 celeriac (up to 500 g/1 lb 2 oz)
1 quince
1 onion
1 carrot
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) olive oil
2 oranges
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
Put 500 ml (9 fl oz/2 cups) of water in a bowl. Squeeze in the juice from the lemon and then add the lemon. Peel the celeriac and chop into pieces, roughly 2 cm (¾ in) square. Add the celeriac to the bowl. Cut the quince in half, remove the pit and thinly slice. Add the slices to the bowl and set aside.
Finely chop the onion. Finely chop the carrot. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 4 minutes, until soft. Add the carrot and cook for 2 minutes. Drain the quince slices and celeriac cubes, pat dry with paper towel and then add to the pan. Fry for 4 minutes until the mixture starts to change colour and softens a little.
Cut the oranges in halves. Finely grate the zest of one half into the mixture. Squeeze the juice from both oranges into a cup and add enough warm water to fill the cup. Pour the orange mixture into the pan and add the sugar and salt. Bring to the boil, then simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Check the softness of the celeriac, and if it’s still hard, simmer for another 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, and rest, covered, for 15 minutes.
Divide the ayvali kereviz between four serving plates. Serve at room temperature.
ÇERKEZ TAVUĞU
CIRCASSIAN CHICKEN
Circassia is a mountainous region in southern Russia where walnut trees grow in abundance. In the nineteenth century, many Circassians were driven out of Russia and took refuge in parts of the Ottoman Empire where they proceeded to introduce new cooking techniques. Turks, who thought chicken came on skewers, now learned they could eat it cold, smothered in a walnutty paste.
Coriander is one of my pet hates, and I don’t use it in my restaurant, but I’ve included it here to honour the Circassians, who brought it to Turkey.
SERVES 6
2 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks
2 coriander (cilantro) stalks
1 onion, quartered
1 carrot quartered
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 whole chicken (about 1.2 kg/2 lb 10 oz)
3 slices day-old sandwich bread
200 g (7 oz) walnuts
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons sweet paprika
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) walnut oil
pide bread, to serve
Pick the leaves off the parsley and coriander, and set aside. Put the parsley and coriander stalks in a saucepan. Add the onion, carrot, salt, peppercorns, chicken and about 3 litres (105 fl oz/12 cups) of water. Place the pan over high heat and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, partly covered, for 1½ hours. Remove any scum that forms on the surface.
Take the chicken out of the pan, place on a rack and leave to cool to room temperature. Leave the cooking liquid in the pan and set aside.
Remove the skin from the chicken and pick the meat off the bones. Place the skin and bones back in the cooking liquid and bring to the boil over high heat. Continue to boil vigorously for 1½ hours, uncovered, so the liquid reduces to half its original volume.
Strain the bones, skin and vegetables out of the chicken stock, and discard. Shred the chicken meat and spread the pieces on a deep serving platter. Pour on 2 tablespoons of stock, cover with plastic wrap and place the platter in the fridge. Discard the crusts from the bread. Dunk the bread into the stock for a few seconds then squeeze out any excess liquid. Blend the bread, walnuts, garlic and 1 tablespoon of the paprika in a food processor. Gradually add some stock, tablespoons at a time, to make a smooth paste.
Remove the serving platter from the fridge. Put the chicken in a bowl, stir one-third of the paste through the chicken pieces, then spread them across the platter again. Chop the parsley and coriander leaves and mix them with the remaining paste, then pour this paste over the chicken. Mix the walnut oil and the remaining paprika together, and drizzle over the chicken.
Serve the çerkez tavuğu platter cold, with pide bread, for people to help themselves.
YAPRAK SARMA
SOUR CHERRY-STUFFED VINE LEAVES
The traditional cold vegetarian dolma stuffing involves spiced rice with currants and pine nuts. In recent years, Turkish chefs have started replacing the currants with sour cherries, which contribute great colour as well as flavour. They may think they are doing something new, but actually a sour cherry-stuffing recipe appears in the first published Turkish cookbook, Melceu’t-Tabbahin (The Cook’s Shelter) from 1844—of course, those adventurous Ottomans thought of it first. This recipe was inspired by my friend Batur, whose yaprak sarma is a signature dish at his scholarly Ottoman restaurant Asitane.
SERVES 4
100 g (3½ oz/½ cup) sour cherries (dried, frozen or tinned), pitted
½ lemon
30 vine leaves
150 ml (5 fl oz) olive oil
2 tablespoons pine nuts
4 onions
185 g (6½ oz/1 cup) short-grain rice
1 tomato
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
5 mint stalks
2 dill stalks
If you are using dried sour cherries, soak their in warm water for 1 hour. If frozen, thaw for 30 minutes. If tinned, rinse to remove the syrup. Halve the sour cherries. Set aside. Zest the lemon half, and squeeze the juice. Set both aside.
If you are using fresh vine leaves, place them in a bowl, cover with boiling water, add 1 tablespoon of salt, and leave to soak for 10 minutes. If they are in brine, wash to remove the salt. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the pine nuts and fry for 2 minutes. Finely slice the onions, add to the pan and cook for 5 minutes until soft. Wash the rice under cold running water and then add to the onion mixture. Grate the tomato into the rice, sauté for 2 minutes and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Stir in the cherries, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, salt, lemon zest and sugar. Add 50 ml (12/3 fl oz) of water and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat—the rice should be softened but still slightly crunchy. Finely chop the mint and dill, add the lemon juice and combine with the rice mixture.
Pat the vine leaves dry with paper towel. Snip off any stems and, if the spine in the centre of the leaf is woody, soften it by crushing with the back of a knife. Put aside the five least attractive-looking leaves.
Next, stuff the vine leaves. Put a leaf on a board, shiny side down. Put a strip of rice mixture in the middle of the vine leaf, fold over the base of the leaf, then fold over each long side and roll into a çigar shape, about 6 cm (2½ in) long. Repeat to make about 25 stuffed vine leaves.
Place a bread and butter plate face side down in the bottom of a saucepan. Spread the five reserved vine leaves over the back of the plate. Arrange the stuffed leaves in a tightly packed spiral shape on top of the plate. Thinly slice the half lemon and scatter over the vine leaves. Put another bread and butter plate on top. Add 250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) of warm water and bring to the boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer, partly covered, for 30 minutes.
