Eat your way around Turkey — Without ever leaving İstanbul
Over the last 20 years İstanbul has grown enormously. A city that had at the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1453 a population of around 60,000 is now bursting at the seams under the strain of perhaps 16 million residents, with its furthest reaches now sprawling almost all the way to Tekirdağ on the European side and Kocaeli (İzmit) on the Anatolian side.
Flooding in the western suburbs last year highlighted some of the problems this speedy growth has created, but there are also undoubted benefits, one of which is that now more than ever it's possible to eat your way around Turkey without ever leaving the metropolis as more and more new restaurants open to dish up mother's cooking to the homesick.
Some parts of the city have a particularly heavy local character reflected in their eateries. Typical examples include “Little Siirt” in the shadow of the Aqueduct of Valens, and “Little Urfa” around the Aksaray transport interchange. There's also a strong Hatay presence around Aksaray, while Fener and Balat have many residents whose families originally hailed from Kastamonu and the Black Sea. So here, without further ado, are just a few of the tasty regional treats awaiting you on a culinary tour of İstanbul.
Siirt -- büryan kebab and perde pilav: Twenty years ago it was a grungy area known for a livestock market and some rather dicey butchers' shops. Now the Kadınlar Pazarı, otherwise known as Little Siirt, immediately in front of the Aqueduct of Valens as you head up Atatürk Bulvarı from the Golden Horn, is the best place in town to eat büryan kebab, one of a set of pit-baked meats (think tandir kebab and kuyu kebab) that are always delectably tasty. In Little Siirt they fire up the ovens early, and you're best advised to head there around lunchtime when the meat is at its best -- avoid Fridays when so many people flock in after prayers that you'll be pushed to find a table.
Büryan kebab is served on a bed of pide and washed down with foaming fresh ayran (yoghurt drink). The best accompaniment is a helping of crispy perde pilav (“veiled rice”), which is baked in a fez-shaped container and comes out shot through with shredded chicken, currants and almonds.
Incidentally, the Kadınlar Pazarı is also a great place to shop for such culinary curiosities as tandir ekmeği (doughnuts of dried bread that need rehydrating before eating), Van otlu peyniri, a white cheese speckled with herbs, and lots and lots of super-fresh honey.
Siirt Şeref, İtfaiye Caddesi No. 4, Tel: 0212-635 8085, www.serefburyan.com
Hatay -- tuzda pilav and künefe: The cuisine of the Hatay corner of Turkey is influenced by Syria and the Middle East, so if you visit the Hatay restaurants around Aksaray you'll be in for some great surprises including warm humus topped with slithers of pastırma (pastrami). At the Hatay Akdeniz Sofrası the biggest treat has to be chicken or lamb cooked inside a case of salt which is sliced open at the table with great ceremony. Be warned that it's a treat that must be ordered in advance -- two hours ahead in the case of chicken, a day ahead in the case of lamb. You also need a group of three diners for chicken, even more for lamb.
Hatay's other great gift to Turkish cuisine is künefe, the mouth-watering dessert made up of crispy grilled shredded wheat wrapped round a melt-in-the-mouth helping of soft cheese, with copious quantities of syrup dribbled over the top. Eat it with cream at the Khorasani Restaurant, and you'll be in seventh heaven.
Hatay Akdeniz Sofrası, Ahmediye Caddesi No. 44/A, Vatan Hastanesi Karşısı, Aksaray, Tel: 0212-531 3333
Khorasani Restaurant, Ticarethane Sokak No. 39-41, Tel: 0212-519 5959, www.khorasanirestaurant.com
Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır -- ciğer and mırra kahvesi: If Hatay food is not your scene, Aksaray is also a great place to dine Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır style. On summer nights in Urfa the main drag is lined with low tables and tiny wooden stools on which sit local men tucking into generous helpings of freshly grilled ciğer (lamb's liver) served on skewers with lashings of greenery. There are plenty of places to emulate the experience in Aksaray, although Canım Ciğerim in Beyoğlu is also renowned for its liver -- watch out for the skewers with neat lamb's fat that come bundled up with it.
Afterwards you can round off the evening with a gulp of mırra kahvesi (mırra coffee), an Urfa and Mardin super-strong take on Turkish coffee that is brewed and rebrewed before being served with elaborate ceremony. Down it in three sips but don't put the cup on the table afterwards, or you might find yourself expected to pay a forfeit -- a cup's worth of gold, or the cost of the waiter's wedding.
