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Overview
Inspired by recipes in Jason Goodwin’s bestselling historical Investigator Yashim series, Yashim Cooks Istanbul evokes the colors and flavors of the Ottoman world, combining Turkish recipes, illustrations and tempting descriptions from the novels.
Fans of the series have been asking for this book ever since Yashim made his first appearance in The Janissary Tree (2006), winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel.
As The Guardian wrote: "A Yashim cookery book would be an appetising prospect."
Yashim Cooks Istanbul covers the full spectrum of Turkish cookery, from simple meze and vegetable dishes to meat, fish and puddings. Good in the kitchen, good on the table, it will draw the reader into the extraordinary atmosphere of old Istanbul. Imagine you could step back into Yashim’s world. Imagine that the flavours and colours of old Istanbul could come to life. Yashim Cooks Istanbul is about time travel – and you don’t have to leave your kitchen to make the trip!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780957254015 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Poisoned Pen Press |
| Publication date: | 11/17/2016 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.50(w) x 9.70(h) x 3.60(d) |
About the Author
Jason Goodwin is a historian and award-winning crime writer whose historical mystery series featuring a eunuch sleuth from 19th century Istanbul has fans all over the world. He walked to Istanbul from the Baltic coast, and wrote Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, and five novels in the Yashim series. He received the Edgar Award for Best Novel The Janissary Tree, the first in the series, which has been translated into over forty languages. He lives in Dorset.
Read an Excerpt
Istanbul
By Yashim Cooks
Argonaut Books
Copyright © 2016 Jason GoodwinAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9572540-1-5
CHAPTER 1
The Janissary Tree
Set in Istanbul in 1836, The Janissary Tree was the first Yashim mystery to be translated into over forty languages. The story revolves around the Ottomans' notorious infantry corps, the Janissaries, who were also craftsmen, musicians and fine chefs. When they mutinied, they would overturn the huge cauldrons in which they cooked their rice, and drum on them with wooden spoons.
"The other day you quoted something to me – an army marches on its stomach. Who said that? Napoleon?'
Palewski pulled a face. 'Typical Napoleon. In the end his armies marched on their frozen feet.'
'But you remember how the Janissaries named their ranks?'
'Of course – by kitchen duties. The colonel was called the soup cook. Sergeant-majors carried a long wooden ladle, and for the men, losing a regimental kettle in battle was the ultimate disgrace.'
"Yashim found the Polish ambassador in a silken dressing gown embroidered with lions and horses in tarnished gold thread, which Yashim supposed was Chinese. He was drinking tea and staring quietly at a boiled egg, but when Yashim came in he put up a hand to shield his eyes, turning his head this way and that like an anxious tortoise. The sunshine picked out motes of dust climbing slowly toward the long windows.
'Do you know what time it is?' Palewski said thickly. 'Have tea.'
'Are you ill?'
'Ill? No. But suffering. Why couldn't it be raining?'
Unable to think of an answer, Yashim curled up in an armchair and let Palewski pour him a cup with a shaking hand.
'Meze,' Yashim said. He glanced up. 'Meze. Little snacks before the main dish.'
'Must we talk about food?'
'Meze are a way of calling people's attention to the excellence of the feast to come. A lot of effort goes into their preparation. Or, I should say, their selection. Sometimes the best mezes are the simplest things. Fresh cucumbers from Karaman, sardines from Ortakoy, battered at most, and grilled ... Everything at its peak, in its season: timing, you could say, is everything.'
Cigar pastries with feta
sigara böregi
Filo pastry – yufka, in Turkish – has been known to the Turks for centuries, and is still made across
Anatolia by housewives wielding three-foot rolling pins, oklava. To replicate their effort would be a counsel of perfection: easier to use commercial filo pastry.
Simple to make, impressive, and utterly delicious, these cigar pastries are perfect Ottoman finger food, good for meze and parties. Just don't expect them to last long once they've been served.
feta cheese 200g/8oz
egg 1
parsley, mint and dill a big
bunch, chopped fine
filo pastry 5 sheets
olive oil 3 tbsp
• Crumble the feta into a bowl and mash it with a fork, then add the egg and the chopped herbs and mix well.
• Stack five sheets of filo on a board and slice them through to make ten five inch strips. Keep a damp tea towel handy to pop over the filo so it won't dry out.
• Lay a strip on the board, running away from you lengthways. Put a teaspoonful of mixture on the near end, and roll it up. Halfway along, turn in the sides to tuck the ends in. Roll it up until about an inch from the end of the sheet, which you should wet with a brush. That seals the filo and keeps it rolled.
