EatingAsia

In Tire, Pit Roast Lamb for Breakfast

I'd be the first to argue against a common misconception regarding the Turkish diet: that it revolves around lamb. While it's true that many Turks eat lamb, it's also true that many avoid it. Turkish cuisine is about so much more than lamb. It encompasses the dairy-heavy dishes of northeasterners, the fish dishes of those on the Black Sea, the meals rich in vegetables and leafy greens of Turkish people on the Aegean and the beef-centric specialties of those in south central Anatolia.

But dang, when Turkish folks do do lamb they sure do it right. And at Babaoğlu Kuyu Kebabi in Tire they've been doing it right for decades.

We'd come to Tire, a smallish city not far from Ephesus, for its massive weekly market. (More on that market later). But before we could market, we had to eat. And where else should we eat but at a favorite spot for market vendors?

"This is a perfect breakfast for sellers at the market, who will be working the whole long day without a break," our friend Serkan said as we approached Babaoğlu's door.

Piles of cut wood, fuel for the pit, sat on the pavement, nearly encroaching on the shop's stoop. In the front window roasted lamb ribs and a leg, and rounds of pocked pide, hung from hooks; steam rose from a shallow cauldron set over a brazier.

After six days of clear skies on the Aegean coast our first day inland was cool and rainy. We welcomed the wall of meaty steam that slapped us in the face as we pushed open Babaoğlu's door.

When I awoke that morning before dawn, my belly still full from nearly a week of hearty eating, the thought of lamb for breakfast had held less than zero appeal. But as I watched Babaoğlu's usta working his cleaver my stomach rumbled to life. Suddenly I was starving.

We started with Tandır Çorbası, soup that accompanies meat cooked in a tandır or pit oven. There wasn't much to it -- fatty lamb stock, rice, red pepper -- but it was pure comfort, an ideal precedent for the feed that was to follow. Garlicky vinegar, a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of kirmizi biber (crushed red chilies) added a bit of zip to the rich meaty broth.

Then we moved on to the main attraction, opting out of liver and specifying meat half fatty, half lean. To assemble their kebabs owner Fikri Babaoğlu (dishing up soup, up top) and brother Selahattin pluck a pide from the hook in the window and slap it to the side of the small tandoor-type oven behind their prep counter. While the bread warms they prepare the meat, shaving it from ribs and leg and shoulder bones and hacking it into bite-sized pieces.

The warmed bread, sliced into thickish strips and dipped into red pepper-infused meat juices (in the small shallow tin, above), is a bed for the lamb. If one asks (and this one did), a few additional spoonfuls of meat juice will be drizzled over the lot. The kebab arrives at the table piping hot and ready for a generous sprinkle of fragrant dried wild thyme.

 

Babaoğlu's kuyu kebabi is a knife and fork dish; the chewy pide, though soaked in meat juices, resisted mushiness to the final bite. The meat was fabulously tender. After my slow start I seriously contemplated a second order.

As we ate market vendors and Tire locals came and went, some leaving with a takeout packet or two. Occasionally a young helper would emerge from the back room, which houses the pit oven, with a freshly roasted chunk of meat or a side of ribs blackened and crusty from the fire. At that moment forks and knives would pause in mid-air as eyes followed the lamb to its resting place on a hook in the window.

Fikri Babaoğlu told us that his family has been preparing kuyu kebabi in Tire for over a century. They do lamb right -- so right that we rose early enough the next day to return for Round Two.

Fikri Babaoğlu, lamb usta

Babaoğlu Kuyu Kebabi, Gumuspala Caddesi, Hasir Pazari Sokak No. 16, Tire; 90-232/512-0116; about 15TL for one serving, including soup. Go early -- the Babaoğlu brothers sell out by 10, sometimes earlier on market day (Tuesday and Friday).

The Wedding Caterer

 

Big pots propped over piles of smoking wood, lined up at the rear of a parking lot caught my eye around 8:30 one Saturday morning, as Dave and I were driving up the Bozburun peninsula. We flew by, late for an appointment in Datca, before curiosity got the better of me. I made Dave backtrack so we could investigate. Turned out we were six hours early for a wedding feast.

Aliye T. is a caterer from a village near Aydin, an inland Aegean city approximately halfway between Marmaris and Izmir. She cooks for weddings, funerals, circumcision celebrations and other gatherings. On this sunny spring day, in this parking lot steps from a serene turquoise bay Aylin, her husband, her sister, assorted other relatives and a neighbor were preparing a wedding feast for 700, to be served at three that afternoon.

Aylin has been a caterer for seven years. "I'm known in my village as a good cook, but I didn't plan for this to be work," she told me. "Then one day a neighbor told a relative in another village about my fine food. They asked if I could cook for their daughter's wedding. I'd never cooked for so many people before, but I got my sisters to help, and we made a meal for 500. We cooked well, the wedding guests told us the food was delicious! And then strangers started calling, asking if I could cook for a wedding, a funeral ...."

Aliye charges 70 to 80 Turkish lira per person, catering six or seven weddings -- averaging 500-600 guests each, she estimates -- every month. She provides a fulls service, everything from food to tables and chairs to canopies to protect from sun and rain.

"I've cooked for weddings in Fethiye!" she told me, patting her chest and naming a city approximately 250 kilometers from her village.

I haven't a good idea as to Aliye's costs, but that struck me as a pretty decent part-time living for a Turkish villager; Aliye and her family also own a small farm. Is the money good, I asked? Aliye shrugged, allowed herself a small smile and held her hands out, palms to the sky. "I get by," she said.

