>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
>> Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
I'm Chris Murphy.
I'm the head of the Near East section.
And the Near East section is one of three
in the African-Middle Eastern division.
The other two sections are the African section,
whose staff is responsible for developing the collection from
and about sub-Saharan Africa.
The Hebraic section, whose staff is responsible
for developing the collection about Judaica worldwide.
And the Near East section, we are rather diverse to say the least.
The staff of the section is responsible
for developing the collection from and about all the Arab countries,
former Soviet Central Asia, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan
and the Caucasus, Iran and Afghanistan.
And the Muslims and Western China, Russia and the Balkans.
And as I said, the staff are primarily responsible
for developing the collection from and about this area.
But they are also the individuals who make available the collection,
who help researchers, you know, access the materials they need
in what is a very large collection now.
We have almost half a million books.
About 50 percent are in Arabic, and then there are about 75
to 80,000 each in Turkish and Persian.
The rest of the collection is made up of some 36 other languages,
very prominent among them is Armenia and must now be close to 40,000
if not above that, followed by Azerbaijani, Uzbek,
all the way down to in [inaudible], a people of the North Caucasus.
And we possess 12 books published in their language.
And that is actually phenomenal growth
because we used to only have nine.
I mentioned that the staff here is responsible
for access to the collections.
And they are also responsible to tell the public,
or to provide venues to allow the public to learn about our holdings
and the kinds of subjects that we cover.
And to that end, the staff often contacts scholars, especially ones
who have been working here in the division.
Or they've met working in the library conferences,
and invite them to make presentations.
And in this case, Dr. Muhannad Salhi,
one of the Arab World specialists, has contacted
and asked today's speaker.
And as I said, Muhannad is one of our Arab World specialists.
He did his doctorate at Chicago and has been with us since 2008.
And now without further ado, I'll ask Muhannad to come forward
and introduce our speaker.
Thank you.
>> Good afternoon everyone.
Thank you all for joining us.
Our speaker today, Sheilah Kaufman, is an award-winning cookbook author
of no less than 26 books.
She is also a popular cooking teacher and culinary lecturer
with expertise in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines.
She's a food editor and partner in cookbook construction crew
that helps writers and would-be authors with their cookbooks.
With her engaging personality and natural ease in front
of an audience, Sheilah began a new career 40 years ago
in the culinary arts traveling from Alaska to Hawaii,
from Maine to Mexico, teaching easy, elegant,
fearless international cooking and writing
for newspapers and magazines.
As a prolific writer and editor, Sheilah is a food editor
for Popular Anthropology and the Maryland chain, The Town Courier.
In addition, she is a freelance writer.
She has written for numerous magazines and papers,
including The Vegetarian Times, Eating Well, The Washington Post,
Tampa Tribune, The Jewish Journal
of Greater Los Angeles, and the Baltimore Sun.
She is a contributing editor to a number of papers
in the United States and a founding member
of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
She is also a popular lecturer and expert on Mediterranean cooking
on culinary traditions and history.
She has been an invited guest speaker for Epcot's Food
and Wine Festival, The Smithsonian Institution, and the Textile Museum.
She has taught and lectured on Turkish cuisines
at Les Dames d'Escoffier, the Turkish Embassy, the Turkish Society
of Canada, [Inaudible], Chow [phonetic] diplomatic groups
and other special interest groups and organizations.
She has also been a frequent guest on television and radio programs
across the nation and in Canada,
including Martha Stewart's radio show.
So now, without further ado, Sheilah Kaufman.
>> Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm very honored to be here,
and I can't tell you how much I appreciate an audience
that hopefully is interested in my topic.
So, let's start.
Turkey is a country whose history is [inaudible] in food.
Layer upon layer far Eastern Asia, Anatolia, Mediterranean,
each reflecting a long and complex history of migration
that enabled the Turkish people both to exert
and receive influences across Eurasia.
Turkish cuisine is both cosmopolitan and rustic, delicate and hearty,
traditional and experimental.
It is a complex amalgamate of east, west, north and south.
A compelling magnet for many traditions at one
of the world's greatest centers of culture and commerce.
Turkish cuisine is based on the creativity of housewives,
of the geography of the region, years of foreign trade and enhanced
and maintained by the lavish traditions maintained
by the palace chefs during the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottomans were renowned for their refined tastes.
[Cough], excuse me.
Turkish food is wonderfully spiced and can have complex flavors.
There are unusual combinations of flavors
and beautiful presentation is important.
The diet is a very healthful one, delicately seasoned
and more intensely flavored with herbs and spices, parsley, dill,
mint, thyme, and bay leaf.
The diet is based on a great variety of foods, more vegetables, fruits,
beans and grains than meat are eaten.
And the cuisine's most important characteristic is its reliance
of the very fresh ingredients and the cooking methods
to bring out the natural flavors.
Fish is eaten on the day it's caught.
Vegetables and fruit are eaten during the season they're grown
and purchased daily.
Or in Anatolia they're dried for winter use.
It is said there are three major cuisines in the world,
Turkish, Italian and French.
East is based on local ingredients and flavors.
