My home kitchen and our restaurant kitchen is the same person. In a minor identity crisis. Deciding whether it gears towards an old village kitchen, a kitchen that can serve dozens of restaurant guests or a kitchen I want. First I thought I would give her time to make up her mind, but since she has been taking a while, I am going to open the wooden door (that we removed upon declaring this possibly the most robust part of the whole kitchen obsolete) and get you to meet her.
As we were touring our restaurant / house for the first time, I felt in love with the kitchen for the bright light coming through the two windows. One faces the street and the other opens into the entree creating a cozy place for staff meals and service area. The kitchen may not be big, but it has got enough space for 2-3 people to go about their duties.
The kitchen came with somewhat unexpected bonuses. One was the solid granite counter to work with pastries and bake bread. Another was the cupboard built in the wall to replace the window that used to open into the bedroom (don’t ask). Finally, two Turkish coffee cups with saucers thoughtfully left by the owner also came handy .. in a few weeks after we installed a stove.
However, the kitchen did have a number of questionable features. One was a DIY cupboard that had curved and molded here and there that I could not trust it to can carry the weight of anything. The marble sink in the granite counter was tiny. Every dishwashing resulted in showering my bottles of olive oil standing in between the sink and the stove.
Our first meal in the new house consisted of canned bacalao my sister bright from Portugal a few years ago that I diligently kept for a significant moment, cheese we procured from a long-time family supplier on the way from Istanbul and wholewheat sourdough I found at a local bakery in Alaçatı (first things first). The house stripped off any belongings was rather cold. Bacalao was delicious, but we needed warm meals going forward.
My husband procured a small picnic gas cylinder. “Latest model,” the vendor ensured him pointing to the innovative detail, the metal part atop the cylinder that imitated a stove. Placed in an empty corner of the kitchen it became my best friend for a week until we replaced it with a proper stove. I first struggled with lighting the gas cylinder, my childhood phobia. My grandma never allowed me to touch her gas stove fearing I would start a fire. Her fear became mine. There is too little room for the childhood phobias in the life of an entrepreneur opening a business in a foreign country, let me tell you. So I learned to light the gas with a match.
The major challenge was not lighting it however, but cooking only one thing at a time. Doing one thing at a time, thinking one thought at a time, cooking one dish at a time, this is the world I don’t belong. But I figured I can put a lot of ingredients in one pot and call it a meal. For breakfasts I made hearty all-inclusive omelets and for lunch I favored stew-style borsch that I convinced my husband to eat Russian style - as the main course (worked once). My gas cylinder served me well: I brewed tea round after round, fried sardines and made tomato sauce from excellent tomatoes, last this season, in a humongous pot mom sent over as if she knew I would get into canning in my first week in Alaçatı.
While camping on the kitchen had its thrills, I needed a proper stove and possibly an oven. My deal seeking husband found an announcement for a brand new oven. Used only once. In our area. Next day he called the oven owner and arranged to see the oven at their house. They welcomed us as if we were long lost and found family, got us seated and asked all sort of things. “Let this not be a mere financial transaction”, said the friendly oven owner who reminded me of Sezen Aksu, a popular Turkish singer from Izmir, with her died blond hair, plump lips and fair complexion you will not commonly find around Turkey. Guess what? We got a cup of mastic perfumed Turkish coffee, our first friends, the promised oven plus a bargain built-in stove.
Besides the stove and the oven we had a few kitchen changes in mind, including the addition of stainless counters, shelves and sink to comply with the formal requirements. We even started window shopping at the secondhand pro kitchen equipment stores in Izmir, but soon realized that we had too little space for your typical professional units and needed to get them custom-made. Still in shock after learning about the tax implications of our lease, I suggested we postpone the kitchen makeover until there is at least a slight prospect of the cash in-flows.
