SIMPLE TASTES

In 1981, while in my early twenties, I lived for about a half a year in Paris at the now-legendary “no name hotel” on rue Git-le-Coeur. The halls smelled of marijuana, garlic, cheap frying oil, and Galloise cigarettes. . The poet Gregory Corso had  provided the place with its legendary name: “the beat hotel.”
  
   
    A few years ago, in Barcelona, I purchased a special plate. It’s a one-of-a-kind and so I only use it when I dine alone. It’s earthenware, glazed a rich yellow with a green and red-brown rim, and there’s lettering on it.
    This lettering is my inspiration: Pa amb Tomàquet reads one line In the middle of the plate there’s a circle containing an “i,” and at the bottom, the word Pernil. In the Catalan language this means “Bread with Tomato ... and Ham.” And that, if I can find all the correct ingredients, is my favorite eat-alone dish.
    For me Pa amb Tomàquet sums up all that is best in the Mediterranean, an area whose cuisines and flavors I’ve been studying my entire adult life. This same basic combination appears in numerous Mediterranean lands. Good sea salt and extra virgin olive oil are the only other essential ingredients.
    I’ve written before about  I ate as a beach picnic on the Greek island of Paxos. There the country-style bread, frigania, was sun-toasted, the local oil had a faint overtaste of hazelnut, the air was balmy and bore the aroma of wild herbs and spring wild flowers, the light slanted just perfectly through the olive trees behind us, and we were soothed by the gentle sounds of the Ionian sea. It was one of those afternoons you never forget, where the taste of food merges with your memory of the setting.
    In the Ionians they replace the ham with thin rings of young red onions. In Italy they usually forgo any embellishment, preferring the simple combination of tomato and bread. One morning in Turkey, in the Euphrates Valley, where much of the Old Testament is set, I was handed a variation I call a “breakfast burrito.” Turkish flat bread had been rolled around some smashed wood-charred onions and ripe tomato slathered with olive oil. The oil had been seasoned with a sprinkling of red pepper paste and dried mint.
    I love these and other Mediterranean versions, but I adore the Catalan Pa amb Tomàquet, the most. Perhaps this is because the first time I ate it—at a bar within La Boqueria, the huge, boisterous and legendary central market of Barcelona just off the Ramblas—was the first time I tasted it with Jamón Iberico. Jamón Iberico is the extraordinary ham from the black-hoofed pigs raised on acorns around the town of Jabugo in the Extramadura region of Spain.
    Alas, Jamón Iberico is not yet available in the United States. I know some importers who are working hard to bring it over. Hopefully this will happen within the next few years. In the meantime, I sometimes add a very thin slice of Serrano ham. But more often than not, I eat the bread and tomato alone.
    Because this dish is so simple (a child can put it together in seconds), the ingredients must be perfect. Late summer vine-ripened tomatoes are a necessity. In Northern California, where I live, we’re blessed with wonderful multi-hued heirloom tomatoes from July through October. Off-season, I look for sweet, juicy, aromatic cherry tomatoes, which I crush before spreading on the bread.
    The bread is key. It should be country-style crusty and very fresh, preferably from a local bakery. When I’m at home, I always use bread from the Della Frattoria bakery in Sonoma County. I recommend grilling it the way the Catalans do, over a hardwood fire, or, if that’s impossible, on a stove-top toaster grill set over a gas flame. This method is much preferred to the result obtainable from an electric toaster, in that the bread will be slightly charred by the flames.
    Extra virgin olive oil is one ingredient on which I never stint. I always buy the very best that I can find. If you choose a Tuscan oil, your Pa amb Tomàquet will be somewhat peppery; if you use a fine Spanish oil, it will be closer to the original. Either way works well for me, depending on my mood. As for salt, my favorite is the large-crystal British sea-salt called Maldon, which dissolves when added to the crushed tomatoes.
    Of course there are numerous “world class” dishes that I’ve written about and greatly enjoy—Spanish paella, Moroccan bisteeya, Provencal bouillabaisse, and cassoulet from South-West France. But when I’m going to eat alone, I always reach for that lovingly lettered yellow plate, the one that says Pa amb Tomàquet.
Pa amb Tomàquet
    Cut a rustic style bread with a serrated knife into ½-inch slices. Lightly toast the slices on a grill or in a toaster-oven. Slather the toasted slices (ON BOTH SIDES) with freshly crushed ripe tomatoes. The layer must not be too thin—or too thick—more like a thin, even red sheen. Sprinkle with fine salt. Slowly drizzle a light, golden extra-virgin olive oil on top on one side.
