Beypazarı and baklava with 80 layers

Every year in the school holidays we come to Ankara to visit Cem’s cousins here.  The journey takes about 7 hours – it’s about 500km – and last Thursday when we drove up here we were worried the roads would be icy.  Actually, the only thing that was icy was the inside of our borrowed minibus, as we found out after we’d left that the heating system didn’t work properly.  Kaan was sat at the back bundled up in his coat and woolly hat!

On Sunday we loaded ALL the family – including mum, auntie, cousins and children into the minibus and went to Beypazarı, a town about an hour’s drive from Ankara.  It often seems to me that every town in Turkey is famous for something – usually a food item that is grown there, or a dish that is peculiar to there;  so for example, everyone who drives through Afyon buys ‘sucuk’ (spicy sausage) and if you go to Çorum you must try the ‘leblebe’ (chick peas).  Beypazarı goes further and is famous for a whole range of things.

Beypazarı

Firstly, carrots.  We drove into town and were met by an enormous, rather dubious-looking model carrot.  The shops sell carrot juice, carrot jam and carrot ‘sausage’ (actually a sweet sticky confection).  The town is also famous for a type of dry crisp bread that is bought as fast as the bakeries can get it out of the oven.

Beypazarı’s stuffed vine leaves are a speciality, due apparently to the high quality and sharp taste of the leaves growing there.  We bought a total of about 5kg and Cem (helped by the rest of us) ate about another kilo standing in the shop.  The shopkeeper actively encouraged this, giving us one of the pans of vine leaves to finish off and ordering in tea to wash them down with.  Don’t you just love Turkey?! 

We finished off the ‘meal’ with dessert in the form of baklava.  Though you can, of course, find baklava all over Turkey and neighbouring countries, Beypazarı’s apparently beats them all by having 80 layers of pastry.  I am not a big fan of baklava but this was lovely, with plenty of walnuts, not too much syrup and light despite the many layers.

The old town of Beypazarı is made up of distinctive wooden houses.  Many of them have been renovated, some turned into small hotels, and we visited one that has been made into a ‘living museum’.  Apart from the house itself, which was laid out and furnished as it would have been in the mid-nineteenth century when it was built, they had traditional crafts and activities in each room.

doing ebru - or paper marbling

I had a go at ‘ebru’ – the Turkish art of ‘marbling’ paper by sprinkling paints into a trough of water mixed with gum, swirling them together, then putting the paper on the top so it picks up the floating paint.  You can see my effort below- but go on the internet to see how stunning it can be!

my first attempt at ebru

Cem went for a different ‘art’ – that of lead pouring.  This is an old tradition where lead is heated over a flame and poured into water. It is said to banish evil spirits, while the shape the hardened lead takes allows the pourer to tell your future.  The picture below shows it being done (Cem is under the sheet) but unlike with my ebru, we will have to wait to see the results!

Cem having lead poured