Remove from the heat, leave to cool and then serve, or keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.
BAKLALI ENGİNAR
BRAISED ARTICHOKES WITH BROAD BEANS
Artichokes are common in the Greek-influenced western part of Turkey—the easterners have barely heard of them. But the artichoke fields that once fed the Ottoman palace have in recent years been turned into shopping centres. Now artichokes are grown way out of town.
If you’re in Istanbul in early spring make sure you try a type of artichoke called bayrampaşa, which is the name of the suburb where they used to grow. They are sold already cleaned by street sellers, soaking in lemon water to retain their colour. They have a wider heart than most artichokes, and lend themselves to stuffing with broad beans. Once summer comes around, their texture becomes too woody for eating.
Artichokes became a staple on meze tables because Turkish drinkers believe these vegetables have liver-cleansing properties.
SERVES 6
6 globe artichokes
½ lemon
1 teaspoon salt
10 spring onions (scallions)
175 g (6 oz/1 cup) fresh broad beans
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 dill stalks, leaves only
Clean the artichokes, discard the stalk and remove the leaves until you reach the heart. Put the hearts in a large bowl and cover with water. Cut the lemon and squeeze the juice into the water. Add the two squeezed lemon quarters and the salt, and set aside.
Wash the spring onions, remove the roots and tough outer leaves, and then slice into 3 cm (1¼ in) pieces. Make a slit in each broad bean skin, place them in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to the boil. Boil for 5 minutes. Strain the beans and leave to cool, then double peel.
Place the spring onions in a saucepan. Add the broad beans and the drained artichoke hearts. Add the olive oil, salt, sugar and 375 ml (13 fl oz/1½ cups) of water, and then bring to the boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, covered, until the broad beans are soft.
Lift the lid and scoop 2 tablespoons of the spring onion and broad bean mixture over the top of each artichoke heart. Simmer, covered, for another 15 minutes. Remove the lid and place 2 dill leaves on each artichoke. Cover again, turn off the heat, and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
Carefully lift each artichoke with its bean and onion topping out of the pan and place on a serving platter for people to help themselves.
MÜCVER
NETTLE AND FETA FRITTER
Usually the classic dish called mücver is made with zucchini, dill and feta. In some parts of the country they add carrots or spinach. I decided to sharpen the flavour with the wild weeds that grow near Bodrum, the west-coast resort town where my mother had her restaurant.
Turks who use wild weeds in their cooking were probably originally taught by the descendants of the Cretans, who used to live along the Aegean coast (until they were expelled in the 1920s). If you can’t find nettles, you could substitute spinach.
This is the first of three zucchini dishes, which can complement each other when served together. You can use the zucchini skins you peel off in this recipe for the next one.
SERVES 4
ZUCCHINI PATTIES
15 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks
10 dill stalks
3 spring onions (scallions)
50 g (1¾ oz) hard feta
20 g (¾ oz) parmesan
1 egg
35 g (1¼ oz/¼ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 zucchini (courgettes)
½ teaspoon salt
30 nettle leaves (or 3 spinach stalks)
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) olive oil
MINT YOĞURT
1 garlic clove
130 g (42/3 oz) plain yoğurt
1 teaspoon dried mint
Pick the parsley leaves, discard the stalks, and finely chop the leaves with the dill. Wash the spring onions, remove the roots and tough outer leaves, and finely chop. Grate the feta and parmesan.
Whisk the egg in a mixing bowl. Add the flour, feta, parmesan, dill, parsley and pepper, and mix together to make a runny paste.
Peel the zucchini (and reserve the skins for the next dish, kaskarikas, if you like). Finely grate the zucchini. Place the zucchini shreds in a colander and sprinkle on the salt. Leave for 5 minutes—the salt will help extract the moisture from the shreds. Wrap the zucchini in muslin (cheesecloth) and tightly squeeze out the excess water.
If you are using nettles, use gloves to handle them. To remove the sting, put in a heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water for 30 seconds. Transfer to cold water for 5 minutes. Pick the green leaves and discard the stems. Pat the leaves dry with paper towel and then roughly chop. (If using spinach instead, wash thoroughly and remove the stalks, then chop.)
Mix the zucchini and nettle (or spinach) with the flour and egg mixture. Divide this dough into eight small patties, flattening them in your palm.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over high heat. Add a drop of water to the oil. If it sizzles the oil is ready. Add the patties, four at a time, and fry for 2 minutes on each side until golden. Transfer to paper towel to drain the excess oil.
Crush the garlic and mix in a small bowl with the yoğurt and dried mint. Place the patties on four plates and serve with the mint yoğurt.
KASKARİKAS
ZUCCHINI AND GOAT’S CHEESE SALAD
This dish was brought to the Ottoman Empire by the Sephardic Jews who migrated to Anatolia when they were expelled from Spain in the sixteenth century. Some of their descendants lived in my apartment block in Istanbul when I was growing up, and sometimes I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner when they made kaskarikas. They tossed zucchini skins with almonds and pine nuts, and served yoğurt on the side. I decided to make it a more complete salad in this version, adding goat’s cheese.
SERVES 6
2 zucchini (courgettes), skin only
1 sour plum, halved (or 3 crushed unripened grapes or 1 teaspoon lemon juice)
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
pinch of sugar
2 tablespoons slivered almonds
1 tablespoon soft goat’s cheese
Cut the zucchini skins into 5 cm (2 in) long strips. Put the strips in a small saucepan and just cover with water. Add the sour plum (or grapes or lemon juice). Add the olive oil, salt and sugar, then bring to boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes until the skins are soft. Remove from the heat and leave to cool to room temperature.
Serve in a salad bowl with slivered almonds, and a dollop of soft goat’s cheese.
CİCEK SARMA
AEGEAN STUFFED ZUCCHINI FLOWERS
You don’t say no to my friend Musa Dağdeviren, the custodian of Turkish traditional values in cooking. So when he told me to meet him outside his Istanbul restaurant at 5 am, I stayed up all night to be on time. We jumped in his pickup truck and drove for an hour to his farm in the country. The sun was just coming up. He wanted to show me the perfect moment to pick zucchini flowers for stuffing—the moment when they open to the sun. He’d brought a pot of his own rice stuffing and we filled the flowers, steamed them and ate them that morning. Two years later I saw a documentary about Middle Eastern cooking hosted by the London chef Yotam Ottolenghi, in which he enjoyed the same experience.
