EatingAsia

On Hainanese Cuisine, Or How Chicken Chops Became Comfort Food in Malaysia

A classic Hainanese coffeeshop breakfast: coffee and charcoal-grilled toast with butter and kaya,usually accompanied by a soft-boiled egg

About eighteen months ago Dave and I were approached by the editor of a new Dutch food magazine called Sabor. Would we be interested in doing a feature story on the topic of our choice for the inaugural issue, he wondered? In fact, for years we'd wanted to write and photograph a story on Malaysia's curious culinary mish-mash known as "Hainanese food". So in late 2010 we spent some time in Kuala Lumpur and on Fraser's Hill researching the story for Sabor.

Sabor published its first issue last August. It's a beautiful, substantive food magazine the likes of which I wish there were more of: a great mix of stories high-brow and low-brow, on dining from the street to tables in starred restaurants, focusing on chefs and producers and cooks and eaters of all stripes. The photography is beautiful and the layout is gorgeous. Our Hainanese piece was given 20 pages; needless to say the photographer was pleased. If you're interested, have a peek at, or download, the story here.

The second issue of Sabor is out now. If you're in the Netherlands and read Dutch (or not, but enjoy looking at wonderful food photography) please pick up a copy and support this new venture.

Our next story for Sabor, on Hanoi, will appear later this year. In the meantime, now that Issue No 1 is off the newstands, we give you here the original English text and photos: Hainanese food and Hainanese cooks in Malaysia, with recipes.

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Just another busy day at Yut Kee

    Soon after I arrived in Kuala Lumpur a Malaysian friend invited me out for a Hainanese meal. Hainan is a Chinese island province in the South China Sea, about halfway between southern China and Vietnam, and in the mid-eighties I idled there for an entire August. I spent every day just like the one before it, hiking past cows grazing in coconut palm groves, swimming off pristine stretches of sand and gorging on whole snapper, plump prawns and lobsters with tails the diameter of my wrist, all steamed with garlic and ginger.

    After almost three decades I can still taste those simple yet stunning lunches and dinners. My chum’s invitation threw up the possibility of having those flavors close to hand once again, and I was thrilled.

     Imagine my surprise a few days later when I found myself staring down a chicken chop. My friend and I had just been served at Yut Kee, a Hainanese-owned stalwart of Kuala Lumpur’s dining scene for over 90 years. The corner coffee shop's chicken chop -- a mostly de-boned leg and thigh deep-fried, topped with peas, cubed carrots and corn kernels and bathed in glossy Worcestershire sauce-seasoned onion gravy -- is one of its signature dishes.

    This was my first taste of Malaysian Hainanese cuisine. It was as far from the dishes that I’d fallen for on Hainan as much of what passes for Cantonese food in America is from the food eaten served in Guangzhou. Once I got over my shock, however, I had to admit that chicken chop was a work of art in its own right. I soon became a Hainanese food devotee and Yut Kee regular.

    Chops are just one of the pantheon of dishes with origins variously Western, Chinese or a combination of the two recognized in Malaysia as “Hainanese”. In addition to chops, Malaysian Hainanese cooks are known for their breakfasts -- soft-boiled eggs served with steamed or charcoal-toasted soft white bread -- chicken pot pies, steaks, and Hailam mee, noodles cooked with prawns, pork and vegetables. They're credited with making some of the best kopi (coffee) -- thick, dark and usually mixed with sweetened condensed milk -- in Malaysia. And they poach whole chickens and serve the meat sliced, accompanied with oily chicken stock-enriched rice and dipping sauces made with ginger and fresh chilies, for a dish known as “Hainan chicken rice”.

    Malaysian Hainanese is a hodgepodge cuisine, a product of the country’s history as colony (the British controlled much of what is now Malaysia and Singapore from the mid-19^th century until 1946) and adopted home of waves of immigrants from Asia and beyond. Today ethnic Chinese make up a little over a quarter of Malaysia’s population. They arrived in stages, beginning in the 1700s with traders from the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian (who are known as Hokkien). Hakka, Cantonese and Teochew followed. They arrived early enough to have their pick of jobs in tin mining, rubber production, agriculture and other professions.

    Hainanese Chinese were among the last to make their way to British Malaya, beginning in the late 1800s and continuing into the early 20^th century. By that time Cantonese, Teochew, Hokkienese and  Hakka clan associations, which were established to help new arrivals find work and housing, had secured a lock on most employment opportunities. So many Hainanese ended up taking positions as cooks in British military camps and in the homes of British expatriates and wealthy Chinese, where they learned to turn out perfectly cooked roasts, make cream of mushroom soup, boil eggs just so, fry up crispy chops and knead dough for bread and pastries. Soon enough they put this experience to use in their own restaurants and coffee shops, where they cobbled together the elements of what came to be known in Malaysia as Hainanese cuisine.

    Yut Kee embodies the Hainanese gastronomic odyssey. “My dad was born in Hainan in 1887 and came to Malaysia when he was in his teens,” says Yut Kee’s son Jack Lee late one afternoon as his busy shops begins to quiet down. Sixty-six year-old Jack runs Yut Kee with his own son Mervyn, who will carry on the family business when Jack is ready to step down. 

    Yut Kee looks as if it has hardly changed since Jack’s father opened its doors in 1928. It occupies a typically long and narrow Malaysian Chinese shop house open across the front on the ground floor with a kitchen in the back and living quarters upstairs. Ceiling fans rotate lazily over the always-crowded dining room, where Malaysian regulars and tourists (Yut Kee’s reputation has spread well beyond Malaysia) sit in bent timber chairs at marble-topped tables arranged on a green and white tiled floor.

    Hainanese cooks mastered not only Western savories, but sweets as well. Displayed near the cash register, in a vintage wood and glass case, are Yut Kee’s desserts: marble cake and fat logs of ethereally light butter cake rolled around a filling of kaya, a rich caramel-ish coconut milk-and-egg “jam”. Yut Kee’s signature inky coffee is made the old-fashioned way -- by pouring boiling water over grounds in a cotton “sock” filter suspended from a metal ring -- in a cubby hole just off the rear of the dining room. Cloudy mirrors on opposite walls maintain good feng shui. Hanging on a wall near the middle of the shop is a large photograph of a young Yut Kee, the spitting image of Jack and Mervyn with his rounded cheeks and upturned nose.

Jack Lee during a rare quiet moment at Yut Kee

    Yut Kee died just three years after Jack was born, so “everything I know about Dad I heard from my mothers,” he says. Multiple wives wasn’t so unusual in Yut Kee’s day, and after he died his three wives ran the business, dividing duties amongst themselves: one took charge of the coffee area, another oversaw the cash register and the third, Jack’s birth mother, kept the kitchen humming. Today Yut Kee opens for breakfast at 7am and closes, after the last customer has taken his or her beer and chicken chop or cup of coffee and kaya roll, around 5 or 6 in the evening. In Yut Kee’s time the place operated as a full restaurant – the “in” place for night clubbers, Jack winks -- and didn’t close its doors till 3 or 4 in the morning.

