As the weekend approaches, Istanbul Eats has a valuable tip on one of Istanbul's best-kept secrets: the massive (and well-priced) brunch buffets served up in several of the Ottoman-era pavilions found inside some of the city's parks. From IE's report:
On a hot summer day, the thought of sitting in a cramped kahvalti salonu does not whet the appetite nor does prospect of paying a hefty hesap to eat breakfast at one of the swanky hotels that line Bosphorus. It sometimes seems that you have to travel to Bursa to eat a reasonably priced breakfast in peaceful surroundings. Thankfully, that is not the case.
In a move that would appall the Padishah (but one we thoroughly approve of), the Istanbul Municipality welcomes the hungry masses into some of the most stunning historic Ottoman-era properties around town for an all-you-can-eat breakfast at rock bottom prices. For 30 TL you can stand in line to gawk at the dusty furniture in Dolmabahce Palace Museum, or for 27.50TL you can lounge around and eat like a king at one of eight park-side imperial residences scattered throughout the city.
Lately, we’ve visited the Hidiv Kasri in Beykoz, the Malta Kosku in Yildiz Park and we intend to check the other six palaces of breakfast off the list in due course. With no less than sixty options of cheese, eggs, jams, honeys, pastries, olives, seasonal fruits and vegetables no one is walking out of here hungry but, truth be told, the quality is about what you’d expect at a mid-range hotel breakfast. No one item on the buffet blew us away but everything was of a good standard, fresh and, of course, plentiful. The service, however, is excellent and the setting is what you are paying for, however little.
Istanbul is probably one of the few cities in the world where a person armed with little more than pluck, a tuxedo and a set of four-foot-long skewers can build an empire out of selling grilled intestines (or kokorec, as they are called in Turkish). That is the story of Vahap Usta, a nattily dressed Turkish culinary entrepreneur who, starting with a single food cart in the heart of old Istanbul, went on to own a mini kingdom of some 33 stands selling kokorec and drive around town in a white Mercedes. After peaking in the 1990's, though, the legendary Vahap Usta somehow lost it all and ended up disappearing from Istanbul's culinary scene.
That is, until now. Istanbul Eats recently caught up with what they describe as the "Willy Wonka of kokorec," finding him once again slinging intestines dressed in his trademark tuxedo and trying to make a new start with a new cart in one of Istanbul's tonier neighborhoods. From their report:
The legend of Vahap Usta lives on in Facebook pages (“Vahap Usta Neredesin?/Where are you Vahap Usta?” asks one) and through claims of recent sightings and nostalgic blog posts of encounters long past. But for quite a while no one seemed to know what exactly happened to the kokoreç King himself. Our attention was brought to this story by friend and fellow trencherman Salih abi, author of the great food blog Harbi Yiyorum. We followed false leads for a year before we finally found Vahap Usta, working at his kokoreç counter on a commercial strip in the Sisli neighborhood.
Turkey is rife with urban legends about the kebab maker who slips donkey meat into his mince to lower costs or the sausage maker whose sucuk (spicy beef sausage) is actually made of horse meat. Turns out these tales are not just the product of the Turkish imagination, with recent inspections made by Turkey's Ministry of Agriculture indicating that several products found on supermarket shelves contain some very troubling ingredients.
The ministry's investigation first took aim at three brands of honey, which were selling at prices that seemed too good to be true. It turned out that what was being offered as honey was actually mostly glucose syrup. But the investigators' further discoveries were even more disturbing, turning up a "beef" product made of horse meat and several other meat products made with a kind of "white slime" (chicken bone and skin). From Today's Zaman:
The Food, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Ministry has named six companies that its audits have discovered are deceiving customers by providing misleading information about the ingredients of the products.
In a written statement before the weekend, the ministry said laboratory analysis of the companies’ products had revealed that there was vegetable oil in “tulum” cheese, horsemeat in “fried beef,” white meat in “100 percent beef bologna” and undefined tissue as well as internal organs in “skinless sausages.”
As anyone who has visited Turkey knows, the fruits and vegetables there taste, well, simply more like what fruits and vegetables should taste like. To anyone used to the mealy, flavorless tomatoes sold in American supermarkets, their first taste of a vine-ripened Turkish tomato is likely a revelation.
