Özlem Warren - Özlems Turkish Table: Recipes from My Homeland

Dedication

For my dear parents, Glin and Orhan, for their passion for Turkish cuisine and continuously inspiring us; and for planting the seeds of a love for good food and the joy of sharing to us. And also to my dear husband, Angus and our children Mark Can and Emma Glin, for all their love, support, patience and understanding.

Copyright

Copyright

Foreword

My love affair with Turkey and Turkish food has spanned more than 30 years and, over those years, it has found a culinary voice in numerous articles and a handful of books. There are few places in the world where the cuisine is so rich and diverse, where the people are so friendly and keen to share, and where the hospitality shines like a bright beacon. With her nostalgic stories of family feasts and growing up in the Antakya region the land of pistachios, bulgur, red pepper sauce, hot red pepper, and pomegranate molasses zlem has managed to bring the culinary culture alive. Another title for her book could be Swimming with Watermelons as the image of her doing that as a child in the family courtyard fountain where she grew up is what stories are all about.

My own Turkish story began in the ancient city of Bursa where I worked for a year and then travelled the length and breadth of the country, often invited into the humblest of homes to sample the regional specialities of the Black Sea, where hazelnuts and anchovies rule the table; Eastern and Central Anatolia where special cheeses are stored underground, stews are cooked in earthenware urns and sealed with bread dough, and ancient noodle traditions pop up in different versions of mant; and to southern Anatolia for a memorable week-long wedding ceremony with great family gatherings and a mesmerizing array of traditional dishes, such as the dried aubergine dolma filled with fine bulgur combined with chili and tomato paste and the infamous mother-in-laws kfte which involve sealing a spicy minced meat mixture inside the meat and bulgur shell to represent the sealing of the newdaughter- in-laws lips.

When I ended up working in Istanbul for several years, my office was perched high above Istiklal Caddesi on the top floor of an archaic building with an unstable, caged lift but the view was magnificent right across the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn and out to the Marmara Sea with the sound of the Muezzin echoing across the water from all sides and the sight of great tankers from Russia ploughing through the city from the Black Sea. It was simply mesmerizing and reminded me every day how the great Ottomans must have felt at the height of their Empire with such strategic domination under their feet. From the Topkap Palace, just across the water from my office, they ruled the seas and the trade routes for 500 years and their industrious cooks created a remarkable culinary legacy, the Saray (Palace) cuisine, which includes succulent dishes like sweet and savoury pastries, indulgent milk puddings, and stuffed vegetables cooked in olive oil.

Historically and culturally, Turkey is a fascinating country of extraordinarily beautiful landscapes, bountiful seas and rich agriculture which contribute to the fresh, healthy, vivid cuisine captured in this book with its refreshing emphasis on the cooking of the southern region, the Gney cuisine. With its geographical proximity to Syria and the Arab influence, the region is a melting pot of religious faiths, languages and culinary cultures culminating in a uniquely robust and spicy cuisine. Greet a Turk and you will eat is a saying that is demonstrated by zlem every day as she shares her passion for her Turkish cuisine in her classes and talks, in her blogs, and now in this precious book, zlems Turkish Table in which she proudly puts the cooking of her southern homeland firmly on the culinary map.

Ghillie Baan

Writer, broadcaster and food anthropologist, with highly-acclaimed books on the cuisines of Turkish, Middle East and South-east Asia