Review: Anatolia: Adventures in Turkish Cooking by Somer Sivrioglu and David Dale
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Trish: “Anatolia” is the ancient term for the modern geographical region of Turkey, and one of the great things about this cookbook is the stories that accompany each recipe. According to co-author David Dale, an Australian political journalist and food and travel writer, “We decided to tell a tale with every recipe. Sometimes we would talk about the mythical origins of a dish or its ingredients, sometimes we would talk about Somer’s first experience of the dish, and sometimes we would talk about its place in the rituals and fashions of ancient and modern Anatolia.”
His co-author is Somer Sivrioglu, a Turkish-born chef in Australia who specialises in Turkish cuisine. He adds, “...Turkish cooking is less about particular ingredients and more about philosophy. It’s about sitting at a table in a Black Sea village, sharing a plate of Armenian topik, Kurdish kebap, Jewish boyoz and Greek tarama, and washing down the meal with a glass of raki or aryan. It’s about the ways different cultures have taken advantage of the abundance of produce in the area now called Anatolia.”
Dawn, I know you were eager to explore Turkish cuisine. What sparked your interest, and why this book?
Dawn: After our success of a Leek and Cauliflower Torshi (The Fiber Fueled Cookbook by Will Bulsiewicz), pickled onions (Plant You: Scrappy Cooking by Carleigh Bodrug) and sauerkraut (The How Not to Diet Cookbook by Dr. Michael Gregor) [links are to our blog posts on each cookbook], I was researching how to pickle more food and found that Turkish people start each meal with pickled foods. Also, Dave and I are interested in traveling to this region in the fall.
Trish: I have really enjoyed pickling and fermenting too. I think I’m on my third batch of Leek and Cauliflower Torshi!
I love the look of this cookbook. It’s one you’d almost want to have sitting on your shelf just to pick up occasionally and stare at the cover while running your fingers over the blue patterned fabric cover. The photography is stunning, by Bree Hutchins. The recipes include plenty of meat and fish options, but we chose vegetarian preparations. I wanted to make a mix of things that looked straightforward and that I might make over and over (like the lentil based “meatballs”); and something exotic that I’d never normally make, which for me was the Armenian Chickpea Domes.
What was your approach to picking recipes, Dawn?
Dawn: Gosh, it wasn’t easy to choose which recipes to make, as after my first pass of the cookbook I had chosen about 20 recipes. However, I narrowed it down to recipes I had never made before. For example a dessert with beans and barley: Noah’s Arc Pudding; a paté with broad beans: Mum’s Broad Bean Pâté (Fava)...and the recipe name for the eggplant dish, “The Priest Fainted” (Braised Eggplant Stuffed with Peppers and Tomatoes), had me intrigued.
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The Recipes
Dawn and Dave:
The Priest Fainted (Braised Eggplant Stuffed with Peppers and Tomatoes)
“Why did this dish…make the priest faint? Some say it was with pleasure, some say because of the extravagant amount of oil in it and some say because it used up every ingredient in his pantry.” This dish was my favourite by far and we have made it several times since. It presents very well and the flavours are fabulous. We really like cooked eggplant but I’d say we haven’t been particularly successful in producing an impressive dish. This dish is impressive and delicious.
I will say if you make the dish, follow the recipe. I’ve tried to adjust the salt and emit the teaspoon of sugar but it’s not outstanding with the modifications.
Mum’s Broad Bean Pâté (Fava)
This dish is truly excellent and completely vegan. I have also made this recipe several times. I’ve set the mould in my china tea cups which are really beautiful. The pate is just the right texture and the olive tapenade and fresh dill add so much rich flavour. The recipe notes, “...fava should be like a cake–able to endure a long sitting at a meze table. If the cake collapses, it’s a dip, not a fava.” This was Dave’s favourite dish of the night.
Noah’s Ark Pudding (Asure)
I was so excited to make a bean dessert after the yummy bean brownies Trish made in a previous collab, but I don’t think I will make this dessert again. It was so much work. I cut so much dried fruit that I got a blister! However, I did learn how to properly make barley. It turns out that if you don’t rinse the barley, and re-rinse it after ten and twenty minutes of cooking it just turns into a big gluey mess. Dave noted that it was very sweet and a HUGE dessert. Admittedly, the recipe states 16 servings! (Note from Trish: I loved the taste of this, and it made excellent leftovers eaten in small portions).
Apple and Cinnamon Tea (Imam Bayildi)
This was a yummy tea which would be fantastic to remake when I harvest apples in the fall or anytime I have an abundance of apples.
Trish:
Red Lentil Meatballs (Merimek Köftesi)
I thought this would be an easy recipe that I could see myself making regularly. Packed full of nutrition, the middle-eastern spices appealed. Apparently it’s “a rare vegetarian version of köfte…and is a staple winter dish in the eastern half of Turkey.” This was super easy to make. I did have trouble sourcing pepper paste (roasted red pepper made into a paste) but I found a combination of red pepper and tomato paste in my local Middle Eastern grocery, which worked great. The recipe makes so much! I served these köfte in lettuce leaves as suggested, which is a good choice because they are very filling. The leftovers are versatile: I used them for burger patties (kind of sloppy but good) and as a salad topping. The flavour was good but not great, we all agreed.
Armenian Chickpea Domes (Topik)
I always like to make something that I’d never otherwise try, and for Anatolia it was these domes. “Topik is a vegetarian dish originally consumed during Lent by the Armenian community.” This took me two days, making it in stages, because there are a lot of components and steps. There’s a chickpea-based dough for the outside, and I’m seriously wondering if you really do need to skin every single cooked chickpea. It’s not fun. The filling had me cooking down 10 (!) onions for two hours. Admittedly, they made for a tasty filling. The construction of these domes was tricky, and I suspect it takes years of practice to get it right. My domes were…suboptimal. Too much dough coating, not enough filling, and they sort of fell apart. But they tasted okay, sort of. We actually tried boiling them, but they fell apart into a dissolving mess. Dave tried frying them the next day, with little success. In the end, lots of effort for little pay off.
Mersin Carrot and Coconut Balls (Cezerye)
For dessert, I loved the idea of using carrots to make a sweet. It was only belatedly that I read the recipe headnotes, informing me that this dessert is considered an aphrodisiac, “the natural Viagra of Mersin on the southeast coast.” I suppose it’s the carrots. Aside from the pesky chore of rubbing the skins off the roasted hazelnuts, this was pretty easy to put together, but the carrot mixture ended up quite loose, and they just barely rolled into balls. They were a bit squishy. And yes, I do realise this doesn’t sound terribly aphrodisiac. The recipe just says “4 carrots,” which is always a bit challenging because quantities here probably would make a big difference. They tasted pretty good, and we ate quite a few of them. As for the aphrodisiac claims, I’ll let you make this and judge for yourself.
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After all was said and done, and cooked and eaten, I think we found some real successes in Anatolia. The eggplant main dish and the Fava were clear standouts! I’ve since made the Red Lentil Meatballs again, and appreciate it more as a salad topping and wrap inclusion than rolled into köfte. But some recipes were extremely labour intensive and didn’t quite give the rewards that we were hoping for. The cultural aspect of this cookbook is outstanding, and it’s worth reading the introductory sections. I think we may collaborate on another Turkish cookbook for our next dinner party. Stay tuned!
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