When anne arrived to visit us, she had a different opinion on the urgency of equipping my kitchen. So we drove to Izmir. It was a serendipity or yet again the gut instinct of my husband who brought us to a shop selling stove hoods he found online. We needed the hood urgently to get the approval from the fire department, without which we could not proceed with our application for the permission to open the restaurant. The hood shop happened to be in the area of Izmir where many restaurant owners shop for professional equipment and supplies.
As we were driving away with the hood in the trunk, mom shouted, “Pull over!” And so we did in front of the huge yard filled with sinks, counters, shelves, cooking pots, trays, whimsical parts of unknown use.. you name it made of stainless steel. All second-hand, some in better conditions that others. Most reasonably priced. This is where I got my sink, a stack of pots (sold by weight) and oh, Özgür convinced the folks there to create two shelves from the leftover parts as per our specifications.
I was ready to celebrate my new kitchen. But not yet.. I had to temporarily carry most of what was already there to the storage room as visiting baba and Özgür were removing the old lopsided cupboard and installing the newly arrived equipment. Breaking, drilling, installing. Dad and Özgür embraced the manly work where women had a little say and expelled me and mom from the kitchen with a delectable pleasure.
Do I need to say that as we remove the cupboard we discovered a massive crack in the wall? Do I need to mention that the hood we bought was hanging too low over the stove so I could not reach the pots at the back burners? Do I need to note that my stove covered in plastic became beyond reach? All I could do was to extract my old friend, the picnic gas cylinder from the depths of the storage room, mount it on the wooden electric wire spool we foraged from a local electric shop and get to frying sardines in the garden.
And yet probably the most long-playing kitchen project was creating the unit for the built-in oven. The week we bought the oven, my husband created a sketch and built that unit rather quickly. It was his first DIY project of this kind, he was proud and I was relieved to have my oven under the counter and not in the middle of the kitchen. After a few days he critically reviewed his work and promised to find a better long-term option. And he kept his word when one month later he brought a unit from IKEA.
The furniture unit for the built-in oven appeared too high to fit under the granite counter so Özgür took it to a local carpenter to trim. After that operation the unit fitted the niche under the counter if you considered the height, but not the width. Özgür trimmed the wall to make the unit fit. And fit it did on the front, but not at the back. My husband then trimmed a bit of the unit width, but not the height that appeared to diminish towards the back wall as the floor got slightly elevated there.
I had the oven in the middle of the kitchen for a week before we could gather the right equipment and my husband mastered the wall breaker and the circular saw. He finally fit the furniture unit that is neither parallel not straight to neither the wall nor the counter that in turn are not parallel or straight to anything anyway. Don’t forget that we are dealing with the house built 40 years ago, very likely as a DIY project. The builder did not know straight or parallel and alas every act of adjusting or changing something in the house turns into a major undertaking. But my kitchen has become larger and I have a stove so I can bake cookies for many popping in guests and bread for our restaurant customers. That’s what matters.
My new kitchen assembled from of eclectic pieces often with pains, sighs and occasional heated debates is metaphoric of my current life. Imagine you are browsing through a “my perfect kitchen” board on Pinterest: spacious, sinking in light from the tall windows, beautiful furniture showcasing craftsmanship of highest quality, latest equipment and indispensable fresh flowers on the counter. Details may vary, but you get the picture. So my kitchen is as far from this picture as it could possible be. And yet it miraculously works. I cook and bake, make tons of jam and rehearsing my restaurant menu to be.
I made peace with my kitchen. She gracefully lets me use her modest premises in exchange for respect. The other day we installed a small wall-mounted table by the window to expand my counter space when needed, but also to enjoy a meal for two or a quiet moment over a cup of tea. When I don’t cook or clean, you can find me sitting there, making notes, sipping my tea and catching the generous sun. The kitchen has become my favorite place in the house. My office, how I call it. And you know what? As the first time, I admire its light. The best one comes around 3 -4 pm. When you would think the light is gone for the day, it flashes a Cheshire cat smile through the thickets of the trees in the neighbors garden and I ran to grab my camera.