    Jack grew up in the shop. “I worked a bit in the kitchen, but I wasn’t sure if I would keep with it,” he remembers. But in 1970, when his mothers were getting on and the day-to-day became a challenge for them, he took over. “They had put so much effort into the business, so I thought, ‘Let me continue with it.”

    Today much of what’s served at Yut Kee is true to the original menu. Though cutlets (prawn, crab, and pork) and Jack’s father’s signature steamed fish with cream sauce are no more, chicken curry -- tender bone-in pieces in a fiery sauce flecked with fresh curry leaves – spicy-sou asam fish, perfectly prepared chops, Hailam mee (noodles with prawns and pork), and toast served with kaya remain. When he took over Jack added a few items such as beef stew and rice stir-fried with belacan (Malaysian shrimp paste) to the menu.

    Yut Kee is perhaps best known for its roti babi (“pork bread” in Malay), an over-the-top, eat-with-your-hands snack consisting of a thick slab of white bread stuffed with pork and crabmeat, coated in egg, and shallow-fried. Visit Yut Kee anytime after 10am and you’ll find at least one order on every single table.

    Butter cake and chops, noodles and a mish-mash east-west dish like roti babi. What exactly is Hainanese food? A “fusion of confusion,” in Jack’s words. But as far as he’s concerned there’s no doubt which Chinese Malaysian cooks can lay claim to the chop:

    “You certainly won’t find any Hokkienese, Teochew, or Cantonese chicken chops!”

 ***

Arundel, on Fraser's Hill

    While many Hainanese cooks transported their skills from colonial-era homes to their own coffee shop, others stayed in private kitchens . The fruits of their culinary prowess can still be enjoyed in a few hotels and bungalows found in colonial hill stations dotted around peninsular Malaysia.

    With its polished plank floors, wood-paned windows, stuffed sofa and chairs, and clipped lawn bordered by temperate blooming flowers and shrubs, Arundel would be right at home in the English countryside. Instead the four-bedroom black-and-white bungalow sits at 1,500 meters two hours outside of Kuala Lumpur on Fraser’s Hill, a former tin-ore trading post turned British hill station in 1922. Set amidst pristine forest threaded with walking trails and often shrouded in fog or rain clouds, the former hill station is a popular weekend and school holiday getaway for Malaysians, who come to take in the clean, cool air and enjoy the green and quiet.

    But I’ve come to Arundel, one of two early 20^th-century houses sharing a prime spot of land at the end of a cul-de-sac, to experience Malaysian Hainanese cooking in situ. For almost 50 years the bungalow’s kitchen was the domain of Tan Kee Tain, a Hainanese cook who arrived in Malaysia in the 1920s. Four and a half years ago Tan died at the age of 82, but not before passing his culinary knowledge on to his daughter-in-law Lam Foong Ling.

Teatime at Arundel: freshly baked scones and a photograph of a young Mr. Tan

    Over tea, homemade scones, and jam in Arundel’s sitting room Mr. Tan’s daughter Nancy Yap, who supervises the bungalow, shares memories of her father. “He didn’t come to cooking naturally – at first it was just a job,” she tells me. Nancy’s father held a number of jobs around British Malaya before making his way to Fraser’s Hill, where some of his relatives worked in other bungalow kitchens.

    “But once he began cooking, he really enjoyed it.” As if to illustrate her point she shows me photos: a lean, young Mr. Tan sitting with a big grin on a curb outside the bungalow and another of a middle-aged Mr. Tan showing off a chicken pot pie with a mile-high puff pastry crust. Then there's a snapshot of white-haired, septuagenarian Mr. Tan in Arundel’s kitchen, demonstrating the art of bread-making to a half-circle of enraptured Malaysian housewives.

    Madam Foong, Mr. Tan’s daughter-in-law, mimics her teacher’s savvy with dough and sweet breads; our scones are rich and buttery, golden outside, a light crumb within. She began to study with Mr. Tan a decade ago. “My kids had left home and I had nothing to do. I always liked to cook. He said, ‘Why don’t you come and work in the kitchen?’ And I thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’”

Hailam mee at Arundel

    Over two days at Arundel I dine on a parade of exquisitely prepared Hainanese classics: crispy pork cutlets bathed in a Chinese sweet rice wine and soy sauce-spiked gravy, Hailam noodles with sliced pork and briny shrimp, garnished with crispy caramelized sliced shallot and perfectly poached Hainan chicken made with a free-range bird and served with zesty fresh ginger and chili sauces. Every meal is accompanied by green vegetables – slender string beans, perky leaf lettuce, crispy baby bok choy – plucked fresh from Arundel’s kitchen garden and stir-fried with Madam Foong’s expert touch. Teatime brings baked goods -- scones of course, and one of Mr. Tan’s specialties: tender, chewy twists of potato-enriched dough sprinkled with sugar and grated orange rind.

    Asked what she most enjoys about cooking, Madam Foong smiles wide and answers quickly: “Roast lamb. I love cooking Western dishes.” Mr. Tan's Hainanese culinary legacy is alive and well on Fraser's Hill.

***

In the kitchen at Yut Kee

    Back at Yut Kee, Jack has promised to show me how to make the shop’s iconic dish: roti babi. But when I arrive after lunch on a Thursday he’s had a change of heart. “Let Mervyn do it,” Jack says, with a nod to his son, who’s standing behind the cash register adding up receipts. “Mervyn’s coming up now. He’s the new generation.”

    Like his father, 30-year-old Mervyn grew up in Yut Kee. After earning a university degree in the United States he returned to Malaysia and joined the business. Putting his knack for systems management to use, Mervyn is adding polish to Yut Kee’s inner operations. But his attachment to the place comes from the heart, all but guaranteeing that the spirit of Yut Kee won't change.

    Mervyn also knows his way around Yut Kee’s well-worn, sometimes bordering-on-chaotic kitchen. I watch as he minces pork by hand and carefully cuts pockets into two thick slices of bread. After stir-frying sliced onion, Chinese sausage and pork with Worcestershire sauce for the roti babi filling he adds jicama, instructing “The jicama goes in last because I like to keep it a little bit crispy.”

    Then the secret of Yut Kee’s version of roti babi is revealed: instead of beating whole eggs for dipping the bread Mervyn separates yolks and whites, beats the latter to stiff peaks and then gently folds them into the beaten yolks. When the stuffed bread is dipped into the mixture it emerges with an impossibly thick layer of egg that browns beautifully, flawlessly, in the oiled skillet.