You might not be able to pick your flowers at sunrise, but you can come close to the experience if you choose male zucchini flowers (the ones with no zucchini attached), which taste better because they have not had to expend any energy producing fruit. This recipe is not Musa’s stuffing—it’s a simpler version they use on the Aegean coast.
SERVES 4
5 spring onions (scallions)
5 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks
5 dill stalks
5 mint stalks
220 g (7 oz/1 cup) short-grain rice
100 ml (3½ fl oz) olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon white pepper
½ teaspoon sugar
1 tomato
½ onion
16 zucchini flowers (preferably male)
½ lemon
Wash the spring onions, then remove the roots and tough outer leaves. Finely chop. Pick the leaves from the parsley, dill and mint and finely chop. Set aside the stalks. Wash the rice under cold running water, drain and place in a bowl. Add half the olive oil, spring onion, salt, pepper, sugar and herb leaves, and mix together with the rice. Grate the tomato into the mixture.
Remove any stalk from each zucchini flower, gently fold back the petals and stuff with a tablespoon of the stuffing. Fold the largest petal over to cover the mixture, then fold over the remaining petals.
Put a 20 cm (8 in) plate face down in the bottom of a large saucepan (about 25 cm/10 in wide). Scatter the parsley, dill and mint stalks over the plate. Place the half onion in the middle of the plate. Surround it with the zucchini flowers, stem side facing up, flowers down. Add the remaining olive oil and 50 ml (12/3 fl oz) of warm water. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Check after 15 minutes and add another 50 ml (12/3 fl oz) of water if the pan seems to be drying out. Turn off the heat and squeeze the lemon half over the flowers. Rest, covered, for 15 minutes.
Serve warm.
TURŞU KAVURMA
FRIED GREEN BEAN PICKLES
If you find this dish in a meyhane, you’ll know the chef is from the Black Sea. Pickling is an ancient tradition all over Anatolia, a way of preparing vegetables at the end of summer to feed the family over the harsh winter months, but the Black Sea is the only area where they pickle vegetables and then pan-fry them. In addition to green beans (usually the flat kind) they fry pickled cabbage and silverbeet roots. But green beans are the best.
SERVES 4
1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) green beans
2 red chillies
4 garlic cloves
160 g (52/3 oz/½ cup) rock salt
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) white vinegar
4 chickpeas
1 onion
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) vegetable oil
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
Wash the beans and cut off the ends. Bring 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) of water to the boil in a saucepan, add the beans and simmer for 4 minutes. Strain the beans and then plunge into iced water for 2 minutes. Strain the refreshed beans and then arrange them, upright, in a 2 litre (70 fl oz/8 cup) preserving jar.
Cut a slice along each chilli (but leave the seeds and the stalks) and push between the beans. Peel two of the garlic cloves and place them, whole, in the jar. Dissolve the rock salt in 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) of water. Add the vinegar to the brine, then pour the mixture into the jar. Put the chickpeas on top of the beans. Seal tightly and store for 1 week at room temperature.
Remove the chickpeas from the jar, scoop off any froth on top of the water and then store for 1 more week (or a few days longer if the weather is cold).
A day before you want to serve the fried pickles, take out about 250 g (9 oz/2 cups) of the beans, and rest them in water overnight.
Pat the soaked beans dry and cut into 5 cm (2 in) lengths. Finely slice the onion and crush the remaining garlic. Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and fry for 3 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and capsicum paste, and fry for 2 more minutes, stirring regularly. Add the beans, stir through the onions, and simmer, covered, for 5 minutes. Serve the turşu kavurma warm on a platter for people to help themselves.
NOTE
You can keep the remaining turşu kavurma in a jar for up to 3 months at room temperature, and enjoy them as a side dish whenever you feel like pickles.
THE BROTHERS OF ORFOZ
An evening walk along the waterfront in the west-coast town of Bodrum is likely to be at first a charming experience and then a depressing one. Beneath the fifteenth-century Castle of Saint Peter, you stroll along a pebbly beach lined with candle-lit tables put out by the local eateries. The gentle waves are lapping just short of the table legs.
It’s idyllic until the waiters start beckoning and shouting: ‘Check out our menu. We got schnitzel, we got pizza, we got Greek salad, we got waffles, we got kebabs.’
Well, an optimist would say at least 20 per cent of their repertoire is Turkish. Bodrum, once the site of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus), is now a tourist haven that could be anywhere in the Mediterranean. But to get back to Anatolia, you need only round the corner just past the beach, behind the museum of Turkey’s favourite singer, Pasha of Bodrum, Zeki Muren, and look for a sign that says ‘Orfoz’. There you’ll find what might be the best seafood meze bar in the country.
Orfoz is run by the Bozçağa brothers—Çağri is the cook and Çağlar is the host (and also a cook). Their parents were bakers, but they’d both gone off and studied chemical engineering at university before they realised their real passion was experimenting with food. So they opened Orfoz in 2003.
When I remark that the bistros along the waterfront do not seem very Turkish, Çağlar says: ‘Well, you could say that in Orfoz we are not doing Turkish cuisine either—we are just doing our cuisine. We cook local seafood in the best way we can think of.’
There’s no written menu. In the great tradition of meyhanes, Çağlar just keeps bringing dishes and asking what we’d like. But afterwards he’s happy to write down, in a mixture of Turkish and English, what he gave us. Here’s what he wrote down after our meal:
Kecirpeynir—Goat cheese with own local cold pressed olive oil
Sardalya sasimi—fish, sashimi, sardine
Smoked eel
Sea snails with wine sauce patlangoz
Fish soup from grouper fish fresh leaves of celery
Mixed salad
Fresh clams and local oysters
Oysters with parmesan cheese
Mussels in casserole wine parsley garlic olive oil
Rice with seafoods cinnamon
Eggplant in oven (garlic, pepper, olive oil)
Grilled octopus
Baby calamary with onion and garlic
Shrimps in olive oil
Mother’s cookie and cream caramel
Seasonal fruits
Çağlar insists that Orfoz is just a meze bar with a large wine list. Anywhere else in the world, it would be called a great restaurant.
Çağlar (left) and Çağrı Bozçağa preparing kidonya, one of their unique shellfish mezes.
