Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [162]
Engin Akin has said that “palace cuisine is the trunk of the tree, while all the other influences constitute the tree’s roots.” The chefs of the sultans duly earned the title “Frenchmen of the East,” yet no one really knows exactly what was prepared in the Topkapı Palace kitchens; the archives house no recipes, and cooks during that time may not have been literate. But one can glean something of the scope of what was prepared by reviewing a list of kitchen ingredients purchased in a single year, 1640. Harry Nickles, in Middle Eastern Cooking, notes that meat was preeminent, at 1,131 tons. He continues:
The spinach ordered came to 92 tons; carrots, evidently not in favor, to less than a ton; and a category of unspecified “vegetables” to 94 tons. In a feat of caterer’s accounting, separate entries were made for 320,350 heads of lettuce and 11,720 cabbages. Rice far outstripped wheat, 265 tons to three. Among dairy products, 14 tons of yogurt were listed, and four of cheese, along with 2,720 plates of kaymak [a very rich clotted cream extracted from six times its volume of milk; the word also refers to a flattering description of a pretty girl]. Egg purchases exceed 18,000 dozen. And tartness apparently won out over sweetness, with 59 tons of vinegar and 19 of lemons against ten tons of sugar (a golden abundance of honey probably corrected the imbalance, but does not appear in the record).
Nickles goes on to say that written menus of the time reveal that the soup chef alone had nearly forty soups in his repertoire, but the names, surviving in the Arabic writing of that day, have no equivalents in modern Turkish and defy translation. Some of the dishes were reportedly magnificent: gold and precious stones were sometimes pulverized and added to the sultans’ more ambitious dishes!
Sharon Croxford and Ozge Samancı are the team behind the Istanbul Food Workshop, which offers hands-on cooking classes and gourmet food walking tours. Croxford trained as a dietitian in Australia and then as a chef at Leith’s School of Food and Wine in London, where she has been teaching cooking, food science, nutrition, and dietetics at King’s College for part of the year. She’s now at the Yeditepe University gastronomy department to teach cooking practice. Samancı is a renowned food historian specializing in Turkish-Ottoman cuisine and she is also on the faculty of Yeditepe University. Together they wrote Flavours of Istanbul (see Recommended Reading, page 394, for more details) and they are passionate about sharing knowledge and experiences of Turkish food with those who want to learn. They emphasize that scholars and gastronomes consider Turkish to be one of the world’s finest cuisines, and that Turkish cuisine is, in essence, Istanbul’s cuisine, which in turn represents the culinary tradition of Ottoman palace cuisine.
The complexity of Turkish food is the result of the varied culinary traditions in lands that were once part of the Ottoman Empire. Though many of these old recipes are still made in contemporary Turkish kitchens, others have been lost, and Sharon and Ozge aim to recover and reintroduce some of these. Programs are seasonal, with options for sessions of a half day to several days. Classes are of three to six people and are held in a semiprofessional kitchen in a charming home where the neighborhoods of Fener and Balat meet. (The Tahtaminare Mosque is directly across the street; Balat’s Tuesday food market is a short walk away; traditional bakeries of bread and biscuits are steps away; and sites nearby include the Greek Patriarchate, Ahrida Synagogue, and Saint Stephen of the Bulgars Church.) Gourmet walking tours—which are proving to be as popular as the classes—include visits to local markets and specialist shops and are typically followed by preparation of an Ottoman feast. Customized programs are happily arranged, and special classes for Ramadan and Kurban Bayramz are also offered. (+90 212 534 4788 / istanbulfoodworkshop.com).