Cooking up murder and mystery in Ottoman İstanbul

Currently, as part of the İstanbul 2010 program, the SSM is hosting what appears to be a fascinating exhibition entitled “Legendary Istanbul -- From Byzantion to Istanbul: 8000 Years of a Capital.” The exhibition brings together works from over 58 museums worldwide. I am determined to find a space in my busy schedule to visit it.

An important part of the SSM experience is savoring the atmosphere of the mansion. The entrance gates open by the Bosporus, then a driveway sweeps you up through trees and lawns and marble statues to an upper terrace with a magnificent view: Here the old family house stands regally alongside the purpose-built exhibition floors.

After viewing the museum exhibits it is always a real pleasure to step out on to the decked terrace of the museum restaurant, MuzedeChanga. The modern Turkish Mediterranean cuisine rivals the view in its exquisiteness.

It was here a year ago that I sampled one of the most magnificent cold entrées I have ever tasted: stuffed zucchini flowers (although as I am British I call them stuffed courgette flowers). At MuzedeChanga the blossom of the zucchini plant is filled with soft Turkish “lor” cheese, sprigs of basil and pine nuts. This is then lightly roasted.

These miniature packets explode with taste on the tongue, the soft creamy filling contrasting perfectly with the crispy flower petals to create a masterpiece which is as satisfying as it is unusual. I have since searched to find the roots of this dish. Food forums in Turkey that mention it relate it to the Aegean Coast, with commenters reminiscing that an elderly neighbor would make the dish for them in their childhood.

So I was delighted to meet my rare friend, the stuffed zucchini flower, in Jason Goodwin’s “The Snake Stone” -- the second in his Yashim the Eunuch detective series set in mid-19th-century İstanbul.

We first met Yashim in “The Janissary Tree” and discovered how his connections to the palace and knowledge of İstanbul helped him considerably in solving a series of murders. Now that the new palace at Beşiktaş -- the Dolmabahçe -- has replaced Topkapı, Yashim’s sphere of influence is threatened. Furthermore, Sultan Mahmud II is dying and there is bitterness in the air. The next sultan’s men may be less than understanding of the previous sultan’s men. So when he is the last to see a dead foreigner alive -- and worse than that, to have booked the dead man passage on a ship and thereby delivered him to his murderers -- Yashim instinctively realizes that his enemies will use the situation against him.

He has at most the three or four days it will take for the French ambassador to write a report on the finding of the corpse of the murdered Frenchman to find the real killers and clear his name.

Earlier in the week he had purchased a copy of a book prized by the chefs of Topkapı Palace, volume I of Carême’s “L’Art de la Cuisine Française au 19me Siècle,” from a secondhand bookseller and had prepared mouthwatering dolma for his French guest. In this list of culinary morsels I found my friend kabak çiçeği dolması (stuffed zucchini flowers), along with some tiny böreks stuffed with white cheese and dill, mussels folded over a mixture of pine nuts, tiny eggplants filled with spiced lamb and the crisp skin of a mackerel rolled loose from its flesh and stuffed with tiny nuts and spices. These delights are all described as “dolma -- that is, their outsides gave no hint as to the treasures that lay within; and all made to recipes perfected in the sultan’s kitchen.”

Yashim is extremely disappointed that his French guest is not overly impressed by the results of his labor in the kitchen and dismisses the plate of meze without tasting anything. For Yashim loves to cook, and in this tale of murder and mayhem in 19th century İstanbul, his preparation of food is described as lovingly as he chooses his ingredients in the market.

Lüfer fish simply grilled with a squeeze of lemon and bread from a Libyan baker accompany his musings at the end of a complicated day when he had visited his friend George who had been beaten to within an inch of his life in Fener, been called in to investigate by the wife of a Bulgarian businessman who had been unsettled by a visit from a blackmailing Frenchman and been present in the book bazaar when a murder was discovered there.

When a desperate Frenchman turns to him for help, rice cooked with saffron and butter are on the menu to soothe Gallic nerves. Good coffee from Brazil provides the backdrop for a discussion about the Greek secret society Hetira: Perhaps this shadowy group has a link with the murders and blackmail. Or maybe it is the Frenchman himself: He is an archaeologist, but perhaps he does not always just dig with a spade?

But now that Frenchman himself is dead, the picture seems to have rearranged itself and as Yashim chops onions and zucchini he realizes that something has been hidden in his apartment. A book, with notes about the serpent column in the Hippodrome -- whose bronze heads were stolen a few decades before -- is hidden within one of his books! What is the connection?

Is there also any connection at all with the disappearance of the father of the servant of Yashim’s close friend, the Polish envoy Palewski? The missing man has recently entered the watermen’s guild -- the group of men who keep the water supply flowing into the great city of İstanbul from the forests to its northwest - and in doing so had incurred a large debt.

As we blunder with Yashim up a number of blind alleys chasing several red herrings before the truth of the matter comes clear in the underground cisterns, fine cooking is never far away. Goodwin infuses his story with detailed pictures of Yashim as an amateur master-chef: The paragraph-long descriptions of his cookery are pure sensual pleasure for a gourmand. He recreates the smells, sights, sounds, touches and tastes of the cooking equipment and the various ingredients both individually and as they mix together to form a perfect dish so well that you almost wish Yashim would set the resultant dish before you.

While Yashim is enjoying his turnip juice in a kebab shop in Şişhane and taking chunks of lamb in his fingers and eating them with pieces of torn-off pide, his house is being turned over by those chasing any secrets and evidence the Frenchman may have left behind.

He is preparing eggplants as a base for the lamb dish Hünkar Beğendi when a surprise visitor arrives at his door: the young and delightful widow of the murdered Frenchman!

It is as he prepares onions and rice with baby artichokes that the eunuch’s suspicions about the Frenchman’s charming widow are aroused and he finally begins to see a solution to the conundrum.

Goodwin’s finished tale is as satisfying to the senses as the stuffed zucchini flowers: the crisp outer layer holding together the soft and creamy center.