Artichoke Stew with Lamb
YESAM - Culinary Arts Center- celebrated the arrival of spring, with traditional spring flavours. Journalist and Food Culture Researcher Nedim Atilla discussed the topics of artichoke and lamb meat.
During the seminar, Nedim Atilla shared the following information: "The vegetable that we consume as artichoke is actually the bud of a type of flower. In the Mediterranean basin, during the ancient Greek and Roman times, artichoke was a wilder version of the one that we know of today. March and April is the time when artichokes are in season and abundant. Prof. Dr. Guven Bakir discovered an old olive oil factory in Urla, in the ancient city of Klazomenai. I asked him, ‘What did the people of 2600 years ago eat with this olive oil?’ because olive oil was initially used as a medium to light the oil-lamps. Prof. Bakir answered by saying that they would eat the olive oil with artichokes and fava beans. He was right, even during those days people would eat artichokes and fava beans, though there are some scientists who disagree with Prof. Bakir. Aside from eating artichokes, the symbol of the artichoke and artichoke leaves was used on Corinthian-style columns. However, the artichokes of antiquity were not closely related to those we know today.
Based on the etymological research done by my colleague, Aylin Öney Tan, the Turkish word for wild artichokes (kenger) comes from Persian. The word for “artichoke” that is used in western languages is a derivative of el-harşuf, the Arabic word for artichoke. In Spanish it is alcarchofa, and in Italian was arcicioffo, but became carciofo later on. The Turkish word for artichoke (enginar) is a derivative of the Greek words agkinara or kinara. Romans living in Istanbul called it angianares which is a relatively similar name to its Latin origin cynara scolymusa. Based on mythology, Cynara was a beautiful young girl living in the island of Zinari. Zeus had made her into a Goddess because she was so beautiful, but later turned her into an artichoke plant when she disobeyed him.
The second part of the seminar was dedicated to lamb, Nedim Atilla continued his speech by talking about the types of sheep that are about to extinct. Trakya kıvıcırcık is the most common one, used for religious holidays and its meat is delicious. Akkaraman is distinct to the Konya prairie. Malya is almost extinct. Merinos were brought to Turkey and bred with local sheep species. This breeding yielded two types of merinos sheep. Another type, thought to be extinct, was found in Aydın and is called çine çapari; it is now under protection. Çine çapari is known to be amazingly delicious.
On the altars of Zeus, the most commonly sacrificed living things were sheep. In many documents it is written that Zeus, Dionysus, Artemis and Demeter all liked eating lamb.”
Mr. Atilla ended his speech with an interesting finding. “In Metropolis, in one of the graves’ stele that belonged to a butcher were the following words: ‘This butcher enabled his customers to get rid of their exhaustion with the meat he provided for them.’ Maybe the reason why we consume a lot of lamb and artichokes is to get rid of our spring fever.”
After the seminar, the participants had a chance to taste the famous lamb and artichokes along with rice pilaf with artichokes, artichoke stems cooked in olive oil, and stuffed artichokes wrapped in grape leaves.
28 February 2013
Lecture video is in Turkish.
