Tag: Turkish food

  • Istanbul’s Top Five Beaneries

    Istanbul’s Top Five Beaneries

    January 18, 2013, by Istanbul Eats

    cb_ist_beans_ys_final1Until we visited some of Istanbul’s shrines to the baked bean, we generally regarded the dish as something eaten out of a can beside railroad tracks. But Turkey takes this humble food, known as kuru fasulye, seriously; that means chefs in tall toques carefully ladling out golden beans in a rich red gravy onto monogrammed flatware, served by waiters wearing bowties and vests. Even in the least formal of Istanbul’s beaneries, the guy manning the pot has the air of a high priest who knows that his incantations alone conjure something unusually delicious out of a simple dry white legume. This is no hobo fare.

    There are two general schools of bean cooking in Turkey: Black Sea and Anatolian. Beans Black Sea-style sit in a red gravy so thick with butter and laden with chunks of meat that we eat it with a fork and a hearty piece of bread. Anatolian beans, often known as Erzincan beans, are soupier and cooked in a tomato-based sauce without butter and meat. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

    The following are our top five bean joints in town:

    #1, Hanımeli
    The far-flung district of Gaziosmanpaşa might sound like a long distance to travel for a plate of beans, but we’d already tried all of the big-name beans in this city. Selma Usta, who stakes her claim as the only female kuru fasulye master in Istanbul, had no poufy hat and starched white jacket, nor – the pride of most bean masters – a giant copper pot. But don’t be fooled by the looks of this humble little beanery in a drab suburb. It has a fanatical following.

    And the beans were all that. Selma Usta prepares the plump and pale Erzincan variety in tiny batches with materials she sources personally from the city of Tokat, in the heart of Anatolia. She claimed to be holding some secrets, and we believe her. But for us, the defining feature of the dish was the butter, which was like nothing we’d encountered in Turkey. Selma’s farm-fresh Tokat butter gave the dish a strong flavor and filled the dining room with its intoxicating musk. This superior ingredient, like a rocket booster, shot the dish beyond the realm of worldly beans to where it now floats – in our minds at least – in bean heaven.

    Address: 1028. Sokak 4, Gaziosmanpaşa (near the Taşköprü stop on the T4 metro line)
    Telephone: +90 212 477 1706
    Web:
    Hours: 8am-8pm; closed Sunday
     

    #2, Fasuli Lokantası
    The beans at Fasuli Lokantası glow unbelievably orange, as if the chef slipped a little something radioactive in the pot. Whatever the recipe, these beans are among the best we’ve had in Istanbul. Stiffened by a whole lot of butter, the gravy and beans achieve almost the same creamy consistency. The cool, crisp raw onions and pickled hot peppers are a welcome balance to the richness of the dish, although their aroma stays with you long after your meal. Host to a loyal lunch crowd, this white-tablecloth establishment also serves up other Black Sea specialties, including muhlama (a sort of Turkish fondue), stuffed chard leaves and corn bread. The location, across the street from Tophane’s nargile cafés and near the Karaköy waterfront, is an added bonus.

    Address: Kılıç Ali Paşa Caddesi 6, Tophane
    Telephone: +90 212 243 6580
    Web: http://www.fasuli.com.tr/
    Hours: 11am-11pm
     

    #3, Hüsrev
    A severe man in a monogrammed blazer stands at the door to Hüsrev, greeting important patrons who walk in and check their coats without pausing from their telephone conversations. Eavesdrop and you’ll probably overhear major business deals being closed. It’s easy to get so caught up in the charged atmosphere that you forget that everyone has ordered nothing more than a bowl of beans accompanied by a salty yogurt drink. But that’s what’s so pleasurable about Hüsrev, which calls itself the “world’s bean gentleman.” From Hong Kong to Houston, a high-powered business lunch is propelled by a big steak and stiff drinks, but here, deals are sealed over beans.

    The blond and creamy beans, bathed in a rich, red gravy, are certainly worthy of their dedicated following. We got the feeling that every variable in the recipe is tightly controlled by a board of ustas in white coats. With such resources, how could these not be the best beans in Turkey? Indeed, though we could not identify a single flaw, we were a little disappointed to find them only delicious. We were hoping for magic beans that would transform us into rich and successful people like everyone else at Hüsrev. But even though they were the most expensive beans we’d ever eaten, we weren’t that much poorer leaving the place.

