Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - What to Eat in Istanbul and Beyond

Episode Date: November 30, 2017

After last week’s conversation with Artful Baker author Cenk Sönmezsoy, I wanted to dive a little deeper into Turkish food, so I contacted Robyn Eckhart, author of the new book: Istanbul and Beyond, named one of this fall’s top 10 cookbooks by Publisher’s Weekly.    Robyn writes about food and travel in Asia and Europe for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Lonely Planet, and other publications. She also publishes the award-winning food blog EatingAsia with her husband, photographer David Hagerman.    In this episode, we discuss how Turkey’s diverse geography influences the diet of the different regions, from the leafy greens of the Black Sea coast to the chili peppers of Hatay province. We also talk about what you should eat in Istanbul and Beyond and where to go to find the best food in Turkey.   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 Apple Podcasts. 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 Mikital. After my conversation with artful baker author Jensama So I watched the dive a little deeper into Turkish food, so I contacted Robin Eckert, author of the new book Istanbul and Beyond. Publishers Weekly has named this one of the fall's top ten cookbooks. Robin writes about food and travel in Asia and Europe for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Lonely Planet, and other publications. She also publishes the award-winning food blog, Eating Asia, with her husband, photographer David Hagerman. In this episode, we'll discuss how Turkey's diverse geography influences the diet of the different regions, and we'll also talk about what to eat in Istanbul and beyond.

Now on to my interview with Robin. Welcome, Robin. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Sarah. So you have been writing about food for several years for the New York. Times, food and wine, travel in leisure. What were you doing before this? I was, before I started my blog, which is where I got my start in food writing, eating Asia. I was working on a PhD in political science at UC Berkeley. And so what made you decide to make the switch to food writing?

I'd always been interested in food, but when I applied to my dissertation program, program in the early 90s, it wasn't, you know, food writing wasn't really a career as such. You know, you didn't know of it as a career as people do now. And I knew that I loved to write in research and I loved China. And so I went into a PhD program in political science with a focus on Chinese politics instead. And then moved to Bangkok in 2002 with my husband. he got a job there and just sort of became, I mean, I'd always been into food and I'd always loved cooking. But when we moved to Bangkok, I just became aware of food in such a more visceral way, I guess, probably because of the street food scene there. And I just never

seen anything like it. And I got a, I had a Thai teacher who just was very into food and we just ended up talking about food all the time. And I started seeing, you know, being aware of foods that although Bangkok was much written about at the time as a food destination, I was eating things and experiencing things that you never saw written about. And I just thought, there's a lot here that, you know, could be investigated and reported on. And at the same time, I had sort of lost interest in being in academia. I'd finished my dissertation research in China, and that was a really hard couple years that made me feel like I did never want to do academic research. in China again, and that was my specialty. I'd also fallen in love with Turkey by that time. I'd visited at the end of the 90s, and so was kind of more obsessed with Turkey than I was with China. I'd taught as a graduate student instructor and found that I didn't really like teaching. And so it was just all of those things kind of came together at once. And I was I was a little past 40, and it was just like, you know what, I can finish my PhD so that I

I can have those three, you know, letters after my name. A lot of people said, oh, you can't, you can't leave the program now. Or I, you know, I'm getting older and I can just drop it and do, you know, what I really want to do with my life and get started on that right now and make a go of it. And so that I did. And I think that's quite, it took a while. Yeah. It took a while. Not overnight success.

I think very few people have that. But I think it's quite brave that you made that decision that, you know, you. you've put all of this time in for your degree. You could have easily gone into that, but you decided to switch and follow your passion. It was hard to walk away from the degree, but at some point you just say, what's the point? Or I did anyway. I imagine, yeah. And I read that you took a food writing class by a Bonapitie editor who advised that we should give into our obsessions.

Is that something that has just resonated with you ever since? Absolutely. That was in, we were living in Vietnam by 2005 and I took a food writing class with, oh gosh, the name escapes me now. But that was one thing she said, and I actually wrote it. You know, she said, given to your obsessions, they'll, you know, great stories will come from it or something like that. And I wrote that on an index card and I put it on my bulletin board. And I don't have a bulletin board anymore, but I still have that index card that I wrote that, you know, her advice on. We moved to Malaysia like in August of 2005 and I started the food blog and just really that was all about my obsession with Malaysian street food.