While many well-known national cuisines rely on one basic element,
for instance, French cuisine people think sauce.
Pasta forms the essence of the Italian kitchen.
But there is no single dominant feature in the Turkish kitchen.
No one can name one thing that would characterize this.
Turkey stands at the crossroads of many cultures and is the land
with the timeless history of over 10,000 years and a food
and wine culture that dates back
to 4000 B.C. The Turks introduced coffee to Europe
and gave the Dutch their famous tulips.
The Dutch tulips were not indigenous to Holland.
They just grow wild all over Turkey.
And at one point the Sultan gave the Dutch ambassador a little bag
of bulbs, and this man went home and thought hmm,
what can I do with these.
And the result was everyone thinks tulips come from Holland.
Seventy percent of the world's hazelnuts are grown in Turkey.
And Santa Claus is from Turkey.
He was Saint Demetri.
Mount Ararat, the history of Turkey goes back
to the stone-age settlements of 7500 B.C. And over centuries,
parts of Turkey have been under the control of the Hittites,
Persians, Romans, Ottoman Turks.
An oral history of Turkish cuisine is thought
to have begun in Biblical times.
Most of the Turkish oral cuisine has been lost.
According to legend, Noah's Arc landed
on Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey.
And the last meal that was served aboard the vessel was a pudding
called asure, containing nearly 20 ingredients, although some say 40,
one for each day of rain, of leftover food.
Ten thousand years ago in Anatolia,
the people possessed a culinary culture sophisticated
for such an early day.
The people grew beans, lentils and wheat.
And they used salt.
They extracted oil from plants and fat from milk.
This just to show one of the arts of the Nomadic people
who populated the mountains of Central Asia.
And as they traveled toward Anatolia, which was Asia Minor,
they encountered different culinary traditions
which they assimilated into their own cooking.
And their carpet weaving is one of the things they were famous for.
And during their early Nomadic life, the early Turks depended
on agriculture and breeding of domestic animals.
Now the Central Asian Turk consumed mutton, goat meat and beef.
And the meat was prepared in a tinder and underground oven
or grilled in an open water charcoaled fire as kabobs.
Kavurma was another famous, small cubes of meat cooked in its own fat,
salted and stored in large earthenware containers
and eaten in winter months.
Pastirma was a preserved meat salted, spiced and dried in the sun.
These foods are still a very important part of Turkish cuisine.
Now milk and dairy products had a special place.
Mare's milk, which is high in vitamin C was valued
over sheep or cow's milk.
And the milk was simmered in a large shallow pan,
and the cream would rise to the surface and form a crust.
The crust was eaten, and the remaining milk was dried in the sun
and then stored as a powder.
And milk and thick cream were the basic elements of their breakfast.
But the queen of dairy products was one of their inventions.
Anybody? Yogurt, and important component of early Turkish diet
and now regarded as one of the most famous Turkish culinary
contributions to the world.
Now rounding out their basic foods were grains,
primarily wheat and barley.
And they were boiled, dried and cracked wheat bulgur,
and this is still a very important cereal
in the nutrition of the Turkish people.
And by the way, it's becoming very important in the American diet.
I'm sure I'll repeat this later, but the Mediterranean diet
of today was the Turkish diet of a thousand years ago.
They made a yufka bread that's still made the same way today, flour,
salt and water, rounded and cooked on a thin iron plate.
As each group of people, the Hittites, the Phoenicians,
the Lydians, the Byzantines, the Romans, Persians, Arabs,
[Inaudible], Mongols, Crusaders
and Ottomans crossed Anatolia from east to west.
They added to the culinary pool thereby enriching the indigenous
Turks own cultural characteristics and cooking techniques.
Now the Persian Hittite
and Byzantine empires introduced different vegetables
to the Turkish cuisine.
Cabbage, cauliflower, parsley, all of Mediterranean origin.
And Turkish cuisine was greatly influenced by Iran's use
of a combination of meats and vegetables or meat
and fruit in what is for us stews.
So, that came from the Persians.
Pilaf is a Turkish version of Turkish rice dishes.
So, Turkish and Iranian elements have gradually led to a cuisine
that the Mongols transplanted to India
where it was enhanced and changed.
And in addition, because Anatolian heritage was built up by
over a period of thousands of years,
these scores of civilizations were composed of a region
with exceptionally rich flora and fauna.
And many spices found their way into the kitchen.
Even with the advancement of technology and agriculture,
many of the methods of food preparation, preserving, cooking
and baking, are still used in rural Turkey today.
And Turkish cuisine holds a place of its own, resisting the encroachment
of fast food in homes and restaurants.
If you go to Turkey, you're not really going
to find fast food restaurants unless they're American.
Turks want good food, they go home to eat it or they go
into a restaurant where a member of a family, father, son,
grandma, mother, is the cook.
So in effect they're eating someone else's home cooking.
Travelers, merchants, peddlers, preachers, rabbis, teachers,
students, beggars, and pilgrims passed through Turkey on their way
to and from the Holy Land.
And these people were vehicles of gastronomic knowledge.