When we arrived the women had already been cooking for two hours. On this day's menu: chickpeas stewed with salca (tomato-red pepper paste) and beef, keshkek (wheat berry porridge, which tastes much lovelier than it sounds), chicken sauteed with tomatoes, chips (it seems Turks are crazy for chips, aka French fries -- we see them everywhere we travel) and asure with sesame seeds and cinnamon.

"The menu changes according to the wishes of whoever hires me to cook for them," Aliye said. "I can do meze too. That's especially popular in spring and summer."

As the women lifted lids and stirred stews the men lingered at the breakfast table. Their work would begin when it was time to unstack the plastic chairs and tables and set up the canopies. In the meantime there were potatoes to slice.

"I've got to get back to work," Aliye said. "Next time you're in Aydin, call me. I'll cook for you. And you can come to a wedding with us."

You bet we will.

 

Cook, Photograph and Eat with Us in Turkey this September!

This space has been quiet, and finally we can tell you why. We've been working on some Turkey projects. 

The first is a collaboration with Istanbul-based cooking instructor and food tour leader Olga Tikhonova Irez, publisher of the blog Delicious Istanbul: a 5-day food and photography workshop this September in Sapanca, a lovely small town two hours by car from the big city.

Our partner Olga's story is compelling: Russian, well-traveled, multi-degreed with extensive experience in the consulting industry, Olga visited Istanbul a few years ago and fell in love (as so many of us do) with the city, its people and its food. So she quit her high-level job, left her home in Moscow and moved to Turkey to make a new life and career in food. Determined to learn everything she could about Turkish home cooking Olga talked her way into an apprenticeship to the female owner-chef at Zelis Ciftligi, a family-run lodge in Sapanca. There she met her future husband, son of said master chef. Now fluent in Turkish, Olga splits her time between Kadikoy, Istanbul where she introduces travelers to the delights of marketing and cooking Turkish-style with her tours and classes, and Sapanca where she helps her family run their business.

When I first stumbled across Olga's blog about 1.5 years ago I spent hours stuck in the archives. I was struck by her honest musings on topics like adjusting to her role in her Turkish family's business and the challenges of finding her place in her mother-in-law's kitchen. I salivated over her descriptions of home-cooked meals at Zelis and found that we share preferences for certain Istanbul restaurants. I found too that we share a dismay at the fact that Turkey's cuisine is little known and underrated.

So when Dave and I were in Istanbul last November we met Olga for coffee. The three of us clicked, and the seed of this workshop was planted.

Earlier this month Dave and I visited Olga and her husband at Zelis. Right away we knew we'd found not only the perfect partners for such an enterprise, but the perfect place: a comfortable, family-style lodging in a beautiful, quiet setting. A casual place where guests could truly feel relaxed and at home. A lodge large enough to easily accomodate a group but small enough to maintain intimacy. A kitchen equipped for a restaurant but homey enough to be right for a small group of people learning and cooking together. Lots of windows and beautiful light for photography. Proximity to great markets. Access to local producers. Gracious and friendly hosts. Even an adorable cocker spaniel named Bakir ("copper" in Turkish).

And the food? Spectacular. We've been eating in Turkey since 1998 and we have never eaten such delicious, lovingly prepared meze. We were served liver that turned me, a liver-hater since childhood, into a liver lover. Breakfast was an orgy of gorgeous fresh baked goods (Best. Borek. Ever.), cheeses, a killer menemen, too many made-on-site jams and preserves to name, fresh yogurt, an intriguing cheese salad that is a specialty of Olga's mother-in-law. It was hard to leave. We wanted to move in.

The four of us ate and visited a market and walked around Sapanca and brainstormed and took notes. Dave and I left excited for the workshop that he and Olga will lead in September.

So here's the deal: 5 nights, 4 full days and two half days of cooking, eating, marketing, photographing, with one long excursion further afield, to a sweet little Black Sea town, for a bit of street, architecture and nature photographry. We'll visit a local farm and meet a cheesemaker. Olga will lead in the kitchen, where you'll get your hands dirty (or dusty) baking bread, making borek and traditional cookies, crafting meze, patting together kebabs, seasoning soups, and more. She'll draw on the sort of deep knowledge of Turkish home cooking and food culture that can only be gained by immersion in a Turkish household -- and she will share it with you. 

Meanwhile Dave will be there to coach you to great photography. He's been shooting for international publictions for a few years now, off next week for his fourth Saveur assignment in 6 months. Dave's also been teaching individual and small-group photography workshops since 2010 -- he loves it, and he's good at it. In Sapanca you'll tell Dave about your goals for the week -- whether it's getting comfortable taking photos of people, maximizing your time at markets to walk away with great images, or using light and shadow to bring out the best in a plate of food, whatever -- and he'll help you get there with plenty of one-on-one coaching time.

This has been a long time coming; we've wanted to offer a workshop marrying the two major elements of EatingAsia -- food and photography -- for a long while. But we're picky about who we work with. Olga is good folks. We're on the same wavelength. We enjoy her and her Turkish family and we learned so much during our brief stay at Sapanca. We certainly did eat well.

If this sounds of interest please hop over to the workshop website [here], read the detailed program, learn about the venue and see Olga's and Dave's bios. If you're interested, head to the sign-up page. We're limiting participation in the workshop to 9 individuals -- first come, first served. There is also room for 3 non-participating partners at a reduced rate.

I'm not teaching (nor am I photographing) but I'll be there, along for the ride. Dave and I hope to see you in Sapanca in September!

 

 

 

In Sinop, Breaking a Meat Fast

After two solid weeks of fish, we had a lust for red meat.

For fourteen days Dave and I had been ranging along the center part of Turkey's Black Sea coast, indulging our love of things piscene. (This journey you'll read about another time, in another place.) All fish all the time -- for seafood lovers like us, this was not a hardship. Especially not here on Turkey's northern coast, where the fish is so fresh (just an hour or two off the boat in some cases), so delicious.