And her advice has done me well since. And you're currently on a book tour for your very gorgeous cookbook, Istanbul and beyond, exploring the diverse cuisines of Turkey. And you worked on that with your husband. Why did you write this book and how did you guys research it? Oh gosh. The book is really a culmination, but hopefully not the final product, of sort of a love and of, I guess, an obsession that we've had with Turkey and its people and its food since we first visited in 1998. We were living in China at that time. I was working on my dissertation research, and he was, David was working a corporate job. And we went to Turkey. We had three weeks, vacation. We had award miles. It was the middle of winter, and the award miles would get us to Istanbul.

And we'd never been before. Didn't have any guidebooks. Didn't really have any idea what to expect, but we're just blown away as, you know, I think most people are who go to Istanbul for the first time. I've never met someone who's not blown away by Istanbul. And spent three weeks, a week in Istanbul, two weeks driving around the country, fell in love with it. And when we left on the airplane, I said to Dave, I don't know how and I don't know when,

but Turkey's going to be a big part of our lives someday. And we moved back to Berkeley about eight months later. And when I should have been working on my dissertation, I started studying Turkish at UC Berkeley and put a lot of effort into that. And we continued to visit annually as his annual vacations would allow for the next few years. And then we moved to Bangkok in 2002. set Istanbul and Turkey aside so that we could get to know our new home region and returned to Turkey for the first time in eight years in 2010. By then he was a freelance photographer and I was

freelancing as a food and travel journalist. And just immediately, as soon as we got in the taxi and we're driving along, the Bosphorus felt that incredible pull that I sort of equate it with, how do you explain why you love someone? It's just this attraction, you know. And then decided at that time because we had the freedom and we had the time to make that sort of decision. We said, you know, let's devote some time to Turkey and do something here. And the idea for the book came about six or eight months later when we were on the Black Sea during anchovy season. And we're eating foods that we had never encountered in Turkey before, even though we'd probably traveled. total of three or four months there by then. We were eating cornbread. We were eating anchovies dipped in

cornmeal and pan fried. We were eating collardy-type greens. And we thought, you know, well, if we're encountering this new to us food here, what might we find in other parts of Turkey that most foreigners and a lot of Turks even don't travel to? And so that was really the nub of the idea for the book. worked on it for the next five years. So before your first trip to Turkey, what did you think the food would be like? And then what surprised you when you got there? I really had no idea. I just had no idea of Turkey as a place.

I mean, I, you know, I'm not a travel snob because I remember when I was an ignorant traveler. I don't think I was even aware of Islam when we traveled to. Turkey. We didn't know it was Ramadan when we went. And I, you know, I knew nothing of the culture and I knew absolutely nothing of the food. I had never eaten in the Turkish restaurant. I don't know. We just, we just sort of went. What surprised us when we got there, pudding, I remember eating a lot of rice pudding with a burnt top. I remember eating like Monta, the sort of, you know, Turkish ravioli, tiny ravioli and yogurt sauce with chili, sizzled butter, drizzled over the top. I had never had anything like that that blew me away.

Everything surprised me because I just, I had no expectations. I think that's always the start of a good trip. No expectations. Up for anything. Absolutely. I'd like to dive deeper into Istanbul, but first, could you give us a snapshot of Turkey the different regions and how the geography has influenced the food there? I'll focus on the regions that I feature in the book.

So we focused on the eastern half of Turkey and decided to do that fairly early on in the process. We basically drew a very rough line from Sinop, which is a port town on the Black Sea coast, south to the province of Hatai, which used to be part of Syria. and borders Syria on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. And so we basically, you know, you can think of a clockwise journey, starting in the middle of the Black Sea coast and going to the borders of Georgia, Armenia, Iran, and Iraq down south bordering Syria and then circling back up to central Anatolia. And the way that the way that the book came about was through our initial road trips in that region, in that part of Turkey.

