Mücver and Istanbul's fertile bostans
In À La Recherche du Temps Perdu (or In Search of Lost Time) Marcel Proust describes how right when a piece of tea-soaked madeleine touched his palate, his senses were invaded by an exquisite pleasure making him indifferent to the vicissitudes of life.
This memory comes to him as his aunt Lèonie offers him little pieces of madeleine after first dipping it in her tea one Sunday morning. The madeleine anecdote is so central to the book’s main theme of involuntary memory that it has come to be known as the “Proustian moment” – the moment when a particular taste or scent conjures up a certain experience, time, or place. Perhaps no mezze has this effect as strongly as mücver – vegetable fritters – does. But in this case, it is not the taste or scent of the final product that conjures up memories but the aromas unleashed while it is being cooked – quite fitting as contrary to what many think, mücver is not the name of a dish but a style of cooking.
A Mother’s Classic
Mücver has such a forceful impact on the senses because, as renowned chef and author Didem Şenol puts it, it is a “mother’s classic”. Unlike most of the mezzes, mücver is rather easy to make as pretty much any vegetable can be used as the main ingredient. That’s why it is very frequently made in every kitchen throughout not only Istanbul but the entire country. Second reason is the distinct and rich odour released as the fritters are fried. Indeed, the scent is so unmistakable that one cannot avoid or hide from memories (often of childhood) being conjured up.
The memories are as varied as the vegetables that can be used as the main ingredient: returning home from school to courgette mücver being fried in the kitchen; final preparations being made before the extended family gathers for the eid dinner; or, responsible parents ensuring their children eat vegetables by making fritters with them. So, what is the story of this mezze that features so prominently not only in kitchens but also in the minds of Istanbulites?
There are quite a few innovative mücver recipes circulating online. One of those is made with butternut squash and deserves mention for the novelty of the ingredients alone: Grate half a kilo of a butternut squash and add two finely chopped spring onions and two sticks of sage to it. Then add two eggs, a bottle of mineral water, one cup of flour and a teaspoon of salt and ground black pepper. Stir until mixture turns into runny dough and using a spoon, scoop small chunks of the mixture and fry in olive oil until crisp.
Not Mücver But Mücber
As mentioned above, mücver is actually not the name of the mezze but a particular style of cooking. That is not the only misconception about this popular food though. The original name is actually not mücver but mücber, which means shredded or mashed in Ottoman and it refers to frying shredded vegetables that are turned into a runny dough in what was called mücber pans (which look very similar to the pancake or fried egg pans used today).
As mücber became mücver in time, another misconception came to be etched in Istanbulites’ minds: that although any vegetable can be used to make mücver, “real” mücver is made with courgettes. Interestingly enough major Ottoman cookbooks, memoirs, and records do not list courgette as a popular mücver ingredient. Among the most common vegetables used are aubergines, potatoes, leeks, carrots, cauliflowers, chards, and a true Ottoman favourite, runner beans.
How to Make the Perfect Mücver – Ottoman Way
One of the earliest recipes for runner beans is found in Cypriot Mehmet Kamil Pasha’s brilliantly titled cookbook Melceü’t-Tabbahin, or A Refuge for Cooks from 1844. According to the Pasha, this recipe for succulent mücvers dates back to the 18th century:
First, destring the beans and boil them for about 15 minutes, until they are tender. Then wash them with cold water to avoid discolouration. Shred the washed beans and mix with flour. In a separate bowl mix five eggs, a finely chopped bundle of parsley, and a teaspoon of salt and ground black pepper. Add the two together and stir until mixture turns into runny dough. Then, melt the butter in mücber pan and using a spoon, scoop small chunks of the mixture and fry until crisp.
Today, not only the vegetables but also the spices used vary from one recipe to another. For instance, mint and thyme are added to enhance the aroma. Kasseri or feta cheese is added to the mix to heighten the flavour. And to achieve a delicious contrasting flavour, it is often served with a creamy yoghurt sauce. Whatever main ingredient is used, whichever spices are preferred, and however it is served, mücver continues to gratify our culinary desires. But what was it that initially made it a salient part of Istanbul’s mezze culture?
