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).

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!

 

 

 

EatingTurkey

Try as we might we almost never manage to blog when we're on the road. When we're traveling -- and especially when we're traveling for work, as we are now -- it's hard to make the time. 

Then we return home to Malaysia, get caught up in the day-to-day .... and 85% of what we've eaten, experienced and photographed never sees the light of day. This is especially true for material from Turkey, where we've spent a lot of time in the last two and a half years. 

So we've started a tumblr called EatingTurkey. The idea is: a quick, manageable post -- one food-related photo and a short caption -- every day that we're on the road in Turkey. When we're not in-country, occasional posts from past trips.

Nothing changes here on EatingAsia. It's still our place for multi-photo, longer posts from Malaysia, the rest of Asia, Turkey and wherever else we happen to find ourselves.

We don't plan to announce EatingTurkey posts here. So if you'd like updates, please subscribe to ET's RSS feed. (We'll also throw up EatingTurkey posts on Twitter and on the EatingAsia Facebook page.)

We're almost a week into this trip, we have two more to go, and we'll be returning to Turkey a few more times in 2013. We'd love to take you along for the ride.

 

A Hamsi Hunt for the NYT

Hamsi with herbs and onions, cooked in foil at a communal grill restauranton the Black Sea

For those not following on Twitter or Facebook: a story we researched and photographed in late November, on an anchovy-fuelled road trip along Turkey's central Black Sea coast, ran over the weekend in the travel sections of the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Read it here and -- if you are as obsessed with anchovies (hamsi) as we are -- bookmark for 2013 or beyond. This was a fun and not overly challenging road trip along a mostly beautiful stretch of coast, doable at a comfortable and not too frenetic pace over 6-7 days.

This was our third trip to the region in less than two years, and we're heading back in a few months. Some readers have emailed to ask if we'd consider leading a Black Sea road trip/tour ourselves. Hm. Now, that's a thought.

Want more Black Sea? Check out Dave's audio-accompanied slideshow of our trip: fish, markets, lovely coastal towns and pretty landscapes.

In Istanbul, a Market That Brings a Taste of the Black Sea to the Big City

It kind of blows my mind that residents of Istanbul, one of the world's busiest, most densely-populated metropolises, have ready access to fresh unpasteurized milk straight from the cow, bread baked in a single village's community oven, pear molasses produced in small batches year after year by the women of one family and fruit harvested from one farmer's orchard before being dried in his garden.

These are truly "artisan" foods, rare and small-batch, of the type fetishized in America. But in Turkey, a country still largely agricultural, they're not all that unusual. Labels and signage don't declare foods like this "artisan" -- it's taken for granted because so many foods here still are. In fact there are few cities in Turkey whose residents can't lay their hands on small-batch, small-producer, single-farmer goods if they're willing to make a minor effort.

This isn't to say that big ag doesn't exist in Turkey, or that mono-cropping isn't a problem (see kiwi orchards on the Black Sea). Yes, pesticides are over-used here, people buy sub-par ingredients in chain stores and battery-raised, plastic-wrapped chicken on styrofoam trays is sold at Migros and Carrefour. But to an extent that is perhaps difficult to imagine unless you get out into the hinterlands and do some serious road tripping, much of Turkey is still a land very much the Land of the Small Producer.

If you are planning a trip to Turkey that doesn't include time beyond Istanbul and you're even remotely interested in knowing how much of the country still eats you owe it to yourself to hit up Istanbul's weekly Kastamonu market, which is named for the province from which most of its vendors come.

Just a few hours' drive east of Ankara airport, Kastamonu registers on the map of few visitors to Turkey -- perhaps because it lacks an airport of its own, or maybe because its Black Sea climate (gray, rainy) puts off potential tourists. That's a shame, because it is spectacularly beautiful.

Kastamonu's capital (also called Kastamonu) is an intriguing if slightly brooding city chock full of photogenically crumbling Ottoman mansions. Ninety minutes away on the Black Sea coast is Inebolu, an exceptionally lovely hill town. Kastamonu is blessed with an extravagant amount of of natural beauty; think conifer-clad mountains, rivers winding through dramatic valleys and stretches of pretty pebble beach backed by rocky crags and lush green hills that plummet to the sea.

And then there is the food, born of microclimates that endow Kastamonu with a wealth of gorgeous produce. In autumn its markets overflow with all manner of leafy greens, fruits, nuts and mushrooms both farmed and foraged. From the Black Sea come fish, kalkan (flounder), hamsi (anchovies) and palamut (bonito), among other varieties. Hectares of velvety pasture provide nourishment for herds of beef and milk cattle (lamb is less often on the table here than in some other parts of Turkey). The province is known for its excellent pastirma (salt-cured, air-dried beef), luscious cheeses, yogurt, kaymak and fresh milk.

