Feeding the giant!

Istanbul is like a huge giant forever hungry. This enormous city of more than 15 million registered residents, in reality, hosts more than 20 million people. Istanbul has always been a center of attraction, acting like a magnet attracting people of all walks and cultures, making the city a melting pot of diverse culinary cultures. It is not easy to feed such a mega city, and history proves that the city has always been a hub of trade, getting the best of all the products available even from agar lands. This has been so since the Roman times, and later in the Byzantine times, when spices such as black pepper and cinnamon made its first west forward move from south Asia. The transition from Byzantine to Ottoman times was not a total disruption, on the contrary, there has been a continuity, especially in culinary practices, we can still taste the culinary legacy of those earlier times.

The Ottoman era was the time when today's Istanbul cuisine was shaped, with the Ottoman court and palace kitchens in Topkapı Palace excelling in gastronomy. One may think that all the special food cooked in palace kitchens was confined to the higher circle of royals, but that was not really the case. Topkapı Palace was like the White House, Pentagon and Parliament combined, it was also the center of governing power, thousands were fed every single day from the court palace, even sending food in trays to families of palace officials. The best of the best ingredients were coming to the court kitchen from all corners of the vast empire that stretched from Hungary and the Balkans to the Middle East and North Africa. Any surplus goods were at once in Istanbul markets, with Istanbulites getting and knowing the best produce from around the empire. As the best products of the empire...