From soup to tea
Even weekday dinners are elaborate in Turkish-American homes, drawing together friends and family
Thursday, August 04, 2005
By Sarah Brown
Staff writer
When Esra Akbulut moved to the United States from Turkey two years ago, she didn’t expect to become known as a food phenomenon. The 23-year-old new mother only really started cooking when she married in June 2003, but since arriving in the New Orleans area, she has developed a small following of countrymen and locals devoted to her red lentil soup, dolmas and moussaka.
“You know the taste of the food you love,” Akbulut said. “You just try and try different things and one day, it tastes just like your mother’s.”
Akbulut showcases her talents at monthly cooking demonstrations at the Atlas Interfaith Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to interfaith dialogue. Because she and many of the mostly male graduate students at the institute are Turkish, her food is also Turkish.
While there are many elements of Turkish cooking unique to the country, it does share many ingredients — rice, bread, yogurt, lentils, olives, eggplant, tomatoes and lemon, to name a few — with a more broadly conceived Middle Eastern style of cooking. The relationship dates to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, when the Turks took their dishes to conquered lands in the Balkan Peninsula and the Middle East, and in turn adopted some of the cooking styles of their subjects.
Although the 2000 Census shows just more than 100 people from Turkey living in the New Orleans area, the number jumps to more than 1,000 for people of Middle Eastern descent, which counts people from Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Armenia.
On a recent evening, Akbulut prepared a typical Turkish evening meal: red lentil soup, stuffed peppers, eggplant and grape leaves and salad, with baklava and tea to follow. The most important meal of the day does not begin, traditionally, until the father of the house returns home. Even a weekday dinner is an elaborate affair consisting of soup, a meat dish with rice or pasta, salad, bread and dessert.
“It’s important to be together,” said Emrah Oral, 24, a Turkish Tulane University doctoral student who belongs to the foundation. “It’s the one time everyone in the house is home and can share their day over a meal.”
Eating beloved foods, drinking tea, and, of course, talking about soccer are rituals that tie the students to their homeland and to their fellow expatriates. Participating in those rituals with locals ties them to their temporary home. On this occasion, the group consisted of about 20 people, including a young American mother married to a Turk, a Palestinian-American municipal employee, and a religious studies student and her four children, ages 9 to 17.
Most of the ingredients Akbulut uses are available at regular grocery stores, but items such as red lentils, grape leaves and the dried eggplant and red peppers used for dolmas — and certainly anything halal, which meets Islamic dietary guidelines — can be found at specialty stores or online. Locally, the shop attached to Mona’s Cafe on Banks Street, and Byblos Market and Ansary Imports in Metairie carry a good selection. (Online, Turkish products can be found at bestturkishfood.com; lazbakkal.com; and istanbulsupermarket.com)
Many Turkish home-cooked meals begin with çorba, or soup. If not lentil, the soup might be yayla, a yogurt soup, or tarhana, made with crushed wheat. Ezo gelin, also known as bride’s soup, is made with red lentils and bulgur wheat.
The soup course is followed by a main course, such as the dolmas. Akbulut makes her dolmas using dried eggplants and red peppers, and grape leaves from a jar. Hydrated, the shriveled black vegetables regain some of their lustrous color, but they remain smaller than fresh eggplants and peppers available at conventional American supermarkets. Traditionally preserved from home gardens, the vegetables are stuffed with a simple rice and beef mixture, boiled until soft, and served warm with thick, cool yogurt.
To prepare the dolmas, rice is rinsed then folded into the meat with minced garlic and onion, dried mint, and generous glugs of golden Turkish olive oil, reputed in Akbulut’s circles to be the best in the world. She stuffs the vegetables three-fourths full (the raw rice expands as it cooks), packs them tightly in a pot and covers them with water to cook. The stuffed grape leaves are cooked the same way, nestled closely together in the pot.
Bread and a salad, simply dressed with lemon juice, olive oil and salt, accompanied the meal, which was served with water. For dessert, baklava, the classic Turkish dessert of layered phyllo pastry with nuts and syrup, is served. Traditionally, phyllo dough is homemade, but Akbulut doesn’t mind skipping this time-consuming and tricky step. She uses commercial dough instead.
Cay, or tea, is served in tulip-shaped glasses following the meal, marking a transition to after-dinner socializing. The students and their guests often play music, show slides of Turkey or just chat. All are natural extensions of sharing a meal, said Fehmi Karadeiz, 28, an education student at Southern University at New Orleans.