But yesterday the weather changed. Around noon the breeze -- which has been bizarrely spring-like, warm and caressing for the last half month -- stiffened and chilled. The Black Sea went from marine blue to white-capped gunmetal. The clear sky darkened and gauzy gray clouds spat rain. By the time darkness fell (4 o'clock-ish this time of year, during inclement weather) we were driving through a steady downpour that smelled like snow.

On this night fish just would not do. Our chilled bones needed meat.

So we bypassed our favorite restaurant, which serves nothing but seafood, in favor of an old-style ocakbaşı, or restaurant featuring an open grill.

Sahil is a kendin pişir kendin ye (cook it yourself, eat it yourself) establishment within shouting distance of Sinop's harbor. The set-up is simple. On the ground floor seating is around a community "table" comprised of a marble countertop framing a big charcoal grill, all beneath a gigantic copper exhaust hood.

You walk in, grab a stool, and place your order. The restaurant offers beef (bonfile or pounded fillet steak, and kofte or mini burgers), chicken (pounded breast and wings) and seasonal fish. (Lamb isn't as relished on the Black Sea as it is in other regions of Turkey; locals often tell us that the smell is a turn-off.)

We ordered bonfile and kofte, which the son of the owners -- Mustafa Usta and his wife, a jovial middle-aged couple from Ordu, several hours east of Sinop on the Black Sea -- brought to the table along with sliced onion and tomato, long green peppers and bread. After giving the coals a good stir with a long poker he used a thick slice of onion to clean the grill of gunk and oiled it with a chunk of talo. His mother spread our meat over its center and formed constellations of bread and vegetables around it.

We asked for a salad and a plate of mixed pickles (most every restaurant in Turkey stocks some sort of pickle or other, often not listed on the menu -- just ask for turşu / TOOR-shoo). Then we sat back to make conversation with our fellow diners while monitoring the main attraction as it smoked and sputtered in front of us.

 

I was nominally in charge but in reality it was Mustafa Usta's wife, who (understandably, given the Turkish obsession with the BBQ) oversaw our dinner. Every 30 seconds or so she jumped in with her tongs, adjusting and flipping our patties and fillets and pressing the vegetables onto the fat-slicked metal. In under 5 minutes we were diving into our meat feast.

What's not to love about well-seasoned beef hot off the grill? What cut of meat -- or vegetable, for that matter -- doesn't benefit from a lick of flame, a crusty char, a hint of smoke?

The kofte, impossibly light, had obviously been chopped, seasoned and molded by a master. The beef fillet, while not the most tender I've ever eaten, boasted the full flavor of meat from a grass-fed cow (a luxury in the USA but a norm in much of Turkey). Pickled chilies with a good but not overwhelming bite made an excellent accompaniment to the juicy, fatty meat. The grilled vegetables, wilted but not without texture, were as delicious as vegetables always are in Turkey, where flavor hasn't yet been bred out of cucumbers, tomatoes, salad greens and the like.

We ordered another round, ate like king and queen for a total of 35 tay-lay (the equivalent of 20 US bucks) and, meat lust sated, waddled back to our hotel.

Sahil Ocakbaşı, Camiibekir Mahallesi Ortayol No. 12, Sinop (across from the mosque right in front of the harbor). 368-260-3645

Turkey's King of Nuts

When you say Turkey folks tend to think pistachios -- if they are thinking of nuts, that is. Pistachios are a huge crop in the country's southeast, and more often than not pistachios are what gets tucked between sheets of yufka for the baklava sold back in Istanbul.

But for me Turkey's big nut is the hazelnut, so dear in the USA but so everyday here, especially on the Black Sea coast. On our first road trip along the Black Sea some 11 or 12 years ago we marvelled at the burlap bags of hazelnuts in the region's kuru yemis (dried foods) stores, pounds and pounds of shelled and unshelled nuts sold for a song. We bought dried mulberries and plums and hazelnuts by the kilo and cobbled together what seemed at the time fabulously luxurious trail mixes. To accompany a beer with handfuls of hazelnuts, instead of peanuts, seemed almost a sin.

A few days ago we kicked off our third Black Sea trip in less than two years, in Giresun -- also known as Turkey's hazelnut capital. Like those of other Turkish cities Giresun's central square is graced with a statue of Kemal Ataturk. But just nearby is another statue, of male and female hazelnut pickers standing back-to-back, conical woven baskets laden with nuts strapped around their waists and giant hazelnut husks (the papery covering over the nut, which looks a bit like a trumpet flower) balanced on their heads.

Driving into Giresun from the east along the four-lane highway, we passed fındık fabrikası (hazelnut processing facility) after fındık fabrikası -- huge buildings, many with container trucks parked out front. In the city fındık depo tucked among houses and low-rise apartment buildings house hundreds of burlap bags of nuts in their shells, and shops with names like Hazelnut Castle and Hazelnut World sell all manner of hazelnut products: the nuts shelled and unshelled and dipped in chocolate, hazenut butter chunky or smooth, hazelnut flour and the big macaroon-type cookies that are made from it and hazelnut ezme, a sweet, sticky slurry of coarsely crushed hazelnuts blended withsyrup.

At Giresun's twice-weekly market, which draws fresh and prepared food vendors from villages near and far, we asked a husband-wife team selling whole dried pears, pear and apple pekmez (fruit molasses) and seven types of cheese why, given that the Black Sea hazelnut harvest was not all that many weeks ago, there were no hazelnuts for sale at the market.

