EatingAsia

On Pursuing an Obsession (Or, what I learned from selling a book)

    

     Almost sixteen years ago to the day I booked our first trip to Turkey. Dave and I were living in Shanghai at the time and Chinese New Year was just around the corner: a nice long slice of vacation time to do with as we pleased. After a so-awful-it's-funny Christmas trip to Guizhou we were determined to travel as far from China as we could. Our award miles would take us as far as Europe, but Europe was expensive. Somehow (advice of friends? an article in a travel pub? for the life of me I can't recall) we decided on Turkey.

     We arrived in Istanbul after midnight and glided into Sultanahmet, the old city, along the ribbon of road that runs along the Bosphorus. I remember gawping up at the minarets of the Blue Mosque as our taxi slide along silent streets to our guesthouse, falling into a deep sleep beneath thick duvets on a charmingly high bed, and being jolted awake before dawn by the call the prayer bellowing from a loudspeaker affixed beneath our window. I sat up ramrod straight, delirious with jet lag and, for the minute it took me to figure out what that noise was, scared silly. I think I fell in love with Istanbul, with its ability to surprise and astonish me, right then. We lingered in the city for 10 bitingly cold days, extending our stay when I came down with a horrible cold. For 48 hours I lay in our room, hunkered feverishly but happily beneath the duvet, watching snow fall as I ate lentil soup and rice pudding that Dave brought from nearby shops.

     I got better and we hit the road. We flew to Izmir and picked up a car, visited a deserted Ephesus and drove south. It was way, way off-season. In Bodrum a storm knocked out power. Our room's ceiling began to leak, making it impossible to use our fireplace to keep warm. We hastily repacked the car and drove through the rain to Aphrodisias, where the only pension open had no heat or hot water and was run by two strangely hostile brothers who served canned tomato soup for dinner. Our compensation was waking after a night of thunder and lightning to a spectacular and empty (except for us) archeological site set against a backdrop of mountains whose peaks had overnite been freshly frosted with what looked like swirls of buttercream.

     Further east at a lakeside resort, restaurants were closed; our hotel's owner took pity on us and defrosted two schnitzel. In Konya, which Istanbul people had warned us would be "very conservative", residents approached us on the street to shake hands and wish us a good trip. Antalya was our Turkish food epiphany. We stayed in an old house in Kaleici owned by a slightly eccentric woman named Perla who kept box tortoises in her large leafy courtyard. Perla and her partner Ali loved to eat, and drink. Every night was an orgy of meze and white wine followed by a perfect grilled fish. Further along the coast, in a seaside village walking distance to the Eternal Flame, we stayed in a bright white room with gauzy turquoise curtains and ate our breakfasts in an orange grove warmed by the sun -- in February.

     We returned to Istanbul in love and obsessed with Turkey, Turks, Turkish food, Turkish towns, Turkish ruins and the wide open Turkish road, all of it. On the flight back to Shanghai I turned to Dave and told him that as soon as I could find a teacher I would study Turkish. I added, "I don't know how and I don't know when, but some day Turkey will be a big part of our lives."

***

     Nine months later we moved back to the Bay Area, and I found a Turkish tutor, then joined first-year Turkish classes at UC Berkeley mid-year. My teacher was a Turkish cookbook author: Kismet! Only I and one other student enrolled in her second-year class, so she split us up for private tutorials. I gained halfway decent proficiency via a steady diet of food magazines and newspaper columns and stories that touched on Turkish culinary culture. Meanwhile Dave and I continued to vacation in Turkey once a year, always following a stop in Istanbul with a long road trip out east. (My biggest regret: no notes from any of those trips.)

     Midway through my sixth semester of Turkish we moved to Bangkok, and set our Turkey obsession aside to immerse ourselves in southeast Asia, a place we'd long wanted to explore. We moved to Saigon, then Kuala Lumpur. We started this blog. I began freelancing and, after leaving his corporate job at the end of 2008, so did Dave.

     In 2010, nine years after our last trip to Turkey, we returned so that Dave could attend a photography workshop. Being back was like slipping on a well-worn glove; Istanbul still fit. Before the workshop began we flew out east to Gaziantep and picked up a car. We drove and drove, first to Mardin -- where I stumbled across a travel story -- and then to Midyat, Van, Kars and Erzurum. Along the way we ate. And ate. Back in Istanbul we extended our stay beyond Dave's workshop, first by a few days, then by a week, then by another week. If we hadn't had a home and pets and responsibilities waiting back in Malaysia for us, it's entirely possible that we'd be one of those ex-pats you meet in Istanbul who came to the city for a visit, and then a second visit ... and never left.

