eggplant – Sue's Turkish Adventures

Turkish Influence

Susan — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:04:00 +0000

Last Sunday I saw a film called Museum Hours. Part of the 2013 Minneapolis Film Festival, the movie centers around a visit to Vienna by a Canadian woman. The woman meets a kind museum guide and he shows her around the city. I was expecting a Vienna travelogue, and in some ways the film provided one. But I was surprised that Turkey entered in. In one scene people are buying lunch at a food truck called “Kismet Kebab.” In another scene Austrians visit a bar where they dance to Turkish music. This is no doubt the result of many decades of Turkish people working in Austria.

I am interested in how cultures spread outside their places of origin. Those of us Americans who have been fortunate to travel overseas can’t help but notice American foods, films, and other products far from home. And not always the ones we are most proud of.

The Turkish culture has long been influential in the Middle East. My Iraqi students told me that all the clothing sold in Iraq is from Turkey, and I suspect that is also true in other Arab countries as well as some of the “stan” countries. Turkey is also moving to Europe. In 2010, the fashionable Turkish women’s store, Yargici, opened a boutique in Paris.

http://greenhotelparis.com/ecotourism/yargici-turkish-fashion-paris/

Most Turkish items that reach the United States are related to food. This is great: Turkish cuisine is both delicious and healthful.

These curved “tulip” glasses, are made by a prestigious Turkish glass manufacturer, Pasabahce. Sold at The Caspian Sea market near the University of Minnesota, they are de rigeur if you’re drinking Turkish tea!

Centrally located in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood, The Black Sea restaurant sells delicious soups and kebabs.

Filfillah restaurant in north Minneapolis offers Iskender, a Turkish favorite.

Filfillah also offers the popular, spicy Adana Kebab.

In New York, the sight of a Mango store reminded us of Istanbul, even though the store is Spanish in origin.

We saw a pudding restaurant on the lower East Side, which had to be Turkish inspired. It is not unusual for restaurants in Turkey to be entirely devoted to sutlu tatli (milky desserts).

I realize that grilled eggplant is native to many Mediterranean countries, but I’m going to give this one to Turkey anyway. Mmm!

One of many food trucks in New York offering Turkish cuisine.

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Turkey on my Mind

Susan — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:36:00 +0000

A Costa Rican friend once told me never to compare countries. That is probably good advice, but I can’t follow it these days. I am constantly comparing my life in Turkey and my life in Minnesota.

Things I like better in Minnesota:

-Female hairdressers

-Enough parking spaces for everyone

-Target! Sometimes I think of all the magnificent, glorious, historical buildings in Turkey and then I put them all up against being able to walk into Target store and buy a stylish version of just about anything I need at a low price. When I think that way, Minnesota wins the comparison. But when I think of the fact that probably that Turkey could obtain Target stores, but Minnesota will never be filled with Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman treasures, Turkey wins.

< -Lending libraries -Clothes-washing instructions in English Things I liked better in Turkey: -I never, ever felt afraid: People were always watching and concerned. I didn’t realize I was so protected until I’d been in Turkey about a year. One evening I was walking up from the Sea Road to my apartment through the historic village of Arnavutkoy. At intervals on the sidewalks, foot-high pillars had been installed to prevent people from parking. Not paying attention, I swung my leg right into one of them, crashing my shin against the cement. The pain did not distract me from hearing a kind of collective “Owww,” from unseen voices all around me. People are always watching in Turkey. -The prayer call. It marked the passage of the day and reminded me of God. Things I no longer have to think about now that I'm back in Minnesota: -Twisties -Ziploc bags Foods I miss: -Eggplant: This wonderful vegetable was available in so many different forms in Turkey: roasted and mashed to form a smoky-tasting hors d’oeuvre; grilled with kebab meat; stewed with lamb; roasted and then eaten cold in salads; and cooked with ground meat to form a delicacy called imam bayildi, the imam fainted.

-Freshly roasted, low-cost pistachios

Foods I’m glad to be reunited with:

-Jicama

-Baby back ribs

-Excellent bread in many varieties, including bagels.Somehow I think this relates to diversity.

Chez Arnaud bakery in White Bear Lake

Black Forest rye bread from the general store at Marine on the St. Croix

American habits that now perplex me:

-Assuming kids hate vegetables.At a recent gathering I attended, sandwiches were offered to both adults and kids, but for children, the lettuce and tomato had been removed.