“When you eat something together, it’s the best time to share ides,” Karadeiz said. “It encourages friendship.”
Red lentil soup
Makes 6 to 8 servings
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon flour
1 carrot, chopped
1 cup red lentils
1 quart water
Salt to taste
Lemon juice to taste
Lemon wedges to serve
Heat olive oil in a pot. Sauté onions in hot oil over medium heat until translucent. Add flour and stir well to blend. Add chopped carrots, lentils and water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and cook, uncovered and stirring often to prevent sticking, until the lentils and carrots are soft and able to be mashed, 30 minutes. Add salt and a little lemon juice, then pour the soup into a food processor or blender and puree until smooth. Serve the soup warm with a lemon wedge on top for added flavor and color.
Dolmas (stuffed eggplants,
red peppers and grape leaves)
Makes 6 to 8 servings
This dish features a rice and ground beef mixture that can be stuffed into either dried eggplants and/or red peppers, or into grape leaves. Turkish specialty items such as dried eggplants and red peppers are available through the Internet (see story).
1 pound dried eggplants and/or red peppers OR small jar grape leaves
STUFFING MIXTURE
1 ½ cups rice, washed
½ pound ground beef
2 onions, chopped
2 to 3 cloves garlic, chopped
Dried mint to taste
Black and red pepper to taste
2 to 3 tablespoons of tomato paste
1 cup olive oil
To stuff eggplant and red pepper: Hydrate dried eggplant and red peppers in a large pot of boiling water for five minutes. Drain. In a large bowl mix the rice, ground beef, onion, garlic, mint, black and red pepper and tomato paste. Add olive oil and mix well. Stuff eggplants and red peppers with mixture, filling the eggplants and red peppers until they are about ¾ full.
To stuff grape leaves: Rinse enough grape leaves in a colander to accommodate filling, approximately 70 to 80. To stuff the grape leaves, lay the leaf flat, vein side up, stem removed. Place about a tablespoon of the rice and meat mixture across the middle of the leaf, fold the sides in, then roll tightly from the bottom to make a tidy packet. Closely pack stuffed vegetables in a large pot, upright and side by side. Cover dolmas completely with water and a lid. Cook about an hour over medium/low heat, checking every now and then to see if the rice and meat in the top dolmas are cooked. Use a slotted spoon to remove dolmas from pan.
SAUCE
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups of water
Red and black pepper, dried mint, and salt to taste
Plain yogurt
Melt the butter in a small saucepan; add the tomato paste and water, and bring to a boil. Add red and black pepper, dried mint and salt. Serve with plain yogurt and sauce on the side.
Baklava
Makes 40 small pieces
SYRUP
4 cups sugar
2 cups water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
FILLING
1 pound walnuts or unsalted pistachios, chopped medium fine
¼ cup sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. First, make the syrup. Boil sugar and water together for about 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and boil 10 minutes more. Let cool to room temperature. For the filling, combine chopped nuts with ¼ cup sugar and set aside.
DOUGH
1 pound commercial phyllo dough, thawed
1 pound unsalted butter, melted
DECORATION
¼ cup crushed pistachios
Butter the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch pan and cut the phyllo dough to fit the pan. Remove one sheet at a time to prevent it from drying out. Unused dough may be covered with wax paper or a damp paper towel. Place one sheet at a time in the pan and brush each layer with melted butter until there are 12 to 15 layers. Spread the walnut and sugar filling on top and continue layering the phyllo until it is all used, remembering to brush each layer with butter. Before baking, cut baklava into diamond or square shapes (40 small; 20 large), taking care not to press too hard.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes, checking occasionally to be sure that it is not burning. The top should be golden brown when it is ready. Remove from oven and let cool five minutes before pouring on the cooled syrup and sprinkling with ¼ cup crushed pistachios. Let the baklava sit at room temperature for at least two hours before serving.
From soup to tea
Trained in Switzerland in Hotel Management, Arli has been providing the finest food and elegant service to everyone from Hollywood Elite, to kings, queens and presidents for more than 25 years.
Musa was born in 1960 in Nizip, Gaziantep (Southeastern Turkey) where he learned to be a chef from family members who were specialists in kebabs and pastries. In his early years he worked on a family farm and later as a helper in restaurants. He opened his first restaurant in 1987 and since then he has been traveling to the far corners of Turkey and Middle East to further pursue his passion for rarely found Anatolian dishes. His love of food has led him to extensively research the food history of Mesopotamia and try recipes over 400 years old.