SpiceLines

Selin Rozanes, an Istanbul cooking instructor, and her husband, Can, prepare a sumptuous green lentil soup enriched with melted butter and spicy red pepper.

“Get in! Get in!”

An impatient, disembodied voice calls from above. I‘m standing in front of the elderly, caged elevator, hesitant about stepping into utter darkness.

“Get in! It’s all right!” calls the voice again.

I step into the elevator. A dim light glimmers on. I press the button. The cage ascends, slowly, with a lot of creaking.

Selin Rozanes is waiting in the doorway of her apartment. With short blond hair and a bright, assessing gaze behind amber-hued glasses, she has the jaunty, energetic air of a successful small business owner. Behind her there is a bowl of dried red peppers into which a blue glass evil eye has been tucked.

Spicy bulgur pilaf, from a recipe by Selin Rozanes, is vibrant with the flavors of Turkish red pepper paste and a host of spices, including cumin, black pepper and sumac.

It felt just like Istanbul yesterday: Forty-nine degrees, angry clouds and spurts of cold rain.

Of course there were no minarets. No way to sit at a teahouse overlooking the steely Bosphorus, warming my chilled hands on a glass of hot cay.

It would have been an excellent day to go to the hamam—if only my bath had a warm bench to lie on and a corpulent masseuse to scour my hide with olive oil soap and a rough mitt until it glowed.

No matter. Instead I made sehriyeli bulgur pilavi, the spicy bulgur pilaf that I first tasted in Selin’s kitchen a few weeks ago. Its enticing aromas filled the kitchen, lightening the gloom, while the vibrant flavors of Turkish red pepper paste and other spices made Saturday supper a lively affair.

Faded grandeur: The hunkar sofasi, or Throne Room Within, where once the Sultan received family and personal guests for celebrations and entertainments. After the Harem Fire of 1666 it was redone in elaborate Roccoco style; calligraphic tiles border the room.

"Lamps were hung about, along with caged canaries and glass globes filled with colored water. Sometimes whirling dervishes entertained the sultan with their madly spinning dance, or girls played catch with a golden ball. And lumbering among the tulip beds were turtles by the hundreds, each with a lighted candle mounted on its shell.” A passage from Middle Eastern Food by Harry Nickles, reprinted in Barrie Kerper's Istanbul: The Collected Traveler.

For centuries it was known simply as the New Palace, or to some, as the Grand Seraglio.

A low, sprawling place with stone walls 10 feet thick, situated on a promontory with commanding water views: the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus. Built by Mehmet the Conqueror after he sacked Constantinople in 1453; rebuilt after fires and an earthquake, each time becoming larger and more intricately laid out.

For four centuries this was the imperial residence of the Ottoman Sultans, a place of unimaginable opulence. There were exquisite gardens, singing fountains, vast sweeps of tulips that blossomed in spring. Table knives were made of gold set with diamonds, courtiers wore brilliant gold-embroidered silks and satins. Golden thrones were set with tourmalines, pearls and emeralds. Sultan Amhed’s wife wore emeralds, 200 in all, “everyone as large as a half crown piece,” wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1717.

Later the palace came to be known as Topkapi, after a gate of the same name that no longer exists. (The word means “cannon’s gate.”) At its peak 4,000 people may have lived here—concubines, janissaries, eunuchs, cooks, doctors, imams, ministers, gardeners, craftsmen, artists, ghosts. Almost all, save for the Sultan and his family, were slaves.

Those days are gone, of course. The Ottoman rulers are dead, the candle-bearing tortoises have crawled away, and tourists, many of them Turkish, daily invade the most private chambers of the royal family. Nothing much is left—apart from the famed emerald-studded dagger and other relics in the Treasury museum—except the buildings themselves….

And the riotous flower-embellished tiles that cover the walls, inside and out. Come and see….

I’ve been bad. Really bad.

Do you think I spend all my time in the kitchen working on recipes for Turkish bulgur with red pepper paste and mint? Shuffling through photos just so you can luxuriate in Tokapi’s turquoise tulip tiles?

No, no. You see, there are shoes…

For weeks I’ve been obsessing over a pair of sleek crimson patent flats I glimpsed in London, perched amongst a bevy of red-soled stilettos in a Belgravia shop window. In memory they glowed, just like the dark raspberry sprinkles on Ottolenghi’s billowy meringues (just around the corner), or the sumptuous ruby Fortuny throw at Venetia Studium (a few streets away).