They carried the news and descriptions
of the exotic dishes and far off lands.
Sometimes they even brought ingredients from their homelands
which were introduced into the culinary pool.
Upon settling in Anatolia, the Turks adapted Arab cuisine,
adding dishes based on wheat, mutton and seafood dishes
when they reached the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.
Now Chinese and Mongol influences
to Turkish cuisine include homemade noodles and monte [phonetic],
little pastas that we think of as ravioli.
These recipes are still used today and are about 1,400 years old
and have not changed at all.
Other new foods were new fruits, vegetables and herbs.
As well as olive oil that had not existed in Central Asia.
And again, this became a basis later for the diet.
Traditional Turkish dishes utilized a variety of vegetables, beans,
grains, fresh fruits, herbs and yogurts.
Now vegetables were the preferred staple of everyday food
and a very integral part of the majority of Turkish food.
The Turks revered vegetables then,
and they still revere vegetables today.
Vegetables are served as main courses,
along with a salad and bread.
And the way this happened was the Ottomans became experts
at taking a simple vegetable and through culinary embellishment,
turned it into an exquisite morsel.
Especially in the art of stuffing vegetables.
In you go into a Greek or Lebanese restaurant,
you might order Imam Baildi, stuffed eggplant with vegetables.
That's a Turkish dish.
So sometimes in Lebanese and Greek restaurant you will be eating
Turkish food unchanged from the way it was hundreds
and hundreds of years ago.
Eggplant is the queen of vegetables.
And any cook worth their salt can prepare eggplant
in at least 40 different ways.
Other vegetables that were favored were bell peppers, tomatoes,
okra, squash and cucumber.
And the recorded history of Turkish cuisine is thought to have begun
in the 10th Century when the Turks came into contact
with the Iran Islamic culture.
And they learned again, the rice dishes from the Persian.
And then they took that, enhanced them,
and then created their own rice dishes.
The Seljuqs introduced new fruits, vegetables and herbs
and new sources for olive oil.
And again, they would take recipes and ingredients,
incorporate them, and make them their own.
They turned the grand cuisine of medieval Baghdad
into something really impressively elegant,
which evolved into what was called the imperial cuisine.
Okay, [cough] excuse me.
The [inaudible] placed great importance on cooking,
and their philosopher began to write a lot about it as an art form.
And their system of governance began to pattern itself
around Persian models, and so did their recipes.
In the 11th and 12th Centuries, much of the power was transferred
from Baghdad to the Seljuqs, who were a Turkish dynasty,
and this later rich culinary foundation
for the Ottoman Empire to build on.
Now the Turks are now neighbors of the Greeks.
So some Greek influence was felt, especially in the baking
around loaves of bread, as opposed to the flat breads
of many of the other countries.
In addition, from the 11th to the 14th Century,
a lot of Greek words were applied to fish and seafood dishes.
Under the reign of the emperor Murad the Second, 1421 to 1444,
and the father of Mehmed the Conqueror,
the meals were very, very simple.
And varieties were rare in both the imperial and popular tables.
The development of the Ottoman cuisine actually began
when Murad the Second ascended the throne.
The most significant impact on Turkish cuisine came during the rise
of the Ottoman Empire and the reign of Mehmed the Second
who conquered Istanbul in 1453.
The culinary arts played an important part of court life
with Topkapi Palace, the center of the empire,
with all culinary activities.
Mehmed was a gourmand, and the richest
and most diverse flavors found
in the dishes were prepared during his reign.
Ottoman meals always began with broth and ended with the sweet.
Deemed to be healthful foods, broths were prepared with beef
or chicken stock, yogurt or fish stock, and then they would add rice,
dried wheat, dried fresh fruits, dried vegetables and roots.
And the Turks believed that having broth first prepared the stomach
for all the food that was going to follow.
Any good cook during this time period would have a repertoire
of over 100 soups.
An evidence of soup's importance among the Ottoman could be found
in the worries of grandmothers and mothers who feared
that they would not be able to marry off the family's youngest daughters
who could not cook a decent soup.
Conquests of the Ottoman Empire's eating and drinking begins to change
with the conquest of Istanbul, because this is when it went
from a tribal to a universal empire.
And the culinary habits began to become universal with the adoption
and simulation of the Byzantine customs.
And the Turks had found a whole new array of foods
and eating habits much closer to our practices of eating than to
that of Medieval Europe at the same time.
Stuffed grape leaves was one of the main features.
And 16th Century Turkish foods had beginnings
with an Arab book written in the 15th Century.
And a later version became the first Turkish cookbook.
And mentioned in this work are dalmas [phonetic],
nut-stuffed sweets, common foods,
and the fabulous sherbet fruit syrups.
Sherbets were served with ice and snow from the mountains
that were stored in elaborate ice houses,
and they were built specifically for the purpose
of keeping ice year round.
Not necessarily for you and me.
It always seemed to be in the beginning that it was
for royalty and the wealthy.
Just like chocolate and coffee and tea were at the time.