"Why would we sell our hazelnuts at the market for 5 lira a kilo when we can get 15 lira from the factory?" he asked (the couple harvest around 500 kilos of hazelnuts a year from their own orchard).

But there are hazelnuts aplenty in Giresun's pastane, or pastry shops. We eyed the breads, buns and sweets in many pastry shop windows before settling on Patar Kadayıfı, in the center of town. Our rationale: the glass case tiny Patar held just three or four sweets, and only two made with hazelnuts.

If there's one thing we've learned from working the street food circuit all these years, it's that specialization rules.

We we ordered the hazelnut baklava. And it was delicious, not too syrupy ..... but to be honest, once you've eaten baklava in Gaziantep no other baklava can ever come close.

So we tried the fındık ezmeli kadayıf, a sort of sticky bar cookie made of hazelnut ezme combined with kadayıf, wispy dried wheat vermicelli. It was wonderful, heavenly, packed with nuts that had been crushed not too fine to really taste. We swooned through a shared plateful.

As we were scraping our plate with our forks, two portly middle-aged Turkish men sat down at the table next to us and ordered a portion each. Their ezme squares arrived topped with thick slices of what looked like kaymak (Turkish clotted cream) and a hillock of crushed hazelnuts. Whoa!

Well, the kaymak turned out to be dondurma, that delicious, slightly chewy Turkish ice cream. So much the better. We returned to Parar the following day just before blowing town and did our fındık ezmeli kadayıf right, crowned with shingles of ice cream and more fındık  -- to the delight of the trio of burly men behind the counter who, judging by their collective girth, enjoy hazelnut ezme often.

Patar Kadayıfı, 21/B Fatih Caddesi, Giresun.

 

Samui's Saving Grace

So, Koh Samui. We've been living in southeast Asia for almost eleven years, and traveling in the region since 1994. In all that time we had not once stepped foot on Samui (or any of its neighboring islands). That changed last month, when we spent a week there for a couple of assignments.

Honestly? I don't love Samui. I can't name any one reason why we stayed away, but as soon as we left the island's airport I understood why some travelers do. Koh Samui is one big argument against uncontrolled tourism-driven development. It is tragically, despairingly ugly.

I felt this way when I landed on Malaysia's Langkawi island for the first time four years ago. I was on assignment there, too, and my heart sank as I steered my rust-bucket of a rental car away from the airport and towards the west coast. Ugly, ugly. How would I ever conjur a truthful travel story out of a place that, at first glance, appeared to have no redeeming qualities?

But over the course of five days on Langkawi I grew to like it, even to love it a little, and that travel piece was one of the easiest I've ever written. That didn't happen for me on Koh Samui, in spite of a fair bit of excellent food, wonderful company (Samui Thais may be the friendliest Thais anywhere) and some nights in lovely digs. Since that first trip to Langkawi I've gone back and taken Dave along -- we've flown in on assignment and also under our own steam, to relax here and eat here. Samui? I'd happily eat there again -- in fact I'd return just to eat. But not on my own nickel. (A major beef: the island is ridiculously expensive in comparison to the rest of Thailand. Looking for value for money? Samui is not where to find it.)

So am I arguing against Samui as a destination? Yes I am -- as a destination for me. But that doesn't mean that others don't, and won't, enjoy it.

One of my niggles about Samui is that it is so resort-ified. I hate being cooped up in a resort, and I especially hate having to make a Herculean effort to leave a resort to get something decent to eat. Vacations should be easy. But if you're a resort person and you have nothing on your agenda but relaxing and eating, then maybe making what I consider to be The Big Effort to get yourself to a good meal -- hiring a taxi and paying an outrageous sum to do so, or hiring a rental car and paying an outrageous sum to do so, or renting a motor bike and risking life and limb on overcrowded roads -- won't seem such a big effort to you.

There is some really, truly wonderful food on Samui. (There is also some -- lots and lots, actually -- really awful food on Samui.) And, as I've argued before, truly wonderful food can be a saving grace of even the most otherwise disappointing destinations. If you're planning a sojourn on Samui it would be a shame to miss out on what deliciousness the island has to offer.

So, without further ado:

Takho Bangpo

If you eat at one local restaurant on the island make it this one. Samui has a cuisine all its own, rooted in two plentiful ingredients -- seafood and coconuts -- and Takho Bangpo serves up some fine examples. On our second night on the island a chef on Samui took us on a bit of a food crawl; Takho Bangpo was the second-to-last stop in a string of many. (This Thailand-based food blogger had also recommended this restaurant before we left). Our meal was so good that Dave and I returned a few days later for another, bigger meal. And had we had time before we left the island, we would have returned again.

The restaurant is a family-owned open-air affair situated right on the beach. Tables are steps from the water. The atmosphere is wonderfully relaxed; this is the place to arrive a bit before sunset, dig your toes into the sand and kick back with a beer while ordering this and that a little bit at a time, so that your meal unfolds leisurely over a few hours.

Every meal begins with a complimetary appetizer: shrimp paste mixed with grated coconut meat, garlic and chilies that's smeared on a coconut shell and grilled over charcoal. The dip is pungently fishy, sweet and salty and goes brilliantly with fresh leaves and veggies served alongside.

The menu has a Local Dishes section -- range around there when you order. Some of the staff speak English, so feel free to ask for recommendations. You never know what might be in season --- like bplaa likun, anchovy-like fish that the kitchen fries to a fantastic crackly crisp. Dunked in lime soured gingery chili sauce, they make a wonderful beer snack. Also ask after bai ngiah, a delicious dark green leaf cooked with egg. (See the opening photo for these two dishes.)