    What emerges from the pan is an almost oil-free fluffy bread pocket spilling tender pork and a touch of crab meat. The Worcestershire is a barely detectable back note, a hint of sweetness and salt that plays off the richness of the pork and shellfish. While the onions are soft and caramelized the jicama retains a bit of bite, offering a welcome bit of textural contrast.

    After plating his roti babi Mervyn heads back out to the cash register. Jack sits at his usual spot, near a table at the entrance, gabbing with regulars and wishing passers-by a pleasant evening. In downtown Kuala Lumpur, as on Fraser’s Hill, Hainanese cuisine is alive and well.

***

Lunch at Arundel: Hainan Chicken Rice w/two dipping sauces and Hailam mee

HAINAN CHICKEN RICE

According to Mr. Tan’s daughter Nancy this is one of the few Malaysian Hainanese dishes that can also be found on Hainan, in her father’s home of Wenchang. This simple preparation demands the best ingredients, so if you can, use a free-range bird. The mark of a good Hainan chicken is flesh that is just barely cooked; you don’t want the meat to get tough.

The chicken, rice, and dipping sauces can comprise an entire meal, but you might also serve a light soup of green leaves (bok choy perhaps, or choi sum) cooked  in diluted chicken broth with a slice or two of ginger.

FOR THE CHICKEN:

And approximately 2-kilo chicken, preferably free range

2-inch piece old ginger

Salt

1. Bring a pot of water (large enough to accommodate the whole chicken) to the boil.Wash and dry the chicken. Drop a few pinches of salt into the body cavity, along with the ginger.
2. Place the chicken into the pot, laying it breast up. Bring the water back to the boil, then lower to a slow simmer and place a lid on the pot. After 20 minutes turn the chicken over. Continue to simmer for another 20 minutes. In the meantime, fill another pot (or large bowl) – also large enough to accommodate the whole chicken – with cold water.
3. After about 40 minutes remove the chicken from the pot, reserving the broth, and plunge it into the cold water. Leave for 20 minutes. Remove and gently pat dry with paper towels. Set aside, propping the chicken up so that any water in the body cavity can drain out.

FOR THE GINGER SAUCE:

2 inches old ginger

2 green onions, white part only

Reserved chicken stock

Salt to taste

Sesame oil – scant 1/4 tsp (optional)

1. Chop and pound in mortar (or whir in blender or food processor) the ginger and the onions. The result should be a barely lumpy puree.
2. Remove to a small bowl and stir in approximately a tablespoon of stock from boiling the chicken (try to include some of the chicken fat as well) and salt to taste. If you like, add just a couple drops of sesame oil.

FOR THE CHILI SAUCE:

2 cloves garlic

2 small fresh hot red chilis

2 large mild fresh red chilis

½ inch old ginger

Chicken fat skimmed from stock

2 kalamansi or ½-1 whole lime

Salt to taste

1. Chop and pound in a mortar (or whir in blender or food processor) the garlic, chilies, and ginger. The result should be a barely lumpy puree.
2. Remove to a small bowl and stir in a bit of chicken fat from the boiling stock, and the juice of 2 kalamansi or ½ whole lime. Taste and adjust for salt and kalamansi/lime juice. The dipping sauce should be hot and tart, but not overwhelmingly sour. It’s meant to balance the richness of the chicken meat and rice.

FOR THE RICE:

2 red shallots

2 cloves garlic

2 1/2 cups rice 

3 3/4-4 cups stock from boiling chicken

2 pinches salt

black soy sauce

1 pandan leaf (if available)

1. Finely mince shallots and garlic, and quickly fry in a dry wok or pan just until they begin to color. Remove from the pan and place in a rice cooker, along with the rice, chicken stock, salt, soy sauce, and pandan leaf. Turn the rice cooker on cook as usual.

TO SERVE:

1 cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced crosswise

2 green onions (scallion), white and green part, thinly sliced lengthwise

fresh cilantro sprigs

1. Arrange the cucumber slices on a platter in a single layer
2. Prepare the chicken: If you prefer, remove the skin from the breasts and legs and thighs. Separate legs and thighs and cut each of the four pieces in half with a cleaver or sharp knife. Carefully remove the breast meat from the bone and cut into 1 ½-inch thick slices.
3. Arrange the breasts and legs/thighs neatly on top of the cucumber. Lightly toss the shallot slivers and cilantro sprigs together with your fingers and place them on top of the chicken.
4. Serve the chicken with the two sauces, the rice and any leftover broth, reheated (or a light soup of green leaves parboiled in diluted broth).

Mr. Tan's -- and now Madam Foong's -- orange twists

ORANGE TWISTS

These light, not-too-sweet orange-fragrant rolls are frequent accompaniments to afternoon tea at Arundel and Bunge. Fresh milk was hard to come by on Fraser's Hill, thus the use of powdered milk..

According to Nancy Tan her father learned this recipe from an American who stayed at Arundel many decades ago. After experimenting with the dough he began to use it for other baked goods as well. Madam Foong advises that the finished dough can be halved, with one half used the same day for these orange twists and the other refrigerated and used within three days for fried donuts, cinnamon buns, or dinner rolls. (If you go this route be sure to use only half the amounts specified when you make the filling)

Makes approximately 34 twists

FOR THE DOUGH:

2 scant Tbsp dry yeast

6 oz. warm water

¼ tsp sugar

2 cups hot water

3 Tbsp milk powder

1 ½ cups vegetable shortening

1 cup white sugar

½ Tbsp salt

1 cup mashed potato

2 eggs

8 – 8 ½ cups plain flour

Flour for kneading

 

FOR THE FILLING:

 

8 Tbsp butter, softened

4 Tbsp sugar

Grated zest of 3 oranges

 

1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water. Set aside for yeast to rise, about 15 mins. Dissolve milk powder in hot water. Set aside to cool slightly.
2. Cream shortening with white sugar. Stir in salt. Pass mashed potato through fine sieve into dough. Stir to combine.
3. Beat the eggs and stir them into the water/milk powder mixture. Add to dough and stir to combine thoroughly. Sift flour into dough and stir to combine. Start with 8 cups and add more if necessary – the dough should be smooth and no longer sticky. Place dough in bowl and cover with a damp towel. Place in refrigerator for one hour.
4. Remove dough from refrigerator and turn it out onto smooth surface lightly dusted with flour. Flatten and knead lightly for several minutes. Return to bowl and place back into refrigerator for at least 1 and not more than 6 hours.
5. Grease two large cookie sheets. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide in two. Set one piece aside and cover with a damp cloth. Knead the other lightly for several minutes and then use a rolling pin to flatten it into an approximately 24-inch by 12 inch rectangle.
6. Spread the rectangle of dough with 4 Tbsp soft butter and sprinkle evenly with 2 Tbsp sugar and half the orange zest. Slide a floured knife underneath the dough’s perimeter to loosen it from the rolling surface.
7. Bring one long side of the dough up and fold it over, so that its edge lays at the rectangle’s center. Repeat with the opposite side. The two sides should barely overlap in the center of the. Lightly pat the surface of the new, narrower rectangle, then use a knife to divide it crosswise into 16 1 1/2-inch strips. Twist each strip into a loose ‘rope’ and lay the ropes side-by-side on a cookie sheet. Cover with a damp hot towel and set aside. Repeat with the other piece of dough. Leave the twists aside, under a damp cloth, to rise for 1 hour.
8. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 and bake the twists on racks set at the oven’s center. Check after 15 minutes – if they’re not finished reverse the trays and bake for an additional 5 minutes, until golden brown.
9. While the twists are baking prepare the icing, if using: stir icing sugar, starting with 1 Tbsp, into orange juice until you have a liquid the consistency of pouring cream.
10. Drizzle the hot twists with the icing (don’t overdo it) as soon as they come out of the oven.