    Address: Dedeman İş Merkezi, Yıldız Posta Caddesi 48/1, Esentepe (located next to Dedeman Hotel in Gayrettepe)
    Telephone: +90 212 347 4210
    Web: http://www.husrev.com.tr
    Hours: 11am-9:30pm
     

    #4, Çömlek
    You can’t miss the huge, red clay cauldron sitting behind the counter at Çömlek. The fellow with the big ladle says it’s the pot that makes these beans better than the rest. Cooking vessel aside, a serving of these beans also has the highest meat count of any we’ve tasted in Istanbul. Whereas most beans might have a shred or at best a few nuggets of tender roasted beef in there for flavor, Çömlek’s are crowned with a generous helping of meat. In such a rich dish the meat satisfyingly offsets the cloying beans, leaving the meek still able to walk away and the strong-willed able to order up another half portion. The restaurant, located on the wooded slopes above Üsküdar on the Asian side, is a bit out of the way. But for us, these are beans at their best and worth the trip.

    Address: Turistik Çamlıca Caddesi 50, Çamlıca
    Telephone: +90 216 316 2953
    Web:
    Hours: 11am-11pm
     

    #5, Erzincanlı Ali Baba
    According to historians, Tiryaki Sokak (“Addicts’ Alley”) got its name from the opium served up in its coffeehouses during Ottoman times. Though that substance has long been banned, since 1924 Ali Baba has been ladling out something equally addictive from a great copper pot: Erzincan-style baked beans. Ingredients such as onion, tomato and chili pepper are more recognizable in the soupy base, as the bean is bigger than its Black Sea counterpart. Though we remain junkies of the Black Sea variety, the Erzincan preparation is a nice change of pace and there’s no better place to try a bowl than sitting on Ali Baba’s squat stools in the shadow of the minarets of the sublime Süleymaniye Mosque.

    Address: Prof. Sıddık Sami Onar Cad. 11, Süleymaniye/Fatih
    Telephone: +90 212 513 6219
    Web: http://www.kurufasulyeci.com/
    Hours: 11am-9pm
     
    (top photo by Yigal Schleifer; bottom three photos by Ansel Mullins)
  • World’s Top 10 Cities For Street Food – Istanbul

    World’s Top 10 Cities For Street Food – Istanbul

    The capital of Turkey is paradise for those who love budget travel and a glitzy culture. It’s also a haven for foodies with street food ruling the roost. Here’s a list of the top street food you must try in the vivid souqs and markets of Istanbul –

    Turkey-food

    Midye Dolma is mussels filled with rice, pine nuts, raisins and spices. This is had with a dash of lemon and olive oil

    Borek pies baked with a filling of local cheeses, spinach, or meat are the breakfast favorites as the locals head out to work

    Yaprak Sarma is a dish of vine leaves stiffed with rice, and herbs. It is cooked in olive oil and served with a yogurt sauce

    Doner Durum, a toasted dürüm is served with kaşar cheese and döner meat. Döner is typically lamb, chicken, or beef grilled on a vertical skewer.

    Dilli Kaşarlı is sliced smoked tongue with kaşar.

    Lahmacun is a flatbread served with minced vegetables and minced meat

    A medley of pickled cabbage, pepper, cucumber, and other vegetables served in a spicy juice is sold from street carts across the city.

    Sucuk Ekmek is ground beef and spices served in bread as a sandwich

    Chicken and chickpeas Pilav (steamed rice)is served hot from carts at night

    The luscious food culture of Tukey, Istanbul in particular, is the crown of this tourist paradise.

    via World’s Top 10 Cities For Street Food – Istanbul « Maps of World.

  • Turkey’s Premier Spells Out Trouble for Most Popular Food: Bread

    Turkey’s Premier Spells Out Trouble for Most Popular Food: Bread

    By Emre Peker

    ISTANBUL–Turkey’s most popular food is in trouble.

    On Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned his attention for a brief moment to bread: the backbone of every meal in Turkey, where bakers put out 37 billion loaves a year.

    The premier said wasting bread is tantamount to greed, which lies at the root of economic crises and wars. Turkey, he said, can’t afford to squander 2 billion loaves of bread annually while the country needs to encourage savings and millions worldwide suffer from hunger.

    That catapulted the puffy white loaves of dough, which are not nutritious but filling and rich in flavor, into the center of political debate. It also brought Mr. Erdogan, who is ever-present in the lives of Turkey’s 75 million people but not known for culinary curiosity, into the kitchen.

    “From now on, we must enter a new period in the business of bread. Let’s remove the so-called white bread from our tables, let’s produce pure, genuine wheat bread, and in addition, let’s bring to the table bread with a high ratio of bran in it,” Mr. Erdogan said in Ankara.