At the height of its glory in the 16th Century,
the Ottoman Empire spread east to west from Baghdad to Tripoli
and north to south from Budapest to Cairo, which was a major spice city,
a sister city to Venice which the Turks also controlled.
Now I thought it very interesting
that once the Turks conquered a nation, they rarely sought
to impose their culture, and there was no unifying language.
So if I conquered you, not only did you keep your language,
your kept your religion.
I did not care.
All I wanted was your taxes.
And so it was a time when Christians, Arabs, Jews, Muslims,
all lived together very peacefully for hundreds and hundreds of years.
This was a palace grocery list in 1661.
The palace went through 36,000 bushels of rice,
3,000 pounds of noodles, 500,000 bushels of chickpeas,
12,000 pounds of salt in one year.
And in 1723 the meat supply was 3,000 head of beef,
60,000 of mutton, 20,000 of veal,
and 200,000 fowl, and 100,000 pigeons.
Two hundred and fifty tons of bread were baked in Istanbul every day.
And a list of deliveries to the palace notes the arrival
of 2,000 pounds of cloves, nutmeg, and 206 pounds of saffron,
if you could imagine what that would be worth today.
These were probably used to flavor the pilafs.
They were favored dishes of the sultan.
I found that Americans know very little about geography.
I was a schoolteacher before I got into this.
And they really don't know very much about countries outside of our own.
I know we try and teach them, but with more
and more travel being accessible to more and more ages,
I know even my nine year old grandson is taking a trip
to Boston with his school.
Americans will become much more familiar with other countries,
their cultures, their cuisines,
and most importantly where they're located.
People have no idea of how big the Ottoman Empire was.
It composed in my mind probably about half of the world.
So these are the modern names of the countries that were part
of the Ottoman territories.
And this goes from the end of the 1300s
to the founding of the [Inaudible] Turk.
So you have in Europe, you have Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Crete,
Crimea, Greece, Herzegovina, Hungary, Slovenia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, North Aegean Islands, Rhodes, Moldavia,
Transylvania, and Serbia.
In Asia, [cough] excuse me, you have Armenia, Azerbaijan, Persia,
Georgia, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen.
And in Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Nubia,
Darfur, Tunisia, just to name a few.
So think about all of this, and this was all new culinary territory.
And I read a description of the Ottomans during this time period.
They were called culinary plunderers.
Because wherever they conquered, all they cared
about was send home the best foods, the best ingredients,
and the best recipes to Topkapi Palace.
In fact, Marie Antoinette's chef came to work
at Topkapi Palace after she was beheaded.
And I think there's, in my eyes, one Turkish recipe
that has a French influence and that's sultan's delight,
which is eggplant that's cooked and then smashed to pieces
and mixed with béchamel sauce.
And you know the Turks did not invent béchamel sauce.
And then a slow-cooked lamb stew is served on top of this.
So I think they had a little bit
of French beside the Arab influences and the others.
Now dishes emerged under Suleiman the Magnificent.
The creations from the palace reached such dizzying heights
of indulgence that they ended up with humorous or sensuous names
like young lady's breast, lady's thighs, lady's navels.
The recipes are still called by these names today.
They are still cooked and eaten today.
And cooking was regarded as an art form.
And eating a pleasure.
And this is a legacy that remains the basis for Turkish cooking today.
And if the Ottomans were culinary plungers, they were dedicated
to the pleasures of the table.
And the palace cooks perfected the recipes they gathered
from across their empire.
Some of the earliest fusion cooking began with the Ottomans
to create one of the world's greatest cuisines.
The palace cooks plundered the markets for exotic ingredients
to produce more ambitious meals.
In the 17th Century, a Venetian ambassador was shocked
to find himself in a banquet of 130 courses.
If there was an excess, there was a true devotion
to the sensual pleasures of the table and a continuing quest
for a refinement of the dishes.
Now in the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Ottomans traded
with the Spaniards, who introduced them
to many new products from the New World.
So into Istanbul from Arab traders
and Spanish traders came chili peppers, tomatoes and maze,
which were very quickly absorbed into the palace cuisine.
And eventually out into the marketplace
where the housewives could begin to get these items
and use their own creativity in creating their own recipes.
And this again is the basis right there
of what was called the Mediterranean diet today.
These grains, these vegetables, these fruits.
The kitchen staff grew to 1370 people,
all of them lived in the palace grounds.
But each one had a different job, so there was the jam man
and the soup man, and the bread man and on and on
and on at [inaudible] item.
And each dish was regarded as a separate skill.
So if you made soup, you never made anything else.
And so she made the bread.
Someone else made the candy.
Someone else prepared the fish.
And it never changed.
And every Ottoman city was a shopping center.
How many have been to Istanbul, to the Grand Bazaar?
Nothing was more glorious than Istanbul's Grand Bazaar.
Now this was a small town in itself.
It was built in 1493 and had 67 main streets
and 4,000 shops all under one roof.
Spices, dried fruits, nuts, seeds, Turkish delights,
and edibles filled most of the shops.
But today when you walk
in it's jewelry that's going to hit you first.
But this was prime real estate,
and it was built right on the Golden Horn.
It has not changed since 1492.