Local scampi served in Orfoz in Bodrum on the Aegean coast.
KADAYIF KARİDES
CRUNCHY PRAWNS
Many Turks would have trouble recognising this dish as part of their cuisine. Kadayıf pastry is mostly used for desserts (in a sugar and cheese confection called künefe) and jumbo prawns are not a common ingredient across the country— being pretty much confined to the area around Mersin on the Mediterranean coast. But I still claim this for my culture because the recipe was a gift from my Aunty Meral, who suggested the idea of wrapping prawns in pastry when I first opened my restaurant in Sydney in 2007. It went down a treat with Australians, who love to throw a ‘shrimp’ on the barbie.
Kadayıf pastry is not easy to make at home, so we suggest you buy it ready-made. In Turkey it’s manufactured in an elaborate process whereby thin streams of batter are drizzled onto a spinning hot plate, so they dry instantly and form bunches. Its full name is tel Kadayıf, which translates as ‘string dough’. It is similar to Italian vermicelli, so if you can’t find Kadayıf, you could buy vermicelli or fresh angel hair pasta instead. You’d soften the pasta in boiling water for a minute, drain it, add the ghee and orange, and bunch it together in ribbons about 1 cm (½ in) wide, ready to wrap around the prawns.
SERVES 4
MUHAMMARA SAUCE
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 red bullhorn peppers (or 1 red capsicum/ pepper)
2 garlic cloves, lightly roasted
50 g (1¾ oz) walnut kernels
1 teaspoon isot pepper (or chilli flakes)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
20 pomegranate seeds
8 fresh king prawns
1 tablespoon ghee
juice of/2 orange
1 teaspoon orange zest
100 g (3½ oz) Kadayıf pastry (or vermicelli or fresh angel hair pasta)
2 teaspoons sumac, for decoration
First make the muhammara sauce. Rub half the olive oil on the bullhorn peppers and roast over an open flame on your cook top, using tongs to rotate the skin and evenly char. (If you prefer a milder garlic taste to raw garlic, you can repeat with the garlic cloves.) Transfer the peppers to a bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and leave to sweat for 15 minutes. Peel the skin from the peppers and remove the stalk and seeds. Roughly chop.
Put the chopped peppers, garlic, walnuts, isot, cumin, salt capsicum paste, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses and the remaining oil in a blender and pulse for 15 seconds to make a coarse paste. Stir in half the pomegranate seeds.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4).
Remove the heads from the prawns. The best way to do this is to straighten the body with one hand and twist the head 90 degrees with the other hand, gently pulling the head off so that the black thread along the spine comes away. Peel off the skin but leave the tail on.
Put the ghee in a frying pan over low heat and warm it slightly (so you can still put a finger in it). Add the orange juice and zest. Place the Kadayıf in a mixing bowl and gently loosen the pastry, slowly adding the ghee mixture and smearing it through with your fingers so it’s evenly spread. When the dough is softened, pull it apart into ribbons about 1 cm (½ in) wide.
Wrap a Kadayıf ribbon tightly around each prawn, starting at the tail and pressing the strands of dough into the prawn flesh. Keep the wrapping in a neat single layer to ensure even cooking. Place the prawns in a baking tray and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. If your oven cooks unevenly, turn the tray round once during cooking.
Spread a heaped tablespoon of the sauce on four plates. Sit two prawns on top of the sauce, tails up. Sprinkle over a little sumac and a few more pomegranate seeds and serve.
MİDYE TAVA
BOSPHORUS-STYLE MUSSELS WITH TARAMA
If you wanted a glass of beer and a plate of fried food to soak up the alcohol you’d go to a birane rather than a meyhane. The dish you’re most likely to find there is deep-fried mussels, where beer appears in the batter as well as in a glass.
The tradition is to serve the mussels with a tarator (dipping sauce) made with stale bread, walnuts and garlic. Our refined version includes the roe of grey mullet, which makes it a tarama (what the Greeks call a tarama salata).
In Turkey, tarama is always light beige, because that’s the colour of the roe. I was surprised to find in Australia that tarama salata is pink—and then I learned that it is often artificially coloured. I do not recommend that you buy commercial tarama salata to serve with this dish. If you can’t find the grey mullet roe, make a simple tarator by replacing the roe with 100 g (3½ oz) of walnuts.
SERVES 4
TARAMA SAUCE
2 thick slices white bread
100 g (3½ oz) mullet roe
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
juice of 2 lemons
250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) olive oil
250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) vegetable oil
MUSSELS
16 blue mussels, scrubbed
60 g (2¼ oz/½ cup) chickpea flour (besan)
100 ml (3½ fl oz) lager beer
1 egg, separated
75 g (22/3 oz/½ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour
1 teaspoon salt flakes
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
vegetable oil, for shallow-frying
First make the tarama sauce. Remove the crusts from the bread and discard. Roughly chop the bread. Put the bread pieces in a mixing bowl and add about 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) of water to just cover. Leave to soak for 1 minute, then remove the bread and squeeze out the water. Transfer to a food processor, add the roe, garlic and half the lemon juice, and pulse to make a paste. Mix the two oils together and gradually drizzle them into the mixture as it’s processing. After you’ve added about 100 ml (3½ fl oz) of the oils, loosen the mixture with 2 tablespoons of ice-cold water. Keep adding oil and iced water in similar amounts to completely emulsify, and finish by adding the remaining lemon juice. Set aside.
Sniff each mussel and if it has a strong smell, discard it. Place the mussels in a bowl and cover with boiling water. When they start to open (after about 5 minutes), scoop them out of the water. Using a knife with a point but a blunt edge, force open any shells that are not open enough and then pull all the mussels out of their shells. Snip off the beards and place the mussels on paper towel to drain.
Using eight 20 cm (8 in) long bamboo skewers, put two mussels, lengthways, on each skewer. Sift the chickpea flour into a wide bowl, pour in the beer and egg yolk and mix well. Whisk the egg white until soft peaks form and fold it into the flour mixture.
Sift the plain flour in a separate bowl and mix in the salt and pepper.
Pour the vegetable into a frying pan, about 2 cm (¾ in) deep and heat over medium heat. Add a drop of water to the oil. If it sizzles the oil is ready. Toss the mussel skewers through the flour, shake off any excess flour, then dip in the batter. Fry four skewers at a time in the hot oil, using tongs to turn after 1 minute, then cook for 1 minute more until golden brown. Place the cooked skewers on paper towel to absorb the excess oil.
