Susan's NGTAW Blog: Cooking Turkish food: lessons with Ferda and Okan

Wednesday, May 11 - evening at the Nisanyan Hotel in Sirince

We were greeted by Okan upon our arrival back at the Nisanyan Hotel and he walked us up to the Tower House, which would be the location of our cooking lesson. Ferda was already in the large kitchen and had a wood fire burning. Ferda did all the cooking instructions and Okan helped with any translations needed – although Ferda’s English is good enough for us to communicate as needed.

We began with our main course – Guvec – a beef and vegetable stew which cooked in a covered clay pot. It needs to cook for an hour, so we cut up the beef, peeled and quartered potatoes, carrots and onions, added garlic cloves, olive oil, fresh sage, rosemary and parsley. Into the open wood fire oven it went.

The kitchen was bright and cozy - smelled great with the open wood fire burning

Wonderful fresh ingredients, including rosemary, sage and parsley from the garden and local olive oil

Ferda is the main chef/cook for the Nisanyan Hotel restaurant; Okan is the manager who helped translate

We then made three cold meze – grated carrot with yoghurt and garlic, roasted red pepper with walnuts and cheese and we made hummus from scratch with a food processor – easy peasy, as Charlie would say. We also made a warm triangle pastry, using grated carrots, zucchini, onions, garlic and cheese for the filling. Ferda had made the phyllo dough pastry by hand – as thin as can be. We cut the dough in long strips and placed a heaping teaspoon of the filling at one end. We then folded the filling up in a triangle, like you would fold paper for the notes we used to pass in high school. These pastry packets are then deep fried a golden brown in olive oil. Okan says that the olive oil they use is all from the trees around the property. He has 100 trees and expects he will inherit several hundred more from his grandfather. He told us the acidity of their oil is very low – 0.5%, which make it very smooth. He also said that they harvest the olives that fall to the ground and make the olive oil soap that they use in the hotel.

Peeling the roasted red peppers - the fragrance of the wood char was enticing

Ferda adding garlic to the sauté pan

Mike adding finely chopped scallions to our carrot and yoghurt meze

Finished dish - grated carrot, zucchini, scallions, garlic, thick yoghurt - delicious

Three meze to begin - each one a treat for the tongue

So easy to make hummus from scratch - I'll definitely do this one again!

Ferda made the phyllo dough - I'm so impressed, as it was perfectly thin and round - a great technical skill

The triangles are stuffed with grated carrot, zucchini, onion and cheese, then deep fried to a golden brown

We next made our dessert – pine nut semolina halva – which Michael cooked over the stove, as it needs constant stirring until ready. It reminds me of cooking cream of wheat cereal, but only water is used, no milk. Once we finished cooking the halva, we were ready for our feast.

And so, with a excellent glass of local white wine, we had our 4 appetizers, the tasty Guvec, served with Grandma Hanife’s home made eriste (Turkish pasta) and finished with halva and home made ice cream. Delicious.

We were given a small gift bag at the end of our lesson – with the listing of our courses, some olive oil from the estate and cards from our Nisanyan hotel. It was a fun evening and Ferda and I are now friends on Facebook so we can keep in touch.