AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Jewish connection with prickly cheese and matza AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Jewish connection with prickly cheese and matza

During our school years, during breaks between classes, a cheese toast was almost an obligatory snack. We would run fast to the school canteen and yell out our orders, double kaşar cheese for me, and for most others, a sure winner with the molten cheese oozing from margarine-drenched slices of toast bread. Those were the years back in the early 1970s when margarine was very much in, mostly used instead of butter, but on the bright side, our cheese was still artisanal, not processed industrial cheese. Needless to say, the grilled cheese toast was a delight, all savory goodness to fill our hungry bellies. But there was one week every year when I tried to hide my joy from a classmate Medi, who would be at the brink of tears while munching a matza. She was the ultimate grilled cheese toast fan, never skipping a single break without one. When it was the time of Pesah, she would be in deep agony, being obliged to pass over her favorite taste. Empathizing vaguely, I would try not to eat mine in front of her. I even once asked to taste the matza and pretended that I liked it.

March 28 2021
Masters of Mother Earth AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Masters of Mother Earth

Women’s power overcomes all. It’s not for nothing that the earth, which feeds humankind, is called “mother,” in Turkish “Toprak Ana.” “Mother Earth” is nurturing. She gives life and is the source of the existence of all living creatures. Who masters the earth and works the soil is mostly women. In Anatolia, women take part in all steps of working the land, harvesting its bounty, and furthermore, they are the ones who prepare all foodstuffs, whether for stocking the pantry or for bringing the soup to the table. It is women who cook the blessings of the Earth by the stove, prepare winter supplies, roll the thinnest sheets of flatbread, make tomato paste, and stand hours near the open fire to reduce grape molasses. The kitchen culture lives on at the hands of women; passed down from mother to daughter, from grandmother to grandchild.

March 07 2021
Delights of delivery AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Delights of delivery

Now it is time to admit! We are hooked to delivery in our urban lives. We shop online, we order almost anything to our doorstep, and we discovered the convenience of ordering food, especially spiked by our home-office experience of working endless hours. Being a food writer, and a practical home-cook that can prepare meals within minutes effortlessly, I would have never imagined that I would ever order ready-made food. But life proves you one thing: You should never say “never” ever!

February 28 2021
Fireballs falling AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Fireballs falling!

According to the Turkish folk calendar, the first “cemre” fell on Feb. 19 and 20. There are two more yet to fall, one on Feb. 26 and 27 and the last one on March 5 and 6. The first always falls or drops to the air, the second to the water, and the third to the earth. But what exactly is “cemre?” For many foreigners, it is a female name they come across quite often in Turkey. The word is borrowed from Arabic (camra), though it has roots in Aramaic and Assyrian (gamera), and even deeper in in history, Akkadian (gumaru). In all those languages it refers to a piece of coal, but a burning one, or better described as a red-hot glowing ember. Interestingly, these words are all similar to “kömür,” which is coal in Turkish. So literally the “cemre fall” means glowing embers, pretty much like fireballs, falling from the sky. The fireballs falling are, of course, never visible, but one can imagine a meteor-like huge fireball passing by up in the sky, suddenly warming the air.

February 21 2021
Cuisine for Turconauts AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Cuisine for Turconauts?

So, the date is fixed! Sometime in the year 2023, there will be some Turkish astronauts up there, watching us and waving from above. Why 2023? We do not know for sure, but from the point of view of what they will be eating, we better get started with the preparations from right now. As far as I know, what will be out there for dinner has not been planned yet. Or maybe there won’t be any dinner at all. How the dinnertime will be arranged is still a mystery to me. I guess the Turkish mission will be eating by Turkish time, but what if they happen to be on the other side of our planet? I hope they will take care of the fact that the date of the mission does not coincide with the month of Ramadan as then it would be extremely difficult to arrange the fasting hours with no sunrise and sunset times. Or will it turn out to be like some eternal fasting? I assume that in such a case, they can be excused from fasting as being voyagers. This timing issue is beyond my understanding, so let us focus on the menu.

February 14 2021
The Year of the Ox, is it time to look down AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

The Year of the Ox, is it time to look down?

Last year when I wrote on Chinese New Year, I remember editing some sentences a few times in order not to sound super pessimistic and be like a scaremonger inducing fear by saying that it would be a disastrous year.

February 07 2021
Fifty shades of glittery gray AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Fifty shades of glittery gray

As of Jan. 31, “Hamsin” days have started. This is the period that lasts for 50 days, the last lot of the winter days before spring comes. “Hamsin” comes from the Arabic word for 50, and, according to the folk calendar, the days before equinox are shortly named as such. This is also the best time for fish in Istanbul and the Marmara and Black seas, especially the famed Black Sea anchovy hamsi. As understood, the fish gets its name from those 50 days when it is considered the peak season.

January 31 2021
Purple plate AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Purple plate

The color of the year was announced as ultimate gray paired with an illuminating tone of yellow. Amongst the duo, naturally, the yellow shines by overshadowing the solemn gray. But the other day, another color rose to the stage. The color purple dominated the scenes at the inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden. It seems that shades of purple will dominate fashion in the coming year, at least in the U.S. Hopefully, the color stands for unity and bipartisanship, bringing together Republican red and Democratic blue melt in one to make purple. Of course, the intensity of red or blue affects the final shade -- resulting in either a reddish hue or a bluish one. Interestingly, purple is the opposite of yellow, supposedly meant to be the color of the year, which stands alone among the primary colors against the combination of red and blue.

January 24 2021
Call of the cold AYLİN ÖNEY TAN

Call of the cold

Snow is the origin of ice cream in Turkey. Cold winter months used to be the time for getting ready to harvest snow for summer months. Ice cream in Turkey used to be confined to summer months only. Most ice cream makers and street vendors would resort to selling the warm hot drink, salep, in the winter months. A quite logical switch, as the ingredients used in both are basically the same A quite logical switch, as the ingredients used in both are basically the same; milk, sugar and salep, which is the magical secret ingredient of both ice cream and the hot drink that bears the same name.

January 17 2021