Spread 2 tablespoons of tarama sauce onto one side of four plates. Place two skewers (four mussels) next to the sauce and serve.
SÜBYE KOKOREÇ
SAUTÉED SQUID WITH GREEN CHILLIES
Kokoreç is my favourite street food, made with lamb intestines, but you may be relieved to hear there are no lambs or intestines in this dish. I’ve used the word in the Turkish name because the squid has a similar texture to the intestines, and the spicing is the same. We use green chillies as a colour contrast to the red bullhorn peppers. I prefer squid to calamari in a dish like this because of its softer texture. Calamari is better stuffed, as you’ll.
SERVES 4
3 garlic cloves
2 green chillies
2 red bullhorn peppers (or 1 red capsicum/ pepper)
3 spring onions (scallions)
4 oregano stalks
1 tomato
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) squid, cleaned
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried thyme
pita bread or baby cos lettuce, to serve
Finely slice the garlic. Slice the chillies and the peppers, and remove the seeds and stalks. Wash the spring onions, then remove the roots and tough outer leaves. Finely chop. Pick the leaves from the oregano and finely chop. Finely chop the tomato.
Finely chop the squid, including the head and tentacles.
Heat the olive oil in a wok over high heat. Add the garlic, spring onion, chilli and pepper. Fry for 3 minutes. Add the squid, capsicum paste, salt, pepper, cumin and thyme. Fry for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the oregano and tomato, stir and then remove from the heat.
Serve hot in open pita bread or in baby cos lettuce, on a large platter for people to help themselves.
KÖMÜRDE AHTAPOT
MEDITERRANEAN GRILLED OCTOPUS
Octopus is one of the most common ingredients on any Aegean seaside meze table. At 3 pm in the coastal towns you’ll see kitchen workers emerge from the restaurants and throw handfuls of octopus against the rocks beside the sea, to tenderise them ahead of the 6 pm rush.
My mum used to automate the process by putting them in an old top-loading washing machine with some rocks and churning them for an hour (without washing powder!). Luckily in fish markets now you can buy them already tenderised.
I love cooking octopus whole with its tentacles on. My good friend İvgen, from Evgenia meyhane in Bodrum, gave me a version of this recipe which has the octopus boiling with mulberry-tree branches before it’s char-grilled. She says it makes the octopus melt in your mouth. For convenience, ecology and flavour, I’ve substituted oregano. No mulberry trees were harmed in the making of this dish. I can’t say the same for the octopus.
SERVES 4
1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) octopus, cleaned
250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) red wine
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 garlic clove
185 ml (6 fl oz/¾ cup) olive oil
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
4 spring onions (scallions)
juice of 1 lemon
3 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks, leaves only, finely chopped
1 small bunch of fresh cranberries (optional)
Put the octopus in a bowl with the red wine and oregano, and leave to marinate for 2 hours.
If you’re using a charcoal grill, light it 1 hour before you’re ready to cook. Burn the charcoal for at least 45 minutes and when the flames have died down, and the coals are glowing with a covering of white ash, the barbecue is ready. (If you’re using a gas barbecue, turn it on to medium-high about 5 minutes before you’re ready to cook.) If you are using the oven, preheat to 200°C (400°F/Gas 6).
Remove the octopus from the marinade, place it on a board and stretch it out into a tube shape. Tightly wrap the octopus tube in three layers of foil. Discard the marinade.
Place the foil-wrapped octopus on the grill and cook for 2 hours, turning every 30 minutes (or cook in the oven for 1½ hours).
Crush the garlic and mix together in a bowl with 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) of the olive oil and the soy.
Remove the octopus from the heat, unwrap from the foil and brush with the oil and soy mixture. Brush the spring onions with the same mixture. If you’re using a charcoal barbecue, put the octopus and spring onions over the coals for 2 minutes on each side. Or sear the octopus and spring onions in a frying pan over high heat for 2 minutes each side until the octopus skin darkens.
Cut the octopus and divide it among four plates. Or place the octopus, whole, on a serving plate for people to help themselves as part of a meze platter. Decorate with the spring onions and drizzle with the lemon juice and the remaining oil. Top with parsley and serve. If it’s the season for fresh cranberries, you can decorate the plate with a few of them.
The signs in the Istanbul fish market say ‘Calamari fish’ (top left) and ‘Real grey mackerel kilo 10.Lira’. Mullet is often used for pickling, drying, or stuffing as dolma.
PIRASA SARMA
LEEKS STUFFED WITH CHICKEN AND CHESTNUTS
Chestnuts are a favourite Turkish street food in winter, sold from wood-fired braziers by hawkers who probably sell ice cream in the summer.
Bursa, a town near Istanbul, is famous for its chestnuts (and its Iskender kebap. It is in the foothills of Mount Uludağ, which has forests full of chestnut trees.
In this meze, I’ve paired the chestnuts with leeks, another winter ingredient. It involves a fair bit of folding, as you’re required to turn a tube into a triangle. Don’t get hung up on a perfect fold. Anything vaguely resembling a three-sided parcel will do, as long as you eat it quickly.
SERVES 4
9 chestnuts
3 large leeks
220 g (7¾ oz/1 cup) short-grain rice
1 French shallot (eschallot)
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) olive oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed
300 g (10½ oz) minced (ground) chicken
1 tomato
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons salt
50 g (1¾ oz) craisins (dried cranberries)
5 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks
5 dill stalks
CAPSICUM SAUCE
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
1 teaspoon salt
You can use frozen or tinned chestnuts, as long as they are skinned. If using fresh chestnuts, cut a cross in the flat base, place in a saucepan of boiling water and boil for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and leave to cool, then peel the skin off. Roughly chop the chestnuts.
Remove the roots and green tops from the leeks, then rinse to remove any dirt. Slice down one side of each leek and peel off the outer two layers. Wash these thoroughly, flatten them out and place them across the bottom of a saucepan.
Peel off another four layers of each leek and place in a separate saucepan. Reserve the remaining white centres. Add 750 ml (26 fl oz/3 cups) of salted water to the second pan, bring to boil and then simmer for 5 minutes until the leek sheets are translucent and soft. Transfer to a bowl of iced water for 2 minutes to refresh. These twelve pieces are the leek skins you are going to stuff.