We did everything by road. And I was just really literally observing out the car window and writing in my notebook all the topographical and climactic changes as we drove. Because Turkey is such a small landmass compared to the United States, but it has as much topographical variation. So you can sort of imagine if you took the USA and you smushed it west to east into a much smaller place,

but it still has a desert and mountains and all this. And so you can be on the Black Sea coast in Turkey, which is much like the Pacific Northwest, and in six hours you will be in a completely different topography and climate. And so we were driving and I was taking notes. And then we were obviously observing and experiencing what people are eating. And it struck me maybe after our first or second trip for the book, that to a degree to which an American, or at least this American, me, could never have imagined

what people eat is determined by where they live and the topography. So, for instance, on the Black Sea Coast, it is, as I said, it's lush, like the Pacific Northwest. It rarely snows except for at higher sea levels. It's very rainy. And so it's a year-round growing season. And so you have things like leafy greens, collared, kale, very tough spinach, fleshy spinach, leeks that grow hip high. Corn is grown there, and corn is a huge part of the diet, dried corn, whole kernels, crack corn, cornmeal, cornflower, and fish, obviously, because it's a coastline. So much of the animal protein in the diet is fish.

And, you know, we tend to think of, oh, in Turkey they eat a lot of lamb or mutton. Well, they don't on the black sea because, you know, sheep don't graze there. And in fact, a lot of black sea people will tell you the smell of lamb makes them ill. And then if you drive east towards the Georgian border and you get to the northeast, which is the next region in my book, It's very lush, high plateaus, which are perfect for grazing cows. Wealth is measured by, you know, the number of cows you have. And so beef is a huge part of the diet. There's a little bit of mutton eaten there, but not much.

It's all beef, cows milk, dairy, cheese is made from cow milk, a cheese called gravier, which is very much like emmental, and another call. Kashar, which is kind of a mild cheddar that age as well. And then you drive south, maybe six hours, and you hit Vann and Hakari provinces, which are Kurdish provinces in the southeast, boarding Iran and Iraq. The topography, again, changes dramatically. It is jagged, high, soaring peaks covered with snow most of the year, jagged foothills, rough terrain, and cows cannot graze on that terrain because they are, you know, huge animals on spindly legs. So mutton and goats can traverse this terrain very well in pasture. And so suddenly you see quite a lot of lamb in the

diet and not lamb, but mutton and sheep milk and goat milk. There's not a lot of arable land. And so foraging is a huge part of the cuisine there. And in the spring, villagers will take to the foothills and literally forage, I mean literally tons. of wild herbs and greens and dry them and eat them in the winter in soups and stews and pickle and salt brine them to add to a cheese, a very famous cheese called oat li panniery, which is made from the milk of the sheep and goats who graze on those same greens. So it's a very, you know, these very tight little locovore type of eating that isn't locovore because it's being rediscovered or is trendy,

but because that's just how it's always been. Moving west again, you get to the southeast. D'Arbaker, Shomliurfa, the home of Irfa Pepper, and Dierbaker provinces, partly Kurdish, some Arab influence. And people are eating a very spicy food. It's the home of Arfa Pepper. You start to see pomegranate molasses

because the climate is supportive of that. Lots of grape molasses. There are a lot of. vines cultivated there that were originally planted by Armenians. Armenians lived there until the early 1900s. And then you travel further west and a bit south to Hattai province, which borders Syria and used to be part of Syria. It's a Mediterranean province. So suddenly you see lots of olives, olive oil, tomatoes, chili peppers, and pomegranates. And so this is really where you start to see lots of pomegranate molasses in the food and tahini and then the last area that I look at is

north central Anatolia and that would be about seven hour drive eight hour drive north of ha Thai that Mediterranean province and this is really where you find the food that perhaps if you don't know turkey very well you think of this is what Turks eat so lots of lamb lots of grains lots of legumes this is the home of the chickpea lots of hummus Yes, exactly. LeBlobby. So, yeah, I mean, it's just a very incredibly locovore type of eating. And why did you decide to focus on the Eastern side for this book?

