Making Turkish Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making Turkish Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I was hired as an art and restaurant critic by the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 100,000) based on the work I had done in my memoirs writing class with Beat poet David Gitin at Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey, California.  (“Just send in some college art history papers and the work you have done for me to the paper and call them,” he said.)

The first assignment I worked on for the Weekly was for the Turkish Festival held on the Monterey Wharf.  I took Florence with me to Border’s to hear the Turkish singers and band that was going to appear play the café at the bookstore.  We also met the artist who would be doing the ebru paper marbling at the Festival.

When I studied French children’s literature and francophone children’s culture at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, I had to study children’s culture of a francophone society as a class assignment.

I already knew much about the Vietnamese, who are a minority in France along with “White Russians” and Algerians.  The white Russians are aristocrats, who have fled the Soviet Union and Russia over the decades for political oppression.  The French were the colonizers of Vietnam and the rest of what was called “Indochina.” 

They fought in Vietnam before the Americans took over.  I also studied Khmer art by going to the Guimet Museum in Paris often when I lived there and going to exhibits on my “Louvre Supporter Card” that got me into all the museums of Paris for free.

Indochina was made up of today’s Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar (former Burma). 

I had to give the Weekly this information to cover art openings in Carmel.  (There really are Monet paintings in bank vaults in our dinky Monterey Peninsula.)  I studied East Asian civilization, art history, and the languages of China, Japan, and Korea at the University of Chicago as well.  I obtained official transcripts for them from the University before I was allowed to be a “young mom” art critic.

I studied the culture of Islam for children from the perspective of religious ceremonies and food.  I took Florence out to discover Islamic children’s culture with me in Madison at a Turkish restaurant downtown called Husnus.

I had read about Turkish food in a cookbook before going out with Florence.  I ordered cheese and spinach borek for us.  These are triangular folds of phyllo dough baked in butter.

I told Florence that cheese has calcium in it that was good for building strong bones.  I picked up the spinach borek and told her that spinach has iron in it for making your blood strong. 

“The spinach borek is also made with onions sautéed in butter.  Onions help prevent colds,” I said.  All these sayings are a southern gardener’s drug store wisdom that has to be verified, of course, with your nutritionist, but I rarely catch colds. 

(Note:  The only time I caught colds was when I worked with the children of farmworkers and their parents in Monterey County.  Many of the Oaxacan workers form southern Mexico in the County come from a tropical climate.  They are not vaccinated in Mexico nor in the US.  I was sick several times, because of this, but was able to get over the infections.)

After the meze (appetizers), I ordered hummus and baba ghanoush for Florence and me with warm pita bread.  Both of these items were almost unheard of at the time.  Hummus is a chickpea puree made with a liquid-type of sesame seed butter, lemon juice, and garlic. 

You are only supposed to eat a little hummus at a time, because it is an appetizer.  If you make a meal of it, you can get fat quickly.  Hummus is incredibly inexpensive to make at home, but it takes time to make at home as the only good homemade hummus is made from scratch with dry beans.

Baba ghanoush is my favorite puree spread.  It is a pain to make at home.  It takes about 6 – 8 eggplants to get a small bowl of this spread made.  Basically, you roast the eggplants, add the liquid-type sesame seed butter, lemon juice, and garlic.

Turkish tabbouleh (parsley and bulgar wheat salad with lemon juice and olive oil) is made with more bulgar wheat than parsley unlike the Lebanese and Syrian versions that I ate growing up in Detroit, Michigan.

I told Florence, “I prefer buying the tabbouleh made at Magic Mill Market in town, because it is made with quinoa, which is a full-protein.  Quinoa comes from Bolivia and Peru.  These are two countries in Latin America high in the mountains.”

(Quinoa is now grown in the US in Colorado and in the Canadian Rockies.)

I told Florence what I knew about protein-combinations at the time and why this food was very good for building muscle and keeping you from catching colds.  I had studied vegetarianism while perusing the shelves in the various libraries at the University of Chicago. 

I told Florence, “If you all you eat is banana-nut muffins, you can probably knock out a welter-weight Muhammad Ali.  And, they are a lot cheaper than steak.  I ate those all the time at the University of Chicago.”

Florence nibbled everything and said, “All this tastes okay.”

“Yes, and it is not expensive, and I can make everything here.  The Magic Mill Market carries all the ingredients and so does Whole Foods, which is opening a store here soon.  I can make all sorts of gourmet lunches and dinners with the ingredients in these two stores.  If we eat at home most of the time, we can afford to go to nice restaurants four or five times a month,” I said.

After our discussion, I ordered Turkish baklava for dessert, which is made with pistachios and honey rather than walnuts like the Greeks do it.

“Your daughter is the only American child, who has come in here,” the waiter said as he handed me a Turkish coffee at the end of the meal with a piece of loukum candy. 

He also gave Florence a box of loukum candy for behaving like a little lady and trying the Turkish food.

I paid the bill and wrapped Florence up in her scarf and hat and headed out into the windy, cold Wisconsin day on one of our many visits to Husnus when we lived in Madison.

On the way home, I told Florence, “It is important to know about Turkey.  Turkey was the head of what was once the Ottoman Empire that includes modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and other countries.  Many of the foods eaten in Turkey are the same as those eaten throughout the former Ottoman Empire.  Some regions use spicier ingredients, but that is the only difference.”