    The prime minister’s comments came after a flurry of media reports that private-equity firms including Dubai-based Abraaj Capital and Colony Capital from the U.S. are seeking a 50% stake in Simit Sarayi, Turkey’s top baker of yet another dietary staple: the simit, a local bagel donned with sesame seeds. While the company’s chairman said Simit Sarayi wouldn’t consider offers below $500 million, the valuation seems half-baked at best, people familiar with the talks said.

    To be sure, Mr. Erdogan’s comments let simit off the hook as he sought to fine-tune Turkey’s habits and preferences. And this isn’t the prime minister’s first foray into health matters.

    An avid opponent of cigarettes, Mr. Erdogan has pushed a smoking ban in Turkey in 2008. The prime minister often solicits smokers to quit, collecting their cigarette packs with a date and signature to mark a pledge to stop smoking.

    In a more controversial health-care move, the government pushed through limitations to Caesarian section births after Mr. Erdogan said in May that he is opposed to the procedure. The premier is also against abortions, which he says is a ploy to stunt Turkey’s economic growth, but the government hasn’t yet pushed legislation on that issue.

    Indeed, the health-conscious prime minister’s argument wasn’t strictly related to the public diet. Mr. Erdogan also said Turkey can pay minimum wage salaries to more than 100,000 people or build 500 schools with the money it squanders on wasted bread.

    Thus, the premier joined other officials to encourage a higher savings ratio and build domestic resources for financing Turkey’s economic growth. Currently, the country relies heavily on international funding as it seeks to expand the $800 billion economy by 5% annually to join the world’s top-10 economies in the next decade.

    “We need to be a nation that gets richer as it saves, and saves as it gets richer,” Mr. Erdogan said. “From time to time, we see those who wipe their lips with leftover bread, we cannot be like them.”

    via Turkey’s Premier Spells Out Trouble for Most Popular Food: Bread – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.

  • Elegy for Istanbul’s Inci Pastanesi

    Elegy for Istanbul’s Inci Pastanesi

    We would have liked to like the profiterol at İnci Pastanesi, and to believe their claim that the profiterol was invented on the premises in the 1940s. But in fact, we’ve always appreciated İnci for non-culinary reasons. Until last week, this old-school Beyoğlu pastry shop had been spooning out cream puffs covered in chocolate goop for almost 70 years with respect for tradition and a refreshing contempt for the latest trends in interior design. Our eyes had grown used to resting on its charmingly worn façade as we walked down İstiklal Caddesi. For better or worse, İnci was an institution.

    cb ist inci amullins final1

    Last Friday, we were alarmed to see a line of police and several moving trucks blocking our view of İnci. As we got closer and saw the cargo in the back of one truck – crates of eggs, banged-up stainless steel coolers – we realized that İnci was being gutted. It was a painful sight that, for us at least, represented the final chapter in the story of this neighborhood in the last century.

    For many, the mention of İnci wells up a sentimental memory of the first taste of something sweet in this classic patisserie, but for us, as non-local students of the area’s heritage, it always represented the last of public emblem of Beyoğlu’s non-Muslim community, a culture long on life support. Though the history of İnci – established in 1944 by a Greek migrant from Albania named Lucas Zigoridis (aka Luka Zigori) – is more recent than the late-19th-century heyday of the neighborhood, it was still a part of that tradition.

    Despite the glam pastry scene of İstiklal Caddesi at the time (in an interview with Milliyet, Zigoridis spoke of the stiff competition), the 1940s was a dark period for Beyoğlu, later followed by even darker times. Zigoridis surely saw many of his neighbors and friends shipped off to work camps when the Varlık Vergisi, or “wealth tax,” effectively targeted minorities. A decade into his lease, the shop owner must have feared for his life on September 6-7, 1955 when two days of violent looting trashed nearly every Greek-owned business on İstiklal Caddesi, prompting an exodus of native Greeks from Istanbul to Greece, Europe and North America. And we can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Lucas Bey to continue serving profiterole in the 1970s, after seeing his own son (among many other Istanbul Greeks) forced to emigrate to Greece at a moment’s notice.

    But Lucas Bey stayed put at his shop in the Cercle D’Orient building at İstiklal Caddesi 124, spooning out profiterole through the gritty ’80s and ’90s, when even a porn theater was considered a good neighbor. He must have watched the tailors and other esnaf, the theaters and the old meyhanes slowly disappear until he himself passed away, leaving the keys and the lease with his apprentice, Musa Ateş, who dutifully carried it out to its last days.

