Travel Memoirs: Istanbul, part2

Much of the olfactory enjoyment when in Istanbul comes from the culinary exploration of dishes that delight all the senses and make one abandon all expectations of following a diet regime in a flash. It is no accident that the Turkish refer to Culinary Arts when talking about food. The abundance and diversity owing to the rich flora and fauna of the area provide rich culinary escapades for an inquisitive gourmet palate. Babette's Feast with an oriental twist!
And so often food and drink is accompanied by oryantal dancing* to excite the senses even more: One feels like James Bond.



With a nomadic origin back to the first millenium in Central Asia, the Turkish repertoire has been influenced by the Arab, Persian, Greek /Byzantine, Seljuk and French traditions, as well as the Imperial Kitchen of the Ottomans, adding colourful spices and refined techniques. The little balls of delight that are içli kofte with their outer shell of bulgur and minced meat and their filling of pine nuts and spicy minced meat are inducement to a glimpse of heaven. They are chased away with tangy turnip juice. In Imam Bayildi bittersweet aubergines in onion and tomato sauce are sweetly melting into the tava (pan). The name literally means 'the Imam fainted', presumambly with pleasure. My favorite and one I recreate at home is Manti, home-made ravioli-like bites stuffed with minced meat with a yoghurt sauce on top.

Cumin and turmeric are especially prized and used in meat preparations which are roasted (kebap), stewed (yahni) and grilled (külbastı). Their acrid, sweaty flavour enhances the oiliness of onion-marinated meat, accompanying donerli rice pilafs in earthen pots topped with bright sauces to be enjoyed with your commensall. The background of those spices recalls the Arabic tradition of the souk echoed in the Serge Lutens perfumes and indeed this is the place to comprehend their intricasy best. Everything mingles nicely in this melting pot of civilizations: their Iskender Kebab is named after the Persian name for Alexander the Great!

When the weather is warm and the bitter orange trees in Balat are in bloom one can catch whiffs of their honeyed goodness intemingled with the sweet smells of the bakeries meters away. To the East, along the Golden Horn, brings you to Eminonu and the Spice (Egyptian) Bazaar, both old trading districts dating to Byzantium and the Spice Road. The pungent, rich smell leads you by the nose across the stalls of the sellers. Each one in its own heap of bright vermillon, deep mustard and brownish golden, they invite you to lean and take a deep breath with the desire to immerse your hands into the expensive, little red stigmata, yellow-green leaves of lemongrass and brown seeds. I find myself trying to mentally decipher the composition of Safran Troublant, a fragrance by L’artisan Parfumeur composed by Olivia Giacobetti. The natural combo of bitterness and sweetness like that in iodoform, as well as the smooth, pleasant feel of saffron(Crocus cartwrightianus) escape from the bottle like djenies from a middle-eastern tale with merchants and thieves. The same feel accompagnies me in Agent Provocateur where the rose is playing cello to saffron’s basso.
All these references are here dissected with the precision of a surgeon: saffron here, rose petals there, curcuma and turmeric like mustard-coloured dust, and fenugreek for pastırma, a delicasy that is destined for the brave and adventurous.

Pastırma is made from wind-dried cured meat, usually veal. Legend has it that agressive horsemen preserved meat by placing slabs of it in the pockets on the sides of their saddles, where it dried by the pressure of their thighs on the horse (this is also the origin of Steak Tartare). Then dried meat is covered in a paste called çemen comprising crushed cumin, fenugreek, garlic, and hot paprika as well as salt. Pastırma is intensely rich with the aroma of fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum), an herb primarily used as a galactogue for millenia, as well as for cattle food. An opaque, rather bitter smell with a nutty undertone, it traverses the urinary track to scent a person’s urine as well as their sweat and intimate juices. Its seeds’ odour is comparable to thick maple suryp. Fenugreek is featured in many fragrances which have rippled the waters of niche perfumery with pre-eminent examples Sables by Annick Goutal and Eau Noire by Christian Dior (composed by nose Francis Kurkdjian). Everytime I smell them I am reminded of the intense flavour that this spice gives them.

