Sourdough Soup? Yes, Meet Tarhana

Tarhana, sourdough turned into an “instant” soup has boggled my mind since the very first time I saw it. Mother of my then Turkish boyfriend bought some from a store of home-made foods during our visit to Beypazarı, a little town with its center set up to give dwellers of the nearby places (such as Ankara where we came from) a feel of visiting an idyllic village where locals have nothing else to do but interacting with the visitors and feeding them with assorted fruits of their varied labors. Home made jams, dried vegetables, longest and thinnest stuffed wine leaves I have ever seen, double-baked Beypazarı kurusu - Turkish take on biscotti, dry type of baklava, homemade dried pasta and then tarhana.

We bought some of those delights including a bag of fine coral color grains which - as I was explained - was kind of a dry tomato soup and was meant to travel with me to Moscow. With the recipe from one of those websites that adapt Turkish recipes for foreigners so thoroughly that most the of time I don’t recognize the original any more I got the directions which I followed. I combined water and that ground tomato soup and was stirring it and stirring as it simmered. Eventually I served a rather uninspiring muddy soup.

Little I knew about the real tarhana and a proper way to cook it. Things clearned when I met my prospective mother-in-law who became my guide into the depths of Turkish home cooking including its heights such as making tarhana. Tarhana is often translated as “sour dough soup” which kind of gives you a hint of the process - the dough is left to ferment for a while. But then how the dought is made, what goes inside and what happens after were a miracle to me. Until a rather epic process of the making was staged at our countryside kitchen in Sapanca.

First, we put together the tarhana dough. Semiha abla, our helper installed a 50 liter metal caldron on the stove and inside went chopped onion, garlic, tomato, meat stock, fresh parsley, dill, dry mint. She took the cream she has been skimming from our homemade yoghurt (aygut): she was setting it aside and saving in the freezer the whole year. The mix was simmering on the stove for about an hour before it was taken off. Then came the fresh yoghurt which we make from the milk delivered on request by our neighbor who keeps a cow. Then the fresh yeast. Then the flour to form the dough. Making tarhana is the ultimate example of cooking without a recipe - ingredients go inside freestyle following general sense of proportion.

With all those ingredients added the tarhana dough turned into a humongous wild beast and more hands were needed to tame it. So came my young cousin Ömer, my sister-in-law Özge, Semiha abla and myself. And we still had 10 kilograms of dough per person to handle.

Picture that: you are on your knees on the floor in front of a huge plastic bowl, hands - up to the elbow - in the still sticky dough that only starts to take shape, you are working to integrate flour onto the dough with forceful moves. You press in the middle with the both fists, the dough surrenders in the middle but then crawls up to the sides of the bowl - you fold the sides in and press again. Once the tarhana dough absorbs the flour anne sieves more flour on your hands and you continue punching, kneading, beating and begging the dough to form.

“Özge’s is ready! Olga’s too!’ anne announced. And we transferred our chunks of smooth tarhana dough approved by anne to the huge plastic containers, sprinkled them with flour, covered and left.

And then the beast of a dough started a life on its own. Only a few hours later it attempted to run away: it proofed so well that the containers that were twice as large as the volume of the dough turned out too tight to keep the dough tamed. We knocked the tarhana dough down, spread a cloth on the floor to catch any dough aspiring to run away.

A night later the monster became domesticated and turned into a pet. And as a pet it started getting regular attention - at least once a day we checked on the tarhana dough, punched it down and fed with a bit more flour which it hungrily swallowed. Every day I came down to dig in and turn it to see that characteristic coral-colored sponge. Looking at it made me strangely happy. Witnessing a proof of transformation that - very much under the covers - happens when you are not looking. After another round of kneading you leave an elastic soft dough to find a flabby sponge hungry for another feeding next time you look.

7 days later came Monday when at the breakfast we were discussing where to dry tarhana. Anne insisted tarhana should stay outside to ‘breath’ during the drying. Semiha abla argued it should not stay on the sun which would take away the vitamins. I challenged her by saying they dry it on the balconies in the South (why do I often myself coaching Turks about how they should go about Turkish food?). I suggested the roof of our restaurant - warmest place, right on the sun and no cats roaming around. We climbed and wrinkling our noses we divided the tarhana dough into the little patties which we flattened, bathed in flour and laid out in the old curtain. For a day our tarhana was enjoying all the unspent generosity of the autumnal sun. And the best view tarhana has possibly ever seen.

That same night we collected the dried up patties and ground them with a food processor. The final step was to push them through a metal rice strainer. To break odd chunks and large pieces of dried herbs. We then spread it on our veranda to let it dry finally - rotating it slightly every day.

Meanwhile, anne has been impatient to check the outcome. So we made the tarhana soup once. And then once more. And then again. My family seemed not to be getting enough of that taste which is so familiar to any Turk - sour and sweet and hearty. And I took my turn to prepare the tarhana soup. It turned way more spectacular than the first time I made it. Was it the quality of the homemade tarhana dough which beats that of Beypazarı’s? Or should I say it my understanding of Turkish cooking which has skyrocked over the past 2 years?