Dusk on Fraser's Hill  

A Dram in Malacca

It's only Wednesday and already it's been a long week. The kind of week that makes me wish I had a regular watering hole, a comfortable spot where they know me and I know them, where it's impossible to walk in for a pop without leaving whatever's weighing on me at the door, where a bit of idle conversation over a tipple carries erases the work day and carries me to dinner.

If I were in Malacca this is where I'd be this evening: at a beautiful eighty-over year-old timber bar burnished from years of spilled drink and water rings and rubbed smooth from hundreds, probably thousands of forearms. A bar with just few seats and one table, occupying the ground floor of a century-old shop house. A bar run by the great-grandson of its founder and his wife, a shy couple who never really open up unless you stop in a second, and third, time.

We discovered Sin Hiap Hin last May while in Malacca to report on its situation three years after being named a Unesco world heritage site. As I wrote in this post on finding old Malacca (it's not easy, but possible) the old town's prognosis isn't good. Everyone I interviewed for the story was frustrated, even despairing, of the public funds spent on new attractions while the city's historical architecture and living culture deteriorates, evaporates. As one of the local conservationists I spoke with said, "Malacca is overflowing with history and richness and culture. We don't have to create anything."

Sin Hiap Hin isn't in any of the brochures touting Malacca's viewing tower, its reconstructed fort or the shopping mall built on the padang where Malaysia declared independence from British rule. It's not in the "Where to Drink" sections of guidebooks that direct you instead to watering holes along Malacca's sanitized riverbanks or to the bars around Jonker's Walk.

Sin Haip Hin is just a nondescript little place on Java Lane, which in the early part of the 20th century was Malacca's entertainment center. Up the street is Tay Boon Wah barbershop, which also opened in the 1930s. Around the corner was the Chinese Theater. Surrounding Sin Hiap Hin were brothels and other bars and opium dens and cheap lodging houses.

Java Lane is dead quiet now, especially in the evenings. But if you sit in Sin Hiap Hin around sunset you can almost imagine the street outside teeming with life -- with new arrivals and hustlers and theater goers and men and women out on the town.

With a bit of coaxing Lian Suan and her husband will reminisce; they'll talk about the laborers who used to convene here for beers and stronger stuff when the Malacca River was still busy with boats ferrying goods from the big ships docked at its port to the warehouses just across what used to be known as the Iron Bridge. "Oh, it got noisy," she smiles wistfully. "We were open very late!" No longer. Come after 630pm or 7 and you'll likely find Sin Hiap Hin's doors shut tight.

On our last visit we admired the bar's fine vintage dram measures; Lian Suan's husband offered them to us as a gift. We couldn't accept. Family heirlooms they are, not something to be handed over to strangers. But later we wondered if we'd done the right thing. The bar's customers are dwindling, and Lian Suan told us they'll probably sell the house eventually. What will become of that beautiful timber bar? Will those dram measures be treasured by the couple's children or their children? Or will they be viewed as junk and tossed in the trash?

Sin Hiap Hin, 5 Java Lane. A wide range of Chinese liquors (try lychee-scented Boon Kwi Loh) sold by the bottle or by the shot, plus ice-cold beer and non-alcholic beverages from the fridge.

The Ambar

We began noticing them on the drive from Inebolu to Sinop: single-story timber structures raised from the ground, supported by what look like rough-hewn cocktail tables of the sort you might find in a Wild West-themed cowboy bar.. Storage facilities of some sort, we reasoned, something along the lines of the rice barns that dot the landscape in Thailand and Indonesia.

Turkey's Black Sea coast is corn country (though plenty of wheat is grown there too). In autumn almost every rural house is festooned with bunches and garlands of drying cobs. These "corn barns", which we later learned are called ambar in Turkish (a generic term for "storehouse"), were used by farmers to dry and store their harvests of corn (and other crops) while waiting for their turn at the village mill. Set up high above the ground, their crops were safely out of the reach of the wild boar and other  animals that roam the Black Sea's pine-carpeted hills. Now most of them sit empty.

We were bug-eyed after days of gray skies,confined by unceasing rain to our hotel room or one or another of Sinop's harborside teahouses. When we finally woke to a weak, tentative sun we dressed and hurriedly breakfasted, jumped in the car and hit the road.

We drove inland, away from the sea we'd been staring at for the better part of a week, and traced a two-lane blacktop deep into a bucolic valley. Here and there were the tiniest of villages comprising a single bufe (always well-stocked with freshly baked bread) and a handful of cottages. Plumes of smoke rose from roadside gardens, signalling pekmez in process. We pulled off the road not once but four times, to find mothers and grandmothers hovering over mammoth metal kazan (cauldrons), cooking down kilos and kilos of apples, pears, mulberries, figs and grapes into liters and liters of fruit molasses over wood fires.

Alongside a river slicing through a not-quite mountainous range trees were hinting at autumn, flashing bare limbs and spots of saffron and yellow. We breezed by a mid-sized town and kept on, beyond the point at which the road became a pitted dirt track. Lured by the vista around the next corner and the next we climbed and climbed, cautiously negotiating hairpin turns, always on the lookout for heedless Turkish drivers.

There were ambar, plenty of them, and we slowed and gawked at each one; by now we were a bit obsessed with these structures. When the road narrowed to nearly impassable we stopped at the base of a hill crowned by an especially handsome specimen and got out of our car to take photos.

While Dave was shooting a window on the facade of what we'd taken to be an abandoned farmhouse opposite the ambar a shutter banged open and a red kerchiefed head popped out. We were assaulted with a half-growl, half-shout: Kimler? Kimler? Ne yapsiniz? "Who's there? What are you doing?"

I shouted back that we were just taking photographs of her ambar. She looked dubious and slammed the window shut. A few moments later she popped out the farmhouse's entrance and, puffing loudly with arms swinging, toddled over to the gate.

"It's gorgeous! He's a photographer," I said, indicating my husband and the corn barn, trying to explain why we'd hiked up a hill and onto her property. She glared at me from beneath thick formidable brows, scaring me a little. My Turkish is no match for an angry teyze. But then suddenly the clouds parted. Her face didn't soften, exactly, but she invited us in for tea.

