Oklava

by Selin Kiazim

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  SALADS & SNACKS

  SAVOURY BAKES

  MEAT

  SEAFOOD

  VEGETABLES & GRAINS

  DRINKS

  DRESSINGS, DIPS & BITS

  SWEET THINGS

  INDEX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  HOW TO USE THIS EBOOK

  Select one of the chapters from the main contents list and you will be taken to a list of all the recipes covered in that chapter.

  Alternatively, jump to the index to browse recipes by ingredient.

  Look out for linked text (which is in blue) throughout the ebook that you can select to help you navigate between related recipes.

  SELIN: FROM THE BEGINNING

  Oklava translates simply as ‘rolling pin’. When I think of an oklava it always conjures up memories of my nene (grandmother): a rolling pin was never far from her hands, which always meant a delicious treat was imminent.

  I was born and grew up in north London, surrounded by Turkish and Greek Cypriots. As all migrant communities seem to do, they’d all settled in one corner of London. As a result, Turkish grocers were always nearby, which made it very easy for Mum to bring us up on traditional Turkish fare, including dolmas, yahni yemek, köfte, böreks and, of course, kebabs.

  My parents came over to London from Cyprus in the 1970s, but our ties to the country have always remained strong. My grandparents and cousins are all there, and our family has lived on the island for generations.

  Thanks to its strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus has been ruled by many nations and settled by many cultures over the centuries. It has had Greek settlers for thousands of years, and in the early 1500s Turkish settlers (including my ancestors) arrived with the Ottoman Empire. Cyprus, as we now know it, has been peacefully divided in two since 1974, with the Turks living in the north and the Greeks in the south.

  There is a huge amount of crossover between Turkish and Greek food. Much of it is practically the same, just with different names: for example, what is şeftali to us is şeftalia to the Greeks, and köfte is keftedes. The biggest difference between the two sides is that the Turks are Muslims and therefore do not eat pork, but the recipes are often essentially the same – one version will use lamb and the other pork.

  The food of Cyprus is all about island cooking; it’s simply what is grown on the land. Of course there are more supermarkets these days and some imports through Turkey, but shopping at the local market or even buying fruit and veg from roadside stalls is still very much how things are done, and in the villages they eat what they grow. Food in Cyprus is immensely seasonal, as I was reminded when looking for cauliflowers in June, while on a photo shoot for this book – there weren’t any! And at certain times of the year, the dishes prepared in all the households will be similar. On that trip in June, a lot of the older women, including my grandmother, had black-stained hands from preparing ceviz macunu, candied walnuts. Making these is hugely laborious and takes a week. My grandmother doesn’t even particularly like candied walnuts; she just makes them for the enjoyment of others!

  In comparison to Turkish food with its Middle-Eastern influences, Cypriot cooking is very simple and more Mediterranean. In Turkey, with its history in the spice trade and influences from the Ottoman Empire, they use a lot more spices, as well as more nuts and dried fruits, to produce the most wonderful aromatic dishes, which can be quite rich. Cypriot flavours are simpler, ingredients lists shorter. There are also regional differences, with some areas of Turkey using butter as their main cooking fat and others olive oil.

  First steps

  In all honesty, I was pretty over Turkish food by the time I turned 19, which is when I enrolled at Westminster Kingsway College to study for a Professional Chef’s Diploma. At college I learnt the basics of French cookery, which couldn’t have been any further from Mum’s cooking. I loved my years at college – it was the first time I felt like I was actually good at something. I was certainly never one for academic studies, but I did naturally lean towards the more creative subjects and had always loved to eat, so I guess it was perhaps inevitable that I would end up a chef.

  In Cyprus with my grandfather, Kazım Doğramacı, my mother, Pervin Kiazim, and my grandmother, Bahire Doğramacı.

  I started at college thinking I would learn the basics and then perhaps work as a caterer, as I was pretty petrified by the idea of being a chef in a restaurant kitchen in London. Any thoughts of being a caterer quickly disappeared when I found myself completely at home in the college kitchens and immersed in cookery books. It became an obsession, and still is. I approached one of my college lecturers, Vince Cottam, who went on to mentor me through many competitions, including one that was run by the ‘godfather of fusion’ himself, New Zealand-born chef Peter Gordon. Competition day came, and that was the first time I met Peter. I was in my third and final year at college, and until then I had mostly met fairly intimidating head chefs on work experience. Now I was at the point where I needed to decide what kind of kitchen I wanted to work in. Peter was – and still is – the friendliest chef I have ever come across, and I knew I wanted to work for him

  I won the competition and my prize was a five-week trip to New Zealand to work at some of the country’s top restaurants. One of them was Dine by Peter Gordon, in a five-star hotel in Auckland. It was during my time there that Peter offered me the opportunity of a trial at his London restaurant, The Providores. I still clearly remember walking down the stairs to the kitchen for the first time, with Peter singing to me at the top of his voice. I worked a double shift that day and loved every minute of it: everyone in the kitchen was so friendly and made sure I tried as many different flavours as possible. No-one shouting? No angry head chef? My mind was blown from day one.

  Moving on.