I'm guessing there's probably a part two coming out in the future. I wanted to, I just wanted to, because we were finding foods that were so new to me, because a lot of people who visit Turkey spend time in Istanbul on the Aegean, on the Mediterranean, perhaps in Cappadocia, the home of, you know, two faferi castles and medieval underground cave cities and balloon rides. And then they don't seem to go further east. And I really wanted, I mean, this is kind of maybe going back to when I was in Bangkok and I'm seeing foods that, you know, I've never read about even though so much has been written about food in Bangkok. You know, a lot by the time I started this book had been written about Turkey and about Turkish food and Turkish travel articles.

And I wasn't seeing any of these places in those articles. And I'm, I guess I'm drawn to maybe the less investigated places or foods. And also, we just wanted to highlight, you know, things that don't get attention, Kurdish food. Kurdish cities These places borderlands I think borders are incredibly interesting And so we just decided to focus on the part of Turkey

That isn't really thought of is the place you go to visit But you should And your book includes recipes That have not been printed before in English Right I believe so I mean I've searched the internet I don't find them in English

Okay Now, going back to Istanbul, could you share a little bit about the history and how Istanbul's location has allowed for the fusion of different cuisines? So, Istanbul was the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and it was as such a very busy trading port. And so cooks in Turkey, sorry, in Istanbul, had, access to ingredients from all over the Ottoman Empire, from Persia, from the Balkans, from the Caucasus, Caucasus and from northern Africa. And then also in Turkey, in Istanbul, in addition to this mix of ingredients, you know, at any time of the year, you had palace cooking. Topkap Palace had thousands of cooks.

Its kitchens, which were recently opened, I believe, have something like 16 gigantic stoves with chimneys coming out the top of the palace. And all these cooks had to do every day was think of ways to please the emperor coming up with new foods, variations on old foods. So, for instance, before cane sugar or beet sugar came to turkey, people cooked with, they sweetened things with fruit molasses. And when sugar first came to turkey, it was a very expensive ingredient. And so only the cooks in the Intov Kappa Palace had it. And so they were creating things like these amazing layered syrupy sweets that we associate with Turkish cuisine. They were taking, you know, what had been flat breads that have been eaten in Anatolia forever and making these doughs into incredible thin pastry sheets, Yufka, or, you know, what we know is Philo also.

And making sweet and sweet borax and savory borax, savory borax, meat borax, with things like raisins and ponds and pine. nuts and all of these kind of warm silk road spices like all spice and cinnamon. It was just a very luxurious cuisine that could only have come about if the cooks had access to ingredients from all over this empire that stretched over most of a lot of the world. And then, of course, not everyone was eating palace cuisine. You also had stuff going on outside the palace. Istanbul was a city. And so there were people on the go, people that needed a quick bite.

And so street food has a long history in Istanbul. Fish sandwiches. Fishermen actually used to sell the sandwiches from their boats and simit and chickpea pilav, you know, carts with, mounted with buttery rice pilav and mixed with chickpeas and pieces of chicken on top. So that's, you know, that's a very Istanbul thing too, street food. And then on top of that, when offices started opening on the European side of the city and you had suddenly a lot of office workers, people who could not go home for lunch, but needed a very tasty and cost-friendly way to eat in the middle of the day, that's when you started to see Locanta.

which is from the Italian word locanda. And Esnath Locanta, workingmen's canteens, basically, tradesmen's canteens, were places that they could go and get a meal like grandma would make, but in a public setting and at a decent price. And these places are still dotted all over Istanbul. You know them by the steam table. Dishes are served from a steam table. And I know that the first time I went to Istanbul

and popped my head in one of these places, I thought, steam table, no way I'm not eating at one of these places. But in actuality, these places, which are run by men, always, and the cooks are men, serve dishes that are really great for a steam table. They are soups and stews and, you know, slow-cooked dishes. And you could imagine dishes like curafousalier, which are white beans and tomato sauce, kind of simmering very slowly away on the back of Grandma's stove. Well, instead, they're just on a steam table at an Esanof Lo Kanta. And these places are still around. They're everywhere, and it's where people eat at lunchtime.