-Eating alone in restaurants. This is something Americans, including myself, don’t mind doing, but I think it would seem pitiful to Turks.

At Colossus Cafe, St. Anthony Park

Some statistics:

-Number of days back in Minnesota before someone asked, “Weren’t you scared living in Turkey?” and then refused to believe me when I answered no: Five.

-First catalog company to find me here in MN: Orvis.(I wonder how long before the deluge.)

Ways to keep Turkey alive for me:

-My little town of White Bear Lake is soon going to have a Turkish restaurant called
The Black Sea

-There is a Turkish/Iranian cafe and grocery store near the University of Minnesota.

-My friend, Patti, has a Turkish housemate who I will soon meet.

-I can order Turkish products at Tulumba.com. Unfortunately, they are not cheap. Price for a package of Turkish tea: $9.99. Shipping: $9.61.

It is fun to do this kind of tallying. I guess what I’m really trying to do is decide which place makes me the most happy. Right now my answer would be: Both!

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I Love Turkish Food!

Susan — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:21:00 +0000

Well, I have apparently adjusted so well to Turkish food that I am overeating. I should have known it would come to this.

During my first year in Istanbul I was skeptical. I sampled but didn’t really embrace savory items such as borek and interesting desserts like kunefe and kadayif, and I tried to resist the pistachios, almonds and cashews I saw all around me.

Flaky, cheesy borek

With repeated exposure, however, these Turkish favorites became mine as well. And added to the above list were homemade rolls kneaded with olive oil and stuffed with mild white cheese; eggplant fried with lamb and then stewed; and Circassian chicken, an intricate salad that involves bread crumbs, spices and chopped walnuts.

Over time, I learned where the very best varieties of these items are sold. That intrepidness deserves rewards — delicious ones — doesn’t it?. And so I formed some peculiar assumptions about eating in Turkey:

1. Turkish food is so healthy (All those tomatoes, all that parsley, all the dreamy melons and tiny, melt-in-your-mouth strawberries!) that I can eat as much of it as I want.

2. I walk a great deal in Istanbul, and climb hills almost daily, hills I don’t have back home. Therefore, I no longer need formal gym workouts, or jogs along the Bosphorus.

3. My Istanbul bathroom scale is in kilograms, which, as an American, I find mysterious. As long as the number is less than 100, I’m doing okay. Right?

Kunefe: shredded phyllo dough baked with mozzarella-like cheese, topped with sugar syrup and fresh pistachios

The first sign that I might be drifting in the wrong direction came recently when, getting ready to attend a wedding, I put on a dress I had worn a year ago. It was tight not just in certain places, but all over, and it took me awhile to figure out why.

Perhaps, I decided, the dry cleaners had shrunk it. I love Denial-land.

It slowly dawned on me that I should probably weigh myself. So one morning last week I stepped on my (pounds) scale here in Minnesota. It was the moment of truth, and the scale proclaimed it in black and white. I had gained nearly ten pounds.

Nut and nutty snacks — in shops everywhere

So now it’s small meals and scant snacks, and most of all, a drastic decrease in desserts. I’m already down 2 ½ pounds—but the first few are the easiest. I’ll be depriving myself of bagels, ranch dressing and trips to the Dairy Queen for weeks.

When I get back to Istanbul, I hope I don’t fall right back into my bad habits. But if I do, I have only Turkish food to blame.

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Desperate Vegetables

Susan — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:22:00 +0000

Can I do it? Can I reach up and take the piping hot bowl of vegetables that my Turkish colleagues are helping themselves to? And then can I sit down and eat them?

The last time I ate a cooked vegetable was back when I was living at home with my parents during college summers. It would have been Libby’s peas or green beans (or possibly asparagus), poured straight from the can into a saucepan and boiled for a quarter hour. The color was gray, the texture mushy and the taste brine-y due to the salt used in preserving them. By the end of that crunchy era, even my parents had started to eat more salads and stir fries, relegating cans to the back of the pantry.

Now, as your faithful Turkey blog writer, I feel a firm obligation to once again permit cooked vegetables to pass my lips. Why? Because they are wildly popular in this foodie culture.

