Ramazan Reflections

After a long hot day, the patience with which all fasting Moslems await the appointed hour for iftar, the meal which breaks the fast, to be annnounced from the local mosque or on the radio is impressive. The further west, the longer the wait. Of course, Ramazan,the annual 30-day period of fasting between sunrise and sunset does not always fall in the summer: it moves back ten days every year. This year, however, has seen record high temperatures with the believers fasting for 16 hours straight. Nothing must pass their lips: not even an aspirin and certainly not a cigarette. A real test of faith indeed.

A Typical Village İftar meal in the Aegean

Traditionally, first a date and some olives are eaten accompanied by copious glasses of water. This is followed by soup – çorba - probably lentil ,or tarhana,made from crushed wheat and yogurt, and then the main meal, typically vegetable-based with a little mince or chicken in it.

A cupboardful of delicious,hot pides!
(pron: 'peedeh')

The special Ramazan bread, the large gloriously round pide, baked twice a day in the local fırın, will accompany this.

Osman, our local baker

A tray of güllaç
(pron: 'goolutch')

Watermelon and cheese are favourites but the piece de resistance is dessert: kadayif, the ‘shredded wheat’ baklava; kemal paşa; and the most popular, güllaç, a light, layered, milky confection. 85% of all güllaç is consumed in Ramazan. Mehmet, our gardener, says in the village they usually have sütlaç, essentially a rice pudding, presumably because it is cheaper.

Ramazan desserts: sweet and sticky!

What happens after İftar

Mehmet and the other men go to the mosque from 10 – 11pm. Being a man of many talents, he is also the village barber so he then opens his Barber’s Shop and cuts hair till 2am. Afterwards he will socialize until 3.30am when all devout Moslems enjoy sahur, last chance to eat and drink before sunrise. The older men , and the women too, will sleep from about 11 - midnight till they hear the sound of the davulcu beating his drum for sahur. This is becoming a dying tradition and in Istanbul, is actually forbidden. After sahur, back to bed for everyone. By now it will be about 4.30am.

Background
In the Aegean area, near Çanakkale, where I have been for the last few weeks, this holy month of fasting has its own special flavour. As Mehmet told me, for the villagers it is like a holiday. Each household saves up approximately 500 TL (about $350) to survive this period as unlike in the city, they, especially the men, don’t work unless they have to eg tending sheep or cows. They actively don’t want to work so that they can pass the daylight hours more easily by sleeping. Iftar is eaten with family and friends and there is very much a festive atmosphere after the strictures of the day. Mehmet says that about 30% are not fasting in the villages these days and no blame is attached. Girls start at about 12 yrs old and boys around 13 – 14. But they start gradually: 1 day, 5 days, 10 days, or every other day, for example. There is huge tolerance.

This year Ramazan will finish on Wednesday 8 September, a special day called Arefe, a half-day holiday, and is immediately followed by a festive 3-day national holiday called Şeker Bayramı (9, 10, 11). If you visit Turkish friends during this time, it is customary to take something sweet as a present, symbolic of all that was given up during the fast. Your household help will appreciate this too. Just before the Bayram, you will notice large boxes of chocolates on sale at all the major supermarkets for this very purpose.

İyi Bayramlar! Have a happy holiday!

When is jam not jam? When it's chutney, of course!

The light is different. The Greek island of Lesbos opposite is starting to emerge from its hazy summer shroud so we can see its beautiful silhouette once more. There is a change in the air, the nights are much cooler, Osman Bey next door is no longer sleeping on his roof, his snores gently punctuating my stargazing. The displays of fruit and vegetables in the Ayvacik market yesterday were not quite so lavish and there was generally a fin du saison feel about it. The truth is, summer is almost over.

The zuccaciye where I bought my first lot of jars for bottling the tomatoes, still hasn’t stocked up on that most convenient size so I had to buy the larger ones, for today we had a project! Having your own vegetable garden may be a rural idyll but with all the lovely hot sun we have been having, Elaine’s has been relentless. It has been producing copious amounts of all sorts of things including aubergines, green peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers all summer long. They cannot be ignored; they clamour for attention on an almost daily basis. Just eating a few now and then will not suffice.