And this is, the menu is decided that day based on whatever's in season. Exactly. Okay. Do you have any favorites that you would recommend for somebody visiting? Oh, yeah, definitely. I would send people to Haivore, which is an Esnophore, which is an Esnachian. off Locanta just off Istylaljadasi that serves Black Sea food, just like you'd have it on the Black Sea. And I would send them to Ladis, which is also off Istwal Jadasi, but closer to Toxim Square.

High Vore is a little more, like the decor is a little more contemporary. Ladis is very old style, you know, these sort of like butter yellow walls and white table claws, you know, sort of not upscale, but sort of old-style gentleman, gentleman's place like. And it's been around forever. And I did include a couple of recipes from Ladesz in the book and spent a morning in their kitchen, which is on the third floor. Those would be two places that I would definitely recommend people go. And I'd love to go back to street food for a moment.

What are some of your favorite street food? and when are people eating these where you mentioned the fish? What else are people eating on the street? Well, first of all, I qualify by saying that even though Istanbul is touted as an amazing street food city, I don't think it's that great a street food city. There are some nice foods, but I don't think that you go to Istanbul to eat street food. Simit is great. People are eating that all day long.

If you can find a fresh one, it's great. Could you explain what that is for somebody who doesn't know? Sure. We call them Turkish bagels. It's a bread ring, usually sesame seed coated. Sometimes it's braided and sometimes it's just a literal bread ring. And hat out of the oven, they're great. They're always sold from carts.

If you get a fresh one, it's wonderful, but too many sold on the street are not fresh. there are just a few bakeries around that still make them. So if you can get one from a bakery. I like toast, which is basically grilled cheese. It is so ubiquitous in Istanbul that I don't think I even noticed it for the first few times we went. You can get toast on a ferry. You can get it from a buffet, which are sort of corner kiosk type 7-Eleven type places. because you can get a toast at stands by the fairies.

You can get a toast in cafes now. And a toast ranges from very basic, like two pieces of bread with some mild cheese inside and pressed in a panini-type press, to more elaborate. Some of the buffets have an array of ingredients in a display case, and you can choose what you want in your toast. So you can get mild cheese. cheese and you get a spread of pepper paste and you can get some roasted chilies in there.

And I'm just a sucker for grilled cheese. So I like a toast. Where can you get the best? Well, the classic is Bambi, which is a toast chain. And I think the original store, if not the original, one of the oldest stores is up near Taksim Square. And, yeah, they're open late night all day. And then another one is there's a good toast at the cafe just as you exit the ferry terminal in Caddicoy. And then nowadays, I mean, sort of more upscale hipster cafes are serving toasts. And there's nothing wrong with a really finely made grilled cheese on good bread.

So I'd go for that too. If you could design the perfect weekend for somebody visiting Istanbul for the first time, Where should they go for the sites and for food? Okay. So let's say you arrive on a Friday. You have a Friday evening. You should go to a place called Lale, which is in Galada, and go to the rooftop and have a drink. That's a nice way to start the weekend.

The view is gorgeous. And I guess maybe Friday night, I might just walk around in. in Karakoi, in that area, Galada Bridge, get out and do some walking, and I would get a fish sandwich for dinner, not from the bobbing boats on the M&O side, because those are not good, but across the Galada Bridge from the vendors in front of the Karakoi fish market. They make a really nice fish sandwich, and what you do is you want to ask for a duble, which is double, which means same amount of bread, double filet, so that you get a good. the most amount of fish to bread ratio.

And then I would wander up to probably the streets around East Deklaal Jadesi, off of East Deklaal Jadesi, where there are various bars, you know, and have a drink. And you sort of have to have, before you go back to your hotel, you have to have an Islakaburger burger, which is wet burger. This is a hamburger where the buns have been soaked in a sort of sauce and it's put in a steam case. And it sounds awful. It's kind of, it's a little bit drunk food, but it can be tasty if you're in the right state of mind. And I just feel like it's something you have to experience if you're in Istanbul.

