I am often assumed to cook Russian dishes for my Turkish family or at least sneak in some Russian influences in our daily fare. The disappointing truth is I can’t remember cooking much Russian food here in Turkey apart from the potato fritters I prepared during the romantic stage of the relationships with my husband-to-be.
The fritters that manifested the Russian culinary ascetics were accepted and eaten for two reasons: 1) fried foods are universally lovable and 2) I was too new to the family to discourage my efforts even though Özgür’s mom did immediately suggest how I could ‘improve’ the Slavic classic, and I had neither the confidence nor the language ability to say that giving dish a Turkish touch does not equal improvement.
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Beşiktaş football team may not enjoy such a wide support as the two Istanbul giants Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray, but its supporters are not less furious and a way better defined. Honestly, you can’t tell a Fenerbahçe fan from the Galatasaray’s just by looking. But you can often identify an avid Beşiktaş supporter - young, educated, free thinker and slightly anarchic. It was Çarşı, the hooligan organization of the Beşiktaş fans, that fearlessly led the recent protests at its home base, in the heart of Beşiktaş district also called Çarşı.
Çarşı, a commercial quarter that usually acts as a center of a neighborhood, in Beşiktaş is a curious place. It undividedly sympathizes Beşiktaş football team yet tolerates other teams’ supporters. Say, at the Kadikoy market every single shop owner would put out Fenerbahçe flag on a match day, and you would not see many walking around in the Galatasaray jersey. But you can wear a non-Beşiktaş jersey in Beşiktaş, even if your team is playing with theirs that day.
How to explain this difference? Is it the abnormal hatred between the Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe or the outstanding tolerance of the Beşiktaş fans?As far as I am concerned the latter wins, yet another proof of which was the gathering of the retired Galatasaray hooligans (= my husband’s friends) that was set at Çarşı Balık, a fish restaurant at the Beşiktaş Fish Market.
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I am often asked what Russian food I miss most. Well, Turks confident in abundance and superiority of their food may not be so curious, but everyone else always asks me this question hoping to learn more about the exotic Russian fare. Also, folks back home seem to measure my patriotic feelings by the culinary longings: during my latest visit I left someone speechless when I claimed I did not to miss a very special taste of Russian potato that must be (according to that person) impossible to find in Turkey.
More often than not I am puzzled when asked about the Russian food I miss. I used all my cross-border moves to learn more about the cuisines different from my native, and I took it to the extreme when I moved to Turkey solely for its food. I also tend to think that if you cook you can replicate most of the foods you might miss.
However the recent trip to Russia proved me wrong: I could not get enough of the foods I thought I was fine without. I guess appreciating your roots comes with age, and I am happy to have gotten there. So here is my far-from-exhaustive list of the Russian foods I miss in Istanbul.
Watching gözleme, a flat dough parcel, being made from the scratch is not unlike witnessing a miracle. A woman sits on the floor, legs crossed, in front of the low round table that serves her as a minimalistic kitchen counter. She deftly rolls paper-thin dough yufka with oklava, a long thin stick that a novice of Turkish cooking would hardly believe to be a rolling pin. The woman rolls a small ball of dough into a 10-15cm round, then she rolls the dough on the pin and unrolls it leaving the perfectly round sheet of dough slightly larger and thinner as it was just a moment ago. And so she rolls and unrolls, rolls and unrolls until she makes an impossibly thin, round and large sheet of dough.
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I used to think of Bebek as the place where one goes for just two reasons - to see and be seen. A sleepy village by the Bosphorus less than a century ago, Bebek has turned into one of the most upscale Istanbul neighborhoods. The rich and beautiful people living here could have helped the country to pay off its external debt if they were to team up and sell their cars and yachts parked right here to the delight of a passerby. If you can’t afford living in Bebek it is still ok to come here to splash on a meal, not necessarily so excellent yet certainly self-esteem boosting. Thankfully, things change, and now you can travel to Bebek for something more substantial than the Bosphorus view and feeling good about your purchasing power - one of the best cups of coffee in Istanbul.
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