This morning, Easter Sunday, the GF woke with a quest in mind. So off we went to Kurtulus, in search of a legendary baker of Greek Easter bread, described as brioche-like, flavoured with mastic and mahlep, and baked by a Turkish family whose patriarch had been apprenticed to an old Rum baker. We went on foot, and though it was grey and cold, it was fresh and pleasant, as long as we kept moving. We took a new route, up a very tall and steep hill, through impoverished neighbourhoods filled with beautiful old houses, as lovely as any in Galata, and immense churches behind razor wire. Then into Kurtulus, down a road lined with tall art deco and similar apartment blocks. The neighbourhood itself is an old Rum area and now has some of the city’s remaining Armenians, so there were many bakeries with signs saying Easter bread was available, or with Armenian notices.
Our hopes were not high that the bakery would be open, or that it would not have run out of bread, or that we could get bread without having pre-ordered it. But we were fortunate: there was a queue snaking out of it, we joined the end, and ten minutes later emerged with a massive loaf of bread. They had two sizes, a small and a very large, and I’m afraid I took one look at the very large and said ‘that one’. So we have rather a lot of Easter bread, but fortunately it is very delicious and doesn’t seem particularly susceptible to becoming stale.
We stepped outside and wondered what to do next, and then saw there were a couple of pins on the map in the neighbourhood; as good a time as any to see what they were. The first was a nondescript vegetable stall owned by a man from Hatay, and in the back was an impressive display of foods from his village – jams, cheeses, vegetables in oil, etc. We came out with a good load and went to the next pin, which was a well known Armenian deli, specialising in topik. This is is a curious food, very cinnamony paste filled with raisins and onions. The one I’d had before was a little too sweet for my taste. This was also a little sweet, but was very delicious nonetheless, and it reminded me of Chinese sweet-savoury foods, like bak kwa or sweet wafers filled with fried shallots despite being completely different. Anyway we came out with a little selection for our Easter dinner.
The final stop was in Nisantasi where we stocked up on bulgur and other essentials, and then returned.
A pleasant afternoon and, more, the first day in many weeks that I didn’t do even a tiny bit of work.