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An Almost Wine-less Trip to Turkey

I drink wine often at home but gave it up while traveling in Turkey because alcoholic drinks are forbidden to Muslims, and I wanted to respect that.  

At a cocktail reception I attended, the cocktails were fruit juice, even though the hotel where this event took place had a beautiful bar.

I became so used to doing without that when I saw people laughing and drinking beer at outdoor cafes in Istanbul, it looked odd and unappealing.

I did have wine one evening, at Bayazhan Restaurant in Gaziantep, a beautiful place with vaulted ceilings like a historical monument (above).  Wine was poured there at a dinner during Gaziantep's inaugural Bulgur Festival.

This is a closer look at the label. The words kirmizi sek şarap under 2013 mean dry red wine. Read more about Kayra wines by clicking here. 

Dinner started with a yogurt soup that contained cubes of lamb, chick peas and, in honor of the Bulgur Festival, grains of bulgur wheat.

Meatball-like Arab kofte in spicy thick yogurt (above) were made of bulgur rather than meat, again in honor of the festival.

Dolma--stuffed dried eggplant and peppers--contained meat and rice (above). We also ate çiğ köfte, Turkey's version of steak tartare, made with raw lamb instead of beef. The lamb is "cooked" with spices rubbed into it by hand. 

Kebabs are much loved in Turkey. The plate above included delicious chicken and lamb kebabs. Ground lamb kebabs had taken on the flavor of the eggplant with which they were grilled.

Another course was roast lamb to eat with rice pilaf studded with pistachios and currants (above).

The dinner included cheese-stuffed borek. This one looked like a pastry (above) but was made entirely of cheese, sprinkled with nigella and sesame seeds. 

In the eastern part of Turkey, each town has its own special cheese. Four of these were on a plate along with dried figs, apricots, raisins, olives, walnuts, cucumbers and tomatoes. On the left is a salad of walnuts with tiny olives. 

Another salad combined purslane with onions, sweet red peppers, tomato and flecks of red chile. The purslane salads in Gaziantep were delightful, and I noticed how common that green was in markets there (above). The Turkish word for purslane (verdolaga) is semizotu. 

For dessert, there was carrot baklava (above), which includes no carrots but is named for its long slim shape. The Turkish way to eat this is by hand, turned upside down so that the syrupy layer is on top. 

The restaurant also brought out a beautiful fruit plate (above).

The way out led through this spacious terrace, a romantic place to have Turkish coffee or tea after dinner.  

Note: This dinner took place during Gaziantep's bulgur festival in 2016. I postponed publishing it because of terrorism incidents at that time and the more recent denial of visas to American citizens. Would I return to Turkey now? Absolutely. The food and people are wonderful. I would love to spend time again in markets, bakeries, restaurants and book stores, aspects of Turkish culture overshadowed by more sensational news.  

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

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.  

Bulgur Gets Its Own Food Festival

This is sushi, right? Yes, but with a difference. It's made with bulgur wheat instead of rice.

You've eaten rice in a pineapple in Thai restaurants. Here the pineapple is stuffed with bulgur.

I ate as much of this as I could. It's a sort of cheesecake made with bulgur. Delicious.

Bulgur risotto, bulgur ravioli (above), bulgur-stuffed artichokes--almost anything you could think of turned up at the recent Bulgur Festival in Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey. 

Even desserts such as the syrup-soaked shredded pastry kadayif (above) were tweaked to include bulgur.

Why a bulgur festival in this city? Because Gaziantep produces 70% of Turkey's annual output of more than 1 million tons of bulgur, serving as a processing center for wheat grown in the region.

If you're new to bulgur, it's wheat that has been cleaned, boiled and dried, then ground into a variety of sizes. 

The weekend festival promoted bulgur in the best possible way--by letting people eat as much as they could. The opening display of 101 bulgur dishes (above) was quickly demolished when ceremonies and speeches were over.  

Booths dispensed Turkish dishes such as pilaf and the bulgur salad kesir. One offered freshly boiled wheat called hedik, sweetened and combined with crushed pistachios. 

