Turkey Itinerary

TURKEY: SLOW FOODS AND BUSTLING BAZAARS Culinary Educator: Nancy Harmon Jenkins itinerary: ® THE CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA Presentedby APRIL 28 - Travel Programs MAY 8 ® 2008 turkey itinerary Day 1: Monday, April 28 (Istanbul) You will be met at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport and taken individually to the hotel based on the flight information you give us. We will be staying at the five-star Sultanhan Hotel, a small but delightful hotel in the central Sultanahmet section of Istanbul. Your culinary educator, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, will welcome and meet everyone on the rooftop of the hotel for a welcome reception and orientation meeting. Dinner will be a full-fledged meze – the tastiest introduction to traditional Turkish cuisine – at one of our favorite restaurants. Hotel: Sultanhan, D Day 2: Tuesday, April 29 (Istanbul) The day will begin with a brief talk outlining the highlights of Turkish cuisine, ancient and modern, with some suggestions about what to look for during our trip. Afterwards, we’ll be off for a guided tour of the bustling Spice Market, with its eclectic selection of shops, restaurants, teahouses, and more. This is one of Istanbul’s most important and most historic bazaars where merchants and tradespeople from Asia, Europe, and Africa have met to exchange goods down through the centuries. Our guide, a prominent Turkish food historian, will take us to a coffee merchant in the bazaar where we’ll sample the wares and learn about Turkey’s role in transferring this product, so vital in our everyday lives, to the rest of Europe. Lunch will be at one of our favorite restaurants, which is within walking distance of the bazaar and highly regarded for its southeastern Turkish cuisine. After lunch, we will tour several of Istanbul’s most noted sites. We will start with a tour of Sultan Ahmet Square, the center of historical and cultural activities of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and go on to the dazzling Blue Mosque and the Haghia Sophia, one of the single most important architectural monuments ever erected. You will have the late afternoon free to relax or explore this amazing city on your own. In the evening our bus will take us out along the Bosporos for a cocktail reception at the splendid home of the prominent Turkish food writer, Engin Akin, and her husband Nuri. After we return to the hotel, the rest of the evening will be free for you to do as you wish. Hotel: Sultanhan, B, L Day 3: Wednesday, April 30 (Istanbul) In the morning we will take a short ferry ride across the Bosporus to visit the market on the Asian side. We’ll be met by a very knowledgeable food expert who will take us through the Kadikoy market – an open-air street market, very different from the Spice Market and more in tune with the way most Istanbulus cook and eat. We’ll see a huge variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables, plus fish mongers, butchers, bakers, pastry and pudding shops, and olive oil merchants. We’ll taste some of these exciting products before we walk on to a restaurant where the chef, one of Turkey’s foremost cooks who is devoted to letting the world know about the glorious food of his homeland, will introduce us to some of his most splendid and interesting dishes. Following the demonstration we will eat lunch, enjoy some very special desserts only available there, and have a lively lecture and discussion about Turkish food with two food historian writers. 1 After lunch, we’ll cruise back over to Europe and our hotel for a rest. Those who are up for it may wish to take advantage of a guided visit to the Kariye (Santa Chora) monument, one of the most stunning ancient churches of Istanbul with a dazzling series of mosaics and frescoes. In the evening we’ll stroll along Istiklal, the spirited center of Beyoglu and the heart of contemporary Istanbul. It has shops, restaurants, bars, art galleries, and street food vendors whose unusual and delightful wares we’ll sample. Hotel: Sultanhan, B, L, D Day 4: Thursday, May 1 (Istanbul – Bodrum) We will check out of our hotel first thing in the morning, even though our flight to Bodrum will not be until later in the afternoon. Then we’ll be off for a hands-on cooking class at a prominent Istanbul cooking school that will feature, among other dishes, a deliciously fragrant red lentil and bulgur soup (bulgur being one of Turkey’s staple grains) and stuffed vine leaves (prizes will be offered to those who master this tricky technique). Lunch will consist of