***

      We returned to Turkey six months later, again in the middle of winter, way way off-season. I love Istanbul most in the winter under gray skies and drizzle; I especially love it under a blanket of snow. After eating fresh anchovies at a Black Sea restaurant in Beyoglu we decided to go to the Black Sea to eat them in situ. We met a fishmonger in Sinop and struck up a friendship. We visited wonderful markets and ate delicious dishes that didn't fit most Western pre-conceptions of "Turkish food". We met home cooks who allowed us into their kitchens and master bakers who invited us behind their marble slabs.

     And we returned home to Malaysia with an idea: a book. But could we? Could I write a book about Turkish food? More important: could I sell a book about what essentially began as a crazy obsession?

***

     After nine or ten research trips, two years of on-and-off book proposal writing (with the help of a great editor/coach) and photograph collecting, an at times demoralizing month pitching agents followed by six months of tinkering with the proposal under the guidance of the one who took our project to heart, and four weeks of nail-biting as the proposal went out to and was reviewed by publishers, we had our answer. Last October, as we were finishing up our latest eastern Turkey roadtrip with a few days in -- of all places -- Sinop, we learned that yes, we could sell a book born of our obsession with a country and a people and a cuisine that we came to know by chance, a place that -- Who knows? -- we might never have  visited if we hadn't been so eager, that winter 16 years ago, to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and China (Shanghai, thank you.)

     We have no title yet for our book, but we can tell you that it will be filled with mouthwatering recipes, plenty of gorgeous photographs, and stories -- about markets and farmers and cheese producers and other food artisans, and ingredients and home cooks in their kitchens and bakers -- from Istanbul and Turkey's eastern half. It will not be EatingAsia in book form, but you'll recognize my voice and Dave's eyes in the text and images on its pages. 

     I'm honored and still rather shocked to be working with a woman who has edited Jacques Pepin. Rux Martin Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish [Title ToBeDecided] in 2016.

***

     Before I jumped wholeheartedly into freelancing I took a food writing class taught by a then-editor at Bon Appetit. One of her sagest pieces of advice: "Give into your obsessions. They can become great stories." And, apparently, books.

    Over the two-plus years that I worked on our book proposal I had so many doubts, and so many fears. (And as I contemplate turning in a completed manuscript in 18 months, I have new doubts and fears!) It often seemed silly, this gut desire to write a book on Turkish food. But I'm so glad I pushed on. You never know where an obsession will lead.

     For 2014, I wish everyone reading this the time and opportunity to really give in to an obsession. Am I telling you to quit your job, sell your belongings and travel the world? To chuck it all and become a writer? To pick up a camera and become a photographer? No. But if there is something -- an activity, a language, a dance, a species of orchid, a cuisine.... whatever -- that intrigues you, give in to your curiosity and pursue it, even if for only an hour a week. Life is short. Do that for yourself.

 Happy New Year!

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.

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).

Suitable for Framing II: Famous Garlic and a Market

Famous Taşköprü garlic, Turkey, October 2011

Market in Mardin, Turkey, June 2010

This is the second post in a series that we're running every Tuesday through early December.All images in the series are for sale, via Photoshelter or directly from Dave.

To learn more about the series visit the first post, here. Images can be viewed full screen in Dave's Suitable for Framing gallery, here.

About the photographer:

David Hagerman is an editorial and commercial photographer specializing in food, travel, portraiture and street photography. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Saveur, Food & Wine, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, Wall Street Journal and other publications.When not on assignment or otherwise gainfully occupied Dave offers private photography workshops in Penang and elsewhere. Contact him at [email protected].

Well Hello, Hamsi!

We love hamsi. If you've been a visitor here since last January you know this. You know that we journeyed to Turkey's Black Sea coast in the middle of winter just to eat hamsi -- anchovies -- at the source.

We're back in the region but still inland, in Kastamonu. Yet we've already had our first taste of the Black Sea's beloved cold season bounty, thanks to a few generous balıkçı (fish sellers).

What is it with Turkish guys who sell fish? They see you snap a photo or two of their product and they want to feed you.

When this bunch at the Sunday market in Kuzeykent, just outside Kastamonu city, saw Dave photographing the basket of beautiful hamsi perched over the grey coal ash in their grill one of them grabbed a thick piece of bread, loaded it up with cooked specimens from the pile on their dining table (opening shot), squeezed over some lemon juice and handed the lot over.

The fish were delicious, perhaps better even than those we ate at our fish seller friend Mert's shop in Sinop nine months ago. It's early in the season and hamsi are still small; these specimens were no longer than our little fingers. Their bones are still tender -- entirely, easily edible. We popped the fish into our mouths whole, though our new balıkçı friends carefully stripped the backbones from theirs.

After we finished our first shared slice of hamsi bread (köy ekmeği or village bread, from a dense, chewy wheat flour -based loaf baked in a wood-fired oven) the cooks threw strips of roasted red peppers onto a second open-faced hamsi sandwich. When a third was offered we had to beg for mercy.

This man, a regular at the market who -- like us -- was drawn from a far corner to this fish stall by the scent of hamsi cooking over an open fire, was happy to take up the slack.