Cig kofte (above) is Turkey's version of steak tartare, made with raw lamb kneaded with bulgur and red peppers fermented until black. Eating it wrapped in a lettuce leaf is Prof. Dr. Mustafa Bayram of the Food Engineering Department of the University of Gaziantep. He's a leading authority on bulgur. 

Bulgur manufacturers were on hand to talk about their products and offer generous tastes. I saw long yellow grains of bulgur that could be cooked like rice. And bulgur combined with roasted vermicelli so that cooks preparing bulgur this way don't have to roast the vermicelli separately. 

Panels focused on how good bulgur is for you and how easy it is to cook--the grains have been boiled already, so they cook quickly. And how seamlessly bulgur blends into almost any cuisine. 

To prove this, chefs from international restaurants in Istanbul showed off their innovations. Olivier Piste, executive chef of the Shangri-La Hotel (above), made a bulgur salad with fried squid.

Giovanni Terricciato of the Movenpick Hotel (above) made risotto with eggplant, tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, sprinkling it with pistachios--Gaziantep is also the pistachio capital of Turkey.

You'll never find chicken biryani with bulgur in India. Nevertheless, Chef Imran Rana of Musafir Indian Restaurant (above) gave it a try, and festival goers clustered around as he showed how to cook it in authentic dum style, layered in a pot sealed with dough (above). 

Korean bibim bap with bulgur (above) was a great success.

I liked the way TV chef Yunus Emre Akkor, an authority on Ottoman cuisine (above), cooked bulgur with clarified butter and turmeric, then suggested using it as the base for sautéed lamb. Ottoman gourmands prized yellow foods, he said. If they didn't have saffron, they used turmeric. 

A fierce downpour with thunder and lightning sent people scurrying to tents and umbrellas. Others jammed into an open-air pavilion where food was handed to you as soon as you sat down.

Some escaped the rain in the restaurant Senfoni. My lunch plate there (above) included the bulgur salad kesir, a yogurt, eggplant and meat salad, another salad with tomatoes and walnuts and flat bread.

But mostly, the weather was good, and people enjoyed picnicking on the grounds. The camel behind this group is covered with bulgur. 

Outside in city markets bulgur is always on display because it is heavily used in Turkish cuisine. 

At a gala dinner (above), every course included bulgur. Sourdough bread was made with bulgur flour. Starters included diced beets in yogurt with bulgur. A creamy mixture blended two types of yogurt with bulgur, caramelized onions and spicy oil. Kesir was dressed up with squid ink, shrimp and pistachios.

A ring of golden turmeric yogurt surrounded beef cheek stew with bulgur "meatballs," spicy tomato sauce and thyme salad (above). 

Lamb shank (above) came with firik and bulgur risotto and bulgur crisps. Firik (freekeh) is freshly harvested wheat that is parched, not boiled like bulgur.

Dessert (above) was a bulgur tour de force. Even the cake was made with bulgur. Bulgur ice cream on a bed of caramelized puffed bulgur was fabulous.

What impressed me was that all the dishes at the festival "worked." Nothing seemed odd or forced. Bulgur was created thousands of years ago, the first processed food made from wheat. Thank heavens that happened. The first dish I cooked when I got home was bulgur pilaf. Even if you cook only that, you will have a great dish in your repertoire. 

Photos by Barbara Hansen

A Turkish Cooking Class in Gaziantep

I'm now making the most delicious Turkish pilaf. It's bulgur pilaf, packed with bright and healthy things such as bell peppers and tomatoes. And it's so easy you could throw it together at the last minute for dinner or to take to a party.  

The recipe is from Kamuran Dover (at the top), a caterer and cooking teacher in Gaziantep, a city in southeastern Turkey that is on UNESCO's list of places with great gastronomy.

As part of a group attending Gaziantep's inaugural bulgur festival, I went to Dover's home for a cooking class. Her spotless apartment was set up not just for the class but for an elegant dinner afterward.

