Authentic Turkish Food Overload at Nar's Organic Farm

Here's a question: why on earth didn't anybody tell me about Turkey before this trip??

It's almost embarrassing to say that we arrived here more by accident (we needed to find a cheap flight out of Israel before the possibility of a war with Gaza caught up with us) than on purpose.

But I've quickly found my purpose in Turkey, and it is to understand how and why its people are so devilishly good at making food.

Sitting down to lunch in Nar & Ahmet's backyard

The reason why the majority of us Americans don’t  know about the pleasures of Turkish foods eludes me. If I could guess, I would say that it's because Turkish people care about food and family and togetherness so much that they aren't concerned with finding the time to show the rest of the world what they are all about.

That's not to say that they don't like sharing. Quite the contrary: If you have a smiling face and an openness to new cultures, step right up, take a glass of black tea or Turkish coffee, and enjoy a brand of hospitality that you may never come to know elsewhere.

Turkish coffees (perhaps my favorite style yet?) with candied watermelon rind 

The fact is, I am so overwhelmed by all this beautiful culture that I have blindly and luckily stumbled upon, I haven’t found the chance to sit Nar down and extract the secrets of her mysteriously delicious cooking.

One issue is that we’ll need a translator...But my time is coming, and when it arrives, we will have authentic Turkish recipes galore.

Until then, afiyet olsun (af-ee-yet ol-so, the Turkish bon appetit)!

Basmati rice pilaf and chickpeas, roasted garden heirloom tomatoes and peppers, fresh peppers, and candied pumpkin 

So let's talk a bit about what we've been eating since our Thanksgiving last week...

Last Saturday was Turkey's Teacher Appreciation Day, so to celebrate, we had tea, cake, and cookies for dinner.

I really appreciate teachers.

Keeping tea warm atop a hot kettle of water. Pour the glass about 1/3 full of tea, and fill the rest with water	Nar cuts into a cake layered with large wafter cookies, chocolate sauce, and chopped hazelnuts
A buttery pastry topped with black sesame seeds and stuffed with sauteed greens	It's squash season, so we can typically count on candied pumpkin to enter our mouths at least five times a week
A Turkish style cinnamon roll, although with no cinnamon, no ooze, and a lot of hashish spiraling within	Despite the hashish, these rolls don't make you high. Just a little high on full-stomach-happiness

After spending a day picking in the fields recently, Nar and Fatma (one of the cooks) used various edible weeds and spinach to make Turkish dolmas filled with rice and local ground lamb meat.

Using a simple weight to keep the dolmas from moving around in the pan	Action shot: Nar talks to me about some of her hocus pocus
Hocus Pocus secret #999: Lemon, EVOO, fresh garlic, tomato paste, and a touch of honey	The hocus pocus sauce on the dolmas is that little extra touch that makes them unforgettable

One of our favorite meals so far has been dumplings made of bulgur and flour and filled with a mixture of ground lamb with sauteed greens and onions, then boiled and served with lemon wedges.

You will eat it slowly, and you will never forget it.

Us volunteers took over the kitchen one night after hunting wild mushrooms in the nearby forest...

Mohammed, the local "nature man" who works at the farm, keeps us from getting poisoned

About two hours after getting back from picking, a mushroom, pumpkin, and sauteed greens lasagna with a layers of bechamel and tomato sauce was born.

Of course the pasta was made fresh by John with garden sage kneaded into the dough...
Did I mention that Kylie, the other volunteer leading this effort, is a professional chef?

Has a fresher lasagna ever been made in Turkey?

Then there's the fresh cheese that Nar makes on the stovetop...

Why isn't it this easy for me?

And if you set any of her fresh cheeses or yogurts on the table, I assure you that we will quickly find something to eat them with...

"Koftes," a traditional Turkish patty, here made with ground lentils with a side of sauteed onions with sumac

Candied baked apples, traditional borek, and homemade turşu (pickled vegetables)

Bluefish that had been caught hours earlier from the Black Sea, pan fried with EVOO, salt and pepper, and a dash of lemon

So in my quest to understand the fullness of heart that goes into all this cooking, I only have one question: how am I ever going to leave this place??

I definitely can't go anywhere with this cat on my back...

What's that? You want to know more about the cats?

All I can say is, they’re going to have to get their own post….

know what I'm sayin'?

All 18 of them.

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