Another appetite rouser: sliced sour green mango served with a hae koh-like sweetened shrimp paste with chunks of dried shrimp (another island-produced ingredient) and plenty of chilies. Lovers of dishes like Penang-style rojak and Filipino green mango with bagoong will especially enjoy this tart-sweet-spicy-salty flavor bomb of a combination.

Another special-to-Samui ingredient is waay, small octopus that are eaten fresh in season and dried every season. September is not waay fishing season, but our chef friend told us that at certain times of the year the ocean view from Takho Bangpo's tables includes hundreds of waay strung to dry on lines suspended above the sea. Tom waay is a soup-stew of dried or fresh waay simmered with lemon grass in coconut milk. The coconut milk on Samui is incredibly creamy -- this was a filling but fantastic dish.

Our Spanish chef friend doesn't eat mussels on Samui -- they can't compare to what he gets at home, he says. We understand. But live in a fresh mussel desert, and so when Dave and I returned to Takho we ordered the local green lipped mussels simply steamed with basil and garlic. Lovely, lovely -- though maybe not to you if you are a regular eater of mussels in, say, Tasmania, northern California, or France.

Other notable dishes at Takho: bpuu phat kari, big chunks of shelled crab meat cooked with onions and Chinese chives in a light, light coconut-free curry sauce; sataw -- also known as petai or "stink beans" -- stir-fried with prawns and just a hint of coconut cream; and butterflied raw prawns on a bed of slivered fresh cabbage, thin slices of bitter melon and whole chilies. The latter dish, the raw prawns, are served with the same tart-gingery dipping sauce as the deep-fried tiny fish. Our chef friend showed us how to eat them: in a spoon, lay a bit of cabbage, then a slice of bitter melon, then a prawn and, if you dare, a chili. Dribble on a bit of dipping sauce and pop the whole thing in your mouth. Bitter, sour, crunchy, soft, the super-fresh raw prawn playing off the ginger and lime -- wonderful.

In Bang Po, on the sea side of the road, amongst a string of eateries and a little bit east of a cafe/bar called 4 Monkeys (also recommended, for a beer at sunset on its rear deck). Look for the faded portrait of the restaurant's founder above the door. Walk in, proceed past the kitchen and exit at the tables on the beach.

Tuna Burger

Our Takho Bangpo guide Alex is Head Chef at the Four Seasons. Resort restaurants aren't our usual hangouts, but we would gladly return again and again to Pla Pla restaurant for Alex's tuna burger. We are Americans, so perhaps burgers hold a special place in our hearts. This thick patty of coarsely hand-chopped fresh white tuna cooked medium-rare (still pink in the middle), smeared with a sort of mayo-tartar sauce and a sweet-spicy sambal-like caramelized onion-tomato-chili sauce on an absolutely *perfect* -- in texture, in flavor, in density -- bun filled a void that's existed in my soul since I ate my last proper hamburger a few years ago.

It is a seriously delicious sandwich, easily one of our best bites that week. That the hefty "fries" alongside are also spot-on is a bonus. 

Homemade kanom

This is tricky, because I don't have an address, or even a street name, for this tiny family-owned shop selling homemade kanom (sweets) from about 5:30 am until they run out, usually by 9am. It's in Nathon, Samui's capital. If you're heading south from Bang Po or Laem Yai, keep your eyes out for an old-style double-story weathered timber shop house with Chinese characters on the LEFT side of the road once you hit town. (There aren't many left, so you should be able to spot it if you watch carefully.) If you stand in front of that shop the side lane kitty corner that terminates at the water is the street you want. The shop will be on your left side, and you'll know it because the kanom are displayed on tables right out front. 

This is the place for coconut sticky rice -- yellow, black or white -- sai gong (with sweetened ground dried shrimp, here zesty with a healthy dose of black pepper), or with sankaya (egg and coconut milk custard), or mango or thick shreds of coconut meat that have been cooked with palm sugar. It's also the place for other sweet deliciousness, like these steamed double-layer dumplings of coconut and palm sugar encased in chewy palm sugar-flavored glutinous rice, which itself is encased in a soft shell of coconut cream,

or these dumplings of coconut-scented sticky rice wrapped around a variety of banana that goes pink and soft when steamed and tastes like a cross between a banana, pineapple and strawberry.

Finally, a couple spots for which we have no photos, but that deserve mention nonetheless:

Sweet Sisters

Opened by, well, Samui sisters not too long ago, this friendly restaurant on the south side of the island serves Thai home cooking and a few western specialties. The emphasis is on natural foods and superior ingredients and presentations are cleaned up in comparison to your average Thai restaurant. But the sister in the kitchen doesn't dumb down flavors, and if you ask for it spicy you will get it spicy. Flavors are intense here; everything tastes fresh and as if it were made with care. It is, because everything's made to order. There's a menu and daily specials on a blackboard.

We enjoyed a fish laab with a riot of fresh, fresh herbs and lots of crispy fried garlic, a turmeric, galangal and lemongrass chicken soup with an incredibly depth of flavor, and a southern Thai-specific wild green stir-fried with garlic. There were other dishes, but alas I was a bit peaked that night and took no notes. I do know that that soup got me back on my feet, and Dave was raving about his meal for days. I wish that we'd had an opportunity to return.

Just go. The restaurant is on the south side of the island, just about where route 4170 meets 4173, on the same side of the road (but opposite corner to) the 7-Eleven. 11am-9pm, off day is Wednesday. And the phone number is 66-864/708-631.

Haad Bang Pho

Our second night food crawl ended at this restaurant about 5 minutes south by car from Takho Bang Po. Like Takho, it's open-air and casual, tables on the sand, with a friendly staff headed by an impressively dreadlocked Thai dude.

