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A Great Place to Eat in Gaziantep

Wouldn't you want to eat at a place where you're greeted with a smile like this?

And where the food is as pleasing as the smile?

The place is Bayindir Kebap Salonu, a restaurant specializing in kebabs. It's located in a busy shopping area in the old part of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey.

The kebabs are cooked over the coals (above), then served with fresh flat breads that are lightly greased by rubbing them with the kebabs.   

Here is adana, minced lamb.

Spicy chicken kebabs (above) are wonderful. 

The kebabs are sprinkled with chopped parsley and slivers of red bell pepper and onions. 

Big super-fresh mint sprigs go on each plate. 

A spicy vinegary salad of tomato, cucumber and lettuce (above) is nice with the kebabs.

The food is made to order. Vegetables are chopped with this huge knife.

Pitchers of water are on each table.

Better with this food is the yogurt drink ayran (above), foamed up in a dispenser outside. The way to drink it is with a spoon from a bowl, like soup. I couldn't resist buying one of these sets before leaving Gaziantep.

For a traveler, finding a decent restaurant can be a challenge, especially when there is no one to ask because you can't speak the language. But this restaurant was bright and open with great vibes, worth investigating. And the food turned out to be as good as intuition said it would be.   

Photos by Barbara Hansen

For Indonesian Food, Try Simpang Asia

Indonesia had a heyday in Los Angeles, when people like Ann Soeleiman and Daniel Ungerer promoted its food.

Ungerer taught Indonesian cooking for the City of Pasadena. Soeleiman opened a restaurant that she named Borobudur after the famous monument near Yogyakarta.  With their input, words such as krupuk (fried chips), ayam (chicken), goreng (fried) and daging (meat) became part of my everyday cooking vocabulary.

That era may be gone, but Indonesian food is still alive and well in Los Angeles, thanks to the restaurant Simpang Asia. 

Simpang is not only a place to eat but a market that stocks Indonesian ingredients such as sweet soy sauce (kecap manis), candlenuts and shrimp paste (terasi) as well as ingredients for other Asian cuisines.

One meaning of simpang is crossroad, according to my Indonesian dictionary. This is appropriate for a place that, through its market, offers access to a variety of cuisines and is located on a curving stretch of National Boulevard that links Motor and Overland Avenues.

The food is primarily from Java, the largest of the Indonesian islands, where the cooking is sweeter. Sumatran food is hotter. Simpang's mantep Padang, a Sumatran dish of chicken in a coconut milk curry (above), is mild, but the beef, egg and green sambals that come with it are spicy. 

The fourth accompaniment is a kale curry so appealing that it ought to be elevated to a main dish. Kale also comes in fried rice and a stir-fry, not to be trendy but as a substitute for daun singkong (cassava leaf), which is not readily available here. 

Padang is the capital of West Sumatra and so any dish called Padang is Sumatran. Another example at Simpang is sate Padang (beef sate). It's served with lontong, cubes of compressed rice (above). Simpang also offers Padang style kalio chicken curry.  

The restaurant's most popular dish is nasi bungkus (above). Nasi means rice and bungkus means package, because the dish comes like a gift, wrapped with banana leaves, then white paper and tied with string.

Inside is a complete meal--rice along with chicken curry, beef rendang (beef in coconut curry), an egg in spicy red sauce and a mixed vegetable curry that includes chayote, carrots and green beans (above).

Another meal-in-a-dish is festival rice (at the top), which centers around a cone of golden rice. Two types of rice, jasmine and long grain, are soaked overnight with turmeric, then cooked with coconut milk, lemongrass and bay leaves. This dish was inspired by nasi tumpeng, a ceremonial presentation of cone-shaped yellow rice.    

At Simpang Asia, festival rice comes with beef rendang, scrambled egg, noodles, chicken sate with peanut sauce and a sweet and spicy snack so addictive that for me it was the highlight of the dish. It's emping pedas, crispy chips that Simpang packages for the market.  

Smoky-tasting fried egg noodles, mie tek tek (above), also come with enough sides to be a meal.

The curry noodle soup laksa (above) is yellow with turmeric and aromatic with seasonings such as lemon grass, galangal, ginger, shrimp paste and chile oil. Along with noodles, the soup contains shrimp, squid and fish cake.   

Willy Effendy from Jakarta is in charge of the kitchen. One of my favorite dishes from the long menu is ayam penyet, slightly crispy fried chicken with Chinese eggplant in a spicy dark sauce flavored with shrimp paste (above). The chicken is marinated overnight to make it extra tasty. 

The standout among the starters is croquettes (kroket in Indonesian), fried balls of potato dough filled with chicken, accompanied by a sweet peanut sauce (above).

After all these rich flavors, it's good to finish with an icy dessert. Es teler (above) is shaved ice with avocado, jackfruit, coconut and sweetened condensed milk.

Smoothies include one made with durian, but the most typical drink is es cendol, a cool combination of coconut milk, palm sugar and green squiggles. The pandan-flavored squiggles are made at the restaurant with mung bean flour. They add a fun chewiness to the drink.

After eating, it's time to shop.  Along with groceries, the market contains a coffee and sandwich bar that is handy for days when you're in too much of a hurry to savor Simpang's flavorful dishes. There's parking in the mall lot and a valet to help find a space. 

Simpang Asia, 10433 National Blvd.,  Los Angeles, CA 90034. Tel: (310) 815-9075. The website is www.SimpangAsia.com. 

Turkey's Refreshing Red Plum Drink

My refrigerator has been crammed with jars of erik suyu, a red plum drink from Turkey, but it took only one heat wave to eradicate them all.

I drink this luscious concoction straight or dilute it with water. Best of all is a fizzy drink topped with pink foam, produced by adding gingerale. In any form, this drink is great in the middle of a steamy night or throughout the day.

