Food was one of Mevlana’s favourite sources for metaphors. He wrote that his life could be summed up in the words “I was raw, I was cooked, I was burned.” The references to food and drink that fill his poetry are allusions to higher, more philosophical ideals. Those who have not yet turned toward God are unripe fruit. A man aroused by faith is a chickpea dancing in a boiling pot or a fish flipping in a pan. God’s grace is sweet almond helva. For Mevlana, for the dervishes that follow his path and, indeed, for Nevin, the language of food is the language of faith.
Eventually your beloved becomes your bread and your water, your lighting candle and your beauty, your meze and your wine.
I told the maitre’d at Kösk Konya Mutfagi I was there to meet Nevin Halici. He led me to a second-floor dining room with a wood-planked roof and tables laid out with gold linen. Nevin was waiting for me with her brother and two sisters. She stood to shake my hand and invited me to sit. “I will put you on a program to learn about the food of Konya. Tonight we will have Konya ‘home food,’” she said, and signalled for the waiter that we were ready to eat.
The meal began with a typical Turkish salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions alongside paper-thin yufka bread. Then came a bowl of manti, a sort of Turkish ravioli made of pasta so delicate it could hardly contain the lumps of ground meat. This was sprinkled with dried mint and drizzled with yogourt and burnt butter. I told Nevin it was the best manti I’d ever had. She nodded. “That is because a woman cooked it. Women cook from their heart.”
A dish of sweet white onions stewed in pomegranate syrup came next, then a bowl of creamy yogourt. Grilled lamb cubes on puréed eggplant, tomato, and green pepper followed. By the time dessert came, a helva made with fresh cream, I could hardly eat anymore. Nevin pushed the plate of helva toward me. “You are young,” she said. “You can eat.”
Because I am Canadian, Nevin told me about her childhood dream of visiting Niagara Falls, but mostly we talked about food. She told me about her favourite restaurants in Istanbul, like Haci Abdullah, whose chefs have a hundred Ottoman-era recipes in their arsenal. When I showed her a picture of my wife, she said, “You are lucky to have such a beautiful wife. You should wake up each morning and make her breakfast.” For Nevin, cooking is the essential expression of love.
Nevin had the army of blue-shirted young waiters at her command; they sprang to our table whenever she glanced up at them. The boys relayed her instructions to the kitchen, brought a little more of whatever Nevin asked for, and cleared away the plates and silverware between each course. I was relieved when one of the servers came to take away our helva – I had eaten far too much – but then the man returned bearing a bowl of tart tomato soup with dried okra. “Something sour should always follow something sweet,” Nevin explained. “It helps get you ready for the next menu.”
Apparently we were not done. Once we finished the soup, our waiter set down a platter of grape leaves stuffed with minced meat and rice. Called sarma, they were much shorter than the stuffed grape leaves I’d had elsewhere. Nevin told me of an archaic belief that a woman who makes her sarma too long is not virtuous. “If a woman makes her sarma longer than the tip of her finger, her husband can send her back to her father’s house.” Then we had a second dessert of flaky Konya-style baklava. The arrival of Turkish coffee signalled that the meal was finally, mercifully, finished.
The sequence of courses – savoury dishes followed by something sweet, something sour, then another series of savouries – was a typical Konya banquet menu. The whole process could be repeated up to six times. I assumed that such banquets were reserved only for grand occasions such as weddings, but Nevin shook her head. “Just receiving a guest is special occasion enough.
“There is another tradition. A host must give her guest a gift at the end of a meal. It is for ‘tooth rent.’ I borrowed your teeth to eat this meal so I must pay rent.” She pulled a carved wooden spoon from her purse and handed it to me. “In Ottoman times, they used to put a golden chickpea in the pilaf. You only get a spoon.” She laughed. Only my offer to pay for the meal chased away her smile. She would not accept a dime.