During three sojourns on the Black Sea we've been lucky enough to hit up many of Kastamonu's weekly markets, which are attended by vendors bringing fresh produce and prepared goods from their homes in small and often remote villages. In fact we've trolled Inebolu's twice-a-week market so many times that some vendors now recognize us (or maybe it's Dave's camera they recognize). We never fail to come away from each visit to the province envious of Kastamonulu and their ready access to such marvelous ingredients and laden with kilos of edible souvenirs to pack back home to Malaysia.

On this last trip to Turkey, despite almost three weeks on the Black Sea and several days in Inebolu, we still hadn't had enough. So last Sunday we set off to the Kastamonu Market in Kasimpasa, an Istanbul neighborhood on the Golden Horn just north of Tarlabasi (home to another great market). Kastamonulu make the long slog to Istanbul overnight by car (and truck) and set up around 6am. When we arrived late at 10:30 or 11 there was still plenty to see and buy.

First up, the essentials: dairy and bread. A table at the market's entrance displayed cow's milk kaymak -- 3/4 inch-thick shards stacked in plastic containers at 5 Turkish lira (about U$2.90) for enough to generously garnish four to six desserts -- as well as six types of cow and goat's milk, salted and unsalted cheeses. There was fresh, unpasteurized milk in plastic water bottles to take home and drink hot (or cold) after boiling. Along with kaymak, some milky semi-soft cheese and a 250-gram bag of suzme (drained) yogurt thick enough to stick to an upturned spoon we purchased grassy, tasting-of-the-beast butter at 7 lira a kilo, 

to slather thickly on köy ekmeği or "village bread", a massive crusty loaf made with unbleached flour.

Pazı ekmeği, bread made with chard and herbs (scallion greens and parsley, usually), was also out in force at the Kastamonu market. We know this bread well from Inebolu and to tell the truth this version was a pale comparison of that made by the talented baker woman we usually buy from there. That said, it was one of maybe 10 loaves left for sale in the entire market -- early risers will probably score a tastier loaf.

On the Black Sea autumn means apples and pears and persimmons. As we road-tripped along the coast we ate dozens of the latter, ripened until sugar oozed from the cracks in their skins, which were covered with so much black we would have sworn the fruit was rotten. It was anything but; sliced open, flesh scooped from skins like pudding, these persimmons were the sweetest, most delicious that we've ever eaten, something like a honey-enriched fruit jam.

There were also plastic water-bottle punnets of what might be Myrica rubra or Chinese bayberry, small nubbly fruits in pretty fruits sporting sunset hues. These we didn't try; vendors were not offering samples (in most market you can taste almost everything, cheeses included) of this relatively pricey fruit and, with only a couple of days in Istanbul, we feared we wouldn't finish a punnet full. Next year. 

In addition to fresh fruits there were plenty of dried specimens as well. In Giresun we purchased little pears sun-dried whole, chewy as Milk Duds, molasses sweet and ever so lightly bitter, like Vietnamese caramel. We saw the same shriveled pears at the Kastamonu market, along with sweet and sour dried plums and quartered apples dried with their skins on.

Giresun is also known for its hazelnuts, but further west towards Kastamonu walnuts and chestnuts rule. At village markets on the coast single vendors might display as many as ten grades of either or both, divided by size and quality. The smaller chestnuts, called kuzu kestane (lamb chestnuts), are for eating raw -- their skin is easily broken with a fingernail, they're slightly juicy and taste like raw mature coconut -- while the larger are meant to be roasted.

The market offers much treasure for vegetable lovers in the form of several types of pumpkin and winter squash,

leafy greens like chard, sturdy lettuces, young leaves of rocket and tere (a jagged-edged leaf that tastes a bit like wasabi) and collard green-like kara lahana or "black cabbage". There were even collard green roots for sale, massive specimens weighing half a kilo and more. Several vendors recommended making soup with these roots. We purchased one and snacked on it raw. It's a wonderful vegetable, super crispy and sweet with no cabbage-y funk. This vegetable, grated, would make a wonderful salad with olive oil and lemon and it would be super stir-fried with garlic and finished with a bit of sesame oil.

Cooler temperatures and autumn rains bring mushrooms to Kastamonu's copious forest land and there were no shortage of these at the market, both farmed and foraged on the coastal mountains. We bought a kilo and a half of several types and cooked them simply, sauteed with loads of that fresh butter and dusted with finely chopped parsley. Outside of Italy during porcini season, I've never eaten tastier mushrooms in my life.

Any Turkish market worth its salt has a mobile tea stall or two; most (especially on the Black Sea) hang photographs of Ataturk.

