I had a very peaceful sleep with no jet lag for a change. After
feeding my family as is expected of an “abla” (older sister) in a typical middle class Turkish family... Not only because it is a sweet and welcome duty
and fulfillment of being the oldest sibling, especially sister but also I love it. I wonder if meditation practice will change my relationship
with jet lags, too! I wake up around 7 am, well-rested and take to the streets:
Mimkent neighborhood where my mother lives is a hilly set of up and down streets looking down on the Izmir Bay with beautiful sunsets
My mother and younger brother live in a very hilly area of Izmir, with lots of steep slopes that makes even a morning stroll in the neighborhood a good work-out. Every time I visit my mom, I take advantage of this and shopping for breakfast becomes part of my daily exercise: My brother doesn’t accept gevrek (baked good similar to American bagel, yet less dense and more crispy than bagel) from any store but one particular neighborhood “firin”.
Turkish bagels "gevrek"s being delivered into a wood burning oven in a firin to be baked before dawn
Firins in Turkey are part of the cultural fabric. They are stores with a huge built-in wood burning oven that can bake hundreds of loaves of bread at any time as well as other baked breakfast goods, mostly savory rather than sweet ,a diversion from what we are used to in the US. In the old days, my mother would make stuffed vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, etc) and send the big copper tray to the neighborhood firin to be baked although she had an oven in her kitchen. She claimed it tasted much better if baked in a wood-burning stone oven…
My mom's tray of dolmas would probably sit next to burning wood logs in our neighborhood's firin like these pots
I know for sure that my childhood tastes are irreproducible today, who knows what changed… Another gourmet delicacy was her spinach borek: She would prepare her own dough and using a rolling pin she would make some 20 filo sheets and spread them on top of one another across a huge tepsi (our tin-plated circular copper tray of 3 ft diameter), layering spinach with ricotto cheese after the tenth layer. Each layer would be generously basted with olive oil.
Typical tin plated copper tray "sini" my mother used to make borek
She would then score the entire circle into small diamond shaped slices each one of which would be sprinkled with sesame seeds before my dad carried the tray to the neighborhood firin. My dad would wait at the firin and supervise the baking of the borek or the dolma (stuffed vegetables), probably annoying the h… out of the baker with his perfectionism and impatience… What came home, though, would be indeed something that royal Ottomans wouldn’t be able to dream of… Such childhood tastes and aromas, all still on my palate and in my nostrils…
Here is how my mother's borek out of the firin looked like!
Mimkent neighborhood where my mother lives is a hilly set of up and down streets looking down on the Izmir Bay with beautiful sunsets
My mother and younger brother live in a very hilly area of Izmir, with lots of steep slopes that makes even a morning stroll in the neighborhood a good work-out. Every time I visit my mom, I take advantage of this and shopping for breakfast becomes part of my daily exercise: My brother doesn’t accept gevrek (baked good similar to American bagel, yet less dense and more crispy than bagel) from any store but one particular neighborhood “firin”.
Firins in Turkey are part of the cultural fabric. They are stores with a huge built-in wood burning oven that can bake hundreds of loaves of bread at any time as well as other baked breakfast goods, mostly savory rather than sweet ,a diversion from what we are used to in the US. In the old days, my mother would make stuffed vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, etc) and send the big copper tray to the neighborhood firin to be baked although she had an oven in her kitchen. She claimed it tasted much better if baked in a wood-burning stone oven…
My mom's tray of dolmas would probably sit next to burning wood logs in our neighborhood's firin like these pots
I know for sure that my childhood tastes are irreproducible today, who knows what changed… Another gourmet delicacy was her spinach borek: She would prepare her own dough and using a rolling pin she would make some 20 filo sheets and spread them on top of one another across a huge tepsi (our tin-plated circular copper tray of 3 ft diameter), layering spinach with ricotto cheese after the tenth layer. Each layer would be generously basted with olive oil.
She would then score the entire circle into small diamond shaped slices each one of which would be sprinkled with sesame seeds before my dad carried the tray to the neighborhood firin. My dad would wait at the firin and supervise the baking of the borek or the dolma (stuffed vegetables), probably annoying the h… out of the baker with his perfectionism and impatience… What came home, though, would be indeed something that royal Ottomans wouldn’t be able to dream of… Such childhood tastes and aromas, all still on my palate and in my nostrils…
My replication of my mother’s cuisine feels almost fake. I
didn’t learn from my mom how to make the
filo dough sheets. Part of it was I never believed as an adolescent and young
woman, the effort was worth the difference since I always needed time to read
more than anything. Now that I have audiobooks that speeds up reading at
unimaginable speed, I sometimes wonder if I should still learn how to make my
own filo sheets. All I can do nowadays is buy the filo dough from the market
and try to replicate what my mother used to make, with little chance! However,
I still make spinach borek at least once every visit here in Turkey, since all ingredients
required for borek are much fresher more delicious than those found in the US.
Moreover, all ingredients come from specialized stores in Turkey: ricotto “lor”
in Turkish from “mandra” that sells only breakfast goods; filo dough from
charcuterie and spinach of course from the farmer’s market…
Borek with filo dough; this variety is called "Arm borek" since spinach and cheese are wrapped into a tube and laid into the tray starting from the center...
With these thoughts, I start walking down the 1 mile slope
that will take me to one of the throughways of the city, where I will find my
favorite “mandra” and charcuterie to buy filo dough, cheeses, olives, and other
breakfast items. Everybody must be asleep, the stores are not open yet; it is
Sunday after all. I walk by store after store lining the street leading to my
mother’s house. Each store has an open porch in front of the actual store.
These porches are secured by an iron floor-to-ceiling fence under lock in
addition to the deeply seated store door being locked. The cases on the porch
containing fruits, vegetables, beer, or other goods are covered with tarps. Some
stores are mini-restaurants or eateries with their outdoors tables and chairs
behind their outwardly fences.
Picture of trust in the residents and passersby of a busy street
Something interesting catches my eye: A small convenience
store “bakkal” in Turkish, has secured its porch as expected, but there is
something hanging on the outside of the fence: a large plastic bag full of some
50 loaves of French bread this particular store will sell to its customers all
day long. Each such small store that provides simple items that are used daily
in Turkish culture have a bread delivery service in place from one of the
firins in the neighborhood. Firins usually start baking their bread around 3-4
am and deliver their orders to retail stores by 5-6 am every day.
Loaves of freshly baked bread coming out of the oven in a neighborhood firin long before dawn
It is clear that the bread delivery guy must have come and gone already. As I look at the bag of bread with warm feelings, thinking of families that will enjoy it day long, I can’t help but feel mesmerized with the level of trust not only between the professionals but also of the store owner with his neighborhood! I know now better than before that my mother and brother live in a neighborhood with a sense of community. My heart warms up…
It is clear that the bread delivery guy must have come and gone already. As I look at the bag of bread with warm feelings, thinking of families that will enjoy it day long, I can’t help but feel mesmerized with the level of trust not only between the professionals but also of the store owner with his neighborhood! I know now better than before that my mother and brother live in a neighborhood with a sense of community. My heart warms up…
 |
| Early rays of the sun lighting the tops of apartment buildings as I shop for our breakfast |
No comments:
Post a Comment