Every two months a suburban community hall in south east Melbourne is transformed… into an Ottoman dining room.

Yilmaz Gursoy is one of the driving forces behind this gathering of Turkish food-loving friends, where everyone brings a plate - or three. It’s called “Zev-Ku Sefa” – old Turkish for "fun and joy". And that’s precisely the atmosphere that prevails. The group has been meeting for many years now after deciding this was a good way to get together without putting too much pressure on one single host. They eat, they sing, they dance and they chat… in Turkish and in English. And their children get together too.

An engineer by profession, Yilmaz tackles his cooking with military precision, making dishes from his home town of Antakya - formerly known as Antioch. Ruled by both the Christian Crusaders and later the Moslem Ottomans, Antioch’s cuisine reflects the turbulent multicultural history of the city. When Yilmaz was a child, the city had a population of 40,000 – which consisted of majority Sunnis, followed by Alawis (or Shiites), Jews, Armenians, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Assyrians and Arabs.

Many of the dishes he prepares have non-Turkish names, like serimsek: lamb mince parcels rolled in fantastic home-style fillo sheets. Then there is cevizli biber – a spiced dip of ground walnuts blended with onion, hot Turkish chilli paste (biber salca), cumin and pomegranate molasses; and finally the incredible Sultan’s delight – grilled, pureed eggplant mixed with bechamel and grated cheese, topped with lamb in fresh tomato, sprinkled with freshly ground allspice and parsley.

Across town, at his friend Yildiz Ugur’s, preparations are underway as well. An obsessive cook, Yildiz makes stuffed pide bread and sweet pumpkin along with her famous pistachio baklawa.

She also soaks cracked wheat and lentils, flavouring them with chilli paste and cumin to make delicious little patties called mercimekli kofte.

Recipes:

Serimsek
Cevizli biber
Baklawa
Mercimekli kofte