It also had an Egyptian Bazaar
or spice market, which stands very close.
It was built in 1664.
And you just walk through rows of candies and nuts and spices,
and everything is just piled like you see it here.
And you get a little bag and you fill it with what you want.
But they also had caviar from the Black Sea and butter from Moldova.
Olives, dried fish from Greece.
Fruits and nuts from the Balkans, dates from Egypt.
And even live trout that came from Macedonia's rivers.
As time passed, olive oil became the alternative for butter,
and sugar replaced honey and grape molasses in desserts.
Cumin, coriander, cinnamon, mustard,
pepper and saffron were the most common spices.
And parsley and mint the primary herbs.
And onions and garlic were very important in cooking of the Turks.
With over 5,000 miles of shoreline, fish and seafood are abundant
in the seas around Turkey.
And some of the best fish and seafood in the world
in the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean,
the Mediterranean, and the [inaudible].
Everything from lobster and mussels, to swordfish, sea bass,
mackerels, sardines, and anchovies.
I have to say the Turks worship anchovies.
They worship them so much they make a dessert using them.
And they also love sardines.
Desserts were everywhere.
But they're usually fresh fruits in season.
Puddings are [inaudible].
Spring started with strawberries and then came cherries and apricots.
By the way, Turkey has not only banana plantations
but tea plantations.
Besides growing almonds, hazelnuts and pistachio,
apricots are another thing that Turkey is famous for.
Figs and quince.
I never had eaten a quince until I learned how to do Turkish cooking.
And the winter fruits were oranges, bananas
and spring summer everything is fresh.
But in some regions, fruit is dried for winter use.
Or jams and preserves.
And the Ottoman Empire was famous for its sweets and pastries.
They had three kinds of sweets, pastries, milk custards,
fruit desserts, and of course, baklava, which is thought
that the Turks also invented.
This is asure.
Asure is Noah's pudding.
This is the pudding that was the last meal on the arc that I told you
about in the beginning when I said that Noah's Arc rested
on Mount Ararat, and the last meal
on the arc was a pudding that's still served today by the name
of asure, or Noah's pudding.
A lot of butter and sugar soaked with thick sugar syrup.
No chocolate.
I was kind of dismayed to find there was no chocolate,
but being adaptable I quickly learned to love sugar syrup instead.
That was my substitute.
But these sweet pastries are not served for dessert.
These are served at very special parties or for tea or coffee.
If you're invited to someone's house for tea or coffee,
then you'll get these rich desserts.
Otherwise, dessert is fruit.
Some type of variety of fruit or a pudding.
These are cookies.
This is what got me into Turkish cooking was the little almond cookie
on the right.
I was invited to a luncheon at the Ambassador's home,
which is magnificent, one of the grand homes of Washington.
And it was very sweet coated with sugar.
And I ate 12 of them.
And that was after pigging out on this meal.
And so I asked one of the gentlemen
who was serving this what this cookie was
because I knew I wanted to make this cookie.
And he said Shakespeare.
Okay I went home and wrote down Shakespeare.
So I called the Ambassador's wife's press secretary the next day.
And I said, I was at the party yesterday,
and I need the Shakespeare cookie recipe.
And she said we have no Shakespeare cookie recipe.
I said, yes you do.
She said, no we don't.
I said don't tell me, I ate 12.
I said I'll tell you what.
I'll call back in an hour.
Please find the recipe for me.
So I called back, and she says, do you me shakkar para.
I said yes, that's what I said, Shakespeare,
S-H-A-K-P, it's all the same.
And that's when I knew that I had to learn Turkish cooking.
And I began writing the first Turkish book
with the Ambassador's wife.
The other interesting thing I learned is I discovered this little
shortbread cookie.
Now shortbread cookies aren't especially sweet
for someone that's a sugar and chocolate addict.
But the [inaudible] was really good.
I found them almost addictive.
And so Nerr [phonetic] was in [Inaudible], and I called her
and I said, oh I found this new cookie.
We can put it in our book, the book that's here.
And she said, there was a dead silence.
I know I'm in trouble with Nerr when there's dead silence.
She said, Sheilah, we don't put cookie recipes in our cookbook.
Recipes, cookies are not dessert.
Okay. Cookies are only served when ladies go
to gossip and have tea and coffee.
So there is no [inaudible] recipe in our book.
But now we're going to go to a celebration feast at the palace
for the dinner with the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
Now, that's what Europeans called him.
Suleiman the Magnificent.
The Ottomans called him the law giver.
The palace now known as Topkapi, was divided into courts.
So when you entered the first court,
this was the most accessible to everybody.
And the fourth court was the most private.
And this is the entrance to the palace.
When you enter through the imperial gate,
you find the [inaudible] of the Janissaries.
And nobody is challenged to enter the first court.
You just walk in.
If you're an artist and a crafts person, anybody off the street,
a beggar, a lawyer, whatever.
You can go through this gate and into the first courtyard,
and nobody will bother you.
Everybody is welcome.
Now the Janissaries were members of an elite course.
They were the first Ottoman standing army.