She invited us into her beautiful beautiful wooden house. Later her husband told us it was built of beechwood by his father, over 60 years ago. We entered from the dim ground floor layed with stone, a storage area for tools and bags of recently harvested walnuts and hazelnuts and, long ago, cattle and sheep and chickens.

Ladder stairs -- the steps, made of 2-inch thick boards, so solid underfoot -- led to an entry area. To the left was a curtained kitchen nook recently updated by the woman's son, with a marble countertop, new sink and taps and a handcarved wooden bench. Two bedrooms lay straight ahead. One was empty save for a cloth spread over the floor covered with drying corn kernals. The timber walls were hung with old kilim and thick cotton cloth.

Habiba -- after a while I gained the courage to ask her name -- led us into a sitting room brightened by two windows -- one with a fine view down the hill up which our car had just snaked -- and directed us to a low cushioned banquette running along one wall. Outside it was cold enough for gloves and a hat and heavy wool socks. Inside, the room was toasty warm from a wood-fired stove set within a five foot-high blackened hearth. She left us there to admire the timber walls, gleaming from age and smoke, and returned with a metal canister of water and a container of tea leaves.

Habiba told us about her family, three sons and a daughter, all grown and married and living in Istanbul. Grandkids too, and they all converge on the village every summer to take in the fresh air and cool temperatures. As she talked Habiba loosened up a bit. She was 64 or 65, she said, she couldn't be sure. She'd grown up in the area, she loved these hills: "Allah allah, you should see it in springtime!" 

We must eat something, she insisted, even though it was past lunchtime. We danced the dance of Turkish hospitality, declining while she insisted, and finally giving in. While Habiba was in the kitchen her husband Kazim returned home. Opening the door to find two yabanci drinking tea in his sitting room he stopped short, then graciously and quickly regained his composure. He offered us more tea.

Kazim and Habiba set up a low folding table in front of us, laid it with a flowered cloth and set it with plates of food. Kazim ate with us (Habiba demurred, saying she'd already eaten): tomatoes, long green mild chilies, fresh cheese and gently pickled romano beans that Habiba warmed in oil over a burner on the wood stove. Tea for Kazim, orange Fanta for Dave and me.

As the three of us ate Habiba pulled hunks of bread from a big loaf she kept in a plastic bag on a shelf near the door. She carefully peeled warm hard-boiled eggs and placed them on our plates.

Kazim told us about growing up in the house, how he was seven years old when his father built it with his own hands. He described a village more populous than it is now, the mosque just minutes from their door crowded with the faithful every Friday afternoon; it's closed now. He described the mill down by the river where his father and the village's other farmers took their corn to be ground into grits and flour. How his mother made meals in the hearth that now houses the modern wood-fired stove, and how as a boy he listened to the family's cows and the sheep and chickens moving beneath the floorboards as he drifted off to sleep. Every autumn, he said, the ambar was stacked to its rafters with corn and other fruits of the harvest.

He and Habiba adore each other. It's lovely to see. When she checked his watch and pulled a sack of pills from beneath her sweater -- ''I was in the hospital last month, for few days," she murmured -- Kazim watched her worriedly. When we heard the clank of a jerryrigged oil can bell, hung just outside the house to scare animals away from the garden, Habiba shook her head, smiling sideways at Kazim, and said "That's his work." He shrugged his shoulders, hung his head, then smiled and winked at her. They both laughed.

Every year in late autumn the Habiba and Kazim slaughter their few chickens, pack the carcasse up along with bushels of hazelnuts and walnuts from their own trees and board an overnight bus to Istanbul. There they stay for the winter, shuffling between their children's houses. Not willingly -- when they were younger, Kazim told us, they stuck out the cold and snow in the old house. But it's impossible now. "There's no taxi, no bus to go into town. Sometimes no electricity. It's too isolated. We enjoy Istanbul but ...."

After finishing our lunch we stayed for two more glasses of tea. Habiba looked tired and Kazim began clucking after her; it was time to leave. The couple walked us downstairs, Kazim taking quiet but obvious pride in the fact that Dave stopped every step to photograph his house's wooden beams and planks and its storage area, where the baskets Kazim and Habiba use to collect walnuts and apples hung on hooks jutting from the walls. He understood why we'd been drawn to the ambar. "Yes, it's beautiful," he agreed.

Neither Kazim nor Habiba wanted their photograph taken. "We're too old and too ugly!" she cried, shooing Dave away but laughing when he tried to convince her otherwise.

"Come back in the spring, in May, after we return from Istanbul," Habiba said us as she urged a bulging bag of black walnuts into my hands."This place in the springtime, oh! You can't imagine how wonderful. Like heaven on earth."

Missed Opportunities and Pide

You certainly wouldn't call Saray the friendliest pide salonu in Turkey. When we walked in, hungry after a morning of shopping on empty stomachs for edible souvenirs like rough bulgur pasta and split fava beans, the owner looked up from behind his desk and fixed us with an unsmiling stare, heaved a deep sigh and went back to his newspaper.

But the place smelled good, too good to walk back out of, like yeast and browning meat and cheese melting under a grill. A welcoming warmth (the weather had turned overnight; the previous day's harmless puffy clouds were now charcoal gray and what had been a cool breeze had morphed into a cutting wind hinting at snow) emanated from the wood oven on the back wall. And pide, lots and lots of pide were being made.

So we ignored the owner's diffidence and grabbed a couple of seats. A delivery order of 90-plus pide was being assembled on the table behind us. We took this as an encouraging sign.

It was our last morning in Tokat, a town in the southern reaches of Turkey's mid-Black Sea region that doesn't see a lot of tourists but should. Not necessarily because of its beauty -- Tokat is your average Anatolian town -- or because of its sights, which are relatively few, but because of its welcoming populace. When you first arrive Tokat feels closed and conservative. Give it half a day and the city opens its arms wide.

Regrets brought us back to Tokat, which we first visited eleven years ago. On that trip, in which we'd driven from the Mediterranean city of Antalya to Camlihemsin on the Black Sea, we'd squeezed too much into too little time. We hadn't yet learned to make room for serendipity by scheduling in plenty of slack days or to be willing to jetison a planned destination if a tempting alternative intervened.

That trip we met a smart, funny 16-year-old who walked us around town and invited us to his high school to sort-of teach an English class. The next morning we went and had a blast. All the kids wanted to invite us home for dinner. If we hadn't been so insistent on getting to Amasya before we hit Trabzon before we visited Camlihemsin we'd have enjoyed a dozen home-cooked meals in a dozen Tokat homes over the next few days. Instead we took to the road shortly after the class.

Stupid, stupid. STUPID.