Here are our ingredients

Today’s recipe was actually for Chilli Jam using sweet red peppers with apples. Now, Elaine’s patch doesn’t do red peppers but what she did have was huge amounts of the green ones that had to be dealt with. With great panache, she adapted the original recipe so that it was no longer for jam but for chutney! It was a perfect exercise in using what you have and not worrying too much if you haven’t got quite the right ingredients.

Adaptation according to Elaine:

• 1kg green peppers – there were a few little red ones in there too. By the way, these peppers are not hot, they just look it. However, we tested a few just to make sure!

• ½ kg apples – ours were sweetish but the good news is that you can use any kind, sweet or sour

• 150 gr granulated sugar

• 110 ml. Vinegar: we had rice wine so you can see any will do! The locally available apple vinegar (elma sirkesi) would be fine

• ½ tbsp salt

Makes 3 small jars or 1 ½ big ones.

Method

1. Wash and deseed the peppers.

Here are the peppers, all prepared and ready to go

 You can put them in a bowl of water as you go so that any remaining seeds fall to the bottom. You don’t want them. Lay the peppers in a single layer on an oven tray and put in a pre-heated 200 deg oven till slightly brown. The idea is to soften them up (about 10 – 15 mins).

2. Wash, core and cut the apples into quarters. We didn’t peel them.

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Don't you think they look delicious?

3. Put apples and softened peppers into a large saucepan and add the other ingredients. Cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and let simmer for about an hour.After about 15 mins, scatter a few flakes of red chilli pepper (pul biber) just to add a little bite.

The chutney is ready when the water has almost all boiled away and the apples and peppers have merged into each other, the colour of warmed earth, sweet-smelling and soft.

Well, what do you think?

Using a stick blender, give the mixture little bursts to break it down further. Be careful: you don’t want to overdo it otherwise it becomes like baby mush. It is a chutney, after all.Spoon immediately into your prepared jars (see my first blog about bottling tomatoes for how to sterilize in the oven. Also Elaine’s method, below). Let cool slightly then screw the lid on.

We had a little taste and though we say so ourselves, found it quite delicious. The real test was Peter, that most English of Englishmen. We watched his face apprehensively as he popped a spoonful in his mouth: to our great delight, mmmmm was the verdict!

Conclusion: we may not have Military Pickles but we do have Elaine’s Pepper and Apple Chutney!

Tip

• Elaine has another way to prepare the jars: first, put them in the dishwasher. Then take them out and fill them with boiling water. Leave them like that for 1 hr. Done like this, filled, they should still be kept in the fridge till needed.

• Another friend of ours has a further tip: turn the jars upside-down after sealing. Leave that way to cool. This ensures that any pockets of air, which could cause mould, disappear.



And now we are off to the beach!

Bread - its place on the Turkish table and the wonders of the 'firin'

‘Ekmek’: that means bread in Turkish. It is indeed the staple of life here. A Turk without bread on his table would be an unhappy man. While bread to us probably signifies sandwiches, here, it really represents life itself. It is considered a sin to throw away even stale bread. The word ‘gunah’ (sin) is very strong. I remember when I was a child growing up in England, my mother would save the stale bread so we could feed the ducks. This doesn’t seem to be an option here: stale bread is used for kofte, the delicious meatballs they make. We might make breadcrumbs in our food processors and freeze them. But what you most definitely mustn’t do is just chuck it in the bin.

Mehmet and Hatice

I have had the most fabulous afternoon. Hatice, the wife of Mehmet who is our gardener and general handyman, phoned me to say she was making bread today. I had been waiting for her call for a few days. Because it is Ramazan, they are eating less bread as there is a special bread called ‘pide’ which is only baked during this holy month and they are eating this so she wasn’t quite sure when they were going to run out of regular bread next. During this month, all devout Moslems abstain from food and drink between sunrise and sunset. You have to admire them in this heat as not even a drop of water passes their lips. Iftar, the special meal that is eaten to break the fast, is at around 8.15pm these days. It literally depends on when the sun sets. Meanwhile, Pelin and I are consuming a 19 litre container of water every 2-3 days ....