To take the heat off those spicy dishes the Turks have devised the wonderfully refreshing drink Ayran or Airan, a mix of yogurt, water and salt, not too different from traditional Lassi from India. It manages to clean the palate and restore the stomach to its best function.
But the most fascinating of them all is the winter drink Boza, a fermented drink made from bulgur. It tastes tart and is thick as glue. Traditionally served with a dash of cinnamon on top and double roasted chickpeas (called leblebi in Turkish) on the side, it was confided to us by our waiter that it grows the breasts to become bigger! I can't vouch for its effects but it sure makes an impression upon hearing the rumour, doesn’t it?


To be continued with bittersweet romance, hammams and desserts...

Pics through Fotosearch and cafefernando.com. Clip from the film From Russia with Love, courtesy of JamesBondwiki.com

*For you ladies who consider this kind of dancing demeening, please click to see this AMAZING clip!

Travel Memoirs: Istanbul

"The ghosts return at night, little lights for unredeemed souls
And if you gaze up at the barricades, you’ll see figures looking back at you
And it’s then that a complaint wanders you through the cobblestone alleys
Of Constantinople, a lover from yore, whom you find in someone else’s embrace".

~"Vosporos", by Nikos Zoudiaris, sung by Alkinoos Ioannidis

Travel Memoirs begins with one of the most sensuous destinations: Istanbul ~the Ottoman name under which the former capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, is known today.
Initially the city was named after the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who made it Nova Roma, over the site of the ancient Greek colony founded by Megara citizens simply named Byzantium. Yet the name Istanbul itself is based on the common Greek usage of referring to Constantinople simply as “The City”, because it was the crown jewel of medieval cities with a population and grandeur that exceeded many western European cities, such as London, Paris and Rome, for centuries. It derives from the phrase "εις την Πόλιν" or "στην Πόλη" {(i)stimboli(n)}, both meaning "in the city" or "to the city".

And it is no surprise that in an Empire whose majority of the population was Greek or speaking Greek, there is still a strong Greek element running through the fabric of memory when one sets foot on Istanbul’s soil. But the Ottoman heritage is none the less interesting to witness: minarets and mosques, majestic palaces, bazaars, carpet dealers and salep sellers on the street peppered with excellent cuisine and suggestive dancing render the visitor captive of its charms. It’s this fusion between Occidental and Oriental that gives Istanbul its extraordinary character. A character of strange melancholy: perhaps it’s the ancestral call…

Passing through the arabesque cobblestone on Istiklal across from the fish market, one enters the Cukurcuma district, full of antique shops, lazy cats sunning their bellies and the aroma of slowly roasted, dark coffee on hot sand, Turkish coffee (Türk kahvesi), made the traditional way. The preparation begins by boiling finely powdered roast coffee beans in a copper ibrik, the shape of a tiny ewer, with the addition of cardamom and (optionally) sugar. The thick liquid boils and boils again ceremoniously, emitting the aroma beyond the scope of the little terraces where it is served. Made one cup (fildžan) at a time, where the dregs settle and a thick golden cream forms on top, the köpük, it is a process of slow anticipation, a largo of animation. And also a journey into the past and the future. In this small fildžan I can almost glimpse the Levantine Arabs bringing the fruit of coffea bush to Constantinople. The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports the opening of the first coffeehouse in İstanbul:

“Until the year 962 (1554-55), in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus, came to the city: they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtalkala, and began to purvey coffee.”

~ Cemal Kafadar, "A History of Coffee", Economic History Congress XIII (Buenos Aires, 2002)

But I can also forsee the future: those sludgy grounds left at the bottom serve for tasseography, an old tradition of fortune telling. The cup is turned onto the saucer and the symbols formed are deciphered by some older woman.The flavour of cardamom and sometimes kakule (pistachio grains whole seed "pods", pistachio-looking like of the cardamom plant) settles in the mouth, lingering for a long time, like the prophecies revealed by the symbols on the cup. “Will they ever come true?”, one wonders gallivanting through the medieval alleys.