This time around we half hoped we'd bump into our young friend, perhaps married now. Surely he'd recognize us (we yabanci don't all look alike, do we?) even if we probably wouldn't recognize him. That didn't happen of course, but we're nonetheless glad that the memory of meeting him all those years ago lured us back. On that first trip Tokat intrigued us. It still does. We know we'll return soon.

Tokat may not be beautiful in the way that Istanbul is. But it is ruggedly handsome, ringed by rocky crags and real mountains further out; from high up the views are dramatic. Kids climb around on those crags after school, and shepherds tend sheep.

There's a crumbling castle too, and stone-paved streets that wind uphill from the bustling "modern" main street. This is Old Tokat, an area of wood-frame brick houses and mansions. Some bear massive double timber doors with a pattern of two side-by-side "Z"s, one flipped in the reverse. Everyone acknowledges this pattern is a Tokat thing, but no one could tell us how or why it came to be.

Agricultural land laps at Tokat's edges and in autumn strings of drying vegetables and fruit festoon windows and walls and women in the Old City, many of whom belong to families who work their own farms, gather on a raised concrete slab at the upper reaches of the neighborhood, where they turn stalks of wheat into wheat berries and bulgur.

Tokat boasts a wonderful twice-a-week market with a koy section where village women sell pekmez and cheese and huge piles of herbs foraged in the hills. And craftsmen making saddles and harnesses by hand and blacksmiths who still pound shoes for horses and donkeys.

In Tokat everyone has time to talk; Dave and I must have drunk gallons of tea between us during dozens of conversations with Tokat-ans on everything from home cooking to the layout of traditional Tokat houses.

So by Day Three, our last day, we felt a warm friendly glow that enabled us to ignore the non-welcome from Saray's owner. We ordered our pides and a couple of chopped salads and admired Saray's lavender and yellow color scheme while we waited for our food.

Which was exceptional, really. There are pide and then there are pide and these pide bore the imprint of years of experience, good ingredients and a master's control of the wood-fired oven.

One arrived oozing scallion-flecked cheese, another spilling tender lamb minced with onion, tomato and long green chilies. Upper crusts were slicked with butter, bottoms were lightly scorched from the hot stones. Every bite held crispness and chewiness and the flavor of good fresh wheat came through. Indifferent ownership or not, we'll return to Saray.

After lunch we left town with regret, though this time it wasn't the sort of regret that comes from missed opportunities.

In case you missed it, Dave has put together a short multi-media on Istanbul's iconic ferry boats. Hop over here, click "play" and take a 4-minute vacation.

In the Philippines, Yemas for Christmas

A few years ago we spent Christmas in a small rural town in Pampanga, Philippines for Saveur magazine. It was one of most memorable, Christmas-y Christmases ever with lots of good cheer and heaps of good eats. Let's just say that that those Filipinos who celebrate the holiday really know how to do Christmas.

One of the many things I learned to make that Christmas week was yemas, milky candies scented with lime rind. They require few ingredients and are a fun diversion from Christmas cookies. And look at that photo -- don't they look festive in their cellophane wraps? A yemas recipe and how-to slideshow are our latest contribution to food and wine website Zester Daily -- find them here.

You can read our Saveur Philippines Christmas feature, with recipes, here. And over the last few years I've posted a couple more recipes from that trip on this blog: over-the-top giant prawns simmered in coconut milk and green papaya fritters with black pepper vinegar.

 

Datli Maya: Tradition With a Twist in Istanbul

The Istanbul-bound flight out of Singapore arrives in the wee hours. Even after we've hit up airport Duty Free, fought the traffic to Beyoglu and dropped our bags in our usual stay in Cihangir it's still early. We know a long nap will assert itself eventually but on a morning like this -- turquoise skies, birds chirping, a light breeze -- going straight to bed is out of the question.

So we walk a little, poking around the neighborhood, tallying the changes since our last visit: a few sleek restaurants, a new bar or two, a couple boutiques. Cihangir doesn't have Galata's dramatic architecture or its historic charm, but its hipster factor has risen dramatically. We're happy to see Mucver is still there; we know it even before we climb the hill outside our door to the corner because we can smell lunch being prepared in the garden-level kitchen just a few doors away.

But wait ... the postage stamp-sized wood-fired bakery where we always buy simit from a sometimes friendly, sometimes grumpy hoca, we see as we approach, has been re-painted. He is gone and -- we roll our eyes -- the place is now a cute cafe called Datli Maya. There is cheesecake in the window.

Oh dear. There goes the neighborhood.

Still, it's open, we're hungry, and jetlag is closing in. We step inside and find that the wood-fired oven is still in use and simit are still for sale. And when we inquire about the hoca the new owner tells us that he taught her to use the wood-fired oven, and the simit recipe is his, and he lives upstairs on the third floor. We feel better.

The cafe is in early days, she says. They're still testing, getting a feel for the fire. Would we like to try a dish of lor (ricotta-reminiscent fresh cheese) and Spanish quince paste warmed in the oven? We would, so we head upstairs, through the teeny-tiny kitchen, and take a seat at one of three tables in the even smaller dining space. In the corner by the door there's help-yourself tea in a big old-fashioned samovar. The wall shelves by our table hold jars of dried herbs, a few books, some knick-knacks. The chairs and tables are mismatched but the place feels comfortable, not twee. Personal, not self-consciously shabby chic.

The cheese and fruit paste arrives at our table drizzled with good olive oil and garnished with two black olives. The lor is unsalted and uber milky, nicely balanced by the sharp olives and sweet quince paste. As we're fighting over the last bite the cafe's energetic owner pops upstairs and, plucking twigs and leaves from the jars on the shelf, offers us herbal tea.

As we drink  I read a framed newspaper clipping hanging on the wall. It turns out that our friendly host is Dilara Erbay, a not unknown quantity in Istanbul's culinary world. (Read more about her career, and Datli Maya, in a typically authoritative Istanbul Eats write-up here.)

Dilara was last associated with Abracadabra, a big beautiful restaurant with a view in Arnavutkoy. One Sunday morning last January we and a couple chef friends went to Abracadabra for what is yet one of the best breakfasts we've eaten in Turkey. Dilara wasn't around, but her commitment to sourcing the absolute best regional ingredients was evident in the kaymak, honeycomb, eggs, butter and cheeses on our table. Yet despite the deliciousness and the welcome given by the Abracadabra staff we knew we wouldn't return; the vibe was a little preening, a bit too see-and-be-seen.

What a lovely surprise then to find that a not-new talent, but a new-to-us talent, was working magic in a place without attitude, a cafe we'd be eager to return to. Three weeks later, after a spell on the Black Sea and inland, we did. It was all good.

The traditionalist in me sniffs at a menu that puts lahmacun side-by-side with cheesecake. But why not, if both are done well? Datli Maya's lahmacun hoca brings his talent for taming the wood fire all the way from the southeast;, our thin-crusted pekmez specimen was memorable, our garlicky sausage and cheese pide delicious. Dilara knows a thing or two about baking; the cheesecake is seven-spiced and lovely, a cross between hefty New York-style and fluffier versions.

