Makin' Mantı

This weekend I learned how to make one of my favorite Turkish foods, mantı. (OK, technically it's my favorite "Central Asian" food, but I'll just adopt the Turkish norm of referring to its Turkish origins.) The name is often translated as "Turkish ravioli" in English menus, a name which gives a sense of the dish but does not do justice to the particular deliciousness of these tiny meat-filled dumplings.

So that you may learn, and I may not forget, here is the nub and gist of mantı preparation. First off, the dough consists of flour, eggs, and salt water. How much? Oh, enough. Of course these things are only "measured" by the watchful eye of the senior Turkish housewife present, in this case, my coworker's mother. The dough is kneaded and kneaded and kneaded by rolling your fists on it, kind of like slow-motion punches. Then it is separated into smaller chunks, in our case, four. Then more kneading and more flour to keep it from sticking. There is a special low, round, wooden table and long, thin rolling pin used for mantı, gözleme, börek; basically anything that involves rolling out dough. I would give the Turkish names for the table and rolling pin here but a) I forgot them and b) they differ by region.

The smaller hunks of dough are rolled first in the normal fashion of stroking the pin across the dough's surface. After an appropriately thin dough is achieved the whole thing is rolled around the thin rolling pin and pulled outwards by the motion of your hands from the middle to the outside. (That sounds a lot more complicated then it is, and if I had a picture of myself engaged in this pursuit, it would be much clearer.) In any case you stretch and stretch the dough until it is almost as big as the table, and then you do it a few more times, just in case. Then the dough is cut into the tiny squares you see below and filled with a finely chopped mixture of ground beef, onion, parsley, salt, and "spices", which I believe referred to red pepper in this case. You poke a little morsel of the meat mixture onto each square, and then fold the corners together and then press them into the middle to form a little pocket*. This part takes the longest- filling and folding each of the tiny squares took about 3 hours, with four tireless women working together.



After this, the many many finished products are at long last boiled for about 10 minutes, their size making it extremely easy to cook them quickly. Traditionally there are several sauces for them, and sometimes they are also used as dumplings in soup. In our case we put some lightly spiced tomato paste (salça) in butter and added a small amount of this to salted and slightly watered-down yogurt (ayran) by way of sauce. I have also eaten them with nothing but an entirely ill-advised amount of butter and walnuts on top.

(Aside: this picture was taken from Turkish wikipedia, credited to OsManduRdu, but it is almost identical to the scene in my Turkish coworker's kitchen. The spice in the jar is sumac, to be spooned on later if desired.)

A total of about 5 hours of work makes them taste at LEAST five times as good as in any restaurant. When I first began eating I inhaled those little yogurt-covered meat-packets as though I hadn't eaten for days (and by virtue of my being in Turkey we all know that is utterly impossible), and when I finished my last bite it slowly dawned on me that in polite circles the rapidity of my consumption might have been considered a bit rude. But as I looked up from my plate for the first time since the first taste hit my eager taste buds, I saw that I was behind in finishing by two other girls, and they immediately begged me to let them fill my plate anew, a request which I quickly and grateful obliged.

Afiyet olsun!



*In other words, you reunite the meat, which I'll call Numa, with the mantı's core. Sorry, that joke is for the benefit of only one reader of this blog.

Salt versus Skulls

For a trip that lasted two weeks, it sure was a whirlwind. There were two utterly indescribable highlights from both cities I visited...which I will, of course, endeavor to describe below. I couldn't resist trying to compare them, but in the end both teams played hard, and in a battle no one should win, who can win? I should also mention that both of the highlights were not in their respective cities proper, but short trips outside the environs. Without further ado:

PRAGUE HIGHLIGHT: THE SEDLEC OSSUARY
The Sedlec Ossuary is actually in the former second-largest town in Czech[Republic]oslovakia, Kutna Hora. Kutna Hora is beautiful in its own Bohemian way...but I didn't go there to enjoy the town. Make no bones about it, I was headed to the hippest joint in the place: a chapel decorated with the remains of an estimated 40,000 plague victims. Needless to say, my jaw dropped as I toured the inner radius of the chapel, and I got a bit of playful ribbing from my friend about how many pictures I took. The story of the place is that "Henry", the abbot of the Cistercian Monastery in Sedlec, went to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage and brought back some official Holy Land soil, and so the chapel cemetery became quite the desirable place to send the dead. However, when the plague struck the sheer number of bodies got a bit overwhelming, and in 1870 to "get the bones in order" an intrepid carpenter , František Rint, decided, in keeping with the chapel's “Baroque” fashion, to decorate the church with the bones of the dead. I don't think I can do this place much more justice in words, so please just admire these photos. The whole place is morbidly breathtaking and totally enthralling, and the beauty of something like a garland of human skulls makes it very difficult to wrap one's mind around the fact that they are actual human remains, which has the surprising effect of making the chapel more of an aesthetic experience than a spiritual one. At least, that's how it was for me. I also could hear John Cleese yelling “LOOK AT THE BONES!” in my head for much of the time, which was rather irreverent, but seriously--just look at them.






KRAKOW HIGHLIGHT: WIELICZKA SALT MINE
Why was the salt mine so awesome? Well, for one thing, it was the first (and likely the only) tour I've ever been on where I've been invited to lick the walls (whether this was facetious or not is unclear due to my guide's completely emotionless delivery of his well-rehearsed English patter about the mine that did not change in tone for the two hour duration of the tour). Secondly, while the mine itself is an unbelievable testament to the human addiction to salt, and is an unfathomable labyrinth of complex tunnels, carvings, chapels, salty lakes, and the like, it also boasts not one, but TWO ridiculous music-and-light shows on the tourist route. You know, to make it interesting. Out of the many tours you could get carted around on in Krakow, it's hard to dwarf how much this one rocks. The mine is definitely a good pick and I'd recommend you ax questions of your guide in order to get all the information, lest you be shafted. You'll learn that the mine also has a bit of meta-tourism going for it, because inside it has carved tributes to the famous tourists that have visited (Copernicus, Goethe, Chopin, Pope John Paul II, and more!) in addition to antiquated and currently unused tourist attractions like a subterranean ferry across one of the salty lakes. Sodium, baby! (Unfortunately due to being underground I have few to no good pictures. The final picture, of the salt-crystal chandelier, is from Wikipedia, taken by Andrzej Barabasz.)



In retrospect, the obvious answer to the question of which is better is simply...both. Who will carve a bone chapel inside the salt mine, though?

Catholicism, Communism, and [hot] Chocolate[...ism?]

My train trip from Prague to the motherland was a near-fiasco, but all's well that ends well. Just note that if you take the train from Prague and have to change trains in Katowice, most likely no one will speak English, and you ought consult the departure schedules yourself (and know the Polish word for departures) instead of waiting for the quaint flap-board to display your train. It's easy to get a ticket from Katowice to Krakow if you make a mistake, however, so I'd recommend the trip if you have a spare day.

The old town of Krakow has a wonderfully medieval feel. I thought I had reached hot chocolate nirvana in Prague, but that was before I went to Wedel and got a cup of their traditional drinking chocolate—heavenly. Big shout-out to Nowa Prowincja for their amazing drinks and beautiful interior. I went there thrice, I couldn't help myself.

Wawel Castle was as beautiful inside as its smok statue was brutals, but I was a bit disappointed that the “dragon's lair” is closed in the winter months. Entry to Wawel Castle Cathedral entitles you to a trip up and down the bell tower, where each of the huge bells has a name and a history. The Cathedral also has some beautiful tapestries inside, as do the castle staterooms. A word to the wise: admission prices and ticket-buying is a bit confusing, but all of it is cool, so you really can't go wrong. I bought tickets first and then tried to figure out what parts of the castle they were for, rather than trying to find tickets for parts I wanted to see. This worked nicely, but you need to be easy-going about it.
These guys were pretty easy-going, just kind of hanging out and crooning to the accordion on the entry ramp to Wawel Castle.

Krakow had more museums than I knew what to do with (which sounds funny after coming from Prague...). I would highly, highly recommend the Cloth Hall museum in the main square: it's only four rooms, but it has hands-down some of the most intricate and masterful paintings (some on 30-ft canvases) that I have ever seen. Also if you don't think you'll miss the 7 zloty (about 3 dollars), the Archeology Museum feels like a well-done 7th grade social studies project, as it makes ample use of dioramas. The big draw is the only Slavic cult god statue ever found.
I also rekindled a little Catholic feeling by going to Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral (pictured in the background above) and visiting the former apartments of Pope John Paul II (before he was a pope, when he was a professor and cardinal, from 1951-1968 or thereabouts).

