Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Turkish Delight: An Interview with Artful Baker Author Cenk Sönmezsoy

Episode Date: November 23, 2017

Happy Thanksgiving to all the American listeners! If you haven’t made dessert yet, check out The Artful Baker, the most luscious baking book you’ll ever feast your eyes on. In today’s episode, I talk to its author, Cenk Sönmezsoy, an award-winning blogger, photographer, and food stylist based in İstanbul.    We chat about the success of his 11-year-old food blog, Cafe Fernando; why he’s obsessed with the Golden Girls; Dolce & Gabbana requesting a brownie recipe; travel inspirations; foods you must try when you travel to Istanbul; and more.   You’ll find interview highlights, and a mouthwatering recipe on postcardacademy.co   If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and forward this episode to a friend.     You can follow Postcard Academy on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.     If you’re feeling especially kind, please leave a review on iTunes. This helps people discover us. 🤗Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel, and I would like to wish a very happy early Thanksgiving to all the American listeners. If you haven't made a dessert yet, then you should definitely check out the new cookbook by today's guest. Jenks Amassai is a blogger, photographer, and food stylist based in Istanbul, and his book, The Artful Baker, is the most glorious food porn I have ever seen. Seriously, buy this book for someone you love, or just keep it for yourself. At the end of the show, I will tell you how to get your hands on Willa Jenk's favorite recipes. But first, on to our interview. Welcome, Jank. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me. So you are from Istanbul, but you spent several years in San Francisco. I actually went to San Francisco for my MBA degree. I studied for two years and then I started working at a PR company in San Francisco. I worked there for three years, so in total I spent like five years in San Francisco. And then I came back to Istanbul, started a job, wasn't really happy. And then I switched jobs and started working with my family. I wasn't happy there either.

So I started a food blog in the meantime. And in 2014, I quit the corporate job and became a full-time blogger. So tell us about your award-winning thing. blog cafe Fernando. Where did that name come from? And what have you been blogging about? Oh, the name. Okay. The name comes from a favorite TV show of mine, the Golden Girls. I'm a huge fan. And when I first opened my blog, the first order of business was to find a name for my blog. But I didn't need to think twice about it because ever since I'd learned that my favorite character from the Golden Girls, Rose Nileand, had a one-eyed teddy bear called Fernando.

I wanted my, I wanted to name my future dog after it, but I never got a dog, and my blog was the next best opportunity. And after I discovered that Fernando.com was taken, I decided on Coffee Fernando and launched it on March 31st, 2006. And I find it so sweet your love and affection for the Golden Girls. Why do you love them so much? It all goes back to my first day in San Francisco. Actually, there's a story in my book about it.

My first day in San Francisco started a bit rough. After a 20-hour two-leg flight, I found myself in San Francisco International Airport. For the first time in my life, I was in the U.S., and it was a long day. I had to, my student visa arrived very late. so I had to go directly to the school. I couldn't find a place to live before I went there. So I had a reservation at a small motel close to the school. I went there.

I gathered my things and went straight to the school. And on my way back, I got lost. And I think I walked for six or seven hours. And after I finally got into my hotel room, I took a shower, and then I threw myself on the bed. you know, switch the TV on. And there they were, the Golden Girls. I was away from my family, my friends, and everything seemed so different. But there they were, and it was the warmth and the comfort, I think, they reminded me of. And after that day, it has been an obsession.

I think you even helped adapt scripts for Turkish Golden Girls. Oh, yes. How do you know about that? I did some online stocking of you, Jenk. Yeah, actually, I was never going to be the writer of the show, but a friend of mine brought me in because the TV shows in Turkey are much longer than the US TV shows. It was supposed to be about an hour and a half, one and a half hours long. So they needed to match episodes back to back. And she was going to ask me which episodes would go together best. But once we started working on the details, she asked me to translate one of the episodes for her.

And she liked it so much that I became one of the screenwriters of the show, the translators. But it didn't go well. and it ended after, I think, five episodes. Oh, no? Yeah, yeah. Well, at least you still have the classic. Yeah. So, okay, so you named your blog after them,

and you've been blogging about baking ever since. So why did you get started baking? How did that happen? After I moved back, I mean, I hadn't baked a thing in my life before I moved back to Istanbul, by the way. I mean, I was quicking through college and stuff. but I never baked a thing. But after I moved back to Istanbul,

one day I received an email from a friend of mine who was still living in San Francisco, and she was sending me a link to her food blog. I had no idea what a blog was. And then I visited her website, and my job dropped because she turned her kitchen into a cupcake factory. And I also was missing the things that I ate in,

San Francisco and there wasn't even a decent brownie back then in Istanbul. So I started baking like that, just like that. She was a great inspiration for me. And then I, you know, discovered other blogs through her blog and decided to start my own. And this was way back in 2006. Six, yes. This is my 11th year of blogging. Okay. Let's talk about brownies and specifically the recipe that got you covered in Washington Post and helped to really blog. up your blog audience. Mm-hmm. The recipe is called brownies my way.