We ordered raw shrimp dressed with garlic and fish sauce and chilies and "cooked" in lime juice (superb), bplaa kapong ng manaow -- black snapper (I think) steamed with lime (excellent) and green curry with chicken which, though a bit sweet for my taste, was rich and fragrant with lemongrass. There was also gai nam prik pao, chicken stir-fried in sweet-hot chili paste which, while very good, paled in comparison to all of the lovely seafood we ate that night.

 

The Cheese Makers' Breakfast

This afternoon, deep in a jet-lagged comatose slumber, I dreamt of cows feasting in a flower-filled spring meadow, and of cheese made from their milk.

In actuality this wasn't so much dream as memory. A little over two weeks ago Dave and I were in Bogatepe, a village set on a high plateau in Kars, northeastern Turkey. Kars is known for two cheeses: gravyer and kaşar. Bogatepe is one of the province's two main gravyer-producing villages. We'd driven some 70 kilometers from the provincial capital to learn about the cheese and its history, and to see how it's made.

Forget everything you think you know about Turkish cheese. Gravyer isn't white or soft or feta-like. It isn't fresh and it isn't aged in a hide. Gravyer would be at home on a northern European table -- not a coincidence, because it was introduced to Kars over a hundred years ago from Switzerland via Russia. Though its name suggests gruyere, gravyer cheese is actually closer to emmental in appearance, texture and flavor: palest yellow with large irregular holes, medium soft, savory, not too salty and mildly nutty.

We spent a long evening and a morning at Koculu Gravyer Zavotu ("zavotu" is derived from the Russian for factory) which, like Bogatepe's other mandira (cheese workshops) -- there are seven in all, and the majority produce not gravyer but kaşar -- uses milk from cows in Bogatepe and a couple of nearby villages. During the three-month cheese-making season Koculu, which dates back to the early 19th century, produces on average three truck wheel-sized rounds of cheese a day, usually two at night and one in the morning. The entire cheese making process takes over five hours, from the time the peynir mayasi ("cheese yeast", or rennet) is poured into huge copper cauldrons of milk taken from the animals just hours before, to the initial pressing of the cheese wheels under a stone-weighted wooden beam.

After 24 hours the peynir ustasi (cheese "master") and his helpers remove the press and peel the rough fabric "clothing" from the new gravyer wheels. Before sending the cheeses off to the depo where they will bob in a salt brine, sweat in a hot room and ripen in a cool room for months, they smooth the surface of each by scraping with the side of a spoon and trim its edges with a sharp knife.

Nothing goes to waste in a mandira. Leftover whey, thick and milky, is turned into food for livestock and given to the village's dogs. The oil that seeps from the cheeses during their weighting and while they sweat in the hot room is collected and distributed to villagers; the women, we were told, apply it as a cream to their faces and hands. ("That's why women in Bogatepe look younger than those in other villages," our host Ilhan Koculu told us.)

And after a long night (the usta and his staff were still working on their second wheel when we left the mandira at 1:30am) followed by an early rise to make yet more cheese the cheese makers take a breakfast that includes those super-young gravyer scrapings and trimmings, all fried in a shocking amount of fresh village butter.

Beyond giving nourishment and energy (and to us gravyer nugget newbies,unspeakable pleasure), those cheese crisps help the cheese maker to predict the quality of his product. After frying up a batch Ilhan demonstrated a test by pulling one apart. He was pleased. Its crackly, deeply browned exterior and long, unbroken string predicted a sufficiently oily cheese of just-right softness.

"This will be a delicious gravyer," he said, pleased.

And then it was time for breakfast -- not just butter-browned cheese, but ethereally rich and thick kaymak, pekmez (grape molasses), helva, bread, olives and -- of course -- tea.

Cheese makers' breakfast: crispy cheese nuggets and kaymak with bread and pekmez

As the cheese makers sat down to eat scrapings from one of the season's earliest cheese, cows gorged on early wildflowers in a pasture just across the road. That evening, their milk would make another wheel of Bogatepe gravyer.

From Dave and I, many thanks to Ilhan Koculu and Cat Jaffee.

In Kota Bharu, A Friendly Hello and a Killer Soup

It rained buckets our first evening in Kota Bharu. We sat in our room sipping vodka we'd brought from Penang, watching the sky turn from mud to black and waiting for the rain to stop. It didn't. So around half past seven we grabbed umbrellas and went in search of dinner.

Big mistake.

Kota Bharu goes to bed at sunset. The streets were empty, the sidewalks rolled up. We splashed our way past Pasar Siti Kadijah to the night market and found it a shadow of its 2005 self. There were no crowds, no buzz. Nor was there anything tempting on offer at the few stalls weathering the storm.

So we headed back to the hotel, passing fast food joints belching out that nasty elixir of too-sweet baked goods, preservatives and grease that hangs over airport food courts. No thanks. We'd rather go hungry, and were reconciled to doing so until we turned onto Jalan Tok Hakim and saw, three blocks up, a promising glow.

'Hello my friend!" shouted the white taqiyah-capped proprietor as we stepped over the threshold of Kedai Kopi Din Tokyo.

Pak Din grinned at us as if we were long-lost friends, then pointed  to a place at his counter. "Come in, come in! What will you eat? What will you drink?"

Kedai Kopi Pak Din Tokyo is an indoor kuda, the Kelantanese term for old-fashioned coffee stalls with U-shaped counters and long wooden benches that must be mounted like a steed (kuda is Malay for horse). Inside the interior of the U sits a big boiler on legs where Pak Din makes good, strong Chinese kopitiam-style coffee and tea by pouring water through grounds-filled cotton socks suspended from metal rings. At the U's base is a long stainless steel trough over which he "pulls" tea by pouring it glass to glass, stirs quail eggs into hot ginger infusion and steeps eggs in boiling water before serving them in classic kopitiam green-and-white saucers.