• As you finish them, put the cigars in a dish under another damp tea towel.
• Heat the oil in a frying pan. When it's hot, fry half the cigars for about five minutes, turning now and then to brown them all over. Remove them to a dish covered in kitchen paper to drain the oil, and fry the other half.
• Eat them straight away. You can make different stuffings, with baked aubergine or some roasted pumpkin mashed with feta and dill, for instance, or spicy lamb mince. the lighted crack at the foot of the door in front of him.
"At the head of the stairs Palewski paused to catch his breath and analyze the peculiar mixture of fragrances seeping through the lighted crack at the foot of the door in front of him.
Yashim the Eunuch and Ambassador Palewski were unlikely friends, but they were firm ones. 'We are two halves, who together become whole, you and I,' Palewski had once declared, after soaking up more vodka than would have been good for him were it not for the fact, which he sternly upheld, that only the bitter herb it contained could keep him sane and alive. 'I am an ambassador without a country and you — a man without testicles.'
Yashim had considered this remark, before pointing out that Palewski might, at a pinch, get his country back; but the Polish ambassador had waved him away with a loud outbreak of sobs. 'About as likely as you growing balls, I'm afraid. Never. Never. The bastards!' Soon after that he had fallen asleep, and Yashim had employed a porter to carry him home on his back.
The impoverished diplomat sniffed the air and adopted a look of cunning sweetness that was entirely for his own benefit. The first of the smells was onion; also chicken, that he could tell. He recognized the dark aroma of cinnamon, but there was something else he found it hard to identify, pungent and fruity. He sniffed again, screwing his eyes shut.
Without further hesitation or ceremony he wrenched open the door and bounded into the room.
'Yashim! Yashim! You raise our souls from the gates of hell! Acem Yahnisi, if I'm not mistaken — so like the Persian fesenjan. Chicken, walnuts, and the juice of the pomegranate!' he declared.
Yashim, who had not heard him come up, turned in astonishment.
Palewski saw his face fall.
'Come, come, young man, I ate this dish before you were weaned. Tonight, let us give it in all sincerity a new and appropriate name: The ambassador was out of humour, and now is delighted! How's that?'
Chicken with walnut and pomegranate
acem yahnisi
This is the first recipe Yashim cooks in The Janissary Tree, and his friend Palewski guesses what it is by sniffing. You can also make it with duck, or pheasant, after which it is named in Persian Fesenjan.
walnut halves 250g/8oz
butter 50g/2oz
olive oil 3 tbsp
chicken thighs 1 kg/2 lb,
skinned
onions, chopped 2
pomegranate molasses 5 tbsp
chicken stock 500ml/1 pint
(see p52)
sugar 2 tbsp
turmeric 1 tsp
cinnamon ½ tsp
ground nutmeg ½ tsp
ground black pepper ½ tsp
salt
seeds from a pomegranate
• Toast the walnuts in a dry frying pan over a fairly hot hob. Stir them until they catch, then cool them down and grind them fairly fine in a blender or pound in a mortar.
• Melt half the butter and oil together, and brown the chicken with a pinch of salt. Remove to a plate.
• Put the rest of the oil and butter in the pan, lower the heat, and fry the onions to translucency: if they brown a little, so much the better. Return the chicken and cover with the stock (or water). Bring to a boil, then lower the heat again and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
• Add pomegranate molasses, ground walnuts, sugar and all the spices. Replace the cover and simmer for an hour, with the occasional stir to stop the walnuts sticking to the bottom.
• Garnish with pomegranate seeds, and serve with a fresh salad and rice.
Pomegranate Molasses
nar eksisi
You can make molasses from most fruit juice – apples, grapes and berries, too. A ratio of four cups juice to a cup of sugar, with the juice of a lemon, makes a little over a cup of molasses.
fresh pomegranate juice
1 1/2 pints
sugar 200g/1 cup
juice of a lemon
• Stir the ingredients together in a heavy-bottomed pan, constantly and tirelessly, on a medium high heat, for up to an hour until it reduces to a syrup. It's not so much a recipe as an activity; just don't let it catch and burn.
• Bottled, it will keep for a few weeks in the fridge. Fruit syrups make delicious drinks, mixed with water. You can even make a syrup of red poppies, soaked in water – but you must snip off the black centres of the petals first!