    So while it’s nice to think of İnci with a twinge of nostalgia, as a reminder of the era of misyurler and madamlar, we find it hard not to be reminded of the neighborhood’s cultural destruction. Walking into İnci meant stepping into the past, accompanied by all of Beyoğlu’s ghosts. İnci witnessed it all, and the pastry shop’s forced closure after losing an appeal to retain its lease feels like nothing less than a desecration of the memory of this neighborhood.

    We are certain that once the Cercle D’Orient building is demolished and “restored” as a shopping mall, the Istanbul municipality will glue a small plaque commemorating the spot where the İnci once stood. Though a laughable gesture pointing to a failure to protect the neighborhood’s heritage, it will at least make it easier for the ghosts to find their way back to haunt the Gap or the food court or whatever ends up at İstiklal Caddesi 124.

    via Elegy for Istanbul’s Inci Pastanesi | Culinary Backstreets.

  • Culinary Backstreets on CBS Sunday Morning

    Culinary Backstreets on CBS Sunday Morning

    schleifer tursucusu2

    Culinary Backstreets’ co-founders Ansel Mullins and Yigal Schleifer recently spent a few days introducing a crew from the CBS Sunday Morning show to Istanbul’s gastronomic underbelly, at one point journeying in a rickety wooden boat on the Golden Horn in order to get to the next meal. Tagging along on one of CB’s culinary walks, the CBS crew found themselves feasting on grilled lamb’s intestines, artisanal pide and Turkish Delight that’s been made by the same family in the same shop for three generations.

    via Culinary Backstreets on CBS Sunday Morning | Culinary Backstreets.

     

  • Locavore Dining in Istanbul’s Şişhane Nabe

    Locavore Dining in Istanbul’s Şişhane Nabe

    Certain global phenomena, like sushi, the mojito and the sitcom Golden Girls, might have arrived a bit late in Turkey, but as the world scrambles to go local, eat seasonally and connect with traditional culinary roots, Turkey is way ahead of the pack. Gram, chef Didem Şenol’s carefully curated locavore deli in Şişhane, feels perfectly in step with the stripped- down style that chefs from New York to New Zealand are favoring today.

    CB ist Gram AMullins final1One of Turkey’s best-known female chefs, Şenol is part of an ancient Eastern Mediterranean cooking guild that ferrets out the best of what’s around and lets the materials do the heavy lifting. The food reflects a connection with the land and the seasons that was never lost in Turkey, despite the country’s rapid modernization and urbanization. And while the menu at Gram is also undeniably contemporary, it’s nothing fancy.

    That restraint is what we like so much about Şenol’s cooking at Lokanta Maya and what led us to the small, vaulted room that makes up the entire dining and cooking area at Gram. Though the end results are often recognizable in the Turkish culinary canon, the starting point of every dish is a raw material, not a recipe. This process is apparent in the cooking at Maya, and Şenol has made it even more accessible at Gram. Here, diners step up to the buffet and assemble their own combo lunch from the day’s specials, choosing either two or four dishes out of the eight to 10 available (which usually include salads, cold mezes, pastries and fish), for a quick lunch in view of the open kitchen. It almost feels like eating at an esnaf lokantası, or tradesmen’s restaurant – if an esnaf lokantası were headed by one of Istanbul’s top young chefs and the esnaf were composed of ladies who lunch.

    On a recent visit, we joined the other diners around the communal table and ate a delicious, chunky take on “tuna fish” with palamut (bonito), coriander seeds and orange peel. The fresh mint in yogurt, so thick it had a peanut butter effect on the roof of the mouth, muffled our cries of delight. In a spinach salad, bright pomegranate seeds harmonized with a crumbled goat’s milk tulum cheese, which was funky from the goatskin it was aged in. One of our favorites, çerkez tavuğu, seemed too precious to be eaten with a fork; we savored it on the fresh sourdough served alongside our food.

    In the venue’s front entrance area, homemade sweet and savory pastries are lovingly displayed on a long, white counter, perfect for breakfast on the go or a leisurely dessert after lunch. Gram also has a nice selection of Turkish wines and is open for private dinner events.

    Şenol has earned bragging rights in this town: she is the author of an excellent cookbook, was named Best Chef of 2010 by Time Out Istanbul, and runs two bustling restaurants. Yet she is still a humble chef who credits the popularity of her cooking to the quality of the materials she uses. Apparently, there’s one global trend yet to reach Turkey – the chef’s oversized ego.

    Address: Meşrutiyet Caddesi 107/D, Beyoğlu

    Telephone: +90 212 243 1048

    Web:

    Hours: 8:30am-5:30pm; closed Sunday

    (photos by Ansel Mullins)

    via Locavore Dining in Istanbul’s Şişhane Nabe | Culinary Backstreets.