  I couldn’t have dreamt of a better start to my career: I learnt such an incredible amount at The Providores, not only about food, but also about how to interact with fellow team members and create a place where people genuinely wanted to work. Leaving was tough, but I knew I wanted my own restaurant some day, so I had to keep pushing myself and climbing the ladder. There were no senior positions available at The Providores, so after two years I handed in my notice to Peter, crying my eyes out.

  The job I had lined up didn’t work out, and three months later I found myself working for Peter again, this time at his Covent Garden restaurant, Kopapa (now closed). After working at Kopapa as a sous chef for a year, I was made head chef. I was pretty confident in my cooking abilities at this point, but had never managed people before, so I found it a tough place to work. Again I learnt a lot, mostly about myself and my management style. Kopapa gave me a great insight into what it would take to open a new restaurant and how hard it is to make one successful.

  By the end of 2012, my head was bursting with ideas and all I could think about was opening my own restaurant. I decided it was time to move on and try to make a name for myself. Pop-ups had become a big thing in London, so it seemed the natural platform for me to try it out. But before I could launch myself into the cut-throat London food scene, I had to decide what kind of food I wanted to present. I grew up in London, where the culture and the food are so diverse: it is incredibly inspiring to see people from all around the world take the humble cooking from their own countries and modernize it to work in London. The combination of my classical training at college, my Turkish-Cypriot family (including the time spent with my nene in her home village), my north London upbringing and four years exploring food from around the world with Peter Gordon gave me a great grounding that meant I could bounce off in any direction I wanted, but I hadn’t ever really cooked my ‘own’ menu before.

  Finding my own way

  There were two things t
hat led me to develop my style of modern Turkish cooking. First of all, there’s nothing I love to eat more than a well-made kebab: anything cooked over charcoal just tastes better! Second, I wanted to do something that no one else was doing, which is pretty much impossible, as there’s always someone who thought of an idea before you – but that wouldn’t stop me trying. I thought to myself, if I want to find something that sets me apart, I need to look at all the elements that make me the chef I am.

  Once I finished working at Kopapa, I booked a trip to Istanbul and went in search of inspiration. I was already starting to lean towards more Middle-Eastern flavours in my cooking, and it occurred to me that all anyone thinks of when it comes to Turkish food are kebabs. Turkish food is rich, diverse and steeped in tradition, but relatively unexplored in the modern cooking world, and that was incredibly exciting for me. Even now, as I write this, we are exploring something new: earlier I was talking to my sous chef Nick about today’s market special, a prawn köfte flatbread with smoked aubergine salad. I told him to mix some lamb suet into the fish köfte mixture and he thought I was slightly mad.

  Opening the doors at Oklava

  I got lucky while I was doing the pop-ups: after only a short while I was put in touch with the owners of what would become Trip Kitchen and Bar in Haggerston, east London. I spent a six-month residency there and was able to start showcasing the sort of food I wanted to cook. It went very well, but still not enough people knew about what I was doing. Then, one random evening towards the end of my time there, Giles Coren, the food critic for The Times, came in for dinner. To say I was petrified is a slight understatement; I immediately started doubting every dish on the menu, thinking he was going to hate everything and completely annihilate me. Somehow I managed to calm down, remember the faith I had in all my dishes and just cook to the best of my ability. It paid off, because he gave my food a glowing – if not perfect – review. I was gobsmacked. The review meant that I could leave Trip Kitchen on a massive high, with the confidence of knowing that if I could just get to the point of opening my own place, I would certainly be in a position to compete with other London restaurants.

  In the end it took just over 18 months to open the doors at Oklava. There were many opportunities along the way but nothing quite worked out, which made this phase of my life an incredibly frustrating time. I kept myself going with the occasional pop-up or event while searching for a site, funding and the right business partner. One of those events was a guest chef appearance at Salt Yard Group’s Ember Yard in Soho. I didn’t know it at the time, or even meet her then, but their operations manager, Laura Christie, would eventually become my business partner.

  A few months passed before Laura and I met up to discuss the possibility of starting a restaurant together. This may sound like a cliché, but I knew immediately that Laura was just the person I was looking to partner up with. She is passionate about the industry, knowledgeable about service and wine, and great at all the things I’m not good at – and she loves a good Excel spreadsheet. I knew I wanted the restaurant to explore Turkish wines, and Laura not only expressed an interest in Middle-Eastern wines, but also, like me, wanted to do something with a wine list that no one else was doing. From that point on, we developed Oklava into what it is now.

  This book brings together recipes that reflect my cooking style, inspired by my grandmother and mother. Some are a little complex – these are the Oklava dishes – but you will also find my versions of simple, traditional family recipes. I hope you will enjoy cooking from this book, or even using it as inspiration for your own dishes. Please don’t just look at the pictures – I want to see grubby pages because you have been using this book so much!

  LAURA : MAKING IT WORK

  When I first met Selin during my time at Salt Yard Group, I immediately knew she was someone I wanted to work with. As well as being fantastically talented, she had a clear vision of what she wanted to achieve and shared a lot of my own passions – not just the amazing produce and wine we are lucky enough to work with at Oklava, but also a real love of the restaurant industry. Knowing at that point very little about Turkish food, wine or culture, but realizing this was a special opportunity, I was quick to express my interest and we have been working together ever since.