My coworker is telling me that the bowl consists mostly of leeks. I see white and pale green, with pieces of orange (carrots), and taking a deep breath, I grab hold of the bowl and place it on my tray.

I began my career as a nutritionist, and still notice food habits. I had little idea what to expect when we moved a year ago . . except worrying that Turkish food might resemble Greek-American cuisine, with its odiferous “feta” cheese (it emphatically does not, to my relief). What I got instead was a complex colorful, vegetable-infused cuisine with Ottoman, European and Arab influences.

The traditional Turkish breakfast is composed of fresh tomato chunks, often peeled, cucumber slices, green and black olives, slices of mild white cheese, fresh bread, and honey or jams – homemade and bursting with flavor.

Lunch is often a bigger meal than dinner—and with workday lunches free of charge people, especially single young men, really load up—but the foods can be the same. Soup, near and dear to the Turkish heart, the most popular a mix of red lentils, onions, chicken broth, spices and nane, dried mint leaves. Some kind of meat: often lamb, but perhaps beef or chicken pieces cooked in sauce with onions and tomatoes and thyme, ground into meatballs or grilled with peppers. Rice, sauteed in butter first, then put to boil. . . the results are plump, shiny and flavorful. And then vegetables: fresh parsley, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes and cabbage in salads, or peas, potatoes, green and red peppers, eggplant, carrots, leeks, green beans and cauliflower cooked and served hot or cold.

Cold, cooked vegetable entree

The sight of teenaged boys scarfing down huge salads and heaped up plates of cooked vegetables never fails to astound me. Do teenage boys in the States eat vegetables at all?

For almost a year, I have bypassed these vegetables, unable to get the Libby’s can out of my mind. Then last August in Minnesota I read a New York Times article by John Willoughby titled, “Braising Vegetables, a Turkish Delight.” In it he described facing a dish of green beans that had been “cooked to death,” then served at room temperature. To his surprise, they were delicious:

Tender and succulent, complemented by the sweet acidity of tomatoes and the mellowed bite of onions, these long-cooked beans had a rich lusciousness that crisp vegetables could never approach.

Willoughby went on to say that the beans had been gently braised in olive oil, then cooled, topped with an herb or citrus juice, and served at room temperature “when their flavors are at their fullest.” He remarked that the taste was like that of an entirely new type of vegetable, “plush and full-flavored but still somehow delicate. . .”

I sit down with my colleagues and face my large, juicy bowl. The leeks look like celery until I fork into them and see them draw apart in layers. As we eat, my fellow teachers tell me about them, mildly dissing the cafeteria. “They’re cooked in some kind of oil, but olive oil would be better.” And, “The only seasoning is salt and pepper, but a little bit of tomato paste and some lemon juice would make them really delicious.” Everybody cleans their plates.

So how am I able to stomach this? Well, I do have to get by the pale colors and soft texture, and I find myself pushing some limp carrot pieces to one side. But I have to admit the leeks are silky and the flavor succulent, like a well-seasoned stew.

I eat most of it, not quite cleaning my plate, but I’m proud of myself. Next, I think I’ll try turlu, a braised multi-vegetable dish that has been compared to Provencal ratatouille. I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, here are links to two excellent Turkish food blogs written by friends here:

A Seasonal Cook in Turkey: http://seasonalcookinturkey.blogspot.com/

My Turkish Joys: http://myturkishjoys.blogspot.com/

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The Imam Fainted

Susan — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 07:32:00 +0000

I have never lived in a place in which people are more involved with food. Wherever I go, at whatever time of day, I see coffee shops, restaurants and cafes full of people. Fresh fruit and vegetable stands burst with color in every neighborhood, more so in the poorer areas. Simits, pretzel-like bagels, are sold from carts everywhere in the city. Once I commented to a rather indifferent store clerk that I was going to eat at a nearby restaurant. He immediately brightened up, came out from behind his counter and spent ten minutes describing the menu and advising me exactly which items to order.

“How often do Turks eat out?” I asked, and the reply was, well, perhaps five or six times a week. You are probably wondering, are Turks fat? The answer is no. It is not uncommon to see someone carrying an extra few extra pounds, but you do not see obese Turks. Why not? I think it’s a combination of reasons. First, portions in restaurants are not oversized. Second, restaurant food—indeed all Turkish food—involves a myriad of vegetables. Third, this is an outdoor culture, and Turks perhaps get out and walk more than Americans. And perhaps smoking plays a role. More Turks than Americans seems to smoke although, thankfully, the practice has been banned in restaurants.

