şemsa’s food per se

I have been a chef and a restauranteur since 1998. I had a restaurant in Istanbul called Kantin for 18 years. It was the first of its kind pursuing only local, only seasonal, mostly organic. It was a restaurant with an attitude when attitude was not acceptable at all. Not because it was a whim, but because I believed in certain principles and wouldn’t budge.

Then I fell in love with an olive grove and in 2018 moved to Northern Aegean and started a teaching kitchen there, Cooks Grove.

At the end of 2023 life took me to live in Thessaloniki, Greece. For the reasons of this move you can read my post here.

Now I am a cook, food writer, olive oil producer, and do consulting for hospitality businesses.

I rather define myself as a cook, not a chef. What matters for me is not the professional act itself, but focusing on ingredients, culture, producers and bringing all those things that matter into my daily enjoyment of food. Cooking for me is about sharing. Both at the table and here with words.

For many years I’ve written in Turkish, a blog, a cookbook and still have a weekly column at the national newspaper Oksijen. Here at Substack I write to share my passion and reflect my knowledge about Istanbul cuisine to a broader audience and also about my adventures in my own kitchen with the hope of inspiring curious cooks alike.

First of all I am an Istanbulite. Proud to be one, being deeply rooted in Istanbul and its’ rich multi-cultural culinary heritage define my cooking. Istanbul cuisine is the most refined of all Turkish regional cuisines.

When you say Turkish food to anyone abroad, it is always kebabs and döner. Yes, they are part of our culture but Turkish cuisine cannot be diminished to just this. It is a highly regional cuisine, where traditions are established by the geography. Food is geography. The climate, the winds, the mountains, the sea, the temperature differences between day and night.... that all changes with your geography and hence the regional cooking. Anatolia is rich with diversity and it reflects upon its cuisines.

Where you live determines what you cook with. On the south-eastern Turkey it is meat, aubergines and chilli peppers whereas by the Black Sea it is mostly defined by anchovies, collard greens , corn and cornmeal or on the Aegean it is baby goat, wild edible weeds and of course olive oil.

But then there is Istanbul, the one and only.

Istanbul has been a capital for many empires throughout history and its food culture is highly multi-dimensional. With its heritage of Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Jews and Turks living in this most exciting of cities and co-existing within its walls, the food of Istanbul has become more than the sum of its people.

I’ve learned Istanbul cooking through women in my family, mainly my mother but also from my aunties and grandmother. So many times I’ve been asked where I’ve trained, the answer is always “with my mother”.

She was an excellent cook. Food was always freshly prepared, daily and eaten at a table set with the proper stuff including white linen tablecloths and linen napkins. Whatever was left over was either for me to consume the next day when I came home from school or it was to be turned into something completely new and exciting. It was a no waste kitchen. All the ingredient were fresh and definitely not pre-packed -not available anyway- seasonal and local. We ate according to seasons and our rich Istanbulian heritage.

Dinner was always an affair where everything was shared, food, laughter, tears, dreams, stories, it was where memories were built. And those memories are still lingering with me today. They affect the way I cook, eat or think about food.

My personal preferences are defined from a very early age at home and by the food women in my family cooked. There are certain dishes I would never ever attempt to change. When something is perfect why mess with it? But then as years passed on, both as a professional and a curious home cook I developed my own style. My cooking is deeply personal. Stimulated by ingredients, influenced by my travels, rooted in Istanbul, it is Şemsa’s food per se.

I will be sharing my recipes and my stories with you. The ones that are classic and/or contemporary Istanbul are grouped in Istanbul Home-Cooking. Also there are my own adventures in the home kitchen to be gathered in Food Journal, and then BREAD! section is filled with my obsessive wish to master the craft.

All I aspire to is to inspire. Come and join me here and let’s enjoy the ride together!

Please don’t forget to subscribe.

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or a paid subscriber.

Subscribe for free to get notifications for my words, published randomly. They remain reachable for a full month before going behind the paywall. After that to reach my archive of posts, you may prefer to go paid.