On Saturday, I would get up and I would have a nice breakfast. Your hotel probably serves a really good breakfast. but you can go to Von Kavala Evi, which translates to Vaughan Breakfast Salon in Jihangir. It is an accessible place that serves the Vaughan breakfast from Vaughn province near Iran, near the Iranian border. Vaughan is known for its amazing breakfast because of the cheese that's made in Vaughan, the oat-le-paneri herb cheese. you'll get something that I call in the book Toasty Scramble Eggs, which is toasted flour, cooked even toaster in butter with eggs added. The usual menamine, which is eggs in chunky tomato sauce, other cheeses from around turkey, Kaimach from Vaan, which is the cream that's lifted off steaming milk, the surface of steaming milk. and then with Von Honey over it,

it's just basically a breakfast meant to hold you all day. That said, you should walk around some more and try to fit in another lunch at either Ladis, the Esnaflocanta, the Working Men's Cantean that I mentioned, and lunch will go as late as two or three, so you can go to these places later, or at Haivore, the Black Sea place that I mentioned. And maybe dinner that night is for one of the restaurants in Istanbul where chefs are doing interesting things with Turkish art as an ingredients.

So I really like Nicole, which is at the top of TomTom Sweets Hotel in TomTom neighborhood. The chef, Iyla Zhajou, trained in France, and she's actually a pastry chef, but she does other cooking too, obviously. and she just does really wonderful dishes with featuring ingredients like local ingredients like pecmes or grape molasses, local taheenly, local cheeses, pomegranate molasses and those sorts of things. And then Sunday, I guess you're probably going to want to do breakfast, but I'd be more likely to skip breakfast and head out to have some tea by the water. You can sit over in Caddacoix. There's a nice cafe by the ferry terminal.

And then I'd go nose around the Caddacoy Market, which has all kinds of wonderful stores. There are places where you can buy cheese to take home and have a vacuum pack. Cheese is from all over Turkey. There's a pickle shop, and pickles are very much part of Istanbul culture. And you can go have actually a glass of pickles. You can select your pickles, and then you eat them from a glass. in the shop and then you drink the juice. It's very good for you. And then I would probably go to Halil, which is a great place for Lafajun, which is, you know, again, we call it Turkish pizza,

but it's basically a crispy flat bread spread with a spicy lamb paste and you eat it with parsley and a little lemon juice. And that is right at the edge of Caddacoy Market. It's one of my favorite places. And I think that'll do you for a week. Lots of good eating. Would you recommend that people go to the Grand Bazaar or is that something? I, you know, I guess architecturally, it's great. And there are still some great spots there, I guess, to buy spices. I sort of tend to avoid it just because a lot of it now is really touristy. And if you go to the Caddicoy market, I mean, presumably one of the reasons you're going to the Grand Bazaar is to taste cheese and to buy spices and maybe to buy coffee, although I don't think.

Turkish coffee is the best. I would go to Caddicoy Market. It's wonderful. You can take a ferry right to Caddicoy, and it is a number of streets and blocks lined with all these stores that sell exactly what is sold in the Grand Bazaar, except it's not for tourists. It really is for people who live in Caddicoi and around Caddicoy. What kind of spices should we buy? Well, you want to buy all of the be bears. Bebear means pepper. So pull Bebebebebe. is pool means crushed, so crushed red pepper flakes. You want to, if you go to these stores, you will see a bunch of bags labeled Pulbi Bear, and they'll be sort of mild to spicy.

So basically you want one that has a nice flavor and is to the spice level that you like, but there should also be some flavor. And then you want to buy Urfa Biber, which we call Urfa pepper. It's also called Isot, because Isot is the name of the pepper. in Turkish. You should buy some ground chili. Think of it as cayenne, kirmice-bibir, red pepper. You should buy some mahalep, which is the ground kernel of a type of wild cherry. It's likened sometimes to vanilla. It has a very, a scent that's lovely and warm and hard to describe, but it's really nice and baked goods and is essential for some baked goods.

And I use it in a recipe in the book. Which one? The Syriac spiced bread. It's a yeasted bread that has all these nice spices and then this malle just adds a certain something. And then if, yeah, try to buy some mostic, which are the crystallized resin from a type of tree, originally from kios, ingredients. but now also cultivated on the Cheshme Peninsula in Turkey and the Aegean.

