If you’re a foodie visiting Istanbul, you will be spoilt for choice. On a visit to Turkey, I actually went to the spice market straight from the airport! Located in Eminonu, right behind the New Mosque (or Yeni Camii) not far from the Galata Bridge, Misir Carsisi is no more a prime spice trading area of the city but is targeted more at the tourist. These days you will also find dizzying varieties of Lokum (Turkish Delight), souvenirs, flavoured teas and local delicacies like baklava and pastrami and even a rather dubious sounding “Turkish viagra”! But it is still heady with the aroma of spices — ginger, cardamom, pepper and saffron from the mounds of spices sold from many stalls.
Locals come here to shop for fruit and vegetables, coffee, clothes, pots and pans in the surrounding cramped backstreets. In the street just outside the Egyptian Bazaar on the Galata Bridge end, you can choose olives from huge barrels, many varieties of Beyaz Penir (white cheese) and it is the place to get the finest Turkish coffee (they sell freshly roasted coffee beans in little bags and the aroma pervades the street in front). The shop at the end of the street carries a dizzying variety of Turkish pickles.
Now everyone knows that Istanbul is a great place for foodies but it is always more interesting to have a local show you around. I found the perfect person to show me around in Selin Rosanes who is a native of Istanbul and owner of Turkish Flavours, a company that coordinates Turkish cuisine courses and cultural culinary tours throughout Turkey. Selin took me around Istanbul and also had me over at her house to teach me Turkish cooking.
Selin’s Yayla Chorba
I was bowled over by Turkish soups. “Chorba” is Turkish for soup, a corruption of the Persian word “shuraba”, which is derived from shur (salty) and aba (food).
In Arabic, “shuraba” means meat broth. And in India, the Mughlai cuisine calls soup “shorba”. Turkish soups are amazing and served at every meal! You can understand how important soup is to its people when you hear Turkish mothers worry about being unable to marry away daughters “who can’t cook a decent soup”! So if you visit a home in Turkey, expect a soup to be served to you at the start of any meal — including breakfast!
The soups here are usually named after the main ingredient, the most common being lentil (mercimek çorbasi) and wheat with yoghurt (tarhana çorbasi). “Yayla” means mountain pastures, which is where this popular yoghurt soup originates from.
Since milk spoils easily during summer, the nomadic herdsmen and the earliest settlers of Anatolia (Asia Minor) converted the milk into yoghurt and prepared this dish.
Ingredients
1 litre/4 cups beef stock (substitutes: chicken/vegetable stock)
½cup rice, rinsed and drained
2 cups yoghurt
2 tbsp flour
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
Salt to taste
4 tbsp black pepper, freshly ground
4 tbsp butter
4 tsp dried mint
Paprika flakes to serve (optional)
Method
* Place rice in saucepan with stock; simmer for 25 to 30 minutes or until it is tender and has released its starch to thicken soup.
* In a bowl, combine yoghurt, flour and egg yolk; mix well. Stir in boiling soup, a little at a time, mixing thoroughly. Slowly add this mixture to rice, stirring constantly.
* Taste; adjust seasoning. Simmer gently for 10 minutes. n To serve, melt butter in skillet, add crushed mint, stir and drizzle over soup.
* Serve hot, garnished with paprika flakes.
Selin’s Split belly Aubergines — Karniyarik
Another “certified” Turkish recipe from Selin, Karniyarik translates as “split belly”. It is widely made and dearly loved in almost every part of Turkey, as well as in other parts of the Mediterranean and Middle East. I must warn you — this is a heavy, slightly laborious dish, but is absolutely fantastic. There are a couple of things to be careful about though, when you’re cooking with aubergines. Buy them right before you cook and pick the firmer ones; aubergines tend to get soft in the refrigerator.
Ingredients
450 gm aubergines, peeled in stripes lengthwise
500 gm mince meat
150 gm onions, cubed
50 gm parsley, chopped fine
100 gm tomato, diced fine (for the stuffing)
Green peppers, 1 for each aubergine
Olive oil, for frying
120 ml hot water
Ground pepper
Salt
100 gm tomato, sliced in half moons (for the top)
Method
* Peel aubergines into lengthwise stripes. To do this, peel off a strip with a peeler and then leave a strip. Repeat all around the aubergines. Heat some oil in a shallow pan and place whole aubergines in it. Fry for 10 minutes. Reserve in the same pan.
* In another pan, heat some olive oil. Add onions and stir for 3-4 minutes. Add ground meat and cook until it soaks up all the juices it lets out. Add diced tomato and stir until cooked. Take off flame and reserve. Stir in chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Mix well.
* Slit fried aubergines in two down the middle leaving the tops and bottoms attached. And pull apart gently. Be careful as you do not want them breaking into two.
* Stuff the cavities formed by the slits with the mincemeat mixture. Decorate with tomatoes and peppers.
* Add 1 cup of hot water over the whole dish, cover and cook in pan on the stove top or in a preheated oven at 400º F till the green peppers are nicely baked.
Ekshili Kofte
These meatballs in egg and lemon sauce are something I learnt from Selin Rosanes.
Ingredients
750 gm lean ground meat
1/3 cup rice
1-½litre water
2 medium carrots, cubed
1 medium potato, cubed
Salt and pepper to taste
1 onion
1 egg
Juice of ½lemon
Method
* Clean and wash rice thoroughly; mix with meat; and form into small balls.
* Boil water in a deep pan; add meatballs. Add carrots, potato, and onion; boil for 30 minutes.
* When done, remove from heat; cool slightly.
* Whisk egg yolk and lemon juice together; whisk mixture into soup.
Note: If you would like a thicker sauce, you can start by cooking 1 tbsp flour in a bit of oil before adding water.