But a new report by Greenpeace's German branch could make that tomato and other Turkish fruits and vegetables a little less appetizing. From the Green Prophet blog:
Of 76 different fruits and vegetables recently evaluated, Turkish peppers contained the most excessive and dangerous amounts of pesticide chemicals, according to Food Without Pesticides, a new 26-page guide to European food released this week by Greenpeace Germany.
Turkish peppers topped the list of “most contaminated” produce in the guide, with an average of 24 chemical substances found in the specimens analyzed. In second place, with an average of 10 chemical substances, were Turkish pears. Nine chemical substances were found in Turkish pears, on average, putting them at third place.
Eleven different Turkish crops were rated, using 582 samples. The guide used a green/yellow/red light system to show its ratings, with a red light meaning that more than one-third of the samples had dangerous levels of chemicals in them.
As previously reported on this blog, efforts by the Turkish government to set a limit on the size of bluefish (lufer in Turkish) that can be commercially caught in the waters of the Bosphorus, in order to save the fish from being wiped out, have been met by angry protests from fishermen. But now the story has taken a more violent turn, after a gang of fisherman allegedly attacked the head of fishing cooperative who had become a vocal critic of illegal fishing on the Bosphorus. From Hurriyet:
The head of a fisheries association was allegedly shot by a gang of illegal fishermen in Istanbul for his stance against the illegal practice.
Ahmet Aslan lost his left eye in an armed attack while he was sitting in a teahouse in Istanbul's Rumelikavağı neighborhood, broadcaster NTV reported on its website.
"There is a gang with trawlers, and we are under constant threat," Aslan was quoted as saying.
Defne Koryürek, an activist who has been campaigning against trawler fishing for some time, said it was “horrifying” that illegal fishers were now bold enough to try and assassinate people.
Koryürek said the number of illegal fishing boats in Istanbul had increased from around 50 in the last year to nearly 300 this year.
In a helpful blog post on the subject, Istanbul-based Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink takes a look at the trouble on the Bosphorus and suggests that the problem goes deeper than just illegal fishing. From her blog, "Journalist in Turkey":
Today brings two great Turkish culinary road trip reports. Robyn Eckhardt and Dave Hagerman of the superlative EatingAsia blog, who have been eating their way through the heart of Turkey over the last few weeks, offer up a very enticing post from the city of Kastamonu, known for its bastirma (air-cured beef). From their post:
Kastamonu native Bayram Sari has owned his butcher shop, where he sells beef and his own pastirma and sucuk (sausage), for a little over 15 years. The enormous sides of beef hanging in his window are from Simmental, a breed of dairy and beef cow that can weigh up to 400+ kilos.
Bayram Bey makes his pastirma in a "secret" location about 45 minutes from downtown, he says. Curing is done from September to November, after summer has well and truly finished but before the worst of Kastamonu's bitter winter begins. To make the pastirma, beef loin and flank are rubbed with salt and air dried it for one to two months; the cemen coating is added after the meat is dried. Kastamonulu love their pastirma -- Bayram Bey figures he sells about 1.5 to 2 tons of the cured meat every year.
"That's no good," he said, pointing to a bag in my lap bearing the name of a pastirma shop next to the truck from which Bayram Bey's carcasses were being unloaded. "You have to try my pastirma!"
He had his shop assistant shave us a couple hundreds grams off a hunk in the display case. It was indeed delicious: not quite as dry as bresaola, supple and rich in flavor, tasting of beef first and then of garlic and spices. He also gifted us a few links of delicious sucuk which, with their hit of cumin, had me wishing for a soft corn tortilla. Go figure.
Veteran Turkey correspondent Andrew Finkel is also a noted food lover and a superb writer on culinary matters. In a column in today's International Herald Tribune, Finkel takes a wide ranging look at the history of Turkish kebab and its role in today's globalized culture. From his column:
Can any one cuisine call the kebab its own? Was the meat skewer born somewhere — or everywhere, of the primal urge to put flesh to fire?