Nick Mulgieri emailed me one day. I think it was the first or second year of my blogging. And he was asking for me to contribute a recipe for an article he was writing for the Washington Post. And I was Goptsamak because, I mean, he was one of my baking heroes. I couldn't believe that he was emailing me for a recipe. and back then I was you know my mentality was if it's a chocolate recipe there has to be lots of chocolate so the brownie was a fudgey brownie topped with more chocolate and then sprinkled with um pistachios and it became a classic on my blog everyone loved it so that's the story of the brownies and then

um I think after a couple more years Dolce Gavana asked me to create a recipe for the launch of their digital magazine Swide. And I came up with another brownie recipe that became really popular among my readers. It's called brownie wears lace. It's also another fudgey brownie topped with hazelnut ganache. And on top, there is a bittersweet chocolate lace pattern. That sounds so amazing. And we can We can find that in your cookbook, correct? You can find the revamped version of the brownie wears lace. I changed the hazelnut frosting with blonde chocolate ganache.

And for the brownies, my way, you can also find it in the book. So where did the idea for the cookbook come from? Actually, I needed a bit of convincing for starting to write a cookbook. I had a successful blog, but I didn't think that. it necessarily gave me the privilege to write a cookbook because I always thought, you know, it was too much work. I didn't have any training about cooking or baking. So, I mean, my blog wasn't, you know, was kind of like a, how should I put it?

A hobby, maybe? It was a hobby. So I didn't think that, you know, I should be writing a book because it's serious. business. So during the first meeting with my Turkish publisher, I asked the vice president, you know, if the world needed another baking book. And he said, I don't know about the world, but if you're writing it, Turkey desperately needs it. So. And at this point, your blog was very popular in Turkey. I think it won like best food blog award and different things like that. Yeah, yeah. So his confidence in me, you know, you know, made me.

me realized that I can do it. So I started working on it and four and a half years later, the book came out. And so it first came out in Turkish. Yes, in 2014. And it's really one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen, honestly. And you did everything for it, right? Yes, I styled the book, I took the photos, I designed the book. I even attended the first print run of the Turkish book, which lasted about 72 hours just to make sure the colors were all correct. And where did you develop all of these skills? Because the photography is quite stunning.

Are you like a self-taught photographer? Yeah, I'm self-taught about everything that is required to produce this book, the baking and taking photos and styling and prop styling everything is self-talked yeah and so where have you found your inspiration both in baking and then I guess along with that photography as well um I think early on I selected really good mentors for myself um for instance for baking my heroes are rosalie berenbaum nick maljerry David levovitz um Dory greenspan Alice madrig So I think I learned from the best. And everything I know about baking, I learned from my heroes.

So when you say learned from your heroes, you would take their recipes and then recreate them and study them. Yeah, yeah, study them. And after a while, you get a sense of, you know, recipe development. And you start, you know, eating stuff when you're traveling. and then it's much easier to recreate them when you learn a few things about baking. All the formulas and ratios, it becomes much easier after, let's say, five or six years of self-teaching. Talk to me more about how travel has inspired your creations. When I taste something that I really like, nothing would stop me from.

recreating it and I think it all started with my um travel to Paris way back when I maybe in my second or third year of blogging um I visited Pierre Armey and all the nice petisseries in Paris and when I came back I was so inspired that you know maybe 10 or 15 of the recipes were inspired by that visit to Paris um in my blog I in my book I in my book sorry. So could you share maybe some examples of traditional Turkish baking and then maybe how you've put your own spin on them based on your experiences? Actually, I don't have too many Turkish baking recipes in the book.