So my friend Elaine and I drove to Pasakoy, the neighbouring village where Mehmet and Hatice live. This baking bread turned out to be a lesson in teamwork. The firin -the outdoor oven – was going full pelt when we arrived, the flames almost leaping out. There has been a full force gale raging since last night but the firin was in a protected spot. Hatice had prepared the dough for 3 loaves for her family of 5; her mother had 1 and her mother-in-law another 1. Then a neighbour who was also a relative arrived with her dough. These were all in metal containers, risen, and ready to go. When the heat of the coals was right, these were upended onto an ancient wooden paddle and pushed into the heart of the firin. It was a joint effort: Hatice’s mother was in charge of the paddle, Hatice emptied each bowl, and Mehmet’s mother floured the paddle for each load of dough. They were amazingly swift, so much so, it was hard to take pictures. For the loaves to be well-risen, maintaining the level of heat is imperative.

Hatice tending the outdoor 'firin'

Hatice and her mother with the dough that has risen

Then we were ushered into Hatice’s sitting room where she graciously offered us tea, despite the fact that none of the other adults were drinking anything. It was just us with the women and Hatice’s children. After only about half an hour, one of the small loaves appeared on a special tray just for us, along with butter and salt, for us to sample.  Again, don’t forget that nobody else was eating anything at all. It was delicious.

Our special loaf

 Well, fresh, hot bread usually is! We resisted the temptation to tuck in. After another 40 minutes or so, we went to witness the other loaves coming out of the oven which were all beautifully risen and firm.

Ouch, they're hot!

I noticed some small things also being retrieved from the firin and realised that they were eggplants! These are delicious when cooked like this: what you do is scoop out the flesh with a spoon, mash it with a fork, and then add yogurt, garlic, a judicious amount of lemon juice with a bit of olive oil and a little salt. This is called patlican salatasi: eggplant salad. Yummy! Of course you can soften up the eggplants in a regular oven but they won’t have that delicous oven-baked taste. For a bit more taste, you can grill them directly over a gas flame but this makes the most horrendous mess so honestly I don’t recommend it.

Finally, while it was still all systems go, and the oven continued to burn hot, Hatice’s mother quickly washed the fresh figs from their trees that had been drying in the sun for the last 4 days. This got rid of any ants or flies that had got into them. They were washed again in salty water, to counteract the sweetness apparently and also to disinfect, and then put onto trays. These were then inserted into the firin to give them a final bake. Thus in winter, no nasty surprises of half-mouldy dried figs, just wonderful sun-filled mouthfuls of goodness.

Hatice's mother washing the sundried figs

One of the big loaves had a pattern on it and we wondered why. Turned out the dough had been resting in a colander so when it was upended on the paddle, the pattern came through!

The one with the pattern from the colander!

Of course, what we have here is very unsophisticated compared to what is available in Istanbul. But these loaves and the ones from the central bakery have absolutely no preservatives in them. This is great but it does mean that they if you are not careful, they become as hard as stone by nightfall! Seriously, you can hardly get your knife through them.

Tip: What I do is cut the loaves into quarters while fresh, and freeze them. This works beautifully. Judicious de-frosting ensures yummy toast for breakfast!

Cooling Cucumbers......and a bit of market life

Yogurt is great stuff especially the kind we get here in Turkey which is absolutely delicious: thick and creamy.It is one of my must-haves in the fridge. Strange to think I used to yearn for the fruity version! Yogurt in Turkey is used mainly as accompaniment to savoury dishes or in something like this cacik. It isn’t considered a dessert. Cacik (difficult to say as c is pronounced j in Turkish) is similar to the Indian raita and the Greeks also have a lookalike. In other words, a side dish made with cucumbers and refreshing yogurt. In the UK I have just about stopped buying cucumbers as they are so tasteless and watery. In this area, they have one local type that is pale in colour, with huge seeds, and bristles to boot. I steer clear of those. But when you see good ones, you know: firm, dark green and not too big.