Wash the rice under cold running water. Finely chop the cores of the leeks and finely chop the French shallot. Finely crush the garlic. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the chestnut pieces and the shallots. Fry for 1 minute, then add the chopped leeks, garlic and the minced chicken and fry for 2 minutes more. Add the rice, then grate in the tomato. Fry for 2 minutes, then add the tomato paste, capsicum paste, spices and cranberries, and stir to combine. Add 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) of boiling water and simmer for 5 minutes, covered. Turn off the heat. Stir in the chopped parsley and dill, close the lid, and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
Pick up one sheet of leek skin and put a heaped tablespoon of mixture onto one side. Fold the edges over to make a tight triangular parcel. Repeat to stuff the remaining leek skins.
Put the parcels into the first leek-skin covered pan, folded sides down, on top of the spread skins. Pack them in tightly. Add 250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) of warm water and put a small bread and butter plate on top to hold the parcels down. Put the lid on and simmer for 30 minutes over low heat.
Meanwhile, make the sauce. Melt the butter in a frying pan over low heat. Add the capsicum paste, pomegranate molasses and salt, and stir to combine. Simmer for 5 minutes.
Remove the parcels from the pan. Place three parcels on each plate. Drizzle the capsicum sauce over the top and serve.
ÖRDEK GÖZLEME
DUCK AND SOUR CHERRY GÖZLEME
The stuffed pancakes known as gözleme are hard to find in Istanbul—even though they are well known outside Turkey. They are associated with the Yörük people who live in mountainous regions. Yörük means ‘walker’ or ‘nomad’, but the Yörüks are not gypsies. They walked into Anatolia around 800 years ago and set up agricultural communities. Nowadays, Yörük women with scarves round their heads arrive in small towns with their tents made of horsehair and fry gözleme stuffed with spinach and cheese, potatoes or minced lamb.
I decided to make the concept upmarket by including duck, which nobody would do in Turkey. Strictly speaking, this dish is not a meze (they don’t serve gözleme in meyhanes), but in my restaurant I serve it as part of my meze selection.
SERVES 6
4 onions
2 carrots
9 garlic cloves
1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) duck legs
4 dried bay leaves
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
½ bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
½ bunch mint
200 g (7 oz) haloumi
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) olive oil
80 g (2¾ oz) blanched almonds
2 tablespoons capsicum (pepper) paste
200 g (7 oz/1 cup) sour cherries, pitted
juice of ½ lemon
1 sheet yufka, 60 cm (24 in) wide (or 12 sheets of filo about 30 x 40 cm/12 x 16 in)
1 egg
4 tablespoons butter
Cut two of the onions into quarters, quarter the carrots, squash five of the garlic cloves, and place in a large saucepan. Add the duck legs, bay leaves, salt and peppercorns, cover with water and bring to the boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1½ hours until the legs are fully cooked.
Meanwhile, chop the remaining onions and crush the remaining garlic. Pick the leaves from the parsley and mint, and finely chop. Coarsely grate the haloumi.
Remove the duck legs from the cooking liquid. Leave to cool slightly and then pull the meat off the bones. Shred the duck meat, and discard the bones and cooking liquid.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the almonds and toast for 2 minutes, shaking the pan constantly to evenly brown. Add the chopped onions and cook for 5 minutes until translucent. Add the garlic, capsicum paste and the duck meat. Cook for a further 3 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool.
Halve the sour cherries. Stir them into the duck mixture and then add the parsley, lemon juice, mint and haloumi. Stir to combine.
Cut the yufka into six wedges. (Or if you’re using filo, overlap two sheets to make a square, painting a little melted butter where they overlap to help them stick together.)
Divide the duck mixture into six portions and put one portion in the middle of each wedge of yufka (or each square of filo). Whisk the egg.
Fold the three points of the yufka wedges over the filling to make a triangular parcel, or fold the four corners of the filo over the filling to make a square parcel. Paint some egg onto the last layer to stick the parcels together.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the butter in a frying pan over high heat. Add one gözleme and fry for 3 minutes on the multi-layered side of the parcel, then flip over and cook the other side for 1 minute. Place on paper towel and repeat with the remaining gözleme and butter. Serve hot on a platter for people to help themselves.
İÇLİ KÖFTE
TARSUS LAMB AND BEEF DUMPLINGS
İçli köfte literally means ‘a meatball with something inside’. The word içli is also poetic language for ‘deeply felt’, and I’ve seen this translated on Turkish tourist menus as ‘sentimental meatballs’.
Tarsus is a historic city in south-central Turkey, in the middle of the wheat and cotton belt. It was where Cleopatra met Mark Antony. Biblical scholars know it as the home of Saul who became Saint Paul. No doubt he ate these dumplings, which are known as kibbeh on the Arab peninsula.
Tarsus has many citizens of Arab descent, who moved to the area in the nineteenth century and introduced this dish, using the wheat of the area. Their version is different from the standard form because it is boiled instead of fried, so it’s healthier.
SERVES 6
LAMB FILLING
4 onions
80 ml (2½ fl oz/1/3 cup) vegetable oil
4 cloves garlic
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) lamb mince
2 tablespoons capsicum (pepper) paste
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon chilli flakes
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
150 g (5½ oz) walnuts
BULGUR SHELLS
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) fine bulgur
200 g (7 oz) lean ground (minced) beef
1 tablespoon cornflour (cornstarch)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons capsicum (pepper) paste
50 g (1¾ oz) butter
1 egg
80 ml (2½ fl oz/1/3 cup) vegetable oil
YOĞURT AND TAHINI TOPPING
200 g (7 oz) plain yoğurt
1 tablespoon tahini
pinch of sumac
First make the filling. Finely chop the onions. Crush the garlic. Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes until translucent then add the garlic and fry for 2 minutes more. Add the mince and fry for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the capsicum paste, salt, pepper, chilli flakes, cinnamon and allspice, and fry for a further 3 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool. Put the walnuts in a blender and coarsely chop. Transfer the filling mixture into a bowl, add the walnuts and mix together, then refrigerate for 2 hours.
Now make the wrapping. Put the bulgur in a heatproof bowl and cover with 750 ml (26 fl oz/3 cups) of boiling water. Leave to soak for 30 minutes, then drain.