I can name one. It's called Uncurabies, which means flour cookies. It's a bit different than the version in my book. But it's all about the texture of these cookies. And I added vanilla beans, which isn't really traditional in Turkey. People usually use other spices or if it's vanilla, then they would use the powdered version, which isn't really as good as the beans themselves. There's also a Cimet recipe, which is, you know, very something you can, you know,

even Istanbul, the ring-shaped bread. very the texture is close to a bagel. It's covered with sesame seeds. What are other things? Oh, there's a pistachio cookie that I baked for when I first met Nick Mulgheria in Istanbul. But I added matcha powder in it because I was so inspired by the patisserie Saddharu Aoki in Paris. And one of the flavor combinations, he used. is pistachia and macha.

And I think, did I read that you also experimented with macha making a cheesecake for your friends at one point? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was, again, after I went to Paris and saw that, you know, macho was the most popular ingredient back then. And when I came back home with a container of macha, it coincided with a friend birthday so I decided to bake a cake for him, bake a cheesecake for him. And then I started working on the recipe, but you know, I only had a container so I couldn't do too many runs with the

recipe. I started adding macha, but the, you know, the amounts usually you see in the recipes online weren't too much and the cheesecake wasn't turning the color I wanted. So I kept adding and adding and I ended up adding the whole container in the cheesecake. And since it was a birthday, I couldn't taste it before I, you know, brought it to him. They've been making fun of me ever since they tasted that cheesecake several years ago. So came up with a great version for the book, which is a no-bake, machin pistachia cake. And it's the color I want. And actually, it's one of my recipe testers' favorite recipe in the book.

Yeah, and you must be quite popular with your friends with all of these skills. Well, you would think so, but not the real case. Because for this book, I've been living under Iraq for the past seven years. People think that I bake everything and share them with friends, but that's not the case because I have to, you know, test how many days they will last at room temperature. you know, how long does a pie dough will last in the fridge? So everything I bake, I test, and I, you know, they go at the end, they're basically inedible after I take photos and, you know, test how long they will last. So it's not like I bake and share them with friends all the time.

And your testing is quite rigorous, right? Like how many, if you're creating a recipe, I guess talk to me a little bit about that process. Well, it really depends on the recipe and how familiar I am with the basics of the recipe. For instance, for a pomegranate gem, I tasted it like 30 times. But that was only because I didn't know early on that pomegranates don't have enough pectin in them. So after I discovered that it was very low in pectin, the fruit itself, I came up with adding an apple pectin that I made myself also. So it really depends on the recipe. If it's, for instance, a cake recipe, it may take three to four times to create what I really want.

if it's something like if it's a bread or a more complicated pastry recipe it can take more if it's a new flavor combination i'm trying it may take lots and lots of trials to get the exact texture and taste i want so it really depends on the recipe and the um ingredients i use but yeah i i am relentless about recipe development um i really don't stop at anything before I get, you know, what I have in mind. What would you say, like, what recipe has the most emotional significance for you in the book? I think Jenks House Cookies has the most emotional significance for me. Just because of the story behind it, these cookies are actually remind me of the cookies I ate at the foot of my.

grandma's chair while she knitted during my childhood and the cookies came up one day when I you know when the button of the food processor got stuck and I was making a tart though the button got stuck the button got stuck and I think it mixed much more than needed so I knew that I wasn't going to use it for the tart because the texture changes after a while So, you know, I rolled it out and cut them into cookies and saved them in the freezer. But when I first baked them in the oven, the smell reminded me of those Danish butter cookies I ate at my grandma's place. I worked on the recipe further and there came my house cookies. Yeah, I think that's such a magical thing about food is it can transport you to so many beautiful little bit.

that you've had in the past. So let's talk more about Istanbul where you live and where you grew up. How would you explain Istanbul to somebody who's not been there? It's like a roller coaster. Every day is different in Istanbul. But it is a young city at the same time, very historic and very old. But the vibe is always energetic and warm. Have you been to Istanbul before?

I have a few years ago, and I really loved it, and I would like to spend more time there. I'm haunted by this perfume that I bought and loved and have run out of and need to go back and get. Oh, what is it? It was just this sandalwood oil that I got at one of the bazaars, and I've looked everywhere in London and also New York, and I just can't find the same thing. So anyway, I'm coming back and I'll visit you and buy that perfume. Perfect. I'll give you a personal tour. That would be amazing.

So if friends were coming to visit you in Istanbul and they had not been before, where would you take them? I always take them to one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Karakoy locantas. Or if they have some time or if you have some time or if you, if you, can have lunch together, I would take them to chia, another restaurant on the Asian side, so we can take the ferry and walk a bit around the Kadikoi food market and then eat lunch. So either of those places.