And this is a piney resin that is added to ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and also to breads. And it's kind of like, I guess it's like you either like it or you don't. But it's a really, it's a very particular flavor that is really central to Greek sweets in Istanbul. Do you have a favorite region in Turkey? Oh, that's really hard. I love seafood, so I love the Black Sea Coast. I love Chili's, so I love Hatai province and it's food. And just sort of overall, I'm really drawn to Vaughn and Hakari,

those two Kurdish provinces in the southeastern corner of the country, both for the food. And the amazing topography. I mean, Hukari is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life. And for just the incredible warmth of Kurdish people. I mean, Turks and Turkey is known for its hospitality. And justly so. It's one of the most welcoming places you'll ever go. And then, you know, going to those provinces, I was, you know, I was once again bowled over by the welcome. It was just it was just even more and even bigger and even warmer. It's just a really lovely place. What memories have really stuck with you from that place? Probably our trip to Hakari in spring of 2015, which was our last research trip for the book. We had wanted to go to Hakari since we started the book, really since we started researching the proposal in 2011. But because of the PKK and the war,

with the Turkish government and the Turkish army. It hadn't really seemed safe to go there. We were traveling entirely by road. We always rented a car, and it just didn't seem safe to drive to Hakari. And so finally, in the spring of 2015, our last trip, which was about a month and a half before the election, things were good. The peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK was going very well. It was looking very positive for the election, for the Kurdish party to get a place in parliament, to get enough votes to do that. The southeast felt very peaceful, very happy, very optimistic.

And so we were in Von Province, which is just north of Hakkari. And a Kurdish chef who had helped me with our research said to me, well, if you think the milk is good here and the cheese is good here and the food is good here, you really need to go to Hakari. And it seemed the right time to do it. And so at the end of April 2015, we drove south to Hakari. It was about four and a half hours to Hakari City. And I mean, it was just, I was blown away by the beauty of the place, these incredible jutting peaks, you know, still snow covered. And then, you know, below them, these deep, just emerald green valleys. And it was a very pristine there's been little development there. Hillsides covered with, you know, very steep hillsides covered with wild time.

Hikari's known for its wild time. And more than that, I mean, Hikari City is not very attractive at all, but it was so, the welcome was so immediate and genuine. I mean, we arrived and just walked around to orient ourselves. And within, I think within two hours, we had been invited to a Kurdish wedding. We had been invited to a baker's house for lunch. We had, you know, someone else had said come out to my village, and we spent only five days there, and it was just an incredible five days. We learned so much, and we saw so much, and we spent time with so many lovely people.

And we left with this plan to go back three months later in August. We'd been invited to join someone on their Yaila, which is the place, the high summer pasturing area, for sheep. And then the election happened in June and the Kurdish Party won its seat in Parliament. And then there was an explosion near the border with Syria and Shanlyar for province in July. And the government blamed the PKK. And then the peace process fell apart. And that was that.

And we can't really go back now. That sounds heartbreaking that. Obviously all that's happening there. I'm so interested in people inviting you to their wedding and all of that. Were they just very curious and coming up to you? How did you meet these locals? Yeah. I mean, you know, the way that we did our research was we sort of let the food lead us wherever it did.

Food, it's been said before, food is a great entree to culture, but it really and truly is because it is, It is unthreatening. It is non-political and everyone consumes it. And so, you know, sort of our modus saparandi, when we arrived in a town, we would walk around and suss out, you know, if there were any restaurants we wanted to check out. If there was any markets we needed, we wanted to check out to start getting a beat on local ingredients. And then we would always go into bakeries, traditional wood-fired bread bakeries, which are a big thing still in East. Eastern Turkey, which are places where, obviously, bread is made in a wood-fired oven, but also places where people bring their dishes to be cooked in these wood-fired ovens. They pay, like, the equivalent

