Turkish flatbreads and a trip to Green Lanes

Much as marathoners carbo-load before the big race, I like to ensure that the meals before Passover contain enough bread products to see me through the next 8 days. Wednesday night there was homemade pizza, slathered with ricotta and wild garlic. Thursday, with a day off work, I made a much-anticipated trip to Green Lanes, a neighbourhood in Northeast London which is home to a large Turkish and Kurdish population, knowing that I’d find lots of things there that would soon be off-limits.

I began with a lahmacun, a thin, lamb-topped flatbread. One of the most popular restaurants on the strip, Antepliler, has expanded its operations to several other storefronts, one featuring casseroles and breads from an enormous open oven. Here, the young usta, or oven-master, rolled out a round of dough slightly thicker than a pita, then smeared it with a few tablespoons of a highly-seasoned minced lamb and garlic mixture. This was pushed into the oven on a long pole, from which it emerged several minutes later blistered but still pliable, to be topped with a salad of rocket, grated carrots and herbs and rolled up in a piece of paper. Not a bad (light) lunch for £1.50.

I ate it while inspecting the window display at a baklava shop, then headed several blocks north to Yasar Halim, a large, long-established bakery with well upwards of 100 varieties of cakes, cookies, breads and filled and topped sweet and savoury pastries. Amongst those I could recognise were tahinli, coils of sweet , yeasted dough layered with sesame paste, something I last had on a Golden Horn ferry ride and pide, canoe-shaped flatbreads topped with cheese and slices of beef sausage (sujuk). (The photo here is of a particularly good egg and lamb version which I had in Istanbul.) I came away with a spicy spinach pastry and a sweet one filled with pistachios and clotted cream—snacks for the late afternoon train ride up to Liverpool.

And to finish off, back to the Antepilier franchise for a bowl of spicy lamb and rice broth, served with a basket of warm, dimpled bread, crispy at the corners from a flash under the charcoal grill. I’ll be back soon for more breads, and photos, hopefully including the women who sit at the front of many of the restaurants making gözleme, almost like savoury crepes cooked on a concave griddle, with fillings of spinach, cheese, eggs and grated potatoes.

For now, though, it’s matzah time.

Antepliler

46 Green Lanes London N4

(020) 8802 5588

Tube: Manor House

Yasar Halim

495 Green Lanes

London N4 1AL

Tube: Manor House

Turkish beans + a recipe

Like the English caff, the Turkish esnaf lokantasi (tradesmens’ restaurant) is usually a daytime-only operation where lots of tea is served. For both, the core custom is local, male and looking to get some hot food without spending a bundle. But where the former might top out at a decent plate of egg and chips, many esnaf lokantasi feature up to a dozen or more home-cooked dishes: meat stews, stuffed vegetables, slow-cooked beans and homely desserts like rice pudding. This is meant to be cooking like Turkish mothers do, some recompense for spending the day in a shop or office

Ali Baba Kanaat Lokantasi’s location directly across from the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul’s Fatih district attracts some tourists, though most don’t make it past the large terrace. Inside, it’s all late ‘30s vintage (bar the steam table and the fountain serving aryan, salty drinking yogurt) with pride of place given over to the fasulye (bean pot). The beans, small and white, are cooked to a recipe from Erzican in the south—distinctively spicier, with more tomato and less meaty, buttery overtones (though some butter and lamb fat or stock definitely make their way into the pot) than those popular further north, along the Black Sea. It was recommended that I order the beans with pilau and cacik, the yogurt-cucumber mixture that can range from pourable to clotted cream-like. The pilau, dotted with pine nuts, was gently savoury, and the cacik was super-thick, a soft, sour counterpoint to the heat and richness of the beans.

Though I tend to cook from recipes rather than taste memories, my first try at recreating the beans I had at Ali Baba Kanaat Lokantasi was nonetheless a success. I made the sauce thicker, as they were intended to sit alongside lamb chops rather than on rice. And while the exclusion of lamb fat and butter was not authentic, the resulting beans were hardly abstemious.

Fasulye in the style of Ali Baba Kanaat Lokantasi

I happened to have two ingredients for this dish which might not be readily available: semi-dried white beans, podded last summer and stored in the freezer, and an open jar of a Spanish/Portuguese sofrito-like sauce called tomate frito. For the former, the best substitute would be small, dried white beans, pre-soaked overnight and, depending on age and variety, cooked for a bit longer. Any good-quality brand of chopped, tinned tomato can be substituted for the tomate frito.

Like any chilli products, Turkish red pepper flakes vary in flavour profile and heat. I think this dish should have a good prickle of chilli, but not more. I’m not sure the bay leaves are authentic, but they marry very well with most bean and tomato dishes.

The beans are initially cooked separately in order to ensure they soften properly, something which can be retarded by the acid in tomatoes.

