This weekend all the rooms reservations were cancelled at our countryside hotel. From fully booked with a waiting list we went to a quiet weekend mode. Besides the big Sunday breakfast that is always crowded it was - probably the first time this year - a weekend leisurely spend with the family. And very special guests. My friend and Le Cordon Bleu graduate Elena brought her teacher chef Gilles who is launching Le Cordon Bleu program in Istanbul. It was the weekend of conversations - about food, over food and while making it. Mom was turning one Turkish specialty after another, Elena was baking French pastry, chef Gilles was getting intensive introduction to Turkish food and culture and I.. I was a like phone whose lamentably squeaking dying battery started cheerful blinking once put to charge.
Thoughts on cooking
‘Have you been to a culinary school?‘ - customers of my Istanbul cooking classes and food tours often ask. Maybe it is my enthusiasm about cooking, maybe the nature of what I am doing or (dare I assume) my dazzling expertise in the domain which makes them think I should have been through a rigorous training. My answer disappoints but even more so - puzzles: I have not gone to a culinary school and got a completely different kind of education at a business school. And then worked as a strategy consultant which may look even more irrelevant to the cooking arts but in fact makes up for a very useful background to run a kitchen.
But then there is somebody I know who went to a culinary school. A young cousin of my husband. When he comes to help at our restaurant kitchen in Sapanca I learn tremendous lot from him. Because as a former consultant you sure know how to benefit from the education someone else has got. So enter my young Turkish cousin Ömer and 5 lessons from the culinary school (he has gone to and I have learned from).
We started getting busy at Zelis Ciftligi in Sapanca on Friday. Shopping at the Friday market, serving dinner, doing prep for the Saturday morning baking and prep for the meze we would be serving on the weekend. Then the weekend when my day kicked off with 7 am baking, orchestrating the buffet preparation, then making staff lunch, then mid-term cleaning, skyping with my sister and parents, prep for dinner, serving dinner, cleaning up and closing down around 11 pm. On Sunday when I brought to anne - still in quarantine after her cancer treatment - a piece of wonderfully moist chocolate cake I baked that morning she said, “This is the first time I left the kitchen for so long and I am so relaxed”. And I have never been more exhausted.
The other day I had a glimpse of what it feels to be a chef (as opposed to a cook). We had a family of regulars over at our countryside restaurant. They are an Istanbul couple whose weekend house is conveniently located near to our place in Sapanca. And they are parents to a little blue-eyed girl, a dream of any Turkish mother or grandmother (ask my mother-in-law). Placing their order they inquired whether I can make “my pasta”.
Just like others read news or magazine articles I read recipes. At the age of 15 I was paging through the paper clips and handwritten recipes in my mother’s cooking journal and then boldly clipping my own find. Inspired I would set my mind to cook a fruit tart only to find out that brown sugar was unobtainable exotic item in a small Russian town in mid 90s. This recreational recipe reading, urge to cook and pressure to substitute have taught not to depend on recipes and more often than not cook without a recipe as such. And I am sure everyone can with these simple tips.
There must be an explanation to the sweating at the kitchen to roll that fresh pasta instead of cooking a package of the store-bought one. To reading culinary books and planning your own endeavors when others are watching a new episode of Fatma Gülün Suçu Ne? (popular Turkish series). To yet another time twist the tried-and-proved recipe of the dish instead of just cooking it the way people already like it anyway? There must be a good reason to why we cook. Different for each of us and yet sort of common ground for all.
It is characteristic how we do not grasp certain things before experiencing them. And our intellectual capacity keeps quiet until our hands or hearts learns. I sort of knew that cooking for a crowd takes stamina and organization. But have not discovered it until anne got into the hospital and I stayed back at the kitchen of our farmhouse with 8 to feed. Every day.
