Snow in mid-March, in Istanbul! Blown, no doubt, all the way from Kars, where the temperature is 20 degrees C. And it doesn’t warm up on its westward journey either just gets wetter. Not even crisp, fresh fried hamsi (anchovies) washed down with raki in Kadir’in Yeri in the nearby fish market can make bearable the icy blasts from the Black Sea that are funnelling down the Bosphorus to meet us in Istiklal Caddesi. So, braving the blizzards below the Süleymaniye Mosque, we purchase two magnificent stainless steel pots with beautifully curved bottoms in the pot-makers’ street, then head on out of the city. A long journey must be taken in sensible stages. In Afyon the sun is shining warmly. We repair to Ikbal Lokantasi the restaurant which has been owned by four generations of the Panca family since feeding Atatürk in 1922, before his final major battle in the War of Independence. Today local families are tucking into Sunday lunch of roast rack of spring lamb. Frances and I are passionate fans of two culinary delights particular to Afyon, both of them specialities of Ikbal: grilled sucuk, a kind of Turkish salami tender and tasty without being over-spiced with a “shepherd’s salad” of chopped cucumber, tomato, peppers, onion, parsley and dill; and kaymakli visneli ekmek kadayif, a dessert of bread-like sponge soaked in black-cherry syrup, which serves as a base for a great slab of kaymak (clotted buffalo cream) on top. This is kaymak at its most sublime: as soft as musk, the perfect foil for the acid of the cherry and the sweetness of the kadayif, with a flavour hinting at mozzarella and the texture of a weeping brie. Thus fortified, at around £4 a head, we attempt an assault on Afyon’s famous citadel, the Karahisar, 700 feet above the city. Halfway up, however, we succumb to the beauty of the views. The plains of Anatolia beckon and we continue to Konya, where we have a supper rendezvous with a carpet-seller. The East begins in Konya, and from here to India bread is the staple, rice a luxury. It was thirty miles south of here, at Catalhöyük, ten thousand years ago, that man first cultivated wheat and made bread. | Damla serves three types: normal yeasted bread, light and crusty as baguette; tirnakli, or “fingernail” bread, a flat, yeasted bread whose dough is stretched by digging in and pulling with the fingers before it is baked in a domed wood-fired főrőn (oven); and acők ekmek, a thin, flat chapati-like bread which is cooked on a steel dome over an open fire throughout the Middle East. After preparing our palates with a flavoursome cream-of-chicken soup, our carpet-seller orders a real Konya kebabfest, including Konya kebab great hunks of lamb baked in its own juices as well as sis chicken, köfte and lamb sis kebab, cooked over charcoal. The following day our hostess is Nevin Halici, the foremost writer on Turkish provincial cuisine, whose long-awaited book on Mevlevi cooking has just been published by Saqi. A short dolmus ride brings us to the riverside village of Sille, a Byzantine site with cave hermitages in the surrounding cliffs. At Sille Konagi, a converted mansion which also acts as a small museum of late Ottoman rags and relics, we lunch lightly on yayla corbasi (yoghurt soup), yaprak sarmasi (stuffed vine leaves) and much tea. Later we are taken to the outlying suburb of Meram, where we pay our respects to the patron of cooks, Shems Atesbaz Wali, the thirteenth-century Mevlevi saint who was Jelaluddin Rumi’s personal cook. Here at his tomb, down an avenue of winter-dessicated terebinth and acacia trees, we are given salt, symbolising the bringing out of the best of tastes. Our evening meal at Konya’s best restaurant, Kösk Lokantasi, is prepared under Nevin’s guidance by the legendary female chef, Zakire Hanim. Okra soup is followed by a very fine su boregi wafer-thin pastry layers with a cinnamony minced-lamb filling; firin kebab tender oven-baked lamb, with creamy tava yogurt; then hosmerim a true Seljukid dessert of pan-fried flour, butter, cream and honey; and, to finish, sacarasi, a light, flaky, baklava-style nut-and-cream pastry. In addition, within the general mêlée of dishes, Nevin insinuates some et tiridi, little titbits of meat and onions on flat bread sprinkled with sumac, and a bowl of delicious manti, perhaps the forerunner of ravioli, in a yoghurt sauce. | No visit to Konya is complete without trying the various flat-bread savouries: the original pizza, etli ekmek, (minced lamb, onions, parsley and peppers spread on wafer-thin dough); peynirli (with kasar cheese); and kusbasi “bird’s head” (chopped lamb), baked to a crisp crust in a traditional wood-fired oven. The next day we feed to bursting on all three at Nevin’s favourite Cero Restaurant. We were warming to the East, as the East warmed us. Kadir’in Yeri
Nevizade Sok, Balikpazari,
Beyoglu, Istanbul Ikbal Lokantasi
Millet Cad. No:21
Afyon
+90 272 215 1205 Damla Kebap
Pürcüklü Mahallesi
Türbe Caddesi No.53
Mevlana Carsisi yani
Konya
+90 332 352 08 81 Sille Konagi
Hukumet Cad.50
Sille, Konya
+90 332 244 9260 Kösk Lokantasi
Akçesme Mah. Topraklők Caddesi 66
Konya
+90 332 352 8547 Cero Restaurant
Nalçaci Caddesi
Karatay Sitesi Alti No:7
Konya
+90 332 235 04 27
Christopher and Frances Ryan run the Damascus Drum, a Turkish style cafe and bookshop in Hawick in the Scottish Borders |