Turks are great picklers and preservers and both tendencies were well in evidence at the Kastamonu makret, at stalls offering any and everything brined -- including peppers, beets, turnips and carrots,

as well as all manner of preserves, jams, sauces and pekmez (fruit molasses) made from figs, apples, pears, grapes, cactus fruit, rose hips and mulberries.

There's no shortage of protein for sale at this market. We saw dainty baskets of school bus orange-yoked eggs cradled in straw, live turkeys (American expats in Istanbul, take note for next Thanksgiving!) roped to a truck wheel and freshly killed gangly free-range chickens. One vendor even had a few goose carcasses for sale.

The birds we had to pass on, for the cookware in our rental apartment wouldn't have been able to accomodate any of them. But we did return to our temporary home with bags and bags of goodies. That night we dined buttery stewed mushrooms ladled over pumpkin mashed with full-cream milk and yet more butter. Dessert was fresh, milky "village" cheese and apples, and a syrupy compote of orange peel-scented dried apples and plums with a generous -- no, make that HUGE -- crown of rich kaymak.

Our stay in Istanbul came at the end of a road trip along the central Turkish Black Sea coast, during which we reported a story on one of our passions -- anchovies -- for the New York Times. Read it here. And Dave has put together a slideshow of out-takes from the trip, set to "Hamsi" (Anchovies) by the Anatolian pop group Mogallar. View/listen here -- it gives a great feel for this very special, and under-visited, part of Turkey.

Kastamonu Market, Kasimpasa, Istanbul. Every Sunday morning. True market hounds should follow a stroll through this market's aisles with a visit to nearby Tarlabasi for its own (admittedly more wholesale but nonetheless good fun) Sunday market.

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.

 

Hot Milk with *t***u**'s (Or, Sometimes You Just Gotta Be a Tourist)

In a recent post on how to get the most out of stanbul I recommended getting into tea drinking. I certainly do when I'm in Turkey, so much so that after a few days on the ground I experience cravings for a glass or two mid-morning, mid-afternoon, early evening, and so on. Lunch or dinner without a glass of tea to follow? Unimagineable!

But there is one time of the day when tea, even strong Turkish tea uncut with water, won't do the job: immediately after I wake. I am a card-carrying caffeine addict and for me that initial, life-giving A.M. jolt comes in one and only one form -- coffee. (Actually, that is not quite accurate -- if given the opportunity I always preface my first sip of morning coffee with a few slugs of Diet Coke. It's not pretty, I know. But it's the truth.)

These days a decent cup is readily (if expensively) available in Istanbul and, I'm guessing, maybe elsewhere on the country's well-touristed western and Mediterranean coasts. Not so much from middle Anatolia east, which is where we've been spending the majority of our Turkey time these last two years. Nescafe is sold just about everywhere (even some tea shops advertise it). I've been known to drink it like medicine, holding nose between thumb and forefinger, when necessary. But now, thanks to a certain Evil Empire-like American coffee chain, Nescafe is a beverage of my past.

I should be ashamed to admit it but these days when we pack our bags for Turkey there's always a ziploc bag or two of single-serving instant coffee from said coffee chain tucked between the jeans and t-shirts. The best part? It actually tastes like coffee (instead of medicine). Pretty good coffee, in fact.

The next best part is that Turkey is an instant coffee-friendly country, for two reasons: (1) even the most down-and-out lodgingscome with in-house breakfast, and (2) Turkey's tea preparation modus operandi guarantees a ready supply of plain hot water for breakfasters. It is the rare Turkish breakfast table that does not include either a traditional caydanlik -- a double boiler consisting of two stacked kettles, the lower containing hot water only, while the upper holds tea -- or an electric samovar-like contraption with one spout dispensing hot water on demand.

At first I felt a measure of embarassment whipping out *t***u**'s instant coffee packets at the hotel/guest house buffet. Some of my fellow diners looked askance (most Turks are much too polite to openly snicker), especially when. like a beer drinker with her whiskey chaser, I accompanied each cup of coffee (2 is my Magic Number) with a full glass of dark, undiluted tea.

But soon I got over the shame and was brandishing my coffee packets with ease. "Yes, I'm a boorish American who cannot adapt -- nay, who refuses to adapt -- to local caffeine customs," those foil cylinders announced.

But the rewards for my crudeness were a fog-free head and a spring in my step, even at 7 A.M..

What else would you expect to see at a fresh milk-serving tea house in what is possiblyTurkey's dustiest town? A patron dressed in white, head to toe,of course.

Then in Van Dave and I spied a cay evi advertising fresh hot milk. Warmed milk just hours from the cow is something that must be tasted to be believed; we'd been drinking it before bed in village homes further north in Kars.

