Can’t help it: writing about food, about Yashim’s cooking or – as now – the picnic he’s assembling, to take with him on board ship – makes me terribly hungry.
My first port of call is always Ayla Algar’s splendid book Classical Turkish Cooking: Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen. It’s the Bible.
But today I’m looking for more about pastirmi, the dried beef fillet that travelled to Italy and then to the US as pastrami.
And I found this interesting website:
http://www.turkishculture.org/pages.php?ChildID=306&ParentID=11&ID=49&ChildID1=306
Jason Goodwin
Novelist, historian and columnist; host, dragoman and hierophant.
[yashim fan mode: on] wait, what? Turkish picnic? when? where? OMG, another Yashim novel? 😀 [/yashim fan mode: off]
BTW, I just received this http://www.flickr.com/photos/ies_ui_chen__2008/4114881682/ as a present 🙂
Although not related to the Great Yashim series. Looking forward to the next and possibly a spin-off series with the adventures of Brunelli?
I noticed the book flap for the US edition of Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America ( Henry Holt and Co.) – this is the following quote, reprinted from Mary Whaley, American Library Association;
“..Paper money, invented in Boston in 1698…”
I have contacted Henry Holt and Co. (MacMillan) regarding this but no reply – the assertion does seem to be factually incorrect, the Chinese having used paper money in excess of 1000 years before. Certainly the Swedish and and Scottish were using paper money in the 17 Century, prior to 1698.
Jason – I have enjoyed your Yashim, his food and his adventures as much as your other books. My husband just finished the Bellini and is eagerly awaiting the next book, as am I, of course.
But I am writing to you now to talk about food. I recently started looking into an Ottoman cookbook and cooking. The results were fantastic. I made 2 attempts so far: nohutlu pilav and tas kebabi. While the nohutlu pilav resembled the dish that’s a regular staple of Turkish cuisine, the tas kebabi was a complete surprise. The latter was a recipe from the 18th c., cooked in a completely different way from what you find today in Turkish cuisine. Marinated meat for hours in lots of mint, cardamon, cinnamon, fennel, onions, and parsley, and cooked in the oven in low heat for some time. Result: utterly delicious, fragrant meat that melts in your mouth. Needless to say that I will be sampling more of these recipes. I have to admit though that some of them intimidate me a bit. If you are curious, the cookbook is titled “500 Years of Ottoman Cuisine,” authored by Marianna Gerasimou.
Thank you for your brilliant writing. I look forward to your next one.
Best regards, Kalli