Here are Caucasians, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, Gipsies etc.
And I know that "sucuk and pastirma" are Armenian foods.
Who can write about this city???
Posted 29 August 2003 - 06:32 AM
Posted 29 August 2003 - 08:32 AM
Posted 29 August 2003 - 03:24 PM
Edited by Caucasian, 30 August 2003 - 11:35 AM.
Posted 04 December 2003 - 04:49 AM
Posted 13 June 2017 - 11:44 AM
KAYSERI, Turkey—
I should admit that during my first year in Turkey, I was—aside from the chunks of meat that restaurants like to smuggle into innocent-looking beans—a vegetarian. Though I enjoyed the wealth of meat-free mezzes, salads, and sarma on offer, one day I asked myself, “How have I lived in Turkey for this long without eating a kebab?” And so it began.
Four years later, I remain an omnivore. But even if I do return to a shoots-and-leaves-only diet, there is one star of Turkish cuisine that will remain as an exception: the air-dried, super-spiced, garlic-infused, thinly sliced beef known as pastırma, which is synonymous with the city of Kayseri. In retrospect, I was lucky to have embraced meat before dating the Kayseri girl who is now my wife, as otherwise there would have been serious objections at the wedding.
Stepping off the plane from Istanbul at the Kayseri airport, you are met with a whiff of manure from the surrounding fields. A straight, flat road takes you to the city center in ten minutes. Apartment buildings and hotels alternate with Seljuk mosques, madrassahs, and tent-like mausolea called kümbet. There are no winding roads, no blaring horns, no grinding traffic, no bellowing crowds; oddly, this Anatolian city of one million seems more modern than Istanbul.
Above it all is the snow-capped peak of Mount Erciyes. This dormant volcano, the highest peak in Central Anatolia, is a shimmering glimpse of heaven rising from the Kayseri plain. On the other side are the surreal rockscapes of Cappadocia, produced by the erosion of volcanic matter that spewed across the region millions of years ago and beloved by tourists. On this side of the mountain, the rockless flatlands of Kayseri do not draw the same crowds. There are no balloon trips or horseback rides here, and few foreigners are drawn to the city’s Seljuk architecture, which combines the shape of Turkic tents with traces of Iranian arabesque. Instead, it is the unique conditions of heat and wind that have made Kayseri famous as the pastırma capital of Turkey.
According to Turkish tradition, this form of meat arrived in Kayseri in the 11th century, stuffed in the saddle bags of the Seljuk horsemen who carved up the withering Byzantine Empire. The Seljuks were the first wave of Turks to settle in Anatolia though their culture was strongly influenced by Iran. Writers and philosophers such as Rumi, al-Ghazali, and Sa’adi Shirazi flourished under the Seljuk Empire that ruled much of Iran, Anatolia, and the Arab world.
These Turkic warriors were by no means pastırma’s inventors, continuing a Central Asian tradition that predated Atilla the Hun. In summer, the nomadic Huns would dry a portion of their meat, saving it for the freezing winters of the steppe when food was scarce.
A rather hostile description from ancient Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus reports that the Huns were fond of “the half-raw flesh of any kind of animal whatever, which they put between their thighs and the backs of their horses.” The word pastırma comes from a Turkic root meaning “to press,” and pressure with weights is part of the production process. But holding raw meat against a horse seems unsanitary even for a Hunnic stomach, and this detail is likely a product of the Roman imagination.
When the Seljuk Empire crumbled and the Ottoman Empire rose in its place, pastırma still held sway over the imperial palate. Mehmet II, the Ottoman sultan who conquered Istanbul in 1453, liked to break his fast during Ramadan with a dish called Yumurta-yı Hümayun or “Imperial Eggs.” Consisting of caramelized onions, eggs, and pastırma served hot in the pan, this dish was savored by generations of sultans afterwards.
Many of Istanbul’s grand palaces and mosques might owe their place to pastırma
Two centuries later, travel writer Evliya Çelebi confirmed Kayseri as the empire’s pastırma capital in his epic the Seyahatname. After a visit to Kayseri, Çelebi writes, “…the cumin-flavored beef pastırma that is famous under the name lahm-ı kadit (thinly sliced meat) is found nowhere else. They send it as gifts to Istanbul.”
If one story about imperial architect Krikor Balyan is true, then many of Istanbul’s grand palaces and mosques owe their place to pastırma. In the 1820s, a row between political factions forced Balyan into exile in Kayseri. According to Ottoman writer Teotoros Lapçinciyan, the architect plotted his return by sending the sultan a box of finest Kayseri pastırma. The sultan was so taken with the gift that soon enough, Balyan was back in Istanbul, founding a family business that designed magnificent buildings, from Dolmabahçe Palace to Ortaköy Mosque. Unjustly, there are no plaques commemorating pastırma’s role in their construction.
Nowadays, pastırma is equally at home among cheeses and jams on the breakfast table and with mezzes and rakı in the taverns. While Istanbul consumes the most pastırma in the country, the only way to understand this meat’s special character is by visiting its natural habitat in Kayseri.
Pastırma production takes place mostly in the summer months, when the hot weather can be relied on to dry the meat. However, for the pastırma that even Kayseri locals regard as gourmet, you must wait for a mythical hot spell in November known as “pastırma summer.” The vast difference in daytime and nighttime temperatures—up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit and down to minus 5—makes the meat that much more tender.
From start to finish, the pastırma process takes around one month. The choice cuts for pastırma are from the rib, sirloin, and fillet. The fattiest parts of the rib and fillet are called tütünlükand kuşgömü, and these are the prized cuts among connoisseurs. Kayseri locals say that these cuts “make the beard dance,” because chewing on these soft morsels is just enough motion to make the hairs on your chin shake, no more.
<img src=""Pastırma with hummus at Cukur Mmeyhane in Istanbul.
Cover the back of the meat in a generous amount of rock salt and leave it for one day.
With the meat still in the salt, put a weight on it to push out the fluid. Leave for one week.
Take the muslin off and hang the meat in a shady spot that is open to the breeze for two days.
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Posted 13 April 2018 - 10:05 AM
The book contains, in addition to the oral history interviews conducted, the introduction by the historian Dr. Mehmet Polatel and the afterword by the editor Dr. İclal Ayşe Küçükkırca, whom are members of the Hrant Dink Foundation’s History Program.
Kayseri’s Armenians Speak is taking us to a visit through the memoirs of the Armenian society. This book is giving clues about the “self” and “other” perception the Armenian society carries, by giving examples on the deportation and genocide memories transmitted through generations, as the other books of the series.
Kayseri was one of the rare cities in which Armenians continued to live during the Republican period, with 1,978 Armenians registered there according to the 1927 census. This total dropped to 1,600 in 1932, to 800 in 1960 and to zero today. After the migration of Armenians living in various areas of Anatolia to Istanbul, predominantly in the 1950s, a significant number of Armenians from Kayseri gathered in the Samatya district in particular.
http://www.armradio....ishes-new-book/
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