Mırra Urfa Sofrası, Muratpaşa Sokak No. 29, Yusufpaşa, Tel: 0212-532 7432
Canım Ciğerim, Minare Sokak No. 1, Asmalımescit, Tel: 0212-252 6060
Ehli Kebap ve Ciğer Diyarbakır, Simitçi Şakır Sokak No. 32, Aksaray, Tel: 0212-631 3700
Mersin -- tantuni and şalgam: Everyone is familiar with döner kebab in all its assorted manifestations. Tantuni, however, tends to get less of a look in, although around Mersin and Adana it's the snack food of choice. Finely chopped snippets of beef are stir-fried with water, oil, onions, tomatoes and herbs, then stuffed into a half loaf of bread or wrapped in paper-thin lavaş. Ideally you down it with bitter şalgam, the turnip-juice taste sensation that can be acquired from the pickle stalls down on the Eminönü waterfront.
Emine Ana Sofrası, Sıraselviler Caddesi, Billurcu Sokak No. 5/A, Beyoğlu, Tel: 0212-292 8430
Bursa -- İskender kebab: It's so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget that İskender kebap was in origin a Bursa specialty, supposedly created when the eponymous İskender stabbed his sword into the ground, then loaded it with meat so that he could grill it while slowly revolving it and so reduce the risk of charring. After adding a dollop of yoghurt plus tomato sauce and a hot butter sauce, and laying slithers of the meat on pide bread, he had the makings of a dish that is now one of the greatest pleasures of Turkish cuisine. Try it at branches of Konak on İstiklal Caddesi or at the Süslü Karakol in Beşiktaş for the authentic Bursa experience.
Konak, İstiklal Caddesi No. 259, Galatasaray, Tel: 0212-244 4281
Kebapçı İskender, Süslü Karakol, Yıldız Yolu No. 6, Ihlamur, Beşiktaş, Tel: 0212-236 5571
Rize -- karalahana çorbası and hamsi: Fewer places in İstanbul serve the cabbage-heavy cuisine of the eastern Black Sea region, but in Cibali, as it merges into Fener, the Kömür Lokantası has been serving up stuffed cabbage leaves and cabbage soup since the late 1980s. This is also a great place to come to eat crispy, crunchy hamsi tava (fried anchovies), a wonderful winter treat.
Kömür Lokantası, Müstantik Sokak No. 33, Küçükmustafapaşa, Tel: 0212-631 0192
Kayseri -- mantı: If you want to make a lonely Kayserili's eyes water, just mutter the word mantı to them. These tiny pasta packets enclosing minuscule morsels of meat are usually doused in a garlicky yoghurt sauce or a thick homemade tomato sauce. They're often called the Turkish ravioli, although you could as easily describe them as Turkish dumplings. Really, they're a dish unto themselves.
Hala, İstiklal Caddesi No 137/A, Beyoğlu, Tel: 0212-292 7004
Gaziantep -- pistachio baklava: Whatever your choice of starter and main course, you're bound to want to finish up your meal with a helping of baklava, the cigarette paper-thin, multi-layered pastry that reaches its apotheosis when stuffed with some of the pistachios for which Antep in the Southeast is famed. Most restaurants worth their salt serve baklava, but for the finest of all, head straight for Güllüoğlu in Karaköy, where they still use a recipe dating back to the 1870s.
Karaköy Güllüoğlu, Rıhtım Caddesi, Tel: 0212- 293 0910, www.karakoygulluoglu.com
Where sugar meets spice | sultanahmet1.com
Intrigued by Ottoman flavours, Caroline Baum rolls up her sleeves and takes a cooking class in Istanbul.
Turkish delights ... a market stall.
I've just been handed a scimitar. At least that's what it looks like - a weapon that might have been used to lop off disloyal heads at the sultan's court in the nearby Topkapi Palace. It turns out to be the Turkish equivalent of a mezzaluna: a crescent-shaped blade, called a zirh, very large and heavy, which takes some getting used to.
The chef and teacher, Feyzi Yildirim, shows me how to rock it from side to side vigorously and then points to a mountain of fresh dill, parsley and coriander. He wants them chopped finely and I have already discovered that he's pretty exacting, even though he speaks no English. Pointing, at times, can be an eloquent method of expressing disapproval: earlier I was asked to pound and knead a bucket of salted and finely chopped onions to extract their juices. When my hands are knuckle-deep in liquid, Yildirim insists that it is not enough. But he does have a neat trick for removing the smell of onion from my hands: a quick rub with a cut lemon.
I've joined a hands-on, half-day class at Cooking Alaturka, around the corner from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul's historic precinct of Sultanahmet. There are seven others in our group and an even gender spread. We're preparing a five-course lunch of traditional Ottoman home cooking and, what's more, we've a schedule to stick to. The school, based on the model of the Cordon Bleu, is open to the public for lunch.