People ask me if Turkish food is spicy. Yes, spices are used, but no, Turkish food is not “hot.” One of the mostly commonly used spices is kekik, thyme. Other popular seasonings are garlic, parsley, onion, lemon, sweet peppers and oregano. Sumak, a reddish powder made from the berries of sumac bushes, is used on salads for astringency, like lemon or lime. Another much-employed ingredient is nar, pomegranate molasses, a wonder ingredient that makes both sweet and savory foods taste better. There was an interesting article about pomegranate molasses last year in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/dining/24power.html

Speaking of unusual new tastes, I am getting used to rose flavoring. I have tasted this in India, mostly in beverages, and it has always been a less-than-pleasant surprise. I need a heads-up if I am going to be drinking something that tastes like perfume. Here in Turkey, however, the flavor is used more subtly.

The first time I tried it was an accident. Sankar and I were out for our evening gelato, and, looking at the array of available flavors, I asked what gul was. “Turkish flavor,” came the enigmatic reply and I impulsively said, “I’ll have it.”

At the first bite, I said, “Oh, it’s rose,” and Sankar frowned, “Why don’t you get something you’re sure of?” To prove myself, I finished the cone, and moved one step closer to accepting this flavor. It is common here, and that helps. My dishwashing liquid smells like roses. Occasionally we are served some baklava or other honey-based dessert that tastes rose-y. And I recently bought a jar of rose jam, which is great on toast. It has the same texture as strawberry jam, which begs the question, am I really eating little chunks of roses?!

After finding a simple Turkish cookbook, this week I assembled all the ingredients and made the very first dish I consumed in Turkey back in January, a soup called ezogelin ҁorbasa. The recipe calls for bright orange lentils, almost fluorescent in hue, which cooked up much more quickly than I expected, as did the bulgur. Most of the soup’s ingredients are ordinary: chicken broth, onion, and a little butter. But I recalled tiny black flecks in the soup that appeared to add greatly, but mysteriously, to the flavor. Were they some kind of pepper? Turns out the flecks are dried mint leaves. I bought a packet at the store and used two teaspoonfuls in the soup. You should be here to take a lovely, herby taste. Mmm.

Eggplant is also a new phenomenon here, and I’ve grown to love its silky texture and subtle taste. Growing up in the Midwest, I have little experience with eggplant. I will go to a cooking class in a few weeks and hopefully learn how to prepare this vegetable. One of the most popular eggplant dishes here is dubbed imam bayildi, eggplant stuffed with onion, garlic, tomatoes and parsley. Its name means, “the imam fainted,” in competing stories, either because the eggplant was so tasty or because the olive oil used to make it was so expensive! Here is a photo of that dish, taken at the famous Sirkeci Train Station restaurant in Old Istanbul, the last stop on the Orient Express.

We began to realize the logistics of Turkish vegetable consumption when we visited the Mediterranean coast a few weeks ago. The tomato is the king of Turkish cuisine. It is eaten at every meal, in many, many forms. Chopped up with cucumber, parsley and lemon juice or made into other kinds of salad. Pounded into salsas or chutneys. Used in soups and stews. For breakfast, peeled and sliced, served with cucumbers and white cheese.

But Turkey does not have the kind of climate that supports growing tomatoes outside year-round. With seventy five million people, each eating, let us say conservatively, one tomato per day, that is of course 75 million tomatoes needed each and every day, summer and winter.

Thus the economy of the temperate towns on the Mediterranean coast and perhaps elsewhere, whose main business is growing greenhouse tomatoes. We drove through town after town where the only industry we saw was greenhouses, and when we found ourselves at an elevation, these towns presented strange skylines indeed.

The taste is fine, though purists might disagree. I think they are better than winter tomatoes back home, though not as good as their sun-ripened cousins.

We are going into the most major Turkish holiday next week. It is called Kurban Bayram, and commemorates Abraham’s willingness to slay his son, Isaac, to please God. Instead, a ram was slain, and—not to spoil anyone’s appetite after this food-filled essay—there will be reenactments of this all over Turkey next week. And some fresh lamb as well. More next weekend!

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