Yeah, and so Istanbul is split like European side, Asian side, and you're on the, you live on the Europe side. I live on the European side, yeah. Okay. What would you say are your top three tourists? must seize if you're in a stumble. I think the first one would be obviously Hagia Sophia.

The next one would be Grand Bazaar. And if people are into food and farmers markets, there's a great farmer's market on Saturdays and another one on Sunday. So depending on when you are here, one of those two. Definitely. Sorry, where could we find?

those markets? The Saturday farmer's market is in Ferikoy and the one on Sunday is in Kassimpacha. It's called Kassimpaasca Kastamono market. And are those mostly vegetable and food markets or do they have

other vegetables? Most vegetable and fruits and they also make Goseleme these Turkish pastries because people usually arrive in the morning and they need something to eat and maybe they'll brew some tea next to it and you can find some food stuff as well

but they're mostly fruits and vegetables and what are those pastries like? You mean gazeme? Yeah. It's like a flat bread but there's a very thin filling inside it. It's a very thin flat bread that they cook on a griddle. The filling is usually either cheese or herbs or potatoes.

What are some other foods that we should try when we're in Istanbul? Well, you should definitely try Simit, the ring-shaped bread with the sesame crust. What else? I brought pistachia paste to my friends in San Francisco this time around, and they all loved it. My favorite place to buy it would be Gemizade. Also, you can buy Turkish delights with clotted cream there. I couldn't bring it because it needs to be refrigerated at all times. Really? The cream is inside the Turkish delight?

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a rolled Turkish delight. You can see the clotted cream from the outside. What's your favorite neighborhood to hang out in? My favorite neighborhood to hang out in is actually my old neighborhood on the Asian side, Fenarbauche. That's where I grew up. It's by the sea. My mom still lives there.

So that will be my favorite place. But for someone that's coming to Istanbul, I think Galata or Karakouye would be a better option. And why is that? Because there's not much to see in Fenarba. There are places, but I think you will have much more fun and you can get the vibe of the city in those two neighborhoods much better. So there's more restaurants. Is that what you mean? Yes, yes, definitely.

More restaurants and cafes and shops around Karagui, definitely. And speaking of cafe, So what is the difference between coffee in Istanbul and coffee in San Francisco? In the recent years, a lot of places have opened in Istanbul, and people are taking it really seriously, and there's lots of good coffee shops in Istanbul right now. But if you're talking about Turkish coffee, of course, it's something entirely different. Yeah, talk to me a little bit about just for people who don't know what Turkish. coffee is like and is that still the most popular coffee beverage I guess um for the general

Turkish public I would say yes it's it's more popular um I don't usually drink too much Turkish coffee because I like to drink coffee a lot and Turkish coffee is you know just small maybe two or three um gulps um so um um Turkish coffee is basically comes in the similar quantity to an espresso, with the ground still in the cup. Turkish coffee is, the texture is very fine. You cook it over, I mean, the most traditional way would be to cook it slowly on charcoal, but people usually, of course, don't have that option at their homes.

You cook it over a flame or a low flame and you can either, you have to put the sugar while they're cooking it. There are three types, I'd say. One is sade, which means without any sugar. When you're ordering it, you always tell if it's sade or ta shakerly, which means little sugar. And then or shakerly, which means with sugar, which means, the medium one has like a half a sugar cube per cup and the sweet version has the whole sugar cube. And it's served without milk, correct? Yes, correct.

I tried to order it with milk when I was in this. I was refused. He said no, I'm not giving you that. And it's usually served with a glass of water on the side. and some people also put mastic jam with a swirl around a spoon inside the water. To sweeten it up. Yeah. I know you're very busy with the book, but if you do have free time, how would you spend it?

I would definitely spend it with my mom and my friends. I don't usually go out too much to eat or drink or. I would usually spend my free time with my loved ones. Right. Very nice. A very close friends of mine live like five minutes away from me. And it's kind of like a gathering place for all of my friends. So we usually get together there and eat, play card games. That sounds very sweet.

That's something that can be quite hard to do, I think, in a city like San Francisco and New York and London. And friends typically tend to live quite far apart from each other and then have to meet centrally at a restaurant or a bar or something. It's great when people can meet in homes. Before I let you go, can we do a lightning round of some of your Istanbul favorites? Sure. Okay. So I think we have to start with bakery. So what is your favorite bakery and what do you get there?