I thought I would go to the Tuesday market in Ayvacık yesterday. In case you are interested in wild life around here, on the way, I saw 2 dead hedgehogs and then on the brighter side, a tortoise slowly crossing the road. I usually jump out of the car and carry them to the other side to make sure they don’t get hit. Anyway,this market is a mini-version of the Friday one and therefore easier - and quicker - to navigate especially in this heat.

When I saw this minibus stuffed to its rooftop with garlic, I just had to take a photo.

The seller was quite bemused that I wanted a picture but he certainly didn’t mind. I guess he sleeps easy with no fear of vampires! I just hope he knows how to keep all that garlic from drying out. I mean, I only buy about 3-4 at a time for that reason and here he has millions! He says proudly on his sign: these are all mine! 1kg for 4 liras. The mind boggles at how many you would get for a kilo!

Anyway, I proceeded and bought my kilo of cucumbers for the usual rock bottom 1 lira. I had yogurt at home. Pelin goes through bunches of fresh mint at a rate of knots with her teas so I got some more. These are the three basic ingredients for cacik as well as the garlic.

Method

Mix about 6 tbsps yogurt in a bowl vigourously with a spoon. I’ve got this great wooden spoon that I love – it’s got a stunted handle and just seems to fit my hand. The idea is to make the yogurt smooth. Add a little cold water and a swirl of olive oil. Now comes the garlic. Crush about 3 cloves but it does depend on how much you love it! We do! Now, take your cucumbers. About 5 should be enough. With your peeler – I am in love with my IKEA one – peel them and then wash. Dry. Then holding one in your hand, cut through in quarters all the way down. Hold them tight and cut bits off the top into your yogurt mixture. The idea is not to make regular-shaped cubes but more irregular pieces. Some people like to grate their cucumbers which is also nice but different.

Then add either some dried mint or if you have it, as I certainly do, some fresh leaves chopped up. Decorate with a sprig or two of the fresh. You can also add another swirl of olive oil.

In our family, we tend to like our cacık on the thick side. Other people like it more liquid. As with everything, it is up to you and your personal taste! It is served in individual bowls and eaten with a spoon as an accompaniment to the main course. In summer it is considered very refreshing and ice cubes can be added as an extra cooling agent.

Tip

• This lovely garlicky yogurt mix can be used to great effect with grated carrot or courgette, both of which are uncooked. The courgette is very watery so has to be squeezed, haberin olsun! That means, be warned!

Luscious Fruit Tarts

Now that you’ve got the pastry under your belt, onto the good stuff!

My market dictates that I use either apples, plums or nectarines but nectarines are the way to go for me as my friend Elaine has just given me a basketful  that Peter picked this morning from their laden tree. I'm sure you'll notice the sudden leap in stellar photography! This is courtesy of Elaine Graham. You can see more of her fabulous work on www.fluidr.com/photos/varenneistanbul.

                                                        
How about where you are? Let the season be your guide.
 
You will need 3-4 apples/ nectarines/pears, depending on size and according to the size of your tin or dish. Or half a kilo of smaller fruit like plums. The plums that we are getting here right now are very small so it depends. If you run out of the fruit you had started out using, never mind, just make a pretty pattern in the middle with a different variety!

Prepare the fruit: wash it, peel if necessary, remove stones or pips and then cut in half, quarters, and smaller as you wish. Then arrange them in a circular pattern round and round your dish. You could also just pile it all in if you wanted a more rustic look. You can add some cinnamon (for apple) or nutmeg (for plum) if you feel in the mood. Don’t forget your little shapes if you made any. Finally, sprinkle with granulated sugar and little knobs of butter and stick it in your preheated oven for about 40 – 45 mins. The pastry will turn a beautiful golden brown and the fruit will be all soft and luscious.