In Kapali Carci (the Grand Bazaar with the 1000 shops) one comes across all kinds of scented products. Fragrant balms for the hair, henna paste for body and hair, oils of rare plants and fossilised resins, like lumps of gum benjamin (benzoin), Turkish sweetgum (Liquidabar orientalis) and all the spices of Arabia. If one persists there are manuscripts, or should I say copies of old manuscripts posing as older than they are, with recipes using them. One of them is "Theriaca Andromachi Senioris", a Venice treacle recipe that uses benzoin appearing in the 1686 d'Amsterdammer Apotheek, a honey- or molasses-based alexipharmic composition once thought to be effective against venom. First developed in Italy, then exported throughout Europe from Venice and ending in Constantinople. If only the offered manuscript were authentic…

And of course there is Anatolian rose Otto (from Ottoman) which leaves an intense trail of almost fruity scent to one’s hands after handling the precious little bottles, with the name Gül (Rose) written on the label. I try to recall if any commercial fragrance captures the intense, decadent and yet also fresh odour of such an essence and come up with none. One is hard pressed not to haggle with the local sellers who are expecting so and the little treasure is secured into a handbag, folded with a silk handkerchief depicting seagulls. It will linger in a drawer with old, frayed photos of ancestors, impregnating their precious memory with the essence of the place they begrudgingly had to leave.



To be continued....

Pic shows Ortaköy Mosque (officially Büyük Mecidiye Camii, the Grand Imperial Mosque of Sultan Abdülmecid) and the Bosphorus Bridge by cafefernando.com.
Translation of lyrics by the author.
Clip from the intro of Greek-Turkish film Politiki Kouzina, uploaded on Youtube by JasonSeaman1.

Travel Memoirs begin

By popular vote, Travel Memoirs will be the subsequent theme running through the next posts. We will traverse the length and breadth of the globe in search of olfactory memories and scent associations and you're all invited in this virtual journey of reminiscence and nostalgia.

One of the major pleasures of travelling is getting to know a different culture and imbuing oneself into the different sensory stimuli at hand. I was never a tourist who ~camera at hand and jockey on head~ would go after the designated sights and frantically check shops and lists with things to do. I believe in savouring the journey, mingling with the locals and slackening the tempo of life till it approximates that of the place itself.

In the first instalment of Travel Memoirs, I am going to focus on the exotic carpet of civilizations that is Istanbul and the Golden Horn and recount the olfactory tittilation that a visitor is bound to experience.

Stay tuned!

Diptyque discontinuations...

LusciousCargo.com sent an email about changes to the Diptyque line they are carrying. Among the good news of introducing new products, such as the new Eau de Toilette scents (L'eau de l'eau, L'eau de Neroli, L'eau des Hersperides, all by nose Olivier Pecheux), there is the sad information of the house's discontinuing several of their beloved products. To stop producing something one loves is always a sad move and more so for this beloved niche house that dates back to 1961, and has kept me company for so long, either with their scents or their wonderful candles.
The Diptyque site is also under renovation, which means major changes are about to be made. Let's hope for the better.

From the Luscious Cargo email:

"Diptyque are introducing several new products this year, the first of them being three new Eau de Toilettes. On the not-so-pleasant front, the house has removed several categories from production. You will find complete details on our website but a few of the more panic-inducing include the elimination of: the 200ml scents (across the board), the Hair/Body Wash, many many candles, and the following EDTs (in both sizes): L'Autre, Eau d'Elide, Opôné, L'Eau Trois, Virgilio.
Read it and weep..."

I am sighing...Are you?

Pic courtesy of Diptyque

Lamb, the fragrance

No, not Lamb by Gwen Stefani, lovely as the site might be.
Another one, which aired in Australia: a sure-fire man magnet!


(uploaded by melliepanther)

What do you think?