Laurence Civil dons a fez to enter a restaurant where the flavors are rich and the baklava is light

There is no Turkish restaurant in Bangkok but I was recently lucky enough to have been invited to the Turkish Delight food festival celebrating the 50th An­niversary of Thai-Turkish Diplomatic Relations. The event was organized by the Dusit Thani Bangkok, together with the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey.

To ensure the authenticity of the Turkish dishes, Ekrem Sarpkaya, Executive Chef of Bilkent Hotel & Conference Centre in Ankara and his team were flown in especially for this event.

Turkish cuisine is largely the heritage of Ottoman cui­sine, which can be described as a fusion and refinement of Central Asian, Middle Eastern and Balkan cuisines. These elements led to it being described as one of the world’s three great cuisines along with French and Chi­nese.

Being unfamiliar with the Turkish cuisine Kurtulus AYKAN, Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy was my guide through the key elements of their food style.

“At the table in Turkey,” Kurtulas says, “see start our meal with salad. Five or six bowls of different dishes similar to Lebanese mezze are placed in the middle of the table and everyone just helps themselves to whatever they want.

“The next course will be a hot soup,” he says, “usually named after their main ingredient, the most common types being lentil, yoghurt, or wheat.” I tried a very tasty thick lentil soup with cumin that had a pleasingly subtle curry flavour.

“For the main course we normally serve either lamb or chicken,” he continues. “We believe that meat makes a meal richer, our preference is for milk fed lamb as the taste of mutton from the older sheep we find too strong.

Being a country with the sea on three sides we have a wide variety of fsh in our food style such as anchovy, sardines, red mullet, sea bass and turbot.”

The main course dish that most impressed me was Topkapi Palace Chicken, breast of chicken stuffed with shallots, raisins, pine nuts and long grain rice.

Pilav is the most basic, sustaining, and comforting of all Turkish dishes. The Turks cook their rice rather diferently, the secret is in the sizzle – which gives it a creamy, buttery, and melt in the mouth consistency and taste. The rice is sorted and washed, then allowed to soak in salted water and drained. It is then fried in oil (especially but­ter), and cooked with water and salt. At the end of the cooking processes, it must be left to rest for 15 to 20 minutes off the heat in order to achieve its best consistency.

“Turkish wine is not available in Thailand,” says Kurtulus, “but to complete your dinning experi­ence we have brought some of our wines, one white and one red both made with our local grapes for you to try with our food.”

The wines he had elected were from Kavaklidere Winery, Turkey’s first and oldest privately owned wine producer. The Kavaklidere Winery were es­tablished in Ankara in 1929 by Cenap And who are now Turkey’s leading wine producer.

They believe in making “Anatolian Wine from Ana­tolian Grapes” promoting indigenous noble and new grape varieties suitable for wine production that have won over 400 medals in domestic and in­ternational competitions.

The white wine we drank is made from the Narince grape which are grown in three different vineyard regions along the Yesilirmak River of Erbaa, Niksar and Tokat. The microclimate is milder than that of the Central Anatolian region because the moun­tains separating the Black Sea and the plateau local­ize the weather. The soil is sandy or gravelly, which bestows a suitable environment for producing grapes for making supreme wine. Narince produces a wine that develops its own flavours after one year. It is the only local white wine that can be aged in oak barrels, because of its complexity of aroma and well-structured body. The developed bouquet of mature fruit flavours combined with fine oak fla­vours can easily last for four or five years. Tasting this wine in the glass the colour was a sub­dued yellow-green colour; on the nose I discovered aromas of citrus fruit, lemon, and camomile and when it flows into the mouth the taste was fresh, round with vanilla flavour coming from oak aging.

Kalecik Karasi is a ‘monocépage’ wine developed after long research into the viniculture and vinifi­cation of this grape. It is cultivated in the Central Anatolia region, close to the Kizilirmak River. The vineyard benefits from the microclimate of Kizilirmak, which is milder than the continental climate of Central Anatolia. This special prestige wine is complex, elegant, well-balanced, and has a lasting and charming aroma of red fruit. It can be aged for up to ten years.

In the glass the wine has a ruby red colour, on the nose I detected aromas of red berry fruits, vanilla, chocolate; and then in the mouth its complex, el­egant, slightly oakey and the same red fruits in the aromas continued in the taste of the wine.

Baklava the world famous Turkish dessert was developed in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapi Palace. It is a pastry made of layers of filo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey. “The secret of this dish,” he explains, “is that each sheet of filo should be so thin that you can see through it.”

To finish the meal Turkish coffee made simply on requests by adding spoonfuls of ground coffee and sugar to water in a long handled open coffee pot. This is placed over a strong naked flame and boiled together for a couple of minutes, then poured into an espresso cup.

Raki is a non-sweet, usually anise-flavored apéritif normally served with the mezze at the start of the meal. I had missed that oppourtunity but had to at lest taste it before leaving. It’s the unofficial ‘national drink’ of Turkey, and it is traditionally drunk mixed with water; the dilution causes this alcoholic drink to turn a milky-white color.