Short and sturdily built, Pak Din is a blur taking orders, serving drinks and food, selling cigarettes, making change and shaking hands, all the while spewing friendly banter and communicating, via the occasional shout, with the kitchen at the back of his shop. If there's a break in the action he makes good use of it, wiping down counters, replenishing the water boiler from a red plastic bucket and keeping glasses -- always at the ready, stacked in a drainer over the trough -- warm with splashes of water from the boiler.

What would we eat? On a night like this, our backs wet and our pants soaked to our knees, something hot and comforting sounded about right. So thought Pak Din's patrons, most of whom were leaning over bowls of the house specialty: sup ekor (oxtail soup).

We ordered two bowls of soup and spooned it up slowly, marvelling at this concoction of meat, bones, tendons, cinnamon, star anise and nutmeg that tasted too good to be medicine yet instantly rendered us healthy, happy and certain that the world is a beautiful place. The hyper-distilled broth was deep, real deep, a gut-punch of meat essence. When we got to the bottom of our bowls it came as no surprise to find them stained sup ekor brown.

By now the rain had stopped but we lingered, reluctant to leave the comradely warmth of Pak Din's U. We ordered a hot milky teh tarik just for the enjoyment of watching his exuberant way with the pull, and then another because the first was so darned tasty, the tea strong and bitter enough to not be overwhelmed by sweetened condensed milk. We sauntered back to our room wired and satisfied.

We returned to Kedai Kopi Pak Din the next day and the next and the next, always around 7am for our caffeine fix and then once or twice again, for tea and a banana leaf-wrapped nasi lemak or a few Kelantanese kuih plucked from the trays and plates lined up along the inside edges of the counters. During the day Pak Din's staff set tables out front of the shop, and if there were no places at the U two were always found for us there.

On our last day in Kota Bharu, after a morning of too much food and before the long drive back to Penang, we stopped in to bid Pak Din farewell. Dave couldn't resist ordering a couple of soft-boiled eggs. When they arrived he followed the lead of other diners and blanketed them with black pepper from a shaker on the counter. (That black pepper is a Kelantanese touch, courtesy of the state's long-porous border with southern Thailand. In other parts of Malaysia it would be white).

We agreed that if we lived in Kota Bharu -- which would never, ever in a million years happen -- Kedai Kopi Pak Din would be a daily stop, if not for the sup ekor, the coffee, or the soft-boiled eggs then simply for the pure pleasure of Pak Din's hello.

Kedai Kopi Din Tokyo, 3945 Jalan Tok Hakim, downtown Kota Bharu, Kelantan; 012/959-0153.

Old Tea in Anatolia

After 120 kilometers of arctic nothingness we found ourselves in Çorum [cho-ruhm], a surprisingly bustling little city set in the middle of northern-central Anatolian nowhere. If Çorum is known to foreign travelers at all it's probably as a place to bunk before or after a visit to nearby Hittite ruins. For Turks, it's home to the finest leblebi (roasted chickpeas) in the country,

One of the upsides of traveling central Turkey during this especially harsh winter was the many excuses it offered -- frozen toes and fingers, mind-numbing expanses of white that could prove detrimental to driver alertness -- to brake for tea. Not that we've ever needed an excuse for a tea break in Turkey; even the southeast's scorching summer temperatures couldn't dampen our enthusiasm for the cay evi / kahvehanesi experience.

Tea delivery in the dead of a Çorum winter

But while Turkey's winter's chill stokes welcome tea cravings it also presents a challenge to the mixed (male-female) couple, one exacerbated by the fact that on this trip we stuck to lesser touristed towns in a relatively conservative part of the country: It's too cold to sit outside, and in some instances I'm not welcome inside. (If you've not ventured far from Istanbul, know that the city is a world unto itself. And I mean that as neither compliment nor smear.)

A little over a year and a half ago I wrote about the traditional Turkish tea house as a Man's World, one which I could observe and even dip my toe into while physically staying outside. During that jaunt around the southeast Dave and I took most of our tea and Turk kahvesi al fresco. That was as much by choice as by necessity -- the weather was fine, most other teahouse patrons were also sipping outdoors, and sitting outside faciliated superior people-watching and photography opportunities. On that trip I never felt it a loss to not be inside. And on a few occasions I was.

But despite having by now a fair bit of experience exploring Turkey's back of beyond and a reasonable facility basic Turkish I do not walk into many tea houses uninvited. Some patrons simply aren't comfortable with -- dislike, even --  having a woman in their midst. I suppose that I could choose to get in a kerfluffle about that, but it is what it is. No matter how good the tea or how lovely the tea house, time spent where the overall vibe says "Go away" is time wasted.

Happily, this trip delivered a few accessible tea houses that also score high on atmosphere.

One of the best is in Çorum's old town, a two or three century-old grid of stone-paved lanes lined with barbershops, butchers, hardware and kitchenware shops and -- of course - tea and coffee houses that has somehow survived the city's ambitious redevelopment. After being accosted by a patron who first tapped on a window as we passed and then burst out the door saying "Tea! Tea! Won't you have some tea?" we were happy enter into the embrace of Tıkı Mehmet Kahvesi's wood-stove warmth.

Most everything in Tıkı Mehmet Kahvesi (also known as Tıkının Kahve)  -- which translates to something like Lazy or Stupid Mehmet's Coffee -- looks original, including some of its customers. According to proprietor Bekir, who runs the show with a helper, the shop has been open for almost 110 years.

