How would you define a business that draws on a big passion rather than a calculated business plan, gives you freedom to decide when to run it or take a break and gets you enough money to finance our lifestyle without creating an empire? Business like my Istanbul food tours and cooking classes. Lifestyle business is the word which I have picked from a recent blog post by Penelope Trunk.
August 2011
There are no handy tips or recipes today. I am still gathering my courage to continue posting any. I had a cooking failure. Failure to use the right ingredient and do justice to it. Failure to cook something decent in the eyes of Zeliha Hanım, a strict judge of all my cooking endeavors in Sapanca. Failure to show up at the kitchen for a few days after.
When I am in Sapanca I assume the duty of a lunch cook so I can test drive the professional kitchen of Zeliha Hanım, master new Turkish dishes and as a pure side effect feed six hungry diners of assorted appetites. No wonder I cook hearty, seasonal and cheap meals. “Few simple inexpensive ingredients always result in delicious food”, says Zeliha Hanım. This tomato soup is a proof.
We have had a turbulent week here in Sapanca. On Monday we witnessed a family drama of a Georgian helper whose daughter did not pass an entrance exam to the university she wanted to get into so the girl was about to take a veil. On Tuesday Özgür’s Blackberry reformatted itself and deleted all the contacts - all of them. On Wednesday parents’ furniture arrived from Istanbul and the house got filled with boxes packed with memories, five male movers bustling about and a sharp smell of their sweat. On Thursday one of the dogs broke the chain and went wild around the estate. On Friday we went to Istanbul to rewind over great food and drinks and meet a few friends: too much rewinding is worse than turbulence, let me tell you. By the weekend it felt only right to withdraw myself from much of the public life and resort to reading and catching up with family over skype.
Inebolu pazarı, Sunday market in Kasımpaşa where villagers from the Black Sea bring their produce for sale, initially was more of myth to me. Villagers coming late in the night to set up the market before the dawn and wrap up by the time most of the Istanbulites would even consider getting up on Sunday. Top chefs hand-picking fresh village grown produce. Legends from the fairy-talish Black Sea brought in the little vans, large baskets and deep dark eyes. Can that be? Got up at 6 am last Sunday to check out.
Our place in Sapanca is a food heaven: with 5 fridges, 3 freezers and 2 wall-size shelves refilled twice a week it is hard to think of a food item that Zeliha Hanım would not have in her professional kitchen pantry. Yet a day comes and I get Istanbul-seek and start longing for my own fridge stuffed with very particular food I pick from very particular vendors at the Kadıköy market in Istanbul.
