[Sca-cooks] Dinner in the Topkapi Serai

Lilinah lilinah at earthlink.net
Mon Nov 12 07:23:01 PST 2007


Maire wrote:
>Wow, Urtatim! I would have risked a *lot* of foul weather for a 
>feast like that! Yum!
>What was your favorite dish in the menu?

I really don't know. I only tasted a few of the dishes during the 
feast (the manti and the chicken) and, while i took some leftovers 
home, i only ate 2 of them yesterday (the chicken soup and the 
muhallebi). Several people came up to me to rave about the meatball 
soup during the feast, but i never got to taste it.

Earlier in the week one of my cooks, Beli Bailey, drove to my house 
where we made over 400 pastries: Sheker Burek, baked yeasted 
"cookies" with home-made almond paste on top; and Senbuse Mukalelle, 
home-made almond paste wrapped in phyllo, then fried in butter on 
site. I did taste one of the Senbuse because a friend shoved one in 
my mouth - it was quite good :-)

One of my cooks, Anna Serre, is a fabulous feast cook in her own 
right. She lives in another Principality and had a long drive to come 
help me. She made a WONDERFUL subtlety just for the feast - the 
Topkapi garden with what looked like a gingerbread domed building, 
trees with marzipan fruits of various colors, and even a cookie lake 
with a colorful glaze. At the end of the feast she invited people to 
eat it - as was done with amazing often life-sized sugar sculptures 
paraded through the streets of Constantinople during princely 
circumcision festivals. I sure hope she got photos of it before it 
was devoured!
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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