our efforts and we will finish just in time to speed out to the airport for our flight to Bodrum. We should be in our hotel, the Marmara, by 7:30 p.m. The stylish and spacious hotel overlooks the blue Bodrum bay, and is a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Selected by Conde Nast Traveler as one of The Top New 36 Hotels in the World, the Marmara has been described as “Turkey’s posh new pad.” Your evening will be free to rest and relax or explore the city on your own. There is a Western-style spa and a Turkish hammam bath at the hotel. Or there’s plenty to see and do for those who want to explore a little night life, and the hotel is just a five-minute cab ride from the lively port. Hotel: Marmara, B, L, D Day 5: Friday, May 2 (Bodrum) We’ll start the day off with an exploration of the food and foodways of this southeastern corner of Turkey with Frank Marciano, an American who is a long-time resident and head of the very active Slow Food group in Turkey. Frank will introduce us to a splendid local cook who is a walking and working advertisement for the sustainable Slow Food lifestyle. We’ll cook with her, including borek pastries in her beehive oven, and have lunch. Then we’ll spend the afternoon afloat on a gulet, a modern adaptation of the traditional wooden working craft of the Aegean, while we relax and discover what the past has been and what the future holds for these pristine waters. Back on land we’ll enjoy a reception with local Slow Food members and a tasting of raki, the potent but fascinating anise-flavored drink (similar to Arab arak and Greek ouzo) that is a must in this part of the world. Hotel: Marmara, B, L, D Day 6: Saturday, May 3 (Bodrum – Ula – Bodrum) In the early morning we will take a two-hour bus ride to the small Aegean village of Ula, for a cooking demonstration by Engin Akin at her beautifully restored family house. There we’ll experience more traditional Turkish cooking from this region where olive oil is the cooking medium of choice, and put to great use in dishes like tender fresh fava beans, herbed zucchini fritters, flaky pastries, and more. We’ll spend the day in this lovely town, and then return to Bodrum in the evening. Dinner will be on your own, and you may want to have a very light meal at the hotel since tomorrow will be another early start. Hotel: Marmara, B, L, D Day 7: Sunday, May 4 (Bodrum – Cappadocia) We’ll be up very early in order to get a good start to Izmir, farther north along the Aegean coast, where we will catch a flight to Cappadocia. En route we’ll stop at Ephesus, one of the greatest Roman sites in all of the Eastern Mediterranean, and a worthy rival to Pompeii and Baalbek. We’ll have just enough time to hit the highlights of this magnificent site, then grab a sandwich to sustain us before 2 we head to the Izmir airport and take a flight to Kayseri in Cappadocia. Cappadocia is that fabulous dream landscape of Central Anatolia, with fairy chimneys carved by the wind and the hand of man (and woman). There we will stay at the Yunak Evleri, a completely modern and quite luxurious cave hotel that is actually part of the cliff structures that dominate this windswept and dramatic landscape. This inspiring hotel includes six cave houses, 30 rooms dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries, and a 19th century Greek Mansion. The region is also one of Turkey’s noted wine-producing areas, so we’ll start our visit off with a tasting of some of the fine wines produced there. Hotel: Yunak Evleri, B, L, D Day 8: Monday, May 5 (Cappadocia) For the next two days we will focus on the very particular culture and foods of Anatolia. We’ll begin with a visit to a local market and then a cooking demonstration with the women of Sinassos village. They will show us how to make manti, borek, and other traditional dishes whose heritage stretches back into the Central Asian origins of modern Turkey. After lunch and a rest, we’ll take advantage of this incredible site and take a short walk to visit some of the 9th century churches carved into the soft rock of the valley. Dinner will be a very special meal in a nearby village where clay-pot and tandir cookery is particularly valued. (What is a tandir? Think of an Indian tandoor oven—the words come from the same origin.) Hotel: Yunak Evleri, B, L, D Day 9: Tuesday, May 6 (Cappadocia) Continuing our visit to Cappadocia (often spelled Kappadokya), we’ll meet with a food anthropologist who will guide us through a tasting of kaymak, a sort of clotted cream often made from buffalo milk.

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