june-2012

TALKING TURKEY
Our food correspondent Matthew Lee samples the delights of Ottoman
cuisine in Istanbul on a mission not to eat a single döner kebab
When the Ottoman
Empire was at its
peak, the royal
palace chefs took full advantage
of the Sultan’s vast riches and
resources, and created dishes
using ingredients hauled in from
across North Africa, the Middle
East, the Caucasus and the
Balkans. That may be why Turks
often claim their cuisine is one of
the world’s three greatest,
alongside French and Chinese.
While there’s no disputing its
richness and variety, it seems an
unfortunate anomaly that the
world’s best-known Turkish dish
was invented in Berlin in the 70s
and is famed for its greasiness, its
saltiness, its high levels of
cholesterol and its devotees’
preference for eating it while
staggering home from the pub.
However, I’ve banished the
ubiquitous döner for a kebab-free
tour of Istanbul’s lively food scene.
Asitane (6 Kariye Camii
Sokak, +90 212 635 7997,
asitanerestaurant.com) is a great
place to begin an exploration of
real Turkish cuisine, which
emerged during the Ottoman
era, when this city, then known
as Constantinople, was the de
facto capital of the world. Since it
opened in 1991, owner Batur
Durmay and his team have
combed through kitchen
registers, books and memoirs
from Turkey’s historic palaces in
an attempt to recreate authentic
Ottoman cuisine, and today I’m
relishing one result of their
experiments, an Ottoman
almond soup so sweet and so
smooth it feels like I’m drinking
marzipan. No wonder then that it
is suspected of being the
favourite food of the longestreigning
sultan of the Ottoman
Empire, Suleiman the
Magnifi cent. All we know for
sure is from the archives stored at
the Topkapi Palace, which tell us
that almond soup was served at
the circumcision feast of one of
his sons in 1539.
Recreating and serving
authentic Ottoman food isn’t a
simple undertaking. ‘The empire
lasted over 600 years and
stretched over thousands of
miles,’ Durmay explains. ‘But we
can read the palace records to see
what the elites were eating in the
15th and 16th centuries.’ After
every last drop of almond soup
has been polished from my bowl,
my lunch at Asitane continues
with some unusual but delicious
dishes – stuff ed lamb spleen,
tripe and chickpea stew, and
fried liver meatballs.
Somebody who clearly shares
my fascination with Turkish food
is Megan Clark, an American
PhD candidate at the University
of Chicago who is studying
Ottoman history and has been
living in Istanbul since 1998. She
recently started running food
tours arranged through the
Istanbul Eats website
(istanbuleats.com), and her
passion for Turkish food is
I S T A N B U L
contagious: ‘I remember fi rst
seeing the weekly street markets
and everything displayed with
such care; the fruits and
vegetables, the eggs and cheeses,
the olives, spices, nuts and
grains,’ she says, ‘and I was blown
away by the whole sensory
experience.’
Megan Clark’s food tour
commences in Sultanahmet, the
city’s oldest district, at the
market next to Eminönü’s New
Mosque. Here we fi nd stalls
specialising in olives, white
cheese, pickled vegetables and
even off al; one butcher proudly
sells bulls’ testicles and sheep’s
brains. Speaking of off al, one
snack that’s found everywhere in
Turkey but hardly anywhere
GW—93