Of course, everyone knows that a trip to Eastern Europe is just incomplete without some kind of communist history thrown in. Well, my hunt for remnants of communism in Poland took me nearby the Krakow School of Economics to see Skeletor, a Soviet building that was started but never completed and now stands as a skeleton due to the complexity of zoning laws that prohibit its destruction. But I repeat: it shadows the Krakow School of Economics. Best juxtaposition ever?
And speaking of amazing juxtapositions...
Being unsatisfied with this mere taste of the communist legacy, I continued along the tram line to Nowa Huta, or New Steelworks. This is a completely Stalin-planned community on the outskirts of Krakow (now a part of Krakow), apparently built to countermand how beautiful, medieval, and artistic Krakow was through its industrial, worker-championing layout and amenities. It was not nearly as depressing as I expected, but it sure was a lot of nearly identical dilapidated concrete buildings. I would have tried to adhere more to the route on the map, but I was a bit too cold to stay there too long.

On the way back to Prague I took a bus because the timing was more convenient. Please be aware: when you take a bus across the Czech/Polish border, border patrol will board the bus, take your passport, and then GET OFF THE BUS WITH YOUR PASSPORT. This is absolutely terrifying to someone who does not speak Polish and who consequently thought her passport was gone forever as the bus pulled away, but eventually at the dinner stop (20 agonizing minutes later) the border guards pulled up and returned all of the documents. In any case, one of the movies shown on the bus was called Holy Business (I think). It was about two men who supposedly inherit a car owned by Pope John Paul II. It was adorable, it mercifully had English subtitles, and it was a very fitting end to my time in Krakow.

Czech it out!

Prague is an utterly amazing city architecturally and artistically, but one thing struck me above all else: the sheer willingness of the Czech people to speak English. Even in situations that would in no way require a Czech person to go out of their way to speak English to me (such as reaching above me to get a bag, or just passing me in the grocery store), if they overheard English on my lips they would immediately exchange some pleasantry in English with me. I am sure that this is a result of the insane numbers of tourists that flock to Prague regularly. I never thought I would see the plus-side of relentless tourism, but it turns out that the incredibly welcoming Czech people have extended their hospitality to include language (there is also a goodly amount of French, German, and even Russian, to name just a FEW of the languages that clutter up signage in Prague).
"Are you flirting in English? Oh, do go on..."

Of course, I hit the tourist highlights: Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock, Prague Castle, Wenceslas Square, the Municipal Building, eating goulash and honey cake, and sampling some delicious beers. It took a lot to distract me from the ubiquitous hot winter drinks, especially hot wine and rich hot chocolate, but Czech beer is famous, after all. I saw a hilarious amount of malformed babies, either Jesus on his mother's knee or cherubs floating in the periphery of the Christian masterworks that litter Prague's museums. I unexpectedly came across some decaying saints in glass coffins in one of the churches I went to, because Christians are rather macabre.
But sometimes you also unexpectedly find peacocks in public gardens, which is cool.

Like many tourists in Prague, I simply could not spend enough time looking at Alfons Mucha collections. There are two museums dedicated to him (that I knew of), and the one that is simply called “The Mucha Museum” is well laid-out and informative, albeit a bit expensive for its small size. I would recommend if, like me, you are a devotee of his art. Another small, expensive, but worthwhile museum is the Museum of Communism, which somewhat passive-aggressively suggests that tourists are intellectual beings that deserve to know more about the Czech people than what can be seen through the bottom of a beer glass (I paraphrase, but the sentiment was the same). Despite this somewhat off-putting introduction, the museum is like reading a short book about how and why communism affected the Czech nation as it did, and it makes the vibrancy of Prague shine all the more, even from behind tacky tourist shops.
I also visited the Museum of the City of Prague (part of the interior photographed above), which is just adorable. Its “claim to fame” is a 3D model of the city made in the mid-nineteenth century, and every half-hour you can see a 3D film where you “fly” through the Prague of yore...a digitization of the model. There is also a beautiful painting of the city in the stairwell dome and far too much minutiae of how districts were divided for tax and municipal purposes throughout history. The temporary exhibit was about Prague denizens traveling to suburban “garden restaurants” for happy summer picnics and the like, which ended in a FUNCTIONING REPLICA of one such restaurants. They recreated a menu and had the foodstuffs on hand, in the museum, served by people in period waitstaff costume. Brilliant.