The tea/coffee "kitchen" features a now rare charcoal-fired copper çay ocağı or "tea stove" set into a stone hearth (see opening photo). The copper tank boils water which is delivered via a spout on its facing to each of two blue enameled metal kettles, one for brewing tea and the other to hold the hot water that dilutes it. (For those of you not familiar with Turkish tea: it's always brewed extra strong and then diluted to taste with hot water; thus the common double-potted Turkish tea kettle -- the lower pot holds and tea is brewed in the upper pot.)

We watched as Bekir Bey emptied spent ash from the stove and then shoveled in new charcoal to keep the supply of boiling water steady. It's a dusty, messy business but he so obviously cherishes the old stove.

A Tıkı regular

The charcoal doesn't really lend a special flavor to the tea. When I asked if tea brewed over charcoal tastes better Bekir nodded adamantly while the customer who invited us in, a native Çorumlu who spends half his time in Istanbul working as a women's hairdresser, shook his head. Other customers who cared to weigh in agreed, nodding their heads as he told me: "It looks nice. It makes us feel good. It's for nostalgia." Fair enough.

Another lovely nostalgic touch: sugar cubes served in old-fashioned brass pedestals.

From Çorum we hit the road for the relatively easy 200-kilometer drive to Sivas, only to be waylaid two hours later by big sloppy snowflakes and icy roads in Tokat. To tell the truth we weren't too terribly disappointed. We took a shine to Tokat in 2000 and our affection for the curious little city deepened when we revisited last October. 

Our unplanned stop afforded the opportunity to revisit a spectacular old tea house on the edge of Tokat's old market district and on the same street as its lovely clock tower.

Yüksek Kahve ("stately" coffee house) is about the same age as Çorum's Tıkı Mehmet but, sadly, is in much worse repair. Its second story, which features a beautiful arched carved wood panel over one window, is all but unuseable. The tea/coffee house is still going though, and in fine weather the verandah makes a excellent perch from which to check out this storied street's comings and goings.

Yüksek's patrons are, on average, younger than Tıkı Mehmet's but no less appreciative of coffee house history. When our host, a former tobacco factory worker in his mid-fifties, grabbed a calendar of decades-old photographs of Tokat off the wall to show me younger guys gathered around. "Look at that," said one, pointing to a photograph taken from Yüksek's verandah, of crowds of shoppers passing by in front on their way to market. "That was this place right here, old Tokat," he sighed with more than a hint of melancholy.

Yüksek's tea cubby and its modern electric çay ocağı are manned by a couple of cool dudes, but neither the new kitchen nor the younger staff take away from the tea house's overall atmosphere.

On the few occasions we've visited the tea shop its tables, okey game-ready with their green cloths, have been well populated and the clink of spoons against tea glasses played in time with a steady hum of conversation. On warm autumn days Yüksek's many windows facilitate welcome breezes. On winter mornings sun warms its two rooms, inviting regulars and visitors to stay for a third or fourth glass.

In Istanbul, a Slurp to Chase Winter Chills

It's snowing! In Istanbul!

And with big fluffy flakes drifting down outside our window, now seems the perfect time to tell you about boza.

Thought to have been invented in the 10th century or thereabouts by central Asian Turks, boza is a fermented drink made from corn, wheat, or millet. We sampled the beverage at Vefa Bozacisi, an old-timey shop not far from Suleymaniye Mosque. Vefa is certainly not a "find" -- it's in every guide book and probably on every walking tour, but it's not just for visitors; Istanbullu frequent Vefa too. 

The shop has a long history. By the 1600s there were boza shops all over Istanbul selling a thin, sour, rather alcoholic version, until Sultan Mehmend IV closed them down as part of a genearl ban on alcohol. During this period a sweetish, hardly alcholic version is said to have been favored by the Janissaries who guarded Topkapi Palace. Given the Sultan's ban on booze it became popular outside the palace walls as well.

In the late 1800s -- or so the story on the Vefa website goes -- Vefa founder Hadji Sadik Bey immigrated to Istanbul from Albania and "started to make Vefa Boza of a different flavour and taste, with thick consistency and having a less sour taste, just as it is flavoured and enjoyed today."

Boza is a winter beverage meant to be drunk warm. Long ago it was sold by itinerant vendors who pushed their carts up and down Istanbul's slippery wintertime hills shouting "Boooza! Booooza!" Now you can buy the stuff in a bottle, but for pure nostalgia value it's hard to beat the Vefa experience.

The shop is all mirrors, blue-and-white tiles, and timber. Orders of boza are ladled up to order from a big marble tub on the bar that runs along one side of the shop.

We sampled our boza off-season (as you might deduce by the short sleeves in these photos). Such a hearty drink would probably have gone down easier in the dead of winter but even in June boza cast its spell on me.

It's quite viscous -- thick and slurpy. Some may find this repellent, but living in Asia has pretty much inured me to gloppiness in any dish or beverage. I loved the boza's's mildly sweet-tanginess, which is nicely complemented by the generous sprinkle of cinnamon with which the boza server annoints each glass.

Right across the street from Vefa is a leblebici (roasted chickpea seller). This is not a coincidence. Some boza drinkers sprinkle the roasted legumes on top of their boza before each sip/slurp.

On that summer day, as we sat in Vefa sipping/slurping our boza, our friend Evren (he of the healthy obsession with deliciousness and the memorable brunch near Rumeli Castle) explained the custom such: "Imagine buying a bag of just-roasted leblebi from the leblebici, then rushing over to Vefa to eat them while they're still hot, with a warm glass of boza."

That I can imagine, on a wintry day like this.

(Want to try making boza at home? This recipe uses bulgur. Want more winter? Dave shot these images earlier this week in Sivas and Malatya, central Turkey -- and on the open road in between.)