Turkish treats served up at festival
Les Coffier, Contributor, Jakarta
Until Oct. 6 the Sriwedari Restaurant is running each evening a Turkish festival that not only showcases a wide range of prepared food and artistic entertainment but also has handicrafts, rugs and carpets both on display and for sale.
This is the second consecutive year of the festival, which has been organized by the Turkish Embassy, the promotion foundation of Turkey and the Hilton, with additional sponsorship from Turkish Airlines and Lion Airlines. Building on last year's success, they have made an impressive effort to show what Turkish culture is all about.
The Sriwedari is a semi open-air venue in the middle of the large, peaceful Hilton complex that provides a perfect setting for the event. You can gaze up at the starry sky while eating and forget, for a few moments at least, that you are slap-bang in the middle of the bustling metropolis.
The very wide range of food is displayed very attractively, buffet-style, and the difficulty for most guests at this all-you- can-eat affair is twofold. First, how to cram a good selection of it on their plate and second, not taking too much of each dish in order to leave room for the others!
The chefs -- Yahya Erdogan, Kamil Yilmaz and Aydin Dayi -- have been flown over for the event. In the Turkish culinary tradition, each has a particular specialty and together they have put together a mouthwatering array of edible treats. They have also been assisted by Sezai, who is the genius in the kitchens at Anatolia Restaurant in Kemang and the Turkish Cafi in Plaza Senayan (reviewed in The Jakarta Post on Aug. 1).
In a brief conversation on the first night Sezai told me how extensively the Turkish culinary arts had pervaded large parts of the Middle East during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire. So influential was this that many of the dishes we regard as the typical fare of other countries in the region are, in fact, their versions of the Turkish original!
So much for scene-setting; what about the actual food? As you might expect, it was dominated by Mediterranean vegetables, olive oil and lamb, with quite a lot of chicken on offer too.
The chefs had put together an array of typical "village" food from various parts of the country. One common characteristic of this type of food is that leftovers cannot really be stored and eaten later; the guests at Sriwedari made sure that this eventuality did not arise!
Dishes in olive oil included stuffed vine leaves, cabbage and artichokes, leeks and spinach boranaki. There was a wide range of salads, including pijaz (cold white beans with onions), eggplant, spicy tomato, chickpea, potato, karisik (mixed pickles), orgu peyniri (cheese plated) and green lentil.
Soups ranged from carrot, with cream, to dugun corbasi (wedding soup) and bakla enize corbasi (broad bean soup).
There were plenty of hot dishes to choose from, but some of my favorites were karisik sebze sote (sauteed mixed vegetables), kuzu elbosan tava (lamb with egg and yogurt sauce), levrek pilavi (sultan's pilaf rice), karidesli levrek firinda (baked sea bass with shrimps) and kuzu pirzola sahan kebali (lamb kebabs).
Of course, if there's one Turkish dish that most people are familiar with, it's probably doner kebabs, and these were available, using moist, full-flavored lamb. Most of the meat used at this event has been imported, so satisfaction is guaranteed.
A range of ice cream and Turkish desserts was also on display, such as baklava with walnut (a sweet paste enveloped in filo pastry), halva (carrot-based dessert) with semolina or nuts, dates and assorted fresh tropical fruit.
For those determined to round off the culinary experience de rigueur, Turkish coffee was available (but patrons had to supply their own sleeping tablets if they didn't want to stay awake all night).
The cost of the buffet is Rp 120,000 ++, very reasonable indeed when you consider the wide range of food on offer, in unlimited quantities too!
Drinks are extra, and the usual range of alcoholic and non- alcoholic beverages is available, plus some Turkish red and white wines, at around Rp 62,000 ++ per glass or Rp 250,000 ++ per bottle.
The event was enlivened by performances of Turkish music, singing and dancing, and the genial master of ceremonies auctioned off some rugs and carpets too, at a fraction of their open-market value. These items were genuine, intricately patterned, handmade works of art, taking about six months to complete.
The final comment takes us back to the food, the highlight of the evening. The art of preparing food to high standards is intensely personal and can challenge a chef's professionalism, as Sezai confirmed. "If I am not in the right mood I cannot cook well that day and I advise my customers accordingly."