Serves 2
Total time (excluding soaking): 90 minutes; Active time: 15 minutes

1 ½ cups semi-dried OR 1 cup dried white beans, pre-soaked if required
Olive oil
1 medium onion
Tomato paste
150 ml tomato frito OR ½ can tinned tomatoes
Turkish red pepper flakes (aci biber)
2-3 fresh bay leaves (ideally fresh)
1-2 cloves garlic
Small bunch parsley
Salt and pepper

Put the beans in a saucepan, cover amply with water and bring to a boil.

In another saucepan of a similar size, heat a thin film of oil on a medium heat. Chop the onion finely and add. Season with salt and pepper. Lower heat and sauté gently, until onion is fully soft and beginning to taste sweet. Squeeze in a few inches of tomato paste and cook for 3-4 more minutes.

When the beans reach a boil, turn down to a simmer and cover. Cook until soft but not falling apart. (In the case of semi-dried cannellini or lingot beans, this should be about 45 minutes.

Add the tomato to the onion. Refill the tomato jar/can to the same level with water and add to the pot, along with a good pinch of the red pepper flakes and the bay leaves. Chop the garlic and half the parsley and add. Season to taste with salt and pepper and cook on a gentle heat until thick and integrated, 30-45 minutes.

When the beans are ready, drain, reserving some of the cooking water, and add to the sauce. Adjust seasoning and add a bit of the reserved water if the sauce is too claggy. Cook for a further 15-20 minutes to allow the flavours to fully combine.

Just before serving, chop the remaining parsley and add. Finish with another pinch of pepper flakes.

Simit

Simit are to Istanbul what bagels are to New York City—the individually-portioned, ring-shaped breads not just an anytime staple, but an iconic part of what it means to be an inhabitant of that city, the object of habit, preference and memory.

Simit are made with a yeasted dough which is allowed to rise, then shaped into narrow rings. Following the second rise, the breads are dipped into water mixed with a bit of molasses (pekmez), then fully coated with sesame breads before being baked in a hot oven. The resultant breads tend to have a well-browned crust with a bit of resistance, giving way to a slightly sweet, soft yet chewy dough.

Just as with bagels, simit are not really made by home bakers. They are sold by bakeries and at a few new simit-specific chains. Most people, however, tend to buy them from one of the hundreds of carts located across the city. While the cart operators obtain a license to operate in a fixed location, there are also still some itinerant vendors, mostly in markets and some older neighbourhoods, who sell the breads from a tray balanced on their heads. Prices, while no longer government-subsidized, are fixed for both wholesale and retail; the maximum price which can be charged to a customer is 1 TL, or about 35p.

Like most breads, simit are at their best when fresh. While the carts have unmistakable charm and convenience, bakeries present the obvious advantage of happening upon a just-baked batch. Beyond that, some prefer their simit a bit sweeter (likely a product of more molasses in the dipping water), with a harder crust, or with slightly saltier dough.

Simit vendors keep a box of processed cheese triangles (like Laughing Cow) for those customers who believe that the first meal of the day must contain a bit of cheese. The new chains use them, much like bagels, as the basis for filled sandwiches, while cafes serving breakfast platters of cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, olives and cucumbers often throw a few segments into the bread basket.

It was snowing on my last morning in Istanbul. The local simit vendor was standing inside the vestibule of a nearby bank to keep warm, but dashed out when he saw me. That simit may not have reached the acme of ideal texture or flavour, but it’s the one I remember best.

Istanbul

I arrived back from my trip to Istanbul less than 72 hours ago. Already, there’s only one piece of the sublime pistachio baklava left—supremely buttery but not overly sweet. The chewy, almond-orange biscuits from a sepia-toned bakery in the Besitkas neighbourhood are gone completely, and we’ve made considerable inroads into the pistachio-sesame halvah, bought from a shop that’s been in the same family for nearly 150 years. For folks who claim not to have much of a sweet tooth, that’s an awful lot of sugar.

In between, I’ve been cooking up some savoury dishes with my new stocks of grains and spices. Last night, we began with a winter salad of bulgur, celery, walnuts and pomegranate from the Moro 3 cookbook. Our main course was minced lamb kebabs, seasoned with fruity-hot red pepper flakes (aci biber), dried mint and oregano and garlic, and served with flatbread and a salad of onions, parsley and sumac.

For breakfast this morning, we used the rest of flatbread to scoop up a take on the Turkish scrambled egg and pepper dish, menemen. Lunch was somewhat more ambitious, a spinach and cheese borek, or savoury pastry. Some compromises were necessary: we used Greek filo pastry (the slightly thicker Turkish yufka only being available in a few North London shops), and a mix of feta and ricotta in place of Turkish white cheeses. The filling was made savoury with sautéed onions, to which I also added some more of the aci biber and dried mint. In a change from the Greek versions I’ve had, the remaining yogurt-oil-egg mixture used to moisten the pastry sheets was poured over the assembled dish, softening the crust but becoming almost soufflé-like in the oven.

I have plans for pilaus, other types of kebabs and lots more salads and dips, as well as most anything which will make good use of my ample dried mint supply. And as soon as I get my notes and photos in order, I’ll have plenty more ingredients, vendors and dishes to write about.

For now, though, my ambitions centre on that last piece of baklava.