  Serve with vanilla ice-cream or of course real cream!

Tips:

• Sprinkling ground nuts over the top of the tart before you put it in the oven makes it look even more attractive. Walnuts are great. Flaked almonds look sophisticated.
• Sometimes the fruit (eg apples) is not particularly juicy and you will end up with a dry old tart. So judge it accordingly: the amount of sugar that you sprinkle should therefore be a bit more (let’s say, 3 heaped tbsp) and likewise the little knobs of butter. They will melt and merge and make your offering more mouthwatering!

Claudia’s Basic “You Can Do It!” Pastry Recipe

When I was getting married, my mother said ‘There are two things you need to know how to make: one is pastry and the other is a bechamel sauce’. And you know what? She was right. Those two things have been invaluable over the years. Bechamel sauce may have fallen out of fashion now because it is fattening but at the time I embellished many a dinner with an au gratin vegetable dish and it was good training for other sauces. But pastry! Knowing how to make it opened up a new glorious vista into my culinary offerings. I even gave lessons to friends when we lived in Tokyo. I don’t know why but there is a certain amount of mystique and even fear of trying to make pastry. And the outcome is that you can’t make quiches, people avoid your mincepies at Christmas, and above all, no fruit tarts in the summer!


My mother was French, you see and the French on the whole prefer fruit or cheese for dessert. BUT they do like a good tart!

OK. Here is Claudia’s basic recipe for short pastry:

225g/8oz flour

 125g/4oz butter (at room temperature)

 ice cold refrigerated water

 a 23-25cm/9-10in flan tin (pie dish)

(If you have a larger-sized tin, simply increase the measurements in proportion to each other ie 10oz flour to 5oz butter, 12 to 6 etc).

Pre-heat your oven to 180/350 degs.

Method

 Measure out the flour and put it in a bowl. Add the butter in small pieces.

Using your fingers –just your right hand is enough- mix the butter into the flour but don’t go too far otherwise it turns into crumbs. (Take rings off!) Don’t worry if there are lumps as these will be integrated into the pastry in a minute.

 Using a tablespoon, start by adding one spoonful of the cold water at a time. Now you are going to concentrate on mixing in all those small lumps of butter that didn’t get mixed in before. Add more water. So you mix with your hands but be gentle. Pastry doesn’t like to be overhandled. You will easily see if you need more water as it will be too dry but continue adding by the careful spoonful as too much, it will end up a sticky mess. Go nice and slowly, adding, mixing.

 When it forms a ball, take it out of the bowl and lay it on the counter (cool marble is ideal!) which you have liberally sprinkled with flour. Now knead your ball. This feels great! It should be smooth and flexible at this stage. Some people recommend putting it in the fridge in a plastic bag for 30 minutes just to rest it but I never seem to do that.

 And now take your trusty rolling pin, flour it as well as putting a spoonful of flour on top of your pastry, and roll away! Roll it in all directions. Turn it over and roll. At this point, the shape is not that important. Now comes my mother’s trick: take your butter which has become nice and soft as it has been out of the fridge all this time, and with a knife, spread it all over your circle of pastry. This  makes it ‘shorter’ ie you are on the way to milles feuilles! Just kidding, but it does add that melt-in-your-mouth touch after baking.

Then from the top, fold the pastry over, then from the bottom and finally the sides, so you have a nice little packet in front of you. Turn it over, again sprinkle with a little flour so it doesn’t stick to your rolling pin, and roll it out. Don’t be scared of it. Go for it, left, right, up and down. This time try to get it to the shape of your tin. If the consistency is right and you have made enough for the size of your tin, this is a breeze. Fold it over gently to transfer to the tin or dish. You can do this easily with your hands, you don’t need a spatula or anything.

 With a sharp knife, go round the edges cutting off the excess. I sometimes make a pattern with a fork round the edge or I use this nifty little device that I have that looks like a trick cyclist’s wheel and roll it round the edge if it is thick enough, to make it look nice. I always prick the bottom all over with a fork to stop the pastry rising. I never do that business with greaseproof paper and pulses as I don’t see the need for it.