The only way you can get erik suyu here is to make it yourself, which is easy. Steps and the recipe follow. I first tasted it at Zencefil, a vegetarian restaurant in Istanbul (above).

Zencefil not only makes the juice drink but a plum sorbet, plum ice cream, a plum tart and plum cheesecake, at least those were on the menu (above) when I was there in June.

Luckily, I was with food writer and historian Nazli Piskin. Nazli's an excellent cook (follow her on Instagram under Nazli Piskin and Edible Istanbul) and she told me how to make the drink. To explain the name, erik is Turkish for plum and suyu is juice.

The first step (above) is to place washed plums in a bowl and add sugar.

After the plums stand for an hour or two, turn them into a large pot, add water and a stick of cinnamon and boil the plums until very tender.

The plums will float as they boil, and the skins will turn the water a beautiful red. After they cool, work them through a sieve with fine holes, a few at a time. Discard the seeds and skins. Strain the juice into a bowl. 

Now stir the plums into the reserved juice, taste and add more sugar if wanted. Then bottle, refrigerate and watch it disappear. I drank my last batch so quickly there was no chance to share, but it would be lovely in a pitcher for a summer party.

ERIK SUYU
Red Plum Drink
From Nazli Piskin, Istanbul

15 red plums, about 3 pounds
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 cups water
1 stick cinnamon

Wash the plums well. Place them in a large bowl. Coat them with the sugar and let stand at least 1 hour or longer.

Turn the plums into a Dutch oven (Nazli uses a pressure cooker). Add the water, rinsing out the bowl with some of it. Add the cinnamon stick.

Bring the plums to a boil and boil until very  soft, 30 to 40 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the plums stand until cooled, at least 1 hour.

Place a sieve with small holes over a large bowl. Place 1/3 of the plums in the sieve. Working with a heavy-bottomed glass or small jar, force as much pulp as possible through the sieve. Discard the skins, seeds and cinnamon stick.

Repeat with the remaining plums, in two batches.

Strain the liquid in the Dutch oven into another bowl. If any bits of plum are in the liquid, put them through the sieve.

Combine the sieved plums and the liquid and stir.  Taste and add more sugar if wanted, but the mixture should be sweet enough.

Pour into clean storage jars, cover and refrigerate. Serve as is, over ice, diluted with water, or in a pitcher with ice for a party.

Makes about 9 cups or 10 servings.  

Crocker & Starr's Classy Napa Wines

It's fascinating to notice how a wine can change as you drink it, like a chameleon.

At first taste, Crocker & Starr's 2004 Cabernet Franc was magnificent--this didn't change. Later, when I tasted it with food, I caught a nuance of age. Similarly, the 2013 Cabernet Franc at first seemed young and almost brash. With lunch, it opened up gloriously. (These wines are in the top photo, from left to right, with the 2011 in between.)

Not that this matters to the consumer. The 2004 Cab Franc is a library wine, no longer available; the 2013 (above) is sold out, to restaurants. 

But if you have a cool $120 to spare, you can get Crocker & Starr's 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon, from vines 40 or more years old, when it is released in September. 

"It's the piece de resistance," said winemaker Pam Starr (above) at a pouring of Crocker & Starr wines at A.O.C. Crocker is Charlie Crocker, descended from railroad pioneer Charles Crocker. 

In 1971, Crocker bought a historic winery and vineyard at St. Helena in the Napa Valley. In 1997, Crocker & Starr was founded, with Starr as partner, winemaker and manager. This September will be their 20th harvest together. 

Talking with Starr, you get the feeling that each wine is a piece de resistance, because she puts so much dedication and expertise into them, skills honed since she started in the wine business in the 1980s.

For example, the 20ll Cabernet Franc is "super beautiful," she said at the lunch. "I'm very proud of it."

At the same time, she's modest about her work. "I'm really just a guide and a translator of what the grapes want to do," she said. But she's also a soil expert, which helps to get the grapes right in the first place. 

"We have some of the best Cabernet Franc in the Valley," she said. Still, it's a challenge. "Cab Franc is not easy. Period," she said. "The grape varieties I work with are very difficult." 

For her, the challenges can be fun. "I've been having a really good time with Malbec," she said.  At the tasting, she poured the sixth edition of The Casali, a blend of 69% Malbec, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon and 6% Cabernet Franc, from 2013. (The blend changes each year.)  

Casali means farmhouse, she said, but her translation is more fun--"party barn"--and fits with her light-hearted view of what she calls "a crazy grape." The label (above) is fun too. 

Starr studied Malbec at Cahors, France, tasted "abysmal" Malbecs here and went to South America for further research. 

She calls The Casali "a summer barbecue wine," although at $80 you might not want to be that casual about it. However, in Argentina, Malbec is the classic wine for barbecues. Starr liked the way it went with A.O.C.'s grilled hanger steak with roquefort butter, shallots and French fries (above), a pairing that would be right at home in Argentina.   

Putting first things last, the 2015 Sauvignon Blanc that Starr poured as guests arrived showed the same care as the reds. "We've a very red-centric universe," she said, "but whites deserve to be celebrated too." This wine is 100% Sauvignon Blanc. Another, a Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon blend, is in a line called Bridesmaid. 

"I don't believe anyone is going to get famous with Sauvignon Blanc," Starr said, but she made it anyway in a distinctive Napa style, with the hope of bringing people back to this varietal.

The 2015 Sauvignon Blanc comes in a Sancerre style bottle (Sancerre in France is noted for Sauvignon Blanc). It is lean and elegant, fitting Starr's goal to bring '"delicious wines to the table." While her other wines may seem costly--wines of this quality are never cheap--you can have this one for $34.