It's not like a bakery, but it's more like a petisserie. It's called Art Cafe. And my friends always know that on my birthday I don't bake. And they buy me a cake from Art Cafe called Pinoli. It's a flowerless, kind of like an almond meringue cake with pastry, cream, and fresh strawberries inside. That sounds delicious. How about brunch place? I don't usually have brunch, so I don't have a favorite.

brunch place. But for lunch, it would definitely be either chia on the Asian side in Cadikoy or Tazele in Canyon shopping mall. My favorite things to eat would be at chia, it's everything, definitely, but mostly the salad bar. At Tazele, it's their mantu, which is a Turkish dumpling in. yogurt sauce, I would definitely suggest the dried eggplant stuffed version. That sounds really good.

How do the hours work at restaurants in Istanbul for lunch and dinner? Are they closed at certain times? And when should people start going out for dinner? It's pretty much the same as in any other city, I would say. For lunch, it usually starts around noon and until maybe two or three. PM and dinner can start anywhere from six to later hours in the evening. And where do you usually go for dinner? If I'm dining outside, I'll definitely go to Karikeri locontas, which I take all of my friends who are

visiting from abroad. And how does tipping work in Turkey? I don't think there is a general rule about tipping. I cannot mention any percentages, but. it's not that strict the rule. So I'd say somewhere around 10 to 15%. Where do you go if you're in the mood for some culture? Do you like museums?

Yeah, I love, for instance, Istanbul Modern. It is a Turkish modern and contemporary art museum. I'd definitely recommend that place. And where do you go to do shopping? You mean for food? For food and then also, are there any, like, designer markets, like up-in-coming Turkish artisans or anything like that that you could recommend? In the Karakai neighborhood, they can definitely find those kinds of shops.

A favorite shop of mine is in Bebek, called Enwai. And my friend Tulya, who is a ceramicist, has a bit of, brand called Santimetre. And I love her plates and her cups. And I usually stop by that shop to see, you know, what's new about her products. She has also a store in New York in Soho. And she lives in Aivalik when she comes to Turkey. So you cannot find her products all over the place in Istanbul. But the only place close to me is Envi in Bebek. For food, I usually try to go to the farmer's markets on Saturdays and Sundays and try to do all my shopping there. There's also Italy close to my house. So I would also visit Italy for meat and charcutary and cheese. And how does the general population

shop for food in Istanbul. Is it still common for people to go to food markets, or are they going to more, I guess, what I would say, mainstream supermarkets? I think most people go to mainstream supermarkets, but in every neighborhood, there's always a farmer's market on a determined date in the week. For instance, in my neighborhood, it's on Wednesdays. but it's not like an organic farmers market it's usually people buying their produce from someone else and just reselling it there so the quality isn't really high

but I would definitely say if it's not the supermarket people buy from their neighborhood farmers markets and if you ever want to get out of Istanbul do you have any day trip recommendations? Day trip. You mean where you can get with a car or? I guess train. Or actually, how do you get around? How do you personally get? Actually, everything is very close in Istanbul. For instance, Alachata, which is a favorite vacation spot and my friends have a house there. It's by car, it would be maybe eight hours, but with a plane, it's just an hour. you can pretty much get anywhere with a one-hour flight in Turkey so and our flights pretty reasonably priced and

it depends on the season and how close in time you buy them if you can plan ahead you can even buy them for like $10 My friends who have a house in Alachatjata, they usually buy their tickets in winter for the summer months, and they usually buy for every week so they have the option to go there. And since it's so cheap, it really doesn't matter because when the time comes, it's usually 10 times or even more. Yeah, I mean, that sounds cheaper than a taxi flying around. Exactly. Exactly.

What's something that you can only do in Istanbul? That would be crossing the continents, I guess, and with a summit in your hand and drinking tea while you go from Europe to Asia. That sounds really beautiful. Yeah. I love the ferry ride from Bechikarj to Kadikoi. Before I let you go, where can people find out more about you? My blog, Caféferando.com. and they can find more information about my book at the artful baker cookbook.com.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Jenks. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks again for having me. I love that he named his blog after Rose's Teddy Bear Fernando. In the Artful Baker, he names a luscious berry tart after another Golden Girl's character. Can you guess which one?

If you know the show, it has to be Blanche. I've included this recipe on postcardacademy.co slash artful baker. If you like today's episode, please share it with a friend and leave a review on iTunes. This helps people discover the show. I'd love to hear from you, so if you're on Instagram, come on over and say hello, or drop me an email at sarah at postcardacademy.com. That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are.

Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarah micotel.com slash blank no more.