I once created a cooking class, called 'Zen in the Kitchen'. Then wrote a book called the same. Then started the group with that name and the blog came after. All this happened in Turkish. Now is the time for the English version of it. Let's see what will cook here!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

A Turkish cuisine book in Dutch


Today I'd like to write about a book written on Turkish food by Karin Vaneker (with Pieter Ouddeken and Erwin Slaats). It's called "Verse Munt Lamsbout & Baklava". Karin Vaneker is a Dutch artist and culinary journalist. She interviewed Meliha Genco, a Turkish mother living in Amsterdam with her family. Meliha is originally from Gaziantep so many of the recipes in the book are from that region (Eastern Mediterranean). In the book you'll read the family's trip from Gaziantep to Amsterdam, a general article on Turkish cuisine, the ingredients that are used in Turkish cuisine. Recipe section starts with breads and pastries. Here you'll see corn bread, "lahmacun" a flat bread with a meat topping, "zeytinli borek", savory pastry with an olive filling and some other pastries. Soups include green and red lentil soups, yogurt soup, mung bean soup and bulgur soup, mostly from Gaziantep region. Rice dishes are called "pilav" in Turkish, so does similar bulgur dishes. In this section, you can see bulgur pilav with vermicelli, bulgur pilav with lentils, pilav with meat and spices. "Kofte" which means meatballs in Turkish are a special section. "Tartaarkofte", grilled kofte, lentil kofte are few. In the book you'll see varieties of pickles, Turkish sweets, kebaps, salads, vegetable and meat dishes all made by Meliha and her family. I especially love the photos. When you look at them, you see that they're made by and for the family. You see family members, ingredients, the process of making some of the dishes. I wish I could read it. I sincerely hope this book will be translated in many languages. Thank you for this enormous effort and putting together a beautiful book. I believe this book will show Dutch readers that Turkish cuisine is much broader and deeper than kebap and lahmacun!

7 comments:

Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

An interesting book. A pity I don't speak Dutch...

Cheers,

Rosa

Anick said...

Oh yeah, yummy Amsterdam, where our team of scavengers save awesome fruits and veggies from the trash at the market ... I miss the Turkish food though.. Gotta come back
- Nomadically yours,

Sarah said...

I would love to learn how to cook Gaziantep recipes. I have a few turkish cookbooks but none that are specifically on eastern Turkish cuisine.
very poor olive season here, btw, how was the harvest in Turkey?

Gloria Hass said...

I find it interesting how cooking cuisine outside of your culture from birth has evolved. It used to be unheard of for an Italian to cook anything but Italian food and so on.

It's nice to see people expanding their world to include other cultures, food, art, etc.

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Amy B. said...

Interesting! How unfortunate though that you have stopped blogging. :( Or did you move to another site? Hope you'll come back to blogging soon!

Cheers,
Amy @ Foodista

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