Plain rice
pilav
Yashim uses long grain white basmati and cooks it Persian style, to produce a dry, fluffy rice with a delicious golden crust. The Ottomans used a lot of butter in their cooking, where modern Turks might use olive oil. Clarified butter, the Indian ghee, comes in a tin. It keeps well and is available in ethnic groceries.
basmati rice 500g/1 lb
salt
butter or ghee 2 tbsp
• Soak the rice in warm water for half an hour, and wash it until the water runs clear.
• Put the pan on a high heat, cover the rice with boiling water from the kettle, add a pinch of salt, and boil for about eight minutes until the water (or stock) has been absorbed and lunar craters appear on the surface. Check for doneness: grains should have a distinct bite. Add a splash more boiling water if you need to.
• In a second pan on a low heat, melt a tablespoonful of butter. Gently transfer the rice into this pan, scattering the grains over the butter. Lay a clean tea towel over the top, clap on the lid, and steam on a very low heat for ten minutes or so.
The rice will be fluffy, the grains separate, and everyone will fight to eat the golden crust at the bottom of the pan.
A Spring Pilaf
taze fasulyeli pilav
When the first small broad beans appear in Spring, nothing could better this simple pilaf with dill.
basmati rice 500g/1 lb
broad beans 300g/10oz fresh or
200g/½ lb frozen
stock or water
fresh dill a handful, chopped
butter 2 tbsp
salt ½ tsp
• Soak the rice in warm water for half an hour, and wash it until the water runs clear.
• Pod the beans, if fresh, sweat them in a generous dollop (1 tbsp) of butter for a minute or two, then add a splash of water and a pinch of salt and let them steam for a few minutes longer, until tender. Ideally you should remove the skins, but you needn't bother unless they are old and tough, or you have the Validé herself, the sultan's mother, coming to dinner. Set them aside.
• Drain the uncooked rice. Melt the rest of the butter in a heavy pan, and stir in the rice over a low heat. After a few minutes, when the grains begin to stick, add salt and pour stock or water over the rice to barely cover.
• Simmer gently until the liquid has all but disappeared. If you test the rice, it will still be nutty.
• Gently stir the beans and half the chopped dill into the rice, and cover the pan with a cloth and a lid. Over a whisper of heat, let the rice steam for fifteen minutes. Sprinkle the rest of the dill on top, take the pan off the heat and let it stand in a warm place, covered, until you are ready to eat it.
• Turn the rice out into a dish, helping to fluff it out with a fork.
"Yashim struck a Lucifer and lit the lamp, trimming the wick until the light burned steadily and bright. It fell on a neat arrangement of stove, high table and a row of very sharp-looking knives, suspended in mid air by a splice of wood.
There was a basket in the corner and from it Yashim selected several small, firm onions. He peeled and sliced them on the block, first one way and then the other, while he set a pot on the stove and slipped enough olive oil into it to brown the onions. When they were turning, he tossed in a couple of handfuls of rice which he drew from an earthenware crock.
Long ago he'd discovered what it was to cook. It was at about the same time that he'd grown disgusted with his own efforts to achieve a cruder sensual gratification, and resigned himself to more stylised pleasures. It was not that, until then, he had always considered cooking as a woman's work: for cooks in the empire could be of either sex. But he had thought of it, perhaps, as a task for the poor.
The rice had gone clear, so he threw in a handful of currants and another of pine nuts, a lump of sugar and a big pinch of salt. He took down a jar from the shelf and helped himself to a spoonful of oily tomato paste which he mixed into a tea glass of water. He drained the glass into the rice, with a hiss and a plume of steam. He added a pinch of dried mint and ground some pepper into the pot and stirred the rice, then clamped on a lid and moved the pot to the back of the stove.
He had bought the mussels cleaned, the big three inch mussels which grew on the Galata bridge, so all he had to do was to slide a flat blade between the shells and prise them open on their hinges, dropping them into a basin of water. The rice was half-cooked. He chopped dill, very fine, stirred it into the mixture and tipped it out onto a platter to cool. He drained the mussels, and stuffed them, using a spoon, closing the shells before he laid them head to toe in layers in a pan. He weighted them down with a plate, added some hot water from the kettle, put on a lid and slid the pan over the coals.
Ram's fries
koc yumurtasi
Not easy to find these days, but it would be a shame not to offer a recipe for testicles.
parsley a bunch
juice of a lemon
olive oil
ram's testicles, or fries 12
plain flour 1 tbsp
salt
pepper
isot biber
an egg, beaten
• Chop the parsley fine and mix with lemon juice and a splash of oil.