Florence already knew what the food of Turkey was like when I took the family to the Turkish Festival on the Wharf to write about it for the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 100,000).  I wrote the following article about one of the most educational Turkish Festivals ever to be held here.  (We had been to several before I wrote about them for the paper.)  I have done some editing for items in the article that are no longer relevant.:

“I’ll admit it.  The real reason I want to go to the Turkish Arts and Culture Festival this weekend besides falling into a trance as I listen to Sahin Gunsel sing Turkish love songs while he plays the oud; tapping my feet and clapping my hands as I watch folk dancers in brightly-colored costumes; and seeing what Turkish towns look like at the Orhan Coplu art exhibit among other Turkish delights; is to admire skill of the belly dancers. 

I love the sheer veils, sequined tops outlined with gold coins, finger cymbals, and sinuous movements of this art form that began as a ritual dance, representing childbirth in a region extending from Morocco to Turkey.

I feel no guilt about sampling Turkish food made by women who learn to cook without cookbooks and measure.  Amazingly, the chefs at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the hub of the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire, operated on the same principle.

An Ottoman chef threw out Empress Eurgenie’s French chef, who was seeking an eggplant puree recipe for his sovereign, because he arrived in the kitchens with paper and measures.

The Ottoman chef said, “”An Imperial chef cooks with his feelings, his eyes, his nose.!”

So, the French empress never ate Turkish food again unlike the fortunate souls who will attend the Turkish Festival this year.

Among the succulent menu offerings at the Festival are doner kebap, slices of ground lamb seasoned with garlic  that resemble Greek gyros and Levantine shwarma; adana kebap, ground lamb meatballs seasoned with garlic, onion, cumin, and red peppers, if the chef comes from southern Turkey; and borek – buttery phyllo crust-pie filled with creamy cheese and spinach.

Of course, there are dolmas, grape leaves stuffed with rice and seasoned with mint; musakka, baked slices of layered eggplant in tomato sauce; and kisir-cracked wheat salad with parsley, tomato, and onion with lemon-oil dressing.

Other Turkish delicacies to be sampled will be cucik, a yogurt and garlic sauce, which goes well with the doner kebap, piyaz – white kidney bean salad seasoned with parsley, dill, mint, and onion topped off with lemon-oil dressing; and Shepherd Salad, a tomato, onion, and cucumber dish made with the freshest vegetables available.

And, finally, there is the traditional ending to a proper Turkish meal – a cup of strong coffee.  When you have drained the last drop, then turn the cup upside down and let Ilge Ozersen read your fortune in the grounds remaining in the cup.

Don’t miss your chance to view the Turkish art on display, which includes Arabic calligraphy (Beautiful writing that enhanced a word’s meaning.  The calligrapher used his skill to decorate religious manuscripts with flowers and geometric shapes as well.

The Hadith, the collected sayings of Mohammed, prohibited the use of human form in religious manuscripts to prevent idolatry.  The artwork on view at this Festival featured manuscripts with gold gilding (Turkish artists painted gold onto their works rather than embossing as done in Europe.), tapestries (the decorations on the tapestries include figures such as sultans, Mosque motifs, and flowers), ebru (paper marbling), and carpets.

Women weavers have anonymously made Turkish carpets one of the world’s premier art forms, since time immemorial.  One-of-a-kind carpets carry tribal symbols, the guls, which vary in the same way that Scottish tartans do.

The weavers vary tone and minute details to create movement among the repeating shapes on the predominantly red carpets.

With artwork like this on the floors, the Turks naturally remove their shoes before entering a home like the Japanese do.  Flowery “Garden of Paradise” carpets can make a dessert lush and attest to the weaver’s skill in coaxing circular shapes out of an angular medium.

Festival-goers can also view silk prayer rugs decorated with a mihrab, the Mosque niche that points in the direction of Mecca, and a lamp that represents Allah.

A trip to the Turkish Festival would be incomplete without knowing a little about Turkey’s wise-fool priest, Nasreddin Hoca.  One day, the Hoca was discussing the completeness of creation with a friend during a walk.  Hoca said, “I think horses would have been much more useful to mankind, if they had wings.”

Just then, some pigeon droppings fell on Hoca’s turban.

“Allah knows best,” he said.

Florence giggled about that joke at home.

The Turkish Festival, lovingly prepared by the non-profit Turkish American Association of California, truly offers many delights not to be missed, including a children’s tent with folk dancing, face painting, and story telling.

End of Article –

  

I bought some extra pistachio baklava to go home in boxes to eat with tea and more discussion with Laurent and Florence both about how we took a trip to Turkey without spending any money on airfare or hotels.

The following books have information on Turkish cuisine and Mediterranean cuisine food in general, which includes Turkish food:

Books on Turkish Cuisine

-Classical Turkish Cooking: Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen by Ayla Algar

-The Art of Turkish Cooking by Neset Eren published by Hippocrene International Cookbook Classics

-Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden

-The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean: 215 Healthy, Vibrant, and Inspired Recipes by Paula Wolfert

-Mediterranean Grains and Greens: A Book of Savory, Sun-Drenched Recipes by Paula Wolfert

Books on Mediterranean Cuisine in General, which includes Turkey

-A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs (with more than 500 recipes) by Clifford A. Wright

-Little Foods of the Mediterranean: 500 Fabulous Recipes for Antipasti, tapas, hors d’oeuvre, meze, and more by Clifford A. Wright

-Mediterranean Cookery by Claudia Roden

-A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden

I would get books like these at the library in DeForest, Wisconsin where we lived at the time.  The Library had free inter-library load with the University of Wisconsin and wealthy neighborhoods around Madison.

By Ruth Paget, Author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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