How uttery mind-blowing, I wondered, would our *t***u**'s instant coffee taste stirred into that liquid white gold?

Back in our hotel room we debated. Would it be rude to defile the cay evi's otherworldly hot fresh milk with our instant coffee? Would other patrons be shocked when we pulled out our packets and shook the contents into our glasses?

Then it occurred to me: while hot fresh milk may be something extraordinary to us, to Vanlilar -- or at least to the male Vanlilar who frequent this particular tea shop -- Hot Fresh Milk ain't no big thang. Add to that the fact that, as yabancilar (foreigners), in the eyes of the tea shop proprietor and his customers we're pretty much alien beings who engage in all sorts of bizarre behavior anyway. Suddenly our so-called dilemma was a no-brainer.

We went. We ordered glasses of taze süt. We added our *t***u**'s instant and stirred. And then we drank -- I kid you not -- the BEST frigging coffee of our lives.

The instant coffee -- you know where to get it. The tea house is opposite the blue mosque by the peynir carsisi, or cheese market, Van.

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.

Süt Cenneti (Milk Heaven)

In Kars, made from milk: kaymakli koymak on the left, çeçil peyniri up top

Since arriving in Kars we've been swimming in milk.

This province, sidled up to Armenia in northeastern Turkey, is a cow-raising, milk-producing behemoth. In this part of Turkey, where the deep snow of long, hard winters gives way to impossibly lush, electric green pasturelands, hayvanlar (which means "animals" in Turkish -- but here in the northeast is more likely to mean "cows) are a source of barest sustenance and vast wealth. They give the meat that is eaten by some and the milk that is consumed in all forms, by everyone.

Cruising the streets of the capital city, which is also called Kars, we pass peynirci (cheese shops) after peynirci, their windows displaying mammoth wheels of emmenthal-like gravyer and stubby rounds of creamy yellow kaşar, a softer cheese with a mild cheddar-like butteriness.

Outside the city it's all dairy all the time, or so it has seemed to us -- heart-stopping, mind-blowingly rich and delicious foods made with the white stuff from the cow.

In villages, where most every household owns at least one cow and some own forty or fifty head, we never eat beef. Instead, there are slices of kaşar and loose piles of çeçil -- string cheese that's milky and springy when fresh and dry, salty and deliciously pungent when left to age and blue in an animal hide -- plus creamy-salty white village cheese. There is milk just hours from the cow, strained and warmed on wood fired stoves and, a milk a day from the cow, cultured into yogurt. There is fresh unsalted butter and kaymak, an impossibly unctuous, partially solidified cream whose taste often bears an intriguing bit of tang, to spread on bread. That kaymak in turn enriches many of the sweet and savory breads that accompany our cheeses. Sometimes there are wild greens plucked from spring meadows and brined in the whey left over from making cheese.

After a week swimming in milk, eating deep in a food culture dependent on the fat of the cow, we thought we'd reached the apex several times over. Then, in a village not far from the deserted Armenian city of Ani, we ate köymak. 

The recipe for köymak is simple: take the richest product of the cow -- kaymak -- and make it richer by placing it over a hot fire, bringing it to a boil and reducing it by half. Add flour, stir continuously until the flour browns and then add some water, bit by bit. Stir and stir and stir until the kaymak releases all of its oil -- which, of course, is essentially butter.

Serve your reduced dairy fat in a pool of its own butter in a bowl. Sprinkle with sugar. Spoon onto bread.

Enter the gates of süt cenneti.

It's a Man's World II: The Kars Sunday Grill

This is Sunday in Kars. Outside of the city, by the river and on hillsides, parked by the road, half-sheltered in the ruins of a church, hunkered beneath the castle -- groups of men, grilling.

Here and there are a few -- very, very few -- families (men, women, children) picnicing around their kebab-erias. But for the most part this is a man's world. On this day 95-98 percent of observed outdoor grillers and eaters are male. Here in Kars the American male's obsession with cooking protein over glowing embers is taken to a whole new level: women are excluded not only from the act of barbecuing, but from the enjoyment of the grill product as well. To a degree we've not yet observed elsewhere in Turkey.

What gives? Your guess is as good as ours.

We've been here in Kars since the middle of last week, heading out every morning to walk the area's stunningly beautiful electric green hills. We've broken our walks with plenty of tea breaks, thanks to the hospitable shephards and cowherds -- and yesterday, the hospitable manager of a hydroelectric power station -- we've met along the way.

The serious walking begins soon enough, when we embark on a multi-day hike. Food will feature prominently, in the villages we overnight in. Tune in next week for a taste of yöresel ev yemeği (regional home cooking).