This year commemorates the 50th year that Turks were first recruited to work in Germany. Many believe that these gastarbeiter managed to wriggle a way into their hosts’ affection by presenting to them an alternative to wurst. A cylinder of meat spinning on an upright spit in front of a vertical open fire — the famous döner kebab — became Germans’ entrée into the culture of their new neighbors. Or so they thought. But no less an authority than The Economist claims that the kebab is an example of cultural reflux: a bit of ethnicity cultivated in Germany and transplanted back to Turkey, where it then thrived.
This argument is pooh-poohed by someone who should know: Beyti Güler, the Horatio Alger of grilled meat and probably the only man alive to have a kebab named in his honor. After spending his boyhood peddling fruit from a barrow in the abattoir district on the outskirts of Istanbul, Güler was to turn his family’s kitchen into the landmark restaurant that bears his (first) name. He opened his first grill house in 1945, but he was soon forced to move it to a barn of a place in order to cope with the throngs who queued up for the house specialty: lamb and beef döner kebab cooked in front of a wall of oak charcoal. In 1983, Beyti’s moved to even grander premises near the airport.
As previously reported on this blog, Turkey's stock of lufer (bluefish), a staple of Istanbul fish shacks and restaurants, is rapidly dwindling. In response, the government has now set a new size limit on commercially caught lufer, a move which provoked a sea-borne protest by Istanbul fishermen. From Hurriyet:
A group of fishermen yesterday protested a decision by the Ministry of Agriculture to ban the catching of small-sized bluefish.
Vessel traffic on the Bosporus Strait was briefly interrupted as some 150 fishing boats set sail on the strait to protest the recent regulations.
The Food, Agriculture and Livestock Ministry in September increased the minimum catch size from 14 to 20 centimeters for bluefish and from 30 to 45 centimeters for grouper.
The boats carried banners that read “Chaos in the sector,” “Do not touch my bluefish,” “1 million fishermen are victims” and “There is no research, just a ban.”
The Treehugger blog, meanwhile, reports about ongoing efforts to save the lufer, including the recent launch of the first annual "Bluefish Holiday." From the blog, which also provides more background on the new lufer fishing policy:
Can a type of mushroom grown in Turkey's Anatolian heartland help fight cancer and Alzheimer's? Some Turkish scientists apparently believe so. From Hurriyet:
A study led by Muğla University has claimed that certain kinds of fungi from Anatolia may have a curing effect on lung cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Associate Professor Mehmet Duru said the study was focused on testing types of non-poisonous Anatolian fungi for possibly treating certain types of cancer, as well as Alzheimer’s disease. Duru said the results have been significant.
"We have discovered that under lab conditions, the matters with which we have been testing completely destroyed lung cancer cells and were much more effective than any other existing cancer medications," said Duru.
The fungi types at hand were also stated to have an effect on slowing down the progress of Alzeimer’s disease.
The rest of the article can be found here. And while it may not fight disease, keme -- another fungus that grows in Anatolia -- is a springtime staple in southeastern Turkish kitchens and kebab houses. A bit more on keme (the "Mesopotamian Truffle" as some call it) here.
Turkey, despite its reputation as a country of smokers, has in recent years begun to institute stricter tobacco control measures. Beyond forbidding smoking indoors and in public places, new laws mandate that scenes of people smoking in movies or television shows be blurred out.
But anti-smoking advocates might be taking things too far. According to Today's Zaman, a Turkish trade organization is proposing Turkey change the name of "sigara boregi," a savory dish made by rolling phyllo dough around crumbled cheese and whose name means "cigarette pastry," because consuming it might encourage children and others to smoke. From the article:
The city of Sakarya is exerting efforts to change the name of the traditional Turkish “sigara böreği” (cigarette pastry) in order to discourage smoking.
The issue will be discussed at the next Council of Chairmen meeting of the Sakarya Union of Tradesmen and Artisans' Chambers (SESOB). Sakarya Restaurants Chamber Chairman Erdal Kurtuldu supports changing what is truly a household name in Turkey, saying: “We felt uncomfortable associating smoking with a food we love. It is time to think about changing the name.”
A new name for the popular pastry will be chosen by SESOB from suggestions posted by the public on the association's website.