Mix the mince, cornflour, salt, capsicum paste and butter into the bulgur. Break the egg into the mixture and knead for 10 minutes, to make a smooth paste.
Mix 125 ml (A fl oz/½ cup) of water with the vegetable oil. Wet your palm with the oily water, and place a ping-pong-ball-sized lump of the beef mixture in your palm. Press it into a pattie the size of your palm. Partly close your fist to turn the pattie into a cup, and put a heaped tablespoon of the lamb mixture in the middle. Fold the wrapping around the mixture to make a ball. Transfer the ball onto a tray. Repeat to make twelve balls and then refrigerate for 2 hours.
Bring about 3 litres (105 fl oz/12 cups) of water to the boil in a saucepan over high heat. Carefully add the dumplings, six at a time, and cook for 5 minutes until the skin is firm and crusty. Remove each batch of dumplings from the pan with a slotted spoon and place on paper towel.
Mix the yoğurt and tahini together in a small bowl.
Place the icli köfte on a serving plate. Spoon a tablespoon of the yoğurt and tahini topping over each dumpling, decorate with a pinch of sumac, and serve.
KURU DOLMA
STUFFED DRIED EGGPLANT
You see the dried shells of baby eggplants hanging in markets all over eastern Turkey, and you can safely assume they came from a village called Oğuzeli, near Gaziantep, which specialises in emptying and drying eggplants, zucchini and capsicums at the end of summer, ready to be stuffed during winter.
Of course the stuffing in this recipe can be used with fresh baby eggplants. Just slice off the top, hollow out the core (leaving thickish walls) and fill it with the stuffing. You can use the scooped out flesh to make the eggplant salad.
SERVES 4
DOLMA
1 green capsicum (pepper)
4 red capsicums (peppers)
10 mint leaves, finely chopped
10 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley leaves
1 garlic clove
175 g (6 oz/1 cup) fine bulgur
150 g (5½ oz) ground (minced) lamb
100 g (3½ oz/½ cup) chickpeas, boiled
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) olive oil
1 tomato
1 pack dried eggplants (aubergines), about 20 pieces (or 10 fresh eggplant/aubergines)
3 red capsicums, extra
1 onion
TOMATO AND CAPSICUM COOKING LIQUID
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon capsicum (pepper) paste
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of ½ lemon
YOĞURT SAUCE
125 g (4½ oz/½ cup) plain yoğurt
2 tablespoons tahini
2 teaspoons sumac
Remove the stalks and seeds from the green capsicum and 1 red capsicum and finely chop. Finely chop the mint and parsley leaves. Crush the garlic to a paste.
Put the bulgur in a bowl, cover with 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cups) of water and leave to soak for 20 minutes. Stir in the mince, chickpeas, pomegranate molasses, cumin, capsicum paste, parsley, chopped capsicum, salt, pepper, oil and garlic. Halve the tomato and grate it into the mixture. Discard the skin. Mix the mince mixture together well and then set aside.
Put the dried eggplants in a bowl, cover with warm water and leave to hydrate for 6 minutes. Remove from the bowl and pat dry with paper towel. Stuff each of them with 1 to 2 tablespoons of the stuffing, until it is three-quarters full.
Cut the remaining 3 red capsicum in half and remove the stalks and seeds. Cut the halves into pieces to fit inside the top of the eggplants. Push the capsicum lids on top of the stuffing, shiny side up. These will stop the stuffing from falling out when the eggplant swells during cooking. Peel the onion but leave whole.
Using a deep 25 cm (10 in) wide pot, place a 20 cm (8 in) wide dinner plate upside down at the bottom of the pan. Sit the eggplants, capsicum-lids upwards, around the inside of the pot, with the onion in the centre to create a tight fit.
To make the cooking liquid, mix the tomato and capsicum pastes, and olive oil in 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) of water. Pour the liquid over the eggplants and add the lemon juice. Bring to the boil over high heat, then reduce to a simmer and cook, covered, for 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix the yoğurt tahini and sumac together in a small bowl.
Spoon 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid onto four plates. Add five kuru dolma to each plate, distribute the sauce on top and serve.
PAÇANGA
PASTIRMA BÖREKS
I used to joke that the word paçanga (pronounced ‘pachanga’) sounds like a Spanish dance, and when we were researching this book, I got two shocks. First, it is the name of a type of music popular in Cuba since the late 1950s; and second, there are scholars who claim the dish was brought to Anatolia by Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition in the sixteenth century. I hope that’s true, because then this dish would represent a blend of three communities that contributed greatly to Turkish cuisine—the Armenians, with their pastirma-making skills; the Bulgarians, with their dairy farming; and the Spanish Jews, with their sophisticated technique (and the name).
MAKES 8
1 sheet yufka (or 4 sheets of filo)
65 g (21/3 oz/½ cup) shredded aged kaşar (or aged mozzarella)
1 tomato
2 green chillies, about 10 cm (4 in) long
8 pieces beef pastirma (or another cold cut of meat, including corned beef)
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) vegetable oil
60 g (2¼ oz/1 cup) breadcrumbs
Cut the yufka into eight wedges. Grate the cheese. Halve the tomato and thinly slice. Remove the stalks from the chillies but leave the seeds. Finely slice.
Divide the pastirma or cold meat into strips about 3 cm (1¼ in) wide and 10 cm (4 in) long. Place a strip across each segment of yufka, about 5 cm (2 in) from the bottom. On top of the strip, out 4 slices of tomato, 2 tablespoons of cheese, and 1 teaspoon of chilli pieces. Whisk the eggs and the salt together in a bowl. Fold the yufka base over the strip of filling, then fold in the sides (about 3 cm/1¼ in flap). Tightly fold up the parcel, but before you finish the rolling, brush the top triangle of pastry with a little of the egg mixture to make the roll stick. Set aside the eight parcels.
Heat the vegetable oil in a deep frying pan over medium heat. Add a drop of water to the oil. If it sizzles the oil is ready. Dunk the böreks into the egg mixture, two at a time, then roll in the breadcrumbs. Pan-fry the rolls for 2 minutes on each side until golden. Place on paper towel to absorb the excess oil and then repeat with the remaining börek. Serve on a platter for people to help themselves.