We crowded into the kitchen, taking notes as she prepared more food than we could possibly eat. The pilaf came first, starting with the sautéing of vegetables in olive oil (above). To these she added tomato and red pepper pastes and canned tomatoes. 

Then in went coarse bulgur, water, salt and generous pats of butter (above). The butter came from Ardahan, a province in northeastern Turkey known for agriculture and livestock.

Without the butter, the pilaf becomes an excellent dish for vegans, as bulgur is known for its nutritional richness. 

After boiling, Dover let the pilaf cook over low heat until the liquid was absorbed. Then she turned off the heat and placed a double layer of paper towels under the lid to collect excess moisture. This is how the pilaf looked when she dished it up.   

Next came eggplant cooked with peppers and tomatoes. Dover presented the eggplant two ways, one vegetarian and the other topped with sautéed diced lamb (above).

Both fresh and dried mint went into a salad along with sour cherry molasses that Dover had made herself (above).

I was astonished to learn that she prepares everything she cooks with, even condiments such as red pepper and tomato pastes and dried red pepper flakes that are readily available in local markets. The canned tomatoes she added to the pilaf were homemade too.  

I had never seen anything like her bread salad, made with flakes of a dried bread called yufka ekmek. These she crushed even finer, mixing in peppers, onions, tomatoes, her homemade seasoning pastes, red pepper flakes, olive oil and shredded Antep cheese (above).

Rather than piling the loose mixture into a salad bowl, she formed it into little kebabs (above). 

I had seen purslane (verdolaga) in produce displays in Gaziantep and wondered how it was used. One way is the hearty soup that Dover had made before we came (above).

She combined the greens with lentils, chickpeas, black-eyed peas, bulgur, garlic and vegetables, adding cherry molasses and sumac molasses and finishing with a drizzle of red pepper flakes heated in oil. The soup alone would have been enough for dinner.

Then we went to the dining table, which was beautifully set with fine linens and china. 

Dinner ended with fresh fruit and Turkish tea (you can see us taking photos in the mirror behind the table).

Dover wanted to know which dishes we liked best. Well, everything. But I singled out the bread salad omac. I couldn't stop eating it.

The dishes she taught were practical and easy to make back home. Markets that stock Middle Eastern ingredients have everything needed, including tomato and red pepper pastes from Turkey, breads that could be substituted for yufka ekmek in the salad omac,  Turkish cheeses and pomegranate molasses, which could replace Dover's sour cherry molasses. 

After dinner, we settled into plushy gold-upholstered chairs in the parlor (above) and talked like old friends. Dover was married at the age of 14, lost her husband in a traffic accident (his photograph is above the mirror behind the dining table) and developed the catering business to support herself. She showed us a huge freezer packed with food for her clients. 

As we left, we retrieved our shoes. Turkish custom is to remove them before entering a home, and we were given slippers so that we would be comfortable during the evening. 

Dover welcomes tourists to her classes. She doesn't speak English, but a translator will be provided. It's a unique opportunity to see genuine Turkish home cooking and then enjoy a superb meal.

To inquire about her classes, contact Filiz Hosukoglu, who works with her and speaks excellent English. Her email is [email protected]. 

TURKISH BULGUR PILAF
From Kamuran Dover of Gaziantep

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 medium green bell pepper, diced small
1/2 medium red bell pepper, diced small
1/2 medium onion, diced small
1 medium tomato, diced small
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon Turkish red pepper paste
1/2 cup canned tomatoes
1 1/2 cups coarse bulgur
3 cups hot water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons butter

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the green and red peppers and the onion and cook until they start to soften. Add the tomato and cook until tender. Stir in the tomato paste and red pepper paste, then add the canned tomatoes and stir until blended.

Add the bulgur, hot water and salt, then add the butter and let melt.

Cover the pan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and cook until the liquid is absorbed but the bulgur is still soft and not dry. Turn off the heat. Place a double layer of paper towels until the lid to absorb steam and let the pilaf stand for half an hour.  Reheat if necessary.

Makes 8 servings.