Roots, Rhythm & Recipes: Exploring Cali's Food Heritage

In this episode, we’re heading to the southeastern corner of Türkiye, to Gaziantep, where every street whispers a recipe, and every dish tells a centuries-old tale. Ece Akdemir, Foreign Affairs Expert at the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality, will share about the traditions, the ingredients, and the passionate people who make up this city’s gastronomic heritage.

Whether you’re a city leader or a food lover, pull up a chair, listen in and discover what makes Gaziantep a Food Capital!

Jessica Ferey: 
Today, we're heading to the southeastern corner of Türkiye to Gaziantep, where every street whispers a recipe and every dish tells a centuries-old tale. In this episode, Ece Akdemir, foreign affairs expert in the Metropolitan Municipality of Gaziantep, will share about the traditions, the ingredients, and the passionate people who make up the city's gastronomic heritage.

Ece Akdemir: 
My name is Ece and I live in Gaziantep, Türkiye. And I work as a foreign affairs expert in Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality. And my role is to just keep up with the foreign relations and bring new ideas, what we can do all together to promote what we're doing internationally and to exchange practical information in different countries.

What makes me so into gastronomy is to just, you know, I grew up in Gaziantep, which is my hometown, and I know how they do all the recipes and I mostly know every region of food. And when I was a child, I used to eat this traditional meal, which we called "Yuvarlama". And I remember that it is special to the city because it was only cooked in the Eid time, actually. They started to do this before one month earlier than the Eid actually, because you need to prepare these meatballs with rice and you mix it and you need to do them as small small balls shaped and you freeze them. When it's Eid time in the morning, even as a breakfast you eat it and I remember that I always wait for the Eid time each year to just eat that special dish! But now in the city, you can find it everywhere. But when I was a child, I had no idea that we can eat it in any time of the year. I thought that we need to wait for the Eid time so that I can have the special meal.

Gaziantep is really one of the biggest cities of Türkiye and in there we are now more than 2.5 million people living together. And maybe you know, of course you know, it's on the Syria border. It's close to the border of Syria. And we had a lot of refugees previously, over the years. And now, they are going back to their safe homes. And we're really happy about it because we know that we hosted them pretty well. And we know that they're healthy, they're better, and they’re in the safe place now. And most of other people were scared that because it's too close to the border and when there was a war which was just a big problem for the city; but I should say that please do not be scared to come into the city. And when you come to the city, you will see a really green city; when you go there you will see each layers of the history because we have one of the biggest, I think third biggest mosaic museum of the world.

And you can see ancient eras in different parts, in different districts of our city. And Gaziantep was like a passage way. So there are a lot of inns in the city. Now the inns have turned into really luxurious, good restaurants which are serving really good delicious foods.

In the city, in Gaziantep, you will see each corner a restaurant, a place in every street to eat kebabs especially. You will just find the way by just smelling. For real, you can find it. Gaziantep is local products. It's just pistachio everywhere. In kebabs, in desserts, in almost every dish we use pistachio. Even we have a special coffee called pistachio coffee. In Turkish it’s "menengiç kahvesi". And it's just everywhere and we are so proud of it. Because we know that it is delicious.

And we have different kinds of pistachios. For example, the first harvest of the pistachio is used for a certain dish. The other harvest part is used for other things like kebabs or etc. For to just eat as a nut, maybe. And pistachio is like a really, really the most important product that we have in the city. We also put pistachios in kebabs. But it's delicious, for real. You need to taste it. It really gives a really slight difference, and it really tastes good. And you will say, how can a pistachio go with a kebab? It's just, you should taste it. Come and taste it, that's all.

So Gaziantep is also a really good place for the vegetarians as well, because the sun feeds the city, so we dry our vegetables under the sun and we believe the taste of the food comes from the sun. And when we have these dried vegetables, especially in winter times, we make rice stuffed vegetables. It's called "dolma" in Turkish and it is actually one of the other famous foods that we have. It's so vegetarian and you can eat it almost in every place in the city. And it's really delicious food to be eaten. And also in summer times, you can find the cold version of this dolmas. And it's easy, easy, easy to eat and easy to go with. So people, as I said, should come and taste this food and be really okay with being vegetarian as well. Because there's a lot of options that they can choose.

In the city, in Gaziantep, it's like a tradition passing down to the youngest. And when a restaurant owner, a chef, is too old, it is passed down to the son. And son teaches it to the son, on and on. And it just goes like this every time. For example, it is really hard to find a "Katmer" chef. "Katmer" is a special dessert in the city and it is really hard to do the dough of this dessert because you need to make it so thin that someone can read a newspaper behind it. It takes years to learn how to do it that tiny, that thin and it's also a work that passed down from father to son.

Jessica:
Gaziantep's culinary heritage is delicious and also central to the city's identity and traditions. Not only is Gaziantep part of the Food Capitals Network, but the city is also included on UNESCO's Creative Cities of Gastronomy list. It's enhancing its initiatives in this area, including the Culinary Arts Center and an agricultural school.

Ece:
In 2017, we received the UNESCO designation as a creative city and the designation of Gaziantep by UNESCO was a really big thing in the city because now we are pretty sure that we are the gastronomy city and now the whole world gets the chance to know about the city.

And we have a culinary arts center. It's a really special academy which has been established after we received the UNESCO designation. And the reason why we established this center is to promote and preserve the originals, the authentic recipes itself actually. And now we are giving some trainings mainly focusing on the original recipes and how to cook them, to pass it down to the generations.

In the city, we also have an agricultural school, and it is run by the agricultural department of the municipality. And the main goal of this agricultural school is to provide education on farming, especially for the women and for the refugee women as well, so that they can learn how to harvest, they can learn how to plant, and they get the chance to sell their own products.

Jessica:
Beyond its global positioning and educational aspects, Gaziantep is committed to promoting its unique culinary traditions through a food festival, which is an important topic here at The Food Capitals. Gastro Antep in the city is an annual festival that showcases unique Turkish cuisine.

Ece:
Gaziantep Gastronomy Festival is actually really short to say Gastro Antep and it is the festival that we do each year in September. First or second week of September, we usually do that. When you enter the festival park, you will see all the locals have their own spaces to sell and show their own products. And you could just simply find whatever you want in Gaziantep, actually. If you are looking for pistachio, yeah, there will be pistachio. If you're looking for a special spice in our city, like pepper, red pepper, you will find it in there. And if you're looking for kebabs, of course you're going to find it in there, too. If you are looking for other dishes like, you know, baklava, the best, you can find it in everywhere. It's like a food show while you're walking. Not just only Gaziantep food. It depends, there's Izmir food, Hatay food. You can taste almost every different cities of Türkiye.

And you will have concerts. You will have the best chefs of the city to show you in really huge, big pots, how to cook something. Yeah that's just what you're gonna have and what you’ll experience there. Not only the locals, or not only the national people, but also for the foreign tourists as well, because in the city, especially in the municipality, we are trying to bring foreign people to see and when they come and visit the city and what they see is important because they will be promoting us in their own cities, in other cities as well. So I think that's one of the important parts.

Food has the superpower to promote creativity.

Goodbye, everyone. I await you in the city, in Gaziantep.