Turkey boasts amazing regional ingredients that should be getting more play outside traditional kitchens. Our kudos Datli Maya for going there in a way that feels honest, not gimmicky.

And as a curious cook who enjoys talking with other cooks I like the idea of a place where I can walk through the kitchen and see what the staff is cooking up for the lunch special. On our last morning in Istanbul we found Dilara and her colleagues wrist-deep in wild mushroom and bulgur pilav. Are those dates? I asked, and Dilara pulled a package of floury red Chinese dates from the counter. "A friend gave them to me," she said. "I think they're Vietnamese. But we're using them in this pilaf. Why not?"

Indeed.

Datli Maya, 59/A Türkgücü Caddesi, Cihangir (across from the mosque). Daily 8am-midnight.

In Hanoi, Old and New Ways With Coffee

One of the best things Vietnam has going for it is coffee.

I'm certain that the easy availability of a cup or iced glass of rich chocolate-y coffee almost any time of the day or night, for the equivalent of an American dollar or less has helped make Vietnam such a popular tourist destination. The language is difficult to master, travel can be a hassle and the locals can be at times, um, crusty. But no matter where in Vietnam you find yourself good coffee is likely to be within reach.

While in Hanoi last August Dave and I must have each downed eight or more glasses a day. It's easy to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn when you know a nice coffee is steps from your hotel. It's easy to keep moving in the wilting heat when there's always a glass of the iced stuff nearby to restart your motor. At home we're generally a.m. coffee drinkers only but when we're in Vietnam coffee is an integral part of our entire day.

In Hanoi we found two more reasons to love Vietnamese coffee: ca phe trung (egg coffee) and ca phe sua chua (yogurt coffee).

Both were introduced to us by Hanoi Cooking Centre chef and proprietor (and co-author of a beautiful new book on Vietnamese street food) Tracey Lister. We'd gone to Hanoi to do a story on HCC and its Vietnamese staff, and the evening we arrived we met up with Tracey to lay plans for the week. She suggested we meet at Cafe Pho Co on Hang Gai street. The entry is a souvenir shop but behind is a lovely bordering-on-crumbling building whose breezy rooftop offers one of the best views in Hanoi. 

The hour dictated beer but as we drank Tracey told us about the house specialty, a concoction of raw egg whipped with coffee that she described as something akin to warm coffee custard. Ca phe trung has been a Hanoi drink for generations and Cafe Pho Co has been serving it for decades. It's a morning libation, though the cafe serves it throughout the day. As difficult as Ca Phe Pho Co can be to locate, their ca phe trung justifies the effort.

I'd equate the beverage to my mother's warm eggnog, sans the booze and nutmeg and shot through with notes of caramel and chocolate. It's part dessert (though it's not cloyingly sweet), part restorative caffeinated beverage. It's also reminiscent of wonderful egg-enriched tea we once drank at a food market in western Sumatra (read about the tea and see how to make it here).

There's no reason not to adore a hot ca phe trung (we also tried it iced but found that the drink doesn't benefit from dilution), although the caloric content probably dictates restricted consumption. I can't imagine a more delicious way with eggs and coffee.

A few days later, after a gut-busting lunch at HCC, Tracey took us to Cafe My to try ca phe sua chua. Coffee with yogurt is a more recent invention than egg coffee, it seems, and you'll see signs for it all over town. But Cafe My is an old, not at all trendy shop known for the high quality of its beans (it also inspired a Cafe My chain).

Its lightly sweetened yogurt is especially rich, which makes it the best place to down this treat. It's an inspired and fantastically refreshing combo (opening photo), the light bitterness of the coffee bouncing off the creamy sweetness of the yogurt. We returned to Cafe My specifically for this specialty, which we sometimes preceded with glasses of iced coffee, several times before we left Hanoi.

On one visit a downpour commenced just as we were finishing our coffee yogurts. We'd not brought umbrellas so had no choice but to mine the rest of the yogurt section of Cafe My's menu.

The slightly alcoholic fermented red rice with yogurt (above) received thumbs up from Dave, but while I loved the rice's chewy texture I was ambivalent about its flavor. I'm generally a fermented foods gal, but I wasn't entirely won over by this one.

Creamy ripe avocado mashed with creamy fresh yogurt -- what's not to love about Cafe My's avocado yogurt? Nothing really, except a disappointing mildness flavor that's especially pronounced after you've tried a coffee yogurt.

Gat Luang Diaries IV: A Punjabi Cook, and Gooseberries

Mr. Singh came to Gat Luang's Namdhari Sikh gurdwara from Bangkok and, before that, Punjab. For six years he's been priest and cook at this eighty-year-old center of Namdhari worship in the Gat Luang neighborhood.

When we first visited the gurdwara's kitchen last February, as part of our project to document daily life in this historic neighborhood Mr. Singh was back home in India, and the institution's weekly Friday dinner was prepared instead by a trio of female members. It was good, but there was something about the way our host at the temple spoke of Mr. Singh that made us want to revisit and see him in action.

His kitchen is spotless. Walking into the gurdwara on a Friday afternoon, we're encloaked in an intense  fugue of spices. I expect to encounter a corresponding tumult in the kitchen. Not so. Stainless steel gleams and light bounces off pristine white tiles. On the stove, big pots and a huge wok are arranged in a neat row, each perfectly centered on its burner. Prepared fresh ingredients sit in little bowls arranged tidily on a corner of the counter.

Mr. Singh works alone in the hot space preparing a five-dish meal for sixty, yet his kurta and pajami -- white, as Namdhari tradition dictates -- show no trace of perspiration, no splotches of stray curry.

He moves slowly, gracefully on bare feet, floating from burner to burner, between sink and refrigerator. He doesn't rush but everything gets done. When we arrive Mr. Singh is dicing his homemade paneer, holding a hunk of cheese in one hand and cutting it into cubes with a serious looking curved blade held in the other. The rest of the cheese sits on the counter, beautifully swaddled in a gauzy white scarf as if it had been styled for a photograph.

When he's finished dicing the paneer Mr. Singh deep-fries a few cubes, dusts them with garam masala, and offers us a taste. It's the best I've eaten. Made with milk taken that morning from cows at Chiang Mai University it's buttery and clean, without the rubbery texture that often plagues commercially made paneer. Then he offers hot samosa stuffed with curried potatoes, to dip into tangy tamarind sauce. And there is kheer, more of that creamy milk, lightly sweetened ("For us Indians it would be made sweeter," our host tells us.), laced with cardamom and floating vermicelli and a few tapioca pearls, served hot in metal bowls.