I use the trimmings to make little cutout shapes to decorate the tart with. For these I use my old childhood cookie cutters so we have little rabbits, ducks and something that looks like Rupert Bear! But of course I can be more serious too and also have hearts and flowers to embellish my tarts. If I’m feeling creative, I ‘draw’ stems and leaves with a sharp knife and then make my own design.

Another good way of using up the extra bits that my friend Lesley told me about is to roll them out, sprinkle with granulated sugar, roll it in and then using cookie cutters, make little biscuits! She says they are called sables ie from the French, sandy! These cook quickly in your pre-heated oven at 180 degs for about 10 mins.

Tips:

• I may not subscribe to some of the usual rules associated with pastry-making but there are indeed some that hold true. One is that pastry does not like hot weather and indeed it doesn’t! My pastry the other day, for example. It was 38 degrees outside and the pastry magically felt it. It was impossible to roll out smoothly so I had to patch it up a bit to make it fit the tins. So you see, there are always pitfalls! That’s why a cold marble surface is ideal.

• The other tip is that I always place my tin on a baking sheet that has been in the oven while heating up. This is to make sure the base of the pastry case cooks through. How many times have you eaten stodgy quiche?

• Pastry cases freeze very well. Make sure you wrap them in foil or clingfilm otherwise they go all hard and take on an attractive greyish colour!

Voila!

Bottling summer tomatoes

Temperatures are soaring, every day in the upper 30s. It is a very hot summer in Turkey this year and I am loving it.


The tomatoes are just beautiful:  big, fat, red, ripened to perfection under the baking sun.  I am in a village overlooking the Aegean and Friday is market day in the nearby little town.  Today is the day, I thought. It's now or never to do something with these beauties. First I went to the zuccaciye, ( I love that word!), a treasure trove of a place bursting with household jars, tea glasses, and other necessities of a rural life to buy jars suitable for bottling. I wanted twelve but they had thirteen left so I ended up with thirteen complete with the metal lids. Then I went off to get the fattest juiciest tomatoes I could find. It's hard to choose which seller to buy from as they all have attractive displays not only of tomatoes but all their other produce straight from their fields and orchards. The heat won out and I decided on the enterprising man with a succulent tomato cut open in front of him who was conveniently close to my car. They cost a rock bottom 1 lira per kilo (33 cents!) which for an Istanbul girl is next to nothing. I bought three kilos.


Home I went and the first task was to sterilize the jars which is most important. There are a couple of ways of doing this: in the past I have boiled the jars but this time thanks to this new recipe, I used the oven method. So far so good. Then I turned my attention to the tomatoes:  I washed them carefully, and peeled them. This year the skin is quite thick and peels off easily, like pulling off a tightfitting glove. Any bits that remained, I used my knife judiciously. Otherwise I would put them in boiling water and skin them that way.


Last year I simply chopped them up and cooked them down a bit before filling the jars. This is fine as you can add the various seasonings like onions, and herbs later on when you are actually using the contents. But this time, following the same recipe, I thought I would make a tastier version. When I saw that my 3 kilos only made 3-4 jars, and because I was on a roll, I used the tomatoes that I had in the fridge so all in all, I made up 4.5 kilos that day, which produced 10 jars. I left about a centimetre at the top of each jar and poured in a little olive oil (we use the oil from Mehmet, our gardener's, olive trees) and then popped out into the garden to pick some bay leaves. I put one on top of each filled jar and then closed them firmly with the lids. I saw that the girl in the zuccaciye had given me about eight extra lids by mistake so I will give those back next time I go to town.


I had such a great morning! It was so satisfying! I will definitely be making more before the summer is out. I thought these could make good alternative presents for my city-dwelling friends.

Tip: It really is most important to use the best tomatoes you can find. Avoid those hard ones that you get in supermarkets and that are all of the same shape. They just won't have the same flavour. But now is the time so go for it!