And the sultans found them around 1365.
Now, anybody know about the Janissaries?
I hate to say this, but they were children who were conscripted
from Christians and other religions to grow up and be soldiers
for the sultan's private army.
So they went around taking from the Balkans,
and they became the property of the sultan.
And most of them eventually converted to Islam.
But over time, this army gained great power.
And they were so successful at what they did, they became one
of the strongest institutions in the empire.
In 1574, there were 20,000 of them.
In 1826 there were 135,000 of them.
Now, they had a very interesting occupation or charity function.
They ran eating houses which they knew as soup kitchens.
And this was to feed the poor.
And these were always attached to a mosque complex.
And their only aim was to feed the poor.
And above anything else,
the Janissaries prized their soup cauldrons so much so that
on the front of their caps, they had a little gilded or jeweled ornament
that a soup spoon would be placed in.
So they always had their soup spoon.
And the caldron was shown upon their banners.
So they started the first charity soup kitchens,
and soup was their thing.
They wore all kind of varied ornate headdresses.
Some of them had bird of paradise feathers that went
from their heads down to their waists.
And their battalions were organized the same way the sultan's kitchen
were organized.
The cauldrons of the soups were used to cook pilaf soups
and Noah's pudding, asure.
And this is the Janissaries.
Here's one of them carrying a symbolic soup spoon.
And different colored clothing, turbans
and boots would designate what rank a person in the Janissaries was.
Now this is the second court.
And during the 16th Century it was wood.
It enclosed a lot of beautiful gardens
of cypress trees and fountains.
There was gazelles and peacocks.
And here you would find government officials and visiting envoys,
and it housed a place where the government could meet,
an assembly hall.
It also housed the harem and the palace kitchens.
Now the palace kitchens were set up to feed up to 10,000 people a day.
These are just some of the silk court costumes.
And this is the style of clothing you would have found
if you were an invited guest.
Now to enter the kitchen you go through a long narrow inner court
that connects eight kitchens.
Each was a lofty chamber with a big dome roof.
And cauldrons were suspended by chains from the ceiling.
Iron bars held them up.
And there were cooking assistants over all of the fire pits
who would do nothing but raise and lower the cauldrons
to adjust the heat or stir the contents of the pot.
Now each of the kitchens had its own head chef.
Plus apprentices.
Plus workmen.
And each of 150 cooks had specific duties to cook to perfection courses
of soups, roasted meats, pilafs and desserts.
The head of the kitchen warden was equivalent
to the head of the whole army.
That's how important the kitchen warden was.
And during the period of 1574 to 1595, the kitchen staff was
over 1,100 cooks and their assistants.
Now the palace cooks were to feed the members
of the councils on the days they met.
And they had to prepare food for 5,000 public people on special days
when the emperor of the sultan would designate that the poor
and the citizens of the empire were to be fed.
This is an honor and an obligation of the sultan under Islamic law.
And eventually the kitchens grew to a dozen.
And each one cared for a specific person or a group like the sultan,
the harem, the royal princes, members of the council.
Once kitchen was just designated for nothing but sweets and drinks.
If you attended a feast for a visiting ambassador [inaudible]
which was for males only, you would enter the great dining hall
with walls covered in ceramic tiles of floral designs, with vines
and carnations, roses and tulips.
Roses, carnations and tulips are the flowers of Turkey.
Most tables were circular and very low with plush cushions
or rugs instead of chairs, and you would sit cross-legged.
And usually there would be [inaudible] or ambassador
who sat at a silver table.
These are some of the court decorations that you might see
on the people that were attending this kind of [inaudible].
And these are some of the accoutrements
that you could be served from.
Now there could be 50 to 100 courses.
And 2,000 very richly dressed courtiers would wear silk,
satins and velvets, or a suit of gold threads,
which would be what the ambassador wore.
And again, the cut and color of the garments, the shape and size
of the turban, would determine what rank the guest was.
Just by looking at somebody even without an introduction,
you would know where they placed in the rank.
You would begin to smell the wonderful aromas that would come
into the hall of cinnamon and saffron and lavender.
Now the meal was carried in on huge round trays,
either of gold, silver or copper.
Or Chinese porcelain.
If you get to go to Topkapi Palace,
they have one of the most fabulous Chinese porcelain
collections anywhere.
They began collecting very, very,
very early when they first began to trade with China.
Your main course might be chicken or lamb
in a pomegranate sauce with pilafs.
And the flavors of candied fruits and sorbets would be dessert.
Now dinnerware was comprised of Chinese porcelain, dishes of gold,
dishes of silver and crystal,
and usually they would have rare jewels embellished along the
interior or the exterior of the dishes.
Now spoons were foremost of importance.
And they came in many sizes and shapes because they were used
for soups, pilafs, puddings, stewed fruit, tea and coffee.
And if you sat at a table which was a communal table where a big dish
of pilaf, a covered dish, was put down in front of you,
then you had to have a long handled spoon so you could reach
and fight the others for what was in that communal dish.
Now, spoons were so important because meats and things were
so tender they were eaten with the hand.