What is that in the lower-left corner? A dog? A lion? A lion-dog? A cool building near the Astronomical Clock nonetheless.


The only downside to Prague is that so many of the streets are lined with tourist shops, but in winter there are significantly less tourists, so I only really reaped the benefits. A light blanket of snow suits the Gothic spires anyways; I couldn't imagine Prague without a few big snowflakes falling and a cup of hot wine in a cafe.

Krakow...is brutals.

I swear, sooner or later I am going to start waxing poetic about all of the amazing art I've seen and post some of my limited pictures from my semester-break jaunt into Prague and Krakow (aka Bubbie Tour 2011), but in the meantime, please let me share my favorite thing I've seen so far. Behind Wawel Castle, the big famous castle in Krakow, there is this awesome dragon sculpture. I know what you're thinking. "Gee, Pelks, that's pretty cool and all, but is any old sculpture of a dragon really 'brutals' ? Did it really warrant its own blog post and everything?"

As a matter of fact it did, because IT SHOOTS ACTUAL FLAMES FROM ITS MOUTH.

Good work, Poland. Good work.

The "-miş" tense

The Turkish language is a wonderful thing. It has fairly rigid semantic rules such that even a novice like myself can attempt entirely new constructions and find them to be grammatical. This unfortunately was not the case with my new word "nefretçi", which was my attempt at translating "hater" (nefret is 'hate', -çi is akin to the English "-er", as in builder or worker. A good Turkish example would be saatçi, a 'watch repairman/clock maker', since saat means 'watch').

In any case, one of the best and most wonderful things about Turkish is the "dubitative" or "reportative" tense, the "-miş" tense. This is the tense you use in order to report what someone else has told you, to deliver information second hand.

For example:
[I heard] There are two Americans in Uşak.
İki tane Amerikalı Uşak'ta varmış.

Now, this might not seem all that exciting until one realizes that it can be used in the first person to describe actions that you yourself did in the past but that you have no recollection of doing. The "-miş" tense is ideal for forgetful people, but even moreso, and more hilariously, for drunks. A friend of mine half-jokingly called it "the drunk tense", I prefer "the hangover tense".

For example:
I was drunk.
Sarhoştum.

[I was told that] I kissed every man and woman at the party.
Partide herkesi öpmüşüm.

[Supposedly] I danced on a table.
Masada dans etmişim.

Oh Turkish language, is there anything you can't do? I hope "nefretçi" makes it in to the popular parlance, as it will be my token of appreciation to the Turkish language after I return home.

Brought to you by Fetih Bey

Remember how Atatürk wore whole yachts as neck ornaments?
Fethiye does. Fethiye (formerly Telmessos, renamed after Fetih Bey, a pilot in the Ottoman airfoce, in 1934) is almost a typical Turkish-Mediterranean resort town with one twist: it is a natural harbor, so it feels more like a lake than a seaside getaway. Of course like any resort town it has its charms...the boardwalk stretches on for meters and meters and features cafe after cafe directly on the water's edge and also numerous illuminated pictures of Ataturk (see above). I had lunch at Cafe Mavi in the old town, where the owner asked me a few questions about myself and then gave me a free delicious piece of homemade carrot cake. Not everyone gets such generous handouts, as I was to learn...
(That box says "Help the Pelicans...For Fish, For Money".)

The best part of the town is the old amphitheater in the hillsides.
The director of Fethiye's adorable museum lived on the slope overlooking the harbor and decided one day that some work needed to be done on his house. In the course of some construction-related digging they happened upon the ruins, and then with the help of a sizable group of local volunteers they uncovered the well-preserved 6,000-seat Roman theater pictured above. The patrons of said theater would have had a miraculous view of the harbor. This is all simply in situ, as are a few scattered Lycian tombs (such as the one fenced in next to the post office, but also there are some in the hillside), and the aforementioned adorable museum has a lovely relic-filled garden to peruse. Fethiye is certainly more interesting than a typical resort town; it's not a must-see, but it's definitely not a bad place to spend a warm day.