  From the beginning, we both felt it made sense to have a Turkish drinks list for a Turkish restaurant, and we set about researching what was available in the UK. With the help of friend and colleague Melisa Atay, herself the daughter of Turkish wine producers, we were introduced to some wineries and packed ourselves off to Istanbul to meet them.

  This was my first time in Turkey and I had mixed feelings about our plan, having told everyone we were putting together an exclusively Turkish wine list and receiving some pretty shocked feedback. On arriving in Istanbul I was amazed to see that almost every restaurant’s wine list was dominated not by Old World or even international producers, but by home-grown Turkish wineries. For those who have not had the pleasure of discovering Istanbul’s dining scene, we are talking about some seriously impressive restaurants. We were lucky enough to meet some of the producers we now proudly list on our menu: Diren, Arcadia, Büyülübag and Paşaeli, to name a few. The passion, innovation and attention to detail shown by all of these wineries are second to none. It was an inspirational trip, and cemented our belief that Oklava was the perfect platform for modern Turkish wine. It suited our ‘bring Turkish food to the London foodie’ concept to a tee.

  Keen to make sure this wasn’t purely a rose-tinted vision (or perhaps a rosé-tinted one), we organized a tasting back in the UK and were pleased to discover we had some diverse and delicious options for our list. Turkey is one of the oldest wine-growing areas in the world and has some brilliant producers, but, rather boringly, a combination of administrative red tape and very healthy demand at home keeps a lot of this wine from the international market, so we are delighted to be bringing a slice of it to London.

  Alongside the wines we serve a small selection of cocktails, as well as Turkish classics – rakı, çay and Turkish coffee – recipes and serving suggestions for which you will find in the drinks chapter.

  Although our recipes will, of course, work with more international pairings, serving the Oklava brunch with a Turkish Bloody Mary, surprising your guests with wine from a region they may never have tried before, or rounding off a delicious meal with a cup of Turkish coffee adds a special touch and really brings the Oklava experience to your home.

  Tomato, raw onion, purslane, crisp bread & mint salad

  Tomato-pomegranate salad with parsley

  Romaine lettuce salad with candied walnuts & feta dressing

  Salad of runner beans, cucumber, fennel & kale with a tomato dressing

  Fried vegetables with garlic yogurt & pomegranate

  Courgette, feta & mint fritters

  Feta, garlic & poppy seed crisps

  Circassian chicken

  Oklava brunch

  Cypriot pastirma, broken eggs, spicy tomato & bread sauce with tomato-pomegranate salsa & yogurt

  Smoked streaky bacon & medjool date butter toasted sandwich

  Brown shrimp kaygana with preserved lemon hollandaise, çemen crumbs, chives & sheep’s cheese

  Menemen

  Pistachio-crusted banana & tahini french toast with orange blossom syrup & smoked streaky bacon

  TOMATO, RAW ONION, PURSLANE, CRISP BREAD & MINT SALAD

  This salad is a version of one my nene makes. Hers is just a salad of yummy things from her garden, dressed with homemade olive oil and Turkish red wine vinegar. I very fondly remember eating this alongside the little fried fish she used to make; I would soak up the juices from the salad bowl with her freshly baked bread. Here I have combined all of that by putting the crisp bread into the salad to soak up the juices. This salad is great served alongside the Fried Red Mullet, Pickled Apricots & Caper Leaves.

  SERVES 2 – 4

  400g (14oz) stale bread, torn into 3cm (⅛in) chunks (old Baharat bread w
ould be perfect)

  8 tablespoons best-quality extra-virgin olive oil

  200g (7oz) tomatoes, best you can find, in different shapes and sizes

  1 onion, thinly sliced

  1 large bunch of purslane, leaves whole and stalks thinly sliced

  4 long green Turkish peppers (Charleston peppers; use ordinary peppers if you can’t find them), sliced

  1 large handful mint leaves, shredded

  1 handful flat leaf parsley

  2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, or any good-quality vinegar

  flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Preheat the oven to 170°C (325°F), Gas Mark 3. Put the stale bread on a baking tray and coat with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and a little salt. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until crisp, checking it occasionally.

  Cut the tomatoes into bite-sized pieces and place in a large bowl with the onion, purslane, peppers, mint and parsley. Once the crisp bread has cooled, add that too.

  Season with salt and pepper and add the remaining olive oil and the vinegar. You can adjust the oil and vinegar quantities depending on how much dressing you like.

  TOMATO-POMEGRANATE SALAD WITH PARSLEY

  This is a version of gavurdağ salatasi, a famous salad from Turkey that also includes walnuts. It’s inspired by a restaurant in Istanbul called Zubeyir, which turns out some of the best kebabs known to man. On my first visit I was encouraged by the waiter to order this salad, so I did – and it was utterly delicious. It’s important to chop the vegetables very small so that they mingle with one another, but they don’t have to be perfect dice. This salad is fantastic served with fatty meats.