So really your spoon was your most important utensil.
They were kept in beautifully carved or painted spoon holders.
Or embroidered bags.
And they were made by special craftsmen who specialized
in carving wooden spoons.
And even the simplest would have wonderful decorations.
Now the spoons for the richer would be made of tortoise shell, silver,
gold, mother of pearl, and would be set
with coral, ivory or precious gems.
You know if you decided to have a large party for your friends,
the cutlery could be a problem because nobody had enough spoons
to feed usually their guests.
That meant everybody had to bring their own spoon.
And so you would show up with your own spoon in a beautiful bag
of velvet or satin or embroidered or gold thread
or maybe jewel-encrusted, and each bag would be a wonderful masterpiece
of needlework and the finest spoon you own.
So when you sat down, everybody wanted to see your spoon to see
if your spoon was nicer than their spoon.
Rivalry over spoons was hardly good manners, but women used
to warn their daughters to stop gossiping, stop looking,
pick up your own spoons and get on with the eating, leading to a rhyme,
add not to word, but take spoons to rice.
People did not converse or talk during dinner.
They just ate.
Food was either cut into bite-sized pieces,
or again it was just torn with the hands.
No knives or forks were used.
Only two spoons.
One for your savory, and the other
for your sherbet or your sweet dessert.
Fingers were the utensils of choice.
And these are some of the types of pots and pans
that the servants would cook in or would serve in.
And when they would come in with one of the dishes,
they would always announce what it was before they put it down.
So you would know what you were going to be eating.
There was no guessing about, hmm, what is that, you know,
maybe I'm not going to like it.
The aromas were always enticing and the flavors memorable.
And bread was always served in abundance.
Now you might have grape leaves stuffed with lamb and plums.
You could have onion fritters.
You could have savory layered bread.
Wheat berry soup.
Yogurt was used in soups and sauces and main courses and desserts.
Cheeses, olives were also served.
Entrées at the palace included a variety of meat dishes
which were roasted, stewed or baked in a pastry.
And dishes also included a variety of rices, vegetables,
the vegetables could be with the meat, pickled.
In summer the Turks would serve salad,
but in the winter you got pickles
as the next course or as the accompaniment.
Some food was fried in batter or stuffed with filling.
Sauces were all but nonexistent.
And that's why the sultan's delight is so unusual,
because usually sauces are just something made
with yogurt, not with [inaudible].
And monte [phonetic] I told you was the little teeny raviolis.
Now the desserts could be all types of things.
The cooks in the palace were very creative, and they liked
to put on a good display.
They used a lot of spun sugar.
They would create whole gardens of animals and people all made
out of spun sugar that would go on the table.
Lakes and fountains and shrubs and flowers were made out of sugar
and every kind of animal.
Cardamom was very popular during this period of cooking.
And creamed rice pudding, stuffed pastries with marzipan, baklava.
Baklava was used at all circumcisions.
That was the dessert that was served
if you were invited to a circumcision.
I noticed that in other religions too.
Amy didn't the Arabs also use baklava?
Yeah. And chickpeas were also used among the different religions
for special occasions.
Creamed rice was popular, and a sweetened yellow pudding.
Now the preferred drink of the Ottomans for breakfast was tea.
And they love apple tea.
Something you have to acquire a taste for.
But coffee was the preferred drink as part of the banquet.
And for a long time, coffee was not an acceptable drink
because it was thought to intoxicate the sultan and the sultan needed
to have all his wits about him.
So it was more or less banned.
But eventually it became acceptable, and they were allowed to have it.
And to finish here, I just wanted to talk about baklava for a minute.
Every month of Ramadan, the Ottoman sultans had trays
of baklava made for the Janissaries.
There would be one tray for every ten soldiers.
And each tray would be covered by a silk cloth and delivered
to the Janissary barracks.
Now, if the trays were returned the following day with nothing on them,
everything was fine between the sultan and the Janissaries.
Don't forget, talking about 100 and some thousand soldiers
that are sitting right there in the palace grounds.
But if something was left on the trays when it was returned
to the sultan, then the sultan knew that there was a problem.
And a number of periods of history had Janissary revolutions.
So the sultan had to be very careful how he treated these people.
And there were guilds depending on what kind of cook you were.
You belonged to a cooking guild.
And whirling dervishes said that the chefs were expected to cook those
around them, meaning the apprentices, so that the people,
the idea of people being absorbed into the food
or their spirits absorbed into the food.
So many refinements of this cuisine were maintained
down to the dissolution of the empire in World War I.
And today modern Turks are very proud of their culinary heritage
and are the only people in the Middle East
who seriously their food history.
There are restaurants in Istanbul today that still serve court dishes,
while others are more into what I call the home cooking
that you might find in the restaurants here.
Every now and then a court dish might show up.
Today there are seven regions in Turkey.
Each has a different climate and geography
and indigenous agriculture products, cultures, customs.
The Turks are masterful at successfully combining three
of the most important things in life, food, family and friends.
Turkish food then and Turkish food now, fresh, seasonal, regional.
Again, the basis of many of the new diets for today.