YAPRAK CİĞER
THRACE-COOKED VEAL LIVER
Thrace is a region that overlaps Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. In the Turkish part, the town of Edirne (named after the Roman emperor Hadrian) is known for two things: olive oil wrestling and the livers of the cattle that grow in the neighbourhood. The liver is sliced very long and thin so that it looks like leaves (yaprak) and is always pan-fried. One thing I learned from an Edirne liver master was to rest the liver in milk to drain the excess blood and soften the taste. I’ve had customers who have never enjoyed liver turn into converts when they try this.
SERVES 4
LIVER
1 veal liver (about 200 g/7 oz)
250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) milk
75 g (22/3 oz/½ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour
50 g (1¾ oz) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
3 dried whole red chillies
1 teaspoon hot paprika
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon isot (or chilli flakes)
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon ground cumin
SUMAC SALAD
½ red onion
1 tablespoon sumac
3 flat-leaf (Italian) parsley stalks, chopped
Peel the thin skin off the liver. With a very sharp Knife, slice the liver into about eight leaves, about 5 mm (¼ in) thick. Place the livers in a bowl, cover with the milk and leave to rest for 1 hour. Pat the liver strips dry with paper towel.
Sift the flour into a bowl. Roll the liver in the flour to coat well. Shake off any excess flour.
Heat the butter in a frying pan over medium heat until it begins to sizzle. Add the liver and cook for 2 minutes on each side until the corners are crisp. Sprinkle on the salt and chillies and sauté quickly, then remove the pan from the heat.
Mix the paprika, black pepper, isot, thyme and cumin together in a large bowl. Toss the cooked slices of liver into the mixed spices.
Thinly slice the red onion, place in a bowl and add the sumac and chopped parsley. Knead the onion mixture for 1 minute to mix the juice of the onion with the parsley. Place the liver slices on a large plate, add a dollop of onion salad on top, and serve.
KOÇ YUMURTASI
RAM’S EGGS
When I put testicles on the menu many people thought I was trying to create a sensation, but I was actually making a point about sustainability. When I was growing up, Turkey was going through economically tough times, and it was important not to waste anything. The butchers would reserve offal for the families that had young children, as a source of protein. I grew up eating liver, kidneys, brains and testicles, and anyone looking at my height today would say that they must have been a great source of nutrition. Nowadays, when the food elite talks about sustainable eating, I like to ask: ‘How did we go from fillet steak to fried crickets without using the rest of the animal first?’
SERVES 4
4 ram testicles
1 slice day-old white sandwich bread
50 ml (12/3 fl oz) milk
80 g (2¾ oz/½ cup) blanched almonds
1 garlic clove, peeled
juice of ½ lemon
1 tablespoon white vinegar
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon isot (or chilli flakes)
2 teaspoons sumac, to decorate
It’s likely you will have bought the testicles frozen. Let them thaw for 15 minutes. Chop off the top and bottom. Remove the translucent skin and the white membrane, then cut the soft meat in half lengthways. Set aside.
Put the bread in bowl, cover with the milk and leave to soak for 5 minutes. Discard the crusts and squeeze the bread to remove excess liquid.
Put the almonds, garlic, lemon juice, vinegar, salt and the bread in a food processor and purée, slowly adding the oil. If it’s too thick, add 2 teaspoons of water.
Melt the butter in a frying pan over low heat. Add the half testicles, cut side down, and sauté for 2 minutes. Turn, sprinkle on the cumin, isot and remaining salt, and fry for 1 minute more. Remove from the pan and rest on paper towel.
Spread 1 tablespoon of the almond and garlic sauce on one side of each plate, with pieces of testicle on the other side. Sprinkle with the sumac and serve.
A busker on Istiklal Street in Beyoğlu, centre of Istanbul’s bohemian culture and nightlife.
KOKTEYLLER
THREE COCKTAILS
Let me tell you a secret: I’ve mixed more drinks in Turkey than I’ve cooked hot dinners. I was trained as a bartender before I became a chef and, like most of my generation of Turkish hospitality students, I was inspired by the movie Cocktail (starring Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown). I found mixing drinks with ‘flair’ was a great way to get tips and to pick up chicks. Then I got serious and added cooking to my repertoire. When I opened my restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, one of my first customers was Bryan Brown, who lives round the corner.
These three flashy mixtures give a nod to traditional Turkish ingredients—raki, pomegranate and figs—and two of them have Turkish puns in their names (the Nar in Narito means pomegranate, and the Inci in Incini means fig). But they were all created within a mile of Bryan Brown.
MAKES 3
INDIVIDUAL COCKTAILS
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
1 heaped teaspoon Turkish coffee
15 ml (½ fl oz) Kahlua
30 ml (1 fl oz) brandy
10 ml (¼ fl oz) barrel-aged raki
1 piece of pashmak (Persian fairy floss)
Boil the Turkish coffee with 70 ml (2¼ fl oz) of water in a pot over medium heat. Strain three times through a tea strainer lined with muslin cloth to yield 15 ml (½ fl oz) of triple-strained Turkish coffee.
Half fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the kahlua, brandy, raki and coffee. Shake vigorously for 1 minute. Strain into a long glass. Decorate with pashmak and serve.
NARITO
1 lime or small green satsuma mandarin
5 ml (1/8 fl oz) pomegranate molasses
6 mint leaves
2 tablespoons pomegranate seeds
30 ml (1 fl oz) light rum
15 ml (½ fl oz) pomegranate liqueur
60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) pomegranate juice
soda water, to top up
Quarter the lime or satsuma. Place in a cocktail shaker with the pomegranate molasses, mint and pomegranate seeds. Mash the mixture with what bartenders call a muddler. Add the rum, pomegranate liqueur and pomegranate juice. Shake vigorously for 1 minute. Serve in a tall cocktail glass, topped up with soda water.
INCINI
½ fresh fig in season or 1 teaspoon fig jam
30 ml (1 fl oz) Hendricks gin
15 ml (½ fl oz) Cointreau
10 ml (¼ fl oz) fresh lemon juice
GARNISH
1 candied fig (from fig jam)
5 pieces lemon zest
Muddle the fresh half fig in a shaker or put in the fig jam. Add the gin, Cointreau and lemon juice. Half fill the shaker with ice. Shake vigorously for a minute. Double-strain into a martini glass with the candied fig and lemon zest, and serve.