• Slice the testicles in half. Dust them in flour seasoned with a pinch of salt and a pinch of isot biber (see page 14), dip into the beaten egg and brown in the hot oil.
• Drizzle with the parsley sauce and serve.
The same method suits herring roes, which are more easily sourced.
Stuffed mussels
midye dolmasi
One of the slowly disappearing sights of Istanbul is the mussel man, with his tray of gleaming great mussels stuffed with rice and currants. In Yashim's day there were many wandering snack merchants, right down to men who sold offal on sticks, which people would buy to feed to the street dogs. That was a meritorious act, as is stuffing your own mussels and serving them cool to your friends.
olive oil 1 tbsp
butter 1 tsp
large onions 2, chopped fine
pine nuts 2 tbsp
long grain rice 150g/5oz
tomato 1, peeled and chopped
currants 1 tbsp
sugar 1 tsp
salt
pepper
fresh chilli 1, chopped, or pul
biber 1 tsp (see page 14)
cinnamon pinch
allspice pinch
nutmeg pinch
turmeric ½ tsp
lemon juice 2 tbsp
mussels 25 large
• In a frying pan melt oil and butter, and soften the onion with the pine nuts.
• Stir in the rice and cook for three minutes. Stir in the tomato, and as it starts to soften add the currants, sugar, salt, pepper and spices, with a squeeze of lemon and boiling water to drench the rice, but not quite cover it. Clap on the lid and simmer until the liquid is absorbed and the rice al dente – a few minutes at most. Give it a stir, taste for seasoning – more heat? More lemon? Salt? – and set aside to cool.
• Clean the mussels, removing beards and discarding any that will not close when given a sharp rap on the side of the sink. As they are done, drop them into a bowl of warm salty water, to encourage them to open.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Istanbul by Yashim Cooks. Copyright © 2016 Jason Goodwin. Excerpted by permission of Argonaut Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 9
The Janissary Tree
Cigar pastries with feta 21
Chicken with walnuts and pomegranates 23
Pomegranate molasses 24
Plain rice 27
Spring pilaf 29
Ram's fries 31
Stuffed mussels 32
Fiery eggs and peppers 34
The guild-master's tripe soup 37
Fish poached in paper 40
Baked lamb steaks 44
Kebab of pilgrim Osman 46
Pilaf with chickpeas 47
Coriander chicken with lemon and sumac 48
Stocks 52
Ladies' thighs 53
Pumpkin soup 54
The Snake Stone
Stuffed chard 62
A bass in salt 67
Widow Matalya's chicken soup 69
Aubergine parcels with chicken 70
Lamb's liver Albanian style 74
Chicken livers with lemon and sumac 76
Hazelnut and lemon pilaf 78
Gypsy salad 82
Bean salad 83
Yoghurt 88
Yoghurt soup 89
Aubergine puree 92
Beetroot salad 97
Klephtic lamb 101
Roast lamb 103
The Bellini Card
Lemonade 108
Lamb and tomato flatbreads 111
Roast goose with apple sauce 113
Fish stew 114
Liver in the Venetian manner 117
The sultan's Ramadan eggs 118
Guinea fowl with pepper sauce 121
Polenta 124
Cress soup 124
Swordfish grilled in vine leaves 125
Walnut and garlic sauce 126
Artichokes with beans and almonds 129
The assassin's steak tartare 130
Hot sauce 134
An Evil Eye
Pide 140
Lentil soup 143
Three pickles 148
Tuna in oil 150
Palace fig pudding 151
Kakavia 154
Spiced stuffed mackerel 158
Pan fried turbot 160
Leeks in oil 163
Ruby pilaf 164
Cucumber with yoghurt 168
Stuffed peppers 169
Pressed beef 170
Palewski's boiled beef with sorrel sauce 172
Beef braised with fennel and garlic 173
Poppy seed cake 174
The Baklava Club
Baklava 181
Stuffed aubergines 185
Wild duck Ottoman style 187
Pan fried nettle with cumin 188
Kuru fasulye 190
Courgette fritters 193
Carrot and beetroot fritters 195
Lamb shanks with quince 197
Omlette 199
Garlic yoghurt sauce 200
Labneh 203
Tomato sauce 204
Fresh tomato sauce 205
Lamb kebab 207
Chickpeas with pomegranate 208
Hummus 210
Acknowledgements 213