Turkish cuisine is said to be one of four global greats, along with French, Italian and Chinese. It's colorful and healthful: the original Mediterranean diet. Turks gave the world yogurt, an impressive array of kebabs, and side dishes with ingredients most urban Americans can get their hands on. So why don't we know it better? In May, Post food critic Tom Sietsema identified a growing Turkish food trend among Washington restaurants, but Turkish street snacks, quick lunches and bulgur-laced meals at home? Not seeing them.
Nur Ilkin and Sheilah Kaufman have their theories about why that is so; in the meantime, the longtime friends are producing cookbooks that might put Turkish food on more American tables.
Their first, "A Taste of Turkish Cuisine" (Hippocrene), was published in 2002. Their follow-up effort, "The Turkish Cookbook: Regional Recipes and Stories" (Interlink, 2010; $35), identifies the breadth and culinary nuance across Turkey's seven regions: Marmara, the Aegean, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the three Anatolian regions in Turkey's Asian side: Central, Eastern and Southeastern. Its 220-plus recipes are enhanced with rich context and photos of those areas.
Marmara is home to Istanbul. Its lamb kebabs taste different from those of the other regions because the animals there are pasture-fed, Ilkin discovered. Chestnuts find their way into stews, rice or bulgur and are glazed with a sweet syrup. Cooks in the Aegean use more seafood than lamb, of course, and the mild climate puts a bounty of vegetables, figs and olive oil in just about every kitchen. The Black Sea region boasts anchovies that are so good they are used even in desserts. Hazelnuts grow there; about 70 percent of the world's hazelnuts come from Turkey.
Beyond the grouper and red mullet drawn from the Mediterranean region is the surprise of the country's only banana plantations. The area's oranges, pomegranates, strawberries, sour cherries and apricots are used to make the jams for which the city of Antalya is famous. Central Anatolians stuff vegetables and leaves. Eastern Anatolians keep stores of dried fruits and grains to survive long winters, and Southeastern Anatolians are known for their baklava made with local pistachios.
In the book, Kaufman refers to Turkish cuisine as a giant, colorful mosaic. In person, the Potomac resident does not need much prompting to list half a dozen new favorites: an addictive walnut-and-red-pepper spread; the best cabbage rolls she has ever tasted, stuffed with a mixture of chestnuts, currants, pine nuts, onions and herbs; and buttered sweet plums. Ilkin is partial to a Black Sea dessert of crispy phyllo with custard at the center, and an eggplant stew with lentils: "It's a very old traditional dish from Antakya in the southeast," she says. "The combination of lentils and eggplant, onion, garlic, cumin and pomegranate molasses is a new discovery for me."
Ilkin, 63, has plenty of research material to support a vegetarian Turkish cookbook, which is what she'd like to work on next with Kaufman.
Although Kaufman, 68, has 26 cookbooks to her credit, it's clear that these particular culinary traditions have captured her heart. She first went to Turkey as an adult, on cruises with her mother. It sparked her interest in the history of the Jews in Turkey and in Sephardic cookery. During return trips, she found herself at "humongous" meals where she fell in love with the flatbread called bazlama. Last year, she spent three weeks eating her way across the country, sampling much of what her co-author had already begun to teach her.
She met Ilkin a dozen years ago. The Gaziantep native and wife of the Turkish ambassador to the United States served more than two dozen Turkish dishes at a luncheon; Kaufman knew she had met a kindred kitchen spirit. Ilkin learned family recipes from her grandmother, although she did not really cook until after she was married.
"Sheilah and I both learn so much from each other's experiences and enjoy each other's company," Ilkin says via e-mail while on vacation in Bodrum, a resort town on the Aegean Sea.
For their first collaboration, Kaufman would go to the ambassador's residence, painstakingly notate the dishes Ilkin and her staff put together and then go home and type out ingredients and directions so she could test the dishes herself. "They didn't measure things, and the directions lacked cooking times and temperatures. That made it difficult," she says. During the six-month process, Ilkin took Kaufman bargain shopping for quinces and chestnuts at Chinese markets, where those ingredients cost far less than at organic grocery chain stores.
This time around, Ilkin pulled from a decade's worth of travel across her country, collecting recipes from house cooks and elderly women. "I don't want old recipes to be lost to a fast-food generation," she says, referring to the KFC and American hamburgers gobbled up by Turkey's younger set. She was careful to choose dishes that had not appeared in "Taste" and were unique to specific regions. After Ilkin's husband was assigned to the United Nations, the cooking and notation took three years' worth of visits between New York and Washington. Ilkin would choose a batch of soups or other related recipes, and the women would work from 9 a.m. till dinnertime. Ilkin took Kaufman to markets in Little Italy for cheeses and to Chinatown for the freshest spices, herbs and fish.
As for their theories about why Turkish food isn't more widely appreciated in this country, Kaufman says that opportunities to shop and taste are minimal for Americans who don't travel abroad. Ilkin says the Turkish community is relatively small and is dispersed throughout the States.
"Good Turkish cookbooks are either written with recipes in metrics," says Kaufman, who owns about 30 of them, "or they measure by tea glasses. Who can follow that? The ones famous Turkish chefs have done tend not to be about everyday food."
She has collected the kind of slim, spiral-bound cookbooks compiled by and distributed among American Turkish communities, but she finds the directions lacking: "I guess maybe that's because everybody already knows how to make the stuff," she says. Kaufman was delighted to crack open "Turquoise: A Chef's Travels in Turkey," by Australians Greg and Lucy Malouf (Chronicle, 2008). But the first recipe she scanned called for 700 cucumbers to make three cups of pickles. Ilkin faulted the authors for "inventing" recipes she did not recognize as authentic.
Kaufman says she appreciates the cuisine's common-man sensibility and its thrift. "Everything they make for the family is what is made for special occasions as well, she says. "They can take a pound of lamb and use it to feed eight to 10 people."
"Turkish cuisine is so rich in vegetables and grains" that can be used to stretch dishes, Ilkin says. "Cooking simple on a limited budget is no problem."
Simple can be a matter of interpretation. "Certain Turkish foods are very complicated," Kaufman says. The co-authors tried to steer clear of those, but the recipe for tarhana was too extreme - and historic - to pass up.
"It's prepared in every part of my country, from whatever is grown in the gardens," Ilkin says.
Centuries ago, the Central Anatolian Turks made tarhana, the equivalent of a powdered soup mix. They laid out a pulverized mixture of cooked tomatoes, peppers and onions on linen cloths to dry on their rooftops. It took weeks to produce but would last a family of four about a year. The resulting dried flavor pebbles could be added to simple broths or eaten straight up as savory breakfast nuggets.
Kaufman found the two-day recipe fascinating to test, with fresh and dried herbs and 20 - not a typo - cups of flour.
Ilkin says that for the end of Ramadan, which was celebrated last week, tarhana was used to create a light first-course soup that was served in many Turkish homes. Variations of tarhana mixes are sold in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. She makes it every two years and shares it with her extended family in Turkey.
"I am going to pay $1.25 for the envelopes of dried mix at the store," Kaufman says. "Or get my dear friend to bring me some of hers."