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Turkish Solanum melongena, the aubergine
1.       Roswitha
4132 posts
 11 Jun 2008 Wed 06:58 pm

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
City of imperial purple
By Ali Sirman

ALL over the world, cities and countries have trees, fruits and even vegetables as their symbols. Lebanon has its cedar, which flourishes on the national flag. Canada has its instantly evocative maple leaf. And Paris for me, although Hollywood prefers to identify it by the Eiffel Tower, means chestnut trees.

Some natural bounty does cause negative reactions. Parisians no longer enjoy Jerusalem artichokes, because they remember being forced to eat them during the hungry years of the second world war. (The Eiffel Tower has its detractors too: they say that Anatole France so hated it that he made a point of lunching there every day. When a friend asked him why, he answered: "Very simple. It’s the only place in Paris from where I can’t see the Eiffel Tower.")

In Istanbul, when I was young, the city itself and all its separate neighbourhoods each had their own symbols. Cengelkoy had a cucumber. Bayrampasha (whose green fields later became the site of the biggest prison in the Middle East and the Balkans) had an artichoke. Langa had romaine lettuce, which you don’t find anywhere these days. Kanlica had yoghurt. Whenever anyone mentions Arnavutkoy, you instantly think of strawberries. And Kavak had its figs, which people went out and picked in the gardens when they ripened in autumn.

When I look back and ask myself which fruit or vegetable was most characteristic of Istanbul - and which left the most profound mark on the city - the answer is Solanum melongena, the aubergine. Istanbul fell deeply in love with it, and created some of its best recipes.

I have good reasons for saying that the aubergine has left a profound mark on the life of Istanbul and its urban fabric. It caused whole neighbourhoods to burn and others to be built. Ahmet Rasim, an Istanbul-based author, tells that in the 19th century, during summer (the aubergine season), wooden houses, thoroughly dried out by the sun, would catch fire when cats tipped over braziers where people had been frying or grilling aubergines on hot coals. With the poyraz, the north wind, fanning the flames, entire districts would be reduced to cinders.

At the time Istanbul had no fire brigade. What it did have were tuhumbaci, who would run to the scene of the fire carrying water pumps on their backs, more of a competitive sport than a public service. Each neighbourhood had its own team of firefighters. They were young men, good-looking, fast runners, and, of course, poor. The point of the competition was not putting out the fire but getting to the scene of the fire first. The sport had its own rules. A person would think twice before asking "Where’s the fire?", for fear of insult. The first proper fire brigade was set up by the Hungarian Count Szecseny, who was made a pasha in 1874, after the famous fire of Pera in 1870 when 3,000 buildings burned down.

So what happened to these neighbourhoods destroyed by fires sparked by that guilty vege table culprit? Their inhabitants found themselves a new building site on a piece of wasteland, which was plentiful in those days. First they built a house, then a mosque (leaving room for a cemetery), and once all that had been set in place, what was left over became the street. That is how Istanbul was built - the houses came first, and improvised streets followed. Foreigners sometimes wonder why Istanbul’s roads, even its main avenues, are never straight, but always winding and twisty. Well, that is the reason: first came the buildings, and the roads a poor second. When Turks complain about Istanbul’s straggling layout, they are forgetting that its structure has literally grown out of their history.

The aubergine has had a profound influence on the social life of the city. It was said to have been brought by the Spaniards from southeast Asia in the 17th century, but it already featured in cookbooks at the time of Sultan Fatih Mehmet the Conqueror a century before. The tastiest recipes were created in Istanbul, because the city was the capital of the Ottoman empire, a multinational creation with one of the three best culinary traditions in the world. This makes nonsense of the battles between Greeks and Turks as to whether a certain recipe is "ours" or "yours". Ottoman cuisine was the result of collective creativity arising from multi-ethnic cohabitation.

In my opinion the subtlest dish in the aubergine repertoire is hunkar begendi ("the sovereign relished it"), a delicacy of the Ottoman court. The aubergine is grilled, and with a little flour and cheese, served as an accompaniment to meat. It was a palatial dish.

In Ottoman times the variety of aubergine dishes, some eaten hot and some cold, ranged from tursu (a pickle) to aubergine preserve. This jam, which is made in the south of Turkey, in Antalya, is exquisite. It’s a great surprise to anyone tasting it for the first time, and until you taste it you can’t imagine how well the aubergine suits the art of jam-making.

It is hard to list all the possible aubergine dishes, so the following are just a few suggestions. Salad, made with grilled aubergines, has five variants: ordinary salad; braised, which is eaten hot in the southeast of the country; the chaka-chuka eaten in some regions, which contains fragments of tomatoes and finely chopped green peppers; and a dish eaten in Izmir in which the aubergine is braised but not pureed. Sometimes the differences between these dishes are a matter of nuance, as with French cheeses. If you want to eat a really delicious aubergine salad in Istanbul, try Pandeli, one of the city’s oldest and most traditional restaurants, which is above the Spice Bazaar in Eminonu. You can also try their aubergine borek, a flaky pastry that comes in 30 different varieties.

Aubergine also features in the preparation of kebabs. In Istanbul these are prepared with diced meat and animal fat. In the southeast the skewer is prepared with pieces of aubergine and balls of hand-minced meat. Ali nazik (Ali the courteous), from Gaziantep, also in the southeast, is a less refined and sophisticated variety of hunkar begendi. In Gaziantep people also cook dolma - stuffed aubergines - made with the dried version of the vegetable.

It would be wrong to think the aubergine was restricted to the palace or a rich man’s table. Quite the contrary: the world-famous imam bayildi ("the imam fainted"), is a popular dish made with olive oil and lots of onions.

Of course there are aubergine devotees in a cuisine where it is so richly represented. One of my friends who likes to eat in restaurants that specialise in local dishes and are not tourist haunts - Haca Sabh in Beyoglu, Kucuk Hudadat in Eminonu and Kanaat Lokantasi in Uskudar - amuses himself by asking the chef how he is going to prepare his aubergines today.

Besides being the foundation of the city and its non-planning, the aubergine also has its place in Turkish jokes. Let me tell you a story. One day the sultan was praising the aubergine to his court flatterer: "How excellent is the aubergine for karnayarik ("split belly") and imam bayildi." So the flatterer agreed: "You are right, my sovereign. The aubergine has no equal." Very soon the sultan had had enough of aubergines, so he said: "I want another vegetable. One that grows in springtime. I want to eat peas with meat. I can’t stand the bitter taste of aubergine."

The flatterer said: "I agree, my sovereign. The aubergine is over-rated." The sultan grew angry: "A moment ago you were singing its praises, and now you say it’s over-rated!" The flatterer bowed his head: "What can I say, my sovereign? My job is to flatter you, not the aubergine."

http://mondediplo.com/2003/06/15sirman

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