Langa was the best-known of Istanbul’s bostans for centuries. Located in the south of the city and on the shores of the Sea of Marmara, Langa (coming from the Greek word Vlanga, meaning outside in Greek, as the bostan was located outside the city wall) was particularly fertile as the River Lykos fed into it. It was famous not only for the vegetables produced therein (especially cucumbers) but also some of the characters working in the bostan. One of those was a Greek woman by the name of Aleksandra, wife of a gardener working in Langa, whose clove compote reached city-wide fame. The others were Maksud and his son Kapril who owned a meyhane in Langa. According to journalist Sermet Muhtar, known for his essays on Istanbul, Maksud would clean the glasses with vinegar and they were so clean that rubbing one’s finger on them would make a nightingale sound. Celebrities such as author Ahmed Rasim frequented the meyhane where Maksud and Kapril wouldn’t apparently take orders from regulars but serve them whatever they thought fit.
Istanbul’s Unparagoned Bostans
Bostans were Istanbul’s market gardens that provisioned the city with fresh vegetables (and to a lesser extent fresh fruits) from the 5th century onwards. Byzantion, Constantinople, and Der Saadet (Ottoman name for Istanbul used since the 16th century, meaning Gate of Felicity) were all imperial cities meaning they were densely populated and their consumption rates were always at lofty heights. That in turn meant, before advancements in transportation and refrigeration technologies were made (that is before the second half of the 20th century), the city had to find ways to sustain itself. And this is what bostans were there for: to meet the citizens’ vegetable needs.
We know that the bostans existed as early as the 5th century because when Byzantine emperor Theodosius II built his walls around the city, he decreed that the farmers tending the land by the walls (today, Yedikule) would be granted the right to use the lower sections of the wall as depots in exchange for maintaining their section of the wall. And in Geoponika, a twenty-book collection of agricultural lore compiled during the 10th century for the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, reference is made to fertile gardens by the walls where a variety of vegetables and greens, including arugula, leeks, onions, beets, dill, and radishes were grown.
Not much changed during the long Ottoman rule. Although records prior to the 18th century only have sporadic references to bostans (such as a reference to Ipsomethya (today, Samatya) bostan in the 1455 cadastral records or the travelogue Evliya Çelebi’s references to impressive urban agricultural production within the city walls), Arif Bilgin, an expert on Istanbul’s bostans, points to a decree dating back to 1624 which mentions that a vast network of bostans and a complicated system of operating them had been in place since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. According to the said decree, bostan owners within the walls of the city and from surrounding villages and towns were to present their fresh produce (particularly courgettes, cucumbers, aubergines, carrots, cabbages, vine leaves, onions, romaine lettuce, spinach, and radish) to the palace. After putting the produce needed by the palace aside, the remaining stock of vegetables would be allocated to different greengrocers in accordance with the needs of the towns in which they were located.
The complexity of this system (which was in place to prohibit bostan owners to sell vegetables on their own accord) proves how valuable bostans were to the city. A study of an indemnity register dating back to 1735 by Aleksandar Shopov and Ayhan Han shows that there were 344 bostans and 1381 bostan workers intra muro (within the walls) alone. These numbers confirm the belief that urban agriculture had always been a priority for rulers of the imperial city.
It wasn’t just the quantity of vegetables produced that allowed a mezze like mücver to gain such a prominent place in Istanbul’s rich culinary culture. Every single account of Istanbul’s bostans make mention of the deliciousness of the vegetables produced. In fact, so flavourful were the vegetables produced, such a distinct taste they had that they came to be identified with the neighborhood where the bostan was located: Beykoz runner beans; Yedikule romaine lettuce; Çengelköy cucumbers, Kemer aubergines and so on.
According to historians most of the workers in the bostans were Muslims and non-Muslims of Albanian origin. Lesser in number were Greeks, Armenians, and Bulgarians. After the second half of the 1950s, migrant workers from a town called Cide from the city of Kastamonu on the shores of the Black Sea, started to work as gardeners in the bostans, learning the trade from the Albanian masters. Today, the descendants of these workers from Cide own almost all the remaining bostans.
Sadly, from the 19th century onwards as the population of the city increased, the numbers of bostans decreased. An anonymous map dating back to 1883 depicts 102 bostans within the walls. In Necip Bey’s 1918 map the number is merely 39. (Although it is fairly certain that the number of bostans outside the city walls remained the same until the second half of the 20th century.)
The real and drastic change occurred in the second half of the 20th century. Mass migration to Istanbul from the rest of the country meant more and more bostans were zoned for construction by successive governments and urban officials. So much so that by 2014 only two bostans remained in Istanbul: one in Yedikule and the other in Kuzguncuk. The battle to keep them alive is at the same time a battle to preserve a fundamental part of Istanbul’s not only culinary but also urban culture.