Alaturka is the brainchild of a determined expatriate Dutch woman and former hotelier, Eveline Zoutendijk. Trained at Cordon Bleu in Paris and after a career in hotel management in New York, she fell in love with Istanbul, learnt the fiendishly difficult language and settled here 12 years ago. Briskly efficient, Zoutendijk runs the classes herself, translating Yildirim's instructions, adding her own hints, juggling pans from stove to oven. She also has a great list of recommended restaurants, which helps visitors navigate a bewildering array of options. On request, she leads tours of produce markets, avoiding the tourist traps such as the Spice Market.
Zoutendijk has studied the subtleties and diversity of Turkish food to devise the seven menus in her school's repertoire. "I love the variety of fresh bold flavours, the foraged ingredients in salads and mezze, the kebab-house culture, the sharing of dishes, the strong emphasis on vegetables such as okra, which some of our clients are a bit unsure about; the regional variations in cheeses," she says. "Turkey is justifiably proud of being one of only seven countries that can feed itself."
All her clients "wants to do something with eggplant" and some are "a bit unsure about the yoghurt soup until they make it. When they look at the list of ingredients, their faces fall but when they taste it ... big smiles." She does not teach with seafood ("too expensive") or bread, because she doesn't have the right oven for it, and she says she doesn't have the right ventilation for grilling kebabs. Students receive recipes to keep, which means they can concentrate on technique instead of scribbling notes.
We're making a soup of red lentil, bulgur, mint and red pepper that is quick and great for freezing; imam bayildi, a classic stuffed eggplant dish that is good hot or cold; dill and cheese pancakes; stuffed vine leaves; and syrup-soaked biscuits topped with the most vibrantly green, fresh pistachios I've seen.
There's plenty to do: we each find a spot in the compact kitchen to roll out dough, beat a batter or dice tomatoes. All of us have trouble making the eggplant boats that we are going to stuff and braise. We either make them too deep or too shallow and we score them incorrectly on the inside, which means they will collapse while cooking. We are all surprised at how easy it is to stuff vine leaves once you know the folding and rolling secret, which is just like learning to make hospital corners in bed-making.
Our favourite is making a round ball of dough and flinging it hard on to a baking tin, before pressing a fresh hazelnut on top ("no fingerprints!" urges Yildirim). This is the first stage of our ultra-sweet dessert. Zoutendijk cuts down the sugar in this and most recipes by more than a third to accommodate non-Turkish palates, but it is still sweeter than we are used to.
There's a moment of panic when people walk in off the street for lunch and we realise we're running late but we set up a proper production line to plate and garnish. Yildirim is a stickler for presentation and we are a bit sloppy. But when we sit down, it's with a real sense of achievement.
Once we've left Alaturka, we become bolder about what we eat during the rest of our time in Istanbul. We sample salep from a street vendor, a hot, milky drink made from dried orchid root. We find slivers of Turkish pastrami, called pastirma, and sharp, herby cheese from the Kurdish town of Van at a classy deli called Namli, behind the Spice Market. We long to cook the sea bass displayed with its red gills turned out as proof of freshness in the markets at the Galata bridge. At a fantastic lunch place called Ciya, on the Asian side of the city, we choose a salad of braised nettles and a strange, chewy dessert of mastic, the resin that was the original ingredient in chewing gum. Our palates recognise the sweet-and-sour blend of pomegranate molasses and cinnamon, the creaminess of fresh chick peas. And when we're peckish after a morning of mosques, there's always a simit stall selling the Turkish version of a pretzel covered in toasted sesame seeds.
Getting there
Malaysia Airlines flies to Istanbul for about $1830 via Kuala Lumpur (8 hours and 11 hours). Qatar Airways flies for about $1756 via Doha (14 hours and 5 hours). (Fares are low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne including tax.) Australians require a visa for Turkey, which can be bought on arrival for about $US20 ($23).
Cooking there
Cooking Alaturka, at 72a Akbiyik Caddesi, Sultanahmet, has a three-hour class for €60 ($95) a person, including five recipes and a sit-down lunch with wine. See cookingalaturka.com.
(The Sidney Morning Herald - 13 Feb 2010)
Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain visits Istanbul
Anthony Bourdain is in Istanbul (Part 1)
anthony.bourdain.no.reservations.sultanahmet1com @ Yahoo! Video
Anthony Bourdain is in Istanbul (Part 2)
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Anthony Bourdain is in Istanbul (Part 3)