of 30 cents to the baker. The baker tends the dish, and then they come and pick it up and take it home, usually with some bread. And so, for instance, we were wandering around. We saw a bread bakery and we walked in and there were two women making um these this sort of a flat bread filled with caramelized in butter uh flour and i had heard about this and i and i had this particular type of bread it's particular to hakar and i said oh you know you're making this dish and then we got to talking and oh they're making the dish they're making these breads because uh someone's sister is getting married in two days and you know why don't you come to the the wedding. I mean, this is a very, it's not unusual. I mean, if a Turk from Istanbul walked in and started

chatting them up about their breads, they would invite the Turk too. Like I said, it's a very, it's just a sort of a welcoming place in a way that, you know, we can't imagine it'd be like walking down the street in, you know, Chicago and someone invites you in for lunch. It's just not going to happen. Right. And why are people still bringing their food to be cooked? the oven. Is it because they don't have an oven at home or because there's something about that type of oven that cooks it better? It's because they don't have an oven at home. Okay. Like if you go to the Black Sea, which is a relatively more developed part of Turkey, you don't find many of these bakeries anymore. And if you go to, say, Cappadocia, where there used to be

quite a lot of them. You don't, it's relatively, you know, relatively more affluent area. And you don't find many of these bakeries anymore. People, they, first of all, they don't so much bake their own bread anymore. And second of all, they all have ovens to bake their, you know, their givetch, which are a type of clay podcassarole in. Same with Istanbul. But you go out east and, like, a lot of people don't have ovens in their homes. They may have gas burners, but not ovens. And so they can, you know, if there's a bakery around, they can just take their dish there. What's been your best meal in Turkey? A meal that's very memorable for me is a meal that we had in Hakari, that Kurdish province in the southeast.

We went into a traditional wood-fired bread bakery, and the owner of the bakery invited us to his house for lunch the next day. And we went in his wife, who is a writer and a journalist, had prepared this incredible meal. of many dishes and their older son was there who was 19. And it was it was about the food because the food was delicious, but it was also just about the company and that sort of bonding over food where you just really learn about people who are living and have lived a life so different than your own. We talked about everything from the herbs and greens that are foraged in Hakari

and where's the best place to find them, to the dishes that were on the table, to their experience of living in Hakari when the urban, when the war between the PKK and the government came to urban areas and how frightening that was. And it was just a really, in every possible way, it was an amazing meal. Is there anything else you would like to add about your book or your travels or book tour? I'll be back in March for more book tour events. We'll be back in the USA. I have a website for the book and events, Istanbul and be on cookbook.com. But one question, one thing I do want to add is people are asking me, is it safe to travel to Turkey or they're saying things like, gosh, I wish I could go to Istanbul now. It's too bad that you can't. And while it's true that it's difficult now because of the visa thing, they're not giving out visas to Americans applying in

America. I would say that it is completely safe to go to Istanbul. If you would travel to Paris or Brussels or Barcelona, you should consider going to Istanbul. If you're in a position to get a visa, and I hope that situation will be resolved soon. Please go, because people are hurting because of the lack of tourism. It saddens me to see friends with restaurants and shops and stuff hurting for business because people think they can't go. It's still a wonderful place, and it's still a wonderful place, and it's as safe as any other place in the world. So go. It's great.

I agree 100%. And where can people find out more about you, Robin? They can find out more about me at robinockhart.com. And at my blog, eatingasia.com. Okay. And I will link to all of these things. So, all right. Thank you again, Robin.

Thanks for having me on the show, Sarah. Well, I am ready to go back to Turkey for some hummus and cement. and also grilled cheese. But what I love most about this interview is Robin saying that she was this close to getting her PhD and then said, nah, my heart is not in this. And even though she put in years of work,

she knew that cutting her losses and pursuing her curiosity for food and writing would lead to something more satisfying and meaningful for her. Lost time is never found again. Ben Franklin said that. All right, I've included Robin's food recommendations on Postcardacademy.co slash Turkish food. If you like today's episode, please share it with a friend and leave a review on iTunes.

Though I guess this is now called Apple Podcasts. I'm not sure that rebrand has caught on. If you'd like to reach me, you can email me at sarah at postcardacademy.com or find me on Instagram at Postcard Academy. 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.