So foreign trade and dominance and a deep respect
for the culinary arts have made modern Turkey a paradise
for food lovers.
No matter where you travel in Turkey, delicious homemade breads,
fresh quality ingredients
and traditional recipes will beckon you to the table.
According to the Turkish tradition,
a stranger at one's doorstep is considered a guest from God,
and should be accommodated accordingly.
So if you're fortunate enough to be a guest in a Turkish person's home,
rest assuredly that Mediterranean fusion meal probably awaits you.
So thank you so much for coming, and I'd be happy to answer questions.
>> Thank you Sheilah very much.
We have time for a few questions and answer.
>> Get yourselves to the nearest Turkish restaurant quickly.
[ Inaudible Question ]
Yeah, it's wonderful isn't it?
Not to see McDonald's or Pizza Hut.
[ Inaudible Question ]
Very inexpensive.
I tell people that if you go to Turkey you get so much bang
for your dollars as compared to going to Greece.
It's totally different.
And most Turks speak some if not a lot of English.
So it's not like you have a problem.
They're very friendly.
They'll take you by the hand and take you where you want to go
if they're not trying to drag you into their brother's rug shop.
But it's just, you can't spend enough time in Turkey.
It's so big.
And it's so different.
And what you eat in Istanbul,
40 miles away they might never have heard of.
When I asked Nerra about this cookie [inaudible],
she'd never heard of it.
She'd never eaten it in her whole life.
So, from village to village or region to region, it's just,
the food is absolutely spectacular.
And very, very, very different.
[ Inaudible Question ]
There's two things that kind of [inaudible] Turkish delight.
One are those fried funnel cakes as I call them that we have,
and also you'll get at the Greek fairs.
You know, they take some batter and they pour it into the boiling oil.
And then they dip it in honey syrup.
That's, some people call that Turkish delight.
But then there's the Turkish delight candies, which I love that are fused
with rose water or orange blossom or pistachios or other little things
that are cut into little tiny squares
and dusted with coconut or sugar.
That's definitely a Turkish thing.
You really don't find that.
[ Inaudible Response ]
Yes. Too many places other than Turkey.
They do sell them in the Mediterranean markets
around town, because I've seen them.
I think they're under $7 for a box of them.
There are a lot of Mediterranean markets
that have Turkish ingredients.
And sometimes you can buy the cinnamon, the round breads that look
like bagels but their thinner, and they have the black seeds on top.
They eat those daily for breakfast.
It was very interesting to eat at the ambassador's house
and have Turkish breakfast.
Turkish breakfast, everything is homemade.
The bread is homemade.
All the jams and preserves are homemade.
There was always a dish of olives.
A dish of cheeses, yogurt and tea.
And that would be a Turkish breakfast.
They eat three meals a day.
Sometimes the big meal is lunch.
And sometimes the big meal is supper.
I think it would depend whether it's
where there is an agricultural community.
They eat their bigger meals at lunchtime,
so they have strength to go back to work.
They don't take siestas in Turkey.
But the seafood, and it's just everything is just amazing there.
I mean, it's a phenomenal part of the world.
And when you think that for 5 or 600 years,
how advanced they were compared to what was going on in quote,
modern Europe of the 15, 1600s, even the 1700s.
It's really an interesting culture to study and to learn about.
And as I said, I found that most Americans did not know
that Istanbul's the only city on two continents,
half in Asia, half in Europe.
In fact, I was going to the Asian half for dinner,
and I crossed a bridge and there was a big beltway green sign
that said welcome to Asia.
So I called my husband I said, hey I could be in Iraq for dinner
in seven hours or something.
You've never, I never had a sense of how close things were to Turkey.
And then you cross the bridge and you're in the European side.
And the crusaders had to come to Istanbul to cross the Bosphorus
to continue down to the Holy Land.
And if any of you, you know, know the story about the crusades
and how the emperor had asked the Pope for some what do you call
when you hire, mercenaries to come and protect him, and the Pope came
up with the brilliant idea of sending 100,000 crusaders
to Istanbul where he expected the emperor to feed and house and take
in these hoard of people and then transport them by boat
across the Bosphorus so they could go on to the Holy Land.
That went on for 12 years.
And the emperor just closed the doors of the city and refused.
So it's the main part of the Silk Road.
People do not realize the Silk Road is a misnomer.
There is three silk roads and a sea silk road.
But people over centuries have just come to call it The Silk Road.
But there really in reality were the four different routes that travel.
But everything went through Istanbul or Constantinople at the time.
So if you'd like to look at my book, you're more than welcome.
If I can answer any more questions or sign any.
>> Yes the book signing.
>> Oh, okay.
>> Afterwards.
>> Okay.
>> If anybody is interested in Sheilah's books.
>> There's a wonderful Turkish restaurant I like to go to McLean
to Kazan where it's real home cooking, inexpensive,
wonderful lunches and dinners.
Agora on 18th, approximate 18th and Kay,
has Mezzy's [phonetic] Divine down in Georgetown.
There are not a lot, but they're all really good.
And each one is different.
>> Thank you very much Sheilah.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.