“When I peel helda beans” (flat green beans similar to string or runner beans), “I get nostalgic.
“In fact, when I was growing up in Turkey, peeling vegetables was a social activity for us,” says Katalan. “I have an image of my mother sitting on the step outside the house peeling the tricky, sticky green okra stems which we would then cook with tomatoes and onions.”
Turkish cuisine fuses Middle Eastern and Mediterranean influences and is both hearty and healthy. “Dolma”, or stuffed vegetables, from the Turkish “dolmak” meaning “to fill”, sit alongside traditional olive-oil dishes as part a cold, meze. Borek — light pastry stuffed with vegetables and cheese (similar to Israeli bourekas) has a whole chapter to itself.
Vegetables are poached and dressed with olive oil, lemon and dill. Zeytinyagli enginar combines baby artichokes (or artichoke hearts) with shallot, baby potato, sugar and lemon juice.
The women explain that (in common with many in the diaspora) Turkish Jews had their own dietary traditions. Some dishes were considered less special — vegetables simply cooked in olive oil were not served on Shabbat nor on simchas or yomtovs. Nor were lentils, which were associated with poverty, says Katalan: “My mother told me that we didn’t have lentils on Monday or Thursday because those were the days when we read from the Sefer Torah.”
Other dishes the women cook from the prized book include fish dishes like tava — seabass fillets dusted in flour and egg and eaten with mayonnaise, and lakerda — a mackerel-like fish pickled and served with piquant raw onion and zesty lemon.
Fritada, a traditional, Turkish Jewish oven-baked dish of vegetables and eggs is a regular feature among the starters on the Friday-night table and especially popular at Passover. Fritada de prasa combines leeks and tangy sheep’s cheese, and a Rosh Hashanah variation includes seasonal vegetables such as chopped spinach, courgettes and leeks mixed with feta, mozzarella and egg.
Telvi and Katalan are so passionate about the history and culture of their country, their words tumble out: “We have to tell you about dolmas and boreks and kaskaritas… but first you have to understand our heritage, as it’s reflected in our cuisine.”
Although there are now less than 20,000 Jews living in Turkey, there has been a community there since biblical times. The biggest influx was after the Spanish Inquisition when Sultan Beyazid opened the door to the skilled and professional Sephardi Jewish refugees but Jewish immigrants also came from Arab countries, Georgia and the Balkans.
Accepted and respected, the Jews in turn welcomed their non-Jewish neighbours into their homes for meals, and recipes and culinary traditions were exchanged.
Arriving with little money or possessions, the Jews became imaginative in their cooking, with leftover stems and roots becoming dishes in their own right. Spinach roots are sauted with rice and broad beans, and “kaskaritas” uses courgette peel, mixed with dill, garlic and lemon.
However, certain vegetables were considered by some Jews as too low-rent to use. “We don’t use garlic, nor onions,” explains Julie. “Onions and garlic were associated with poverty! We definitely would never use them on Friday nights or special occasions!”
Not so for everyone, though. Katalan, whose family came from Georgia, includes both onions and garlic in her cooking. They tease each other about their favourite green-bean dish — ayse fasulye — that uses helda beans, sauted tomatoes and herbs. Katalan adds onion — but Telvi wouldn’t.
For Telvi and Katalan, it is more than just food, it’s their culture and heritage, their happy memories of life growing up in sunny Istanbul.