     If you like, you can top the bread off with paper-thin slices of Serrano ham or large, fat fillets of anchovy, preferably imported from l’Escale.
    You may want to rub some garlic on the bread as well, but I’ve yet to meet a Catalan gastronome who would approve. Eat with a knife and fork
 I've been writing about the foods of Turkey for the past 15 years without learning much of the language. But one word I managed to pick up is esprili, which means very clever, witty and fun. I mention this word because it perfectly describes Musa Dagdeviren, the brilliant 43-year-old chef at Çiya in Istanbul. Working with him has been one of the most fascinating experiences of my career.
I met Musa last year in Napa, during a festival at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. I was immediately attracted by the foods he'd set out at one of the tastings, an array as intricate as a Turkish carpet. I'd never seen, much less tried, these dishes before: fresh cheese made from milk fermented with fresh figs, a recipe Musa discovered in the Black Sea town of Samsun; yogurt layered with dried fruits and nuts, a popular mid-Anatolian dessert that Musa tweaks by sautéing the fruits and nuts in brown butter.
Musa's vision, I learned, is vast and multicultural. He's a pioneer in what I've come to call the new Anatolian cooking; it focuses on regional dishes from all over Turkey but also jumps geographic boundaries to include Greece, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, the Balkans, the Caucasus and beyond.Musa is fascinated by the ethnic influences—Kurdish, Arab and Jewish, among others—on regional cuisine. He is part chef, part culinary anthropologist. "I am trying to preserve the best of the forgotten foods from the countryside," he says, and his genius is knowing when to leave these recipes intact and when to add a twist of his own.
I yearned to learn more. So I went to Istanbul.
Çiya is in Kadikoy, on the Asian side of the city. It is actually a cluster of three small restaurants: two kebab (or bread-and-meat) köftecis and one sofrasi, with salads, soups and stews. Hardly any of the dishes can be found elsewhere in Istanbul. Virtually all have their origins in regional peasant cooking—an approach that astounds many Istanbulis, who consider only Ottoman palace-style food worthy of critical praise.
"I'm interested in the food of real people," Musa told me through my interpreter and good friend, the Turkish cookbook author and Sofra magazine columnist Ayfer Ünsal. Perhaps because he is a "real person" himself: Half Kurdish, half Turkish, he began his career at three, straddling the racks at his mother's family bakery to sweep excess flour from the loaves. At five, too heavy for straddling, he crushed tomatoes with his feet. At six he hauled barrows of the olive pits used to heat the bakery ovens.
Musa talks in a pleasantly conspiratorial manner, leaning forward and speaking softly. "I travel all over the country to cook with people in their homes and also study old books to find new leads," he said. "I get very excited when I discover new poor people's dishes, because I believe only poor people can create great food. If a man has money, he can buy anything, but a person who has nothing must create beauty from within." Musa truly believes this; during our conversation he spent an hour describing the many miraculous (his word) uses for stale bread: served in a gravy of preserved meat, garlic, tomato and pepper (as in his hometown of Nizip, in southeastern Turkey), say, or soaked in lamb broth and eaten in an olive-oil sauce with scrambled eggs (as in the town of Senkoy, near the city of Antakya). By the time he finished talking, I was dazzled and exhausted.
Musa offers more than a thousand dishes at Çiya each year, all prepared with the best seasonal ingredients from specially chosen purveyors and the market nearby. He makes 50 types of meat kebabs grilled with such additions as shallots, apples, eggplant or quinces, or stewed with sour cherries, or served on a smoky tomato sauce. He prepares dozens of stuffed leaves and stewed vegetable dishes like eggplant with lentils and pomegranate molasses, and zucchini with chickpeas and fresh tomatoes. There are hundreds of soups in his repertory. Once you sample a dish, there is little chance you will find it again. But you'll never be disappointed.
On my last night in Istanbul, Musa gave a monumental dinner party with 26 different dishes. When most of the guests had left, he offered to read my coffee grounds. After saying all the usual nice things, he suddenly leaned forward, in his usual conspiratorial manner: Two people were plotting against me! I must stop them.
"Quick, spit on the grinds," he commanded. So I did. And that's when I committed to memory the word esprili.