When I say I had a chance to help a few chefs at their small kitchens people say “wow” and something to that effect. Little they know (and so did I before) that when assisting a chef the first thing you get to know is dishes. I mean, dishes! Save your aspirations to learn the recipes and cool chef tricks for later as the first skill you will hone to perfection during your apprenticeship at a restaurant kitchen will be dishwashing.
Your Most Intimate Introduction to Turkish Food and Culture
I have got unexpected feedback to my speech at the recent tourism conference in Ukraine: I was talking about how to develop and launch a niche tourism product (aka my Istanbul food walks and cooking classes). After my presentation another speaker approached me, “Olga, you look like a very happy person! Indeed what one needs to be happy - job that you love and family that supports you”. Indeed while we may picture happiness as a definitive climax with the bad guys killed and the good ones kissing with sparkles in the sky as a backdrop happiness often times comes in simpler and not-so-glorious aspects.
My solo dining in Istanbul started a few years ago when drained out of energy by the exorbitant workload of a consultant I was coming for long weekends to re-charge and savor Istanbul and its food. Those were my rendezvous with the city itself when I could have it all for myself. Istanbul reciprocated my intentions and proved a very friendly place for a solo female traveler.
Sun, good food, brief walks in Sultanahmet that supply your annual portion of male attention, numerous shopkeepers ready to please, hamam pampering, cooking classes and concerts you can attend without being intimidated by your couple-lessness. And on top of this - plentiful opportunities to meet other solo travelers when you feel like joining forces to attack a good eatery.
I am used to being a foreigner. For the past 10 years I am. Through my travels and living abroad. Even in my home country. “You speak Russian without an accent“, - a Moscow taxi driver notes. “I am a native” - I murmur.
Being a foreigner is always discriminating - in a very cool but also very annoying way. On the one hand you get a license to do outrageous things that violate local customs. Yet on the other hand you are never given full excess to the local living. And you are constantly balancing between keeping your identity (and sanity) and yet integrating.
I was long looking forward to making this anchovy recipe of rice coated with anchovy fillets (hamsili pilav). For starters, I was waiting for the anchovy season to fully blossom. Piles of little silver-bellied fishes on the forefront of the fish stores at the Kadiköy market in Istanbul and dedicated fishmongers orchestrating the humming anchovy trade to the Istanbulites queuing for the 5-lira-a-kilo goodness.
Baking is just like your boyfriend going for a boys’ night out. In baking you can only hope you have picked a reliable recipe and measured your ingredients right. Stove top cooking always gives you a chance to open the lead and fix things going wrong. Not the baking: once you send your creation to the oven you can’t control the outcome anymore. Same with the boys’ night out. If you pick the right guy in whom you trust and if you have enough self-confidence you can wish him a great boys’ night out with a light heart.
I am little nervous every time I am cooking something new for somebody new. Which happens all the time. Because I think it is boring to cook the same thing over and over again. And I always find new hungry people to feed. My nervousness grows as I cook in different settings too: what works at the professional kitchen of Zeliha Hanım in Sapanca may not suit my home kitchen in Istanbul. So every time I keep thinking: Will the recipe (that I tested five times in other settings) work? Will people (who approved on many other occasions) like the dish?