When we arrived Mr. Singh, with his heavy brows, full beard and lush moutache seemed remote and unapproachable, even a bit fierce. But as we praise his food his eyebrows shoot up and his face crinkles into a smile. He is proud of his skill in the kitchen. "You must return tonight for dinner," he says, and we will.

On the counter by the sink in the kitchen are a stainless steel pitcher of cool water and a bowl of amla -- Indian gooseberries -- a seasonal delicacy eaten with spicy dips by northern Thais. At first bite the hard, pitted fruit has no flavor, and then it's sour and bitter, with an astringent finish that sucks all moisture from the mouth.

When you eat this strange fruit water drunk afterwards tastes shockingly sweet. Mr. Singh likes to make amla into a chutney. "Next time you come," he smiles.

A Punjabi saying:

Amle Da Khada

Aur

Shyane Da Keha Bad

Vich Acha Lagdahaey

(Roughly translated for me, by our host at the gurdwara:

Just as the gooseberry has little flavor but makes water taste sweet afterwards, so you do not believe when an elder speaks to you, but learn later in life.)

On the Turkey's Black Sea Coast, Autumn's Bounty

No doubt about it, we are very, very behind. Behind in posting from our autumnal travels in Turkey and from our rainy season time in Chiang Mai. And in posting from Hanoi, and Kelantan before that, and from Taiwan before that.

Where have the last five and a half months gone?

It's almost Thanksgiving (we'll be spending it in Chiang Mai, where we find ourselves once again). To make up for our absence, we're offering a great recipe for Turkey Day leftovers, and a story and slideshow to go along with it. Autumn's abundance on show in markets on Turkey's eastern Black Sea coast, and comfort food from Sinop: islama, an over-the-top dish of butter and broth-soaked lavash (or yufka) topped with turkey (or chicken) and crushed walnuts.

Jump to the story and slideshow, our latest for food and wine website Zester Daily, here.

(And it's still a great dish, even if Thanksgiving isn't in your near future.)

Kastamonu: Here's the Beef

Last January, en route from hamsi (anchovy) node Sinop to Ankara we made an 18-hour pitstop in Kastamonu, capital of the Turkish province of the same name. The sky was dull gray and the sub-zero wind unrelenting; by necessity our explorations were punctuated with stops in tea houses where we could thaw our frozen feet. Coal smoke hung in the air and soot coated buildings. Early Sunday morning, when we ventured out in search of caffeine, the streets were all but empty.

Still, there was something about Kastamonu that made us know we'd be back. Maybe it was the city's trove of crumbling old konak, or mansions, or its romantic situation on the slopes of two hills separated by a river, one hill crowned by the ruins of an 11th-century castle and the other by a late 1800s tower with a still chiming clock.

Perhaps it was the chorus of calls to prayer that we heard at dusk fas we watched a nearly full moon rise from the the courtyard of Ismail Bey mosque, high up one of Kastamonu's slopes. Or the thousands of starlings that appeared in the sky over the crest of the opposite hill right after, swooping and diving in wildly shifting formations.

It could have been dinner: superb kebabs that in their charred glory tasted all the better for being our first bites of meat after more than a week of eating primarily fish.

At any rate, we did return to Kastamonu last month, driving straight from Ankara's airport after a flight from Istanbul. We returned to the same Sunday market that we briefly lighted on in January -- and were treated to our first taste of this fall's hamsi catch -- and feasted on spit-roasted lamb in the nearby town of Taskopru, known for its garlic. We poked around the brick-paved streets in Kastamonu's market neighborhood, and found a good restaurant serving local dishes, including a version of etli ekmek ("meat bread") very different from the etli ekmek we ate last year in Mardin, in southeastern Turkey (a town which, coincidentally, is also built on a hill).

And we ate enough meat to fortify us for the self-imposed nothing-but-seafood diet we had planned for the next two weeks, which we would spend on the coast.

When one thinks of Turkish food it's lamb that most readily comes to mind. But in many parts of the country (like Kars) beef is the preferred red animal protein. Most of Kastamonu's kasab, or butchers, display not sheep but cow carcasses. And pastirma -- cured, air-dried beef -- is a local specialty.

In Kastamonu, beef, pastirma and garlic from Taskopru

Pastirma is usually associated with the eastern Anatolian city of Kayseri, where it is heavily flavored with garlic. Kastamonu's pastirma is also garlicky but less so. We know this because we carried some in our car for most of a day with minimal stink. A decade ago we bought some pastirma in Kayseri and attempted to do the same, but after two hours the interior of our car was so heavy with garlicky-ness that we were forced to pull over and eat the culprit.

In Kastamonu pastirma is preserved with and without an orange coating of ground seasonings -- garlic, fenugreek and paprika -- called cemen. The former is eaten as is while the latter is cooked into etli ekmek (which is then known as pastirmali ekmek), stewed with vegetables, or pan-fried with eggs.

Monday is beef delivery day in Kastamonu's pastirma/butcher area. Early in the morning we spotted men dressed in blood red uniforms unloading huge sides of beef from a truck. We followed them through a maze of passageways to a butcher shop, where we drank tea (of course) and chatted a bit with the shop's owner..

Kastamonu native Bayram Sari has owned his butcher shop, where he sells beef and his own pastirma and sucuk (sausage), for a little over 15 years. The enormous sides of beef hanging in his window are from Simmental, a breed of dairy and beef cow that can weigh up to 400+ kilos.

Bayram Bey makes his pastirma in a "secret" location about 45 minutes from downtown, he says. Curing is done from September to November, after summer has well and truly finished but before the worst of Kastamonu's bitter winter begins. To make the pastirma, beef loin and flank are rubbed with salt and air dried it for one to two months; the cemen coating is added after the meat is dried. Kastamonulu love their pastirma -- Bayram Bey figures he sells about 1.5 to 2 tons of the cured meat every year.

"That's no good," he said, pointing to a bag in my lap bearing the name of a pastirma shop next to the truck from which Bayram Bey's carcasses were being unloaded. "You have to try my pastirma!"

He had his shop assistant shave us a couple hundreds grams off a hunk in the display case. It was indeed delicious: not quite as dry as bresaola, supple and rich in flavor, tasting of beef first and then of garlic and spices. He also gifted us a few links of delicious sucuk which, with their hit of cumin, had me wishing for a soft corn tortilla. Go figure.

It's fair to say that when it comes to curing meat Bayram Bey is a maestro. After bidding him "Gorusuruz" (See you again -- and we will) we headed back to our hotel and packed our car for the drive to the coast.

We tucked the pastirma and sucuk into a bag with other edible souvenirs of Kastamonu -- sour plum fruit leather, "black" bulgur (coarse bulgur made from emmer, aka farro -- one of the province's specialty crops) and freshly harvested walnuts. Halfway to Inebolu the sun came out and we made an impromptu pitstop at cafe perched on a hilltop, where we refueled with tea, bread and Bayram Bey's pastirma (opening photo).