I decided, too late, that I had to have them.

Avoid the dolma blues by making Selin's delectable bite-sized chard rolls: Lots of aromatic herbs and sweet spices, and a slow simmer in a burnished broth infused with Turkish red pepper paste transform ordinary dolma into little morsels of deliciousness.

Are you thrilled by dolma?

I know, me neither.

Especially the ones wrapped in dull khaki-colored grape leaves. The ones you see in deli cases and on bad retro-cocktail platters. Stuffed with meat or rice, they always seem dead to me. Dead, as in made weeks ago.

But in Istanbul last month, I had a total change of heart.

In her teaching kitchen, Selin and her husband Can showed me how fresh green chard leaves—big, billowy and so luscious that they seemed to have been cut from someone’s garden that very morning—could be used to create delectable little dolma. Stuffed with meat and rice, spiked with aromatic herbs and sweet spices, the bite-sized rolls were simmered in a sunny broth infused with Turkish red pepper paste. They emerged, burnished and glowing with delicate flavor.

What a revelation: Little morsels of deliciousness!

When the leaves on the Japanese maple start to turn, there's no escaping the turkey. Thanksgiving is just around the corner. But why not spice up the brussels sprouts?

The leaves finally began to change color a few days ago. This morning I woke up, thinking—yikes!—Thanksgiving is less than a week away.

Luckily—or maybe not—howls of anguish erupt if I even hint that I might experiment with the main event. I could probably cook the meal in my sleep: Brined Heritage Turkey with Oyster and Red Chile Dressing? Check. Cranberries Two Ways (spicy and not)? Check. Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes, positively oozing with butter? Yep.

And always, no matter how much I yearn to make a fruit tart, I always end up baking the infamous little New Orleans Pecan Cakes (one for each of us, no make that two, ummm, did I say three?), with Insufferably Rich Toffee Sauce and Coffee-Chicory Ice Cream.

Dinner gets on the table around four in the afternoon, just as the shadows lengthen, so we get to light the candles.

But the side dishes are my playground. Sweet potatoes, butternut squash, brussels sprouts, green beans—let's get creative. Bring on the cumin and the cardamom, cinnamon and ginger, orange zest, turmeric and the red hot chiles.

This year, though, it seems like everyone’s talking about spicy side dishes.

It was the weekend of the great dismantling.

No frost, but the cold night air cast a wintry spell, blighting the angel's trumpets and withering the hibiscus buds before they had a chance to unfurl....

It was time.

Time to uproot the pineapple lilies and sever the "Black Magic" leaves from the elephant ear bulbs...

For the turkey on Thanksgiving, a sweet and and savory bulgur dressing seasoned with cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, coriander and Turkish red pepper flakes. Dried apricots, walnuts and grated orange zest made it even more delicious.

I woke up Thursday morning with a broken heart. Ripped in two, so violently that my rib cage hurt and I could scarcely breathe.

It looked like an awful Thanksgiving. Usually it’s a happy day, family all together, the aroma of turkey roasting in the oven, Domino prancing underfoot, cadging bites of celery and potato skins, champagne toasts and utter pigging out on warm pecan cake with toffee sauce.

But not this year. And then, when I had about hit bottom, the telephone rang.

Let me tell you how a bad day became a day for rejoicing and thanks. Oh, and there’s a recipe too.

Bergdorf Goodman's magical holiday windows, in the making: Go here to see the full screen YouTube video. Music by Audrianna Cole.

Feeling a bit giddy, so it's off to New York for a bubbly few days. Touching down at Kalustyan's, an old haunt where I'll be sating my new passion for marash biber, sweetly spicy Turkish red pepper. Then on to La Boite a Epice for inspired blends conjured by Lior Lev Sercarz, global spice maven and top secret weapon of many a starred chef. No passport needed to sample Tangier (rose petals, cumin, cardamom), Cancale (fleur de sel, fennel, orange), or any of his other magic mixes. And, despite the lines, I'll be dipping into Eataly: can't resist a jaunt to the new "F.A.O. Schwarz for foodies." (The New Yorker said it first.)

What else? Hmmm...in no particular order, someone wants New York Rangers hockey socks, another is longing for just the right Japanese tansu chest for stashing the martini glasses in the library. Also on the list: reading copies of John Lawton's mostly out-of-print British Inspector Troy series, anything from Assouline for our in-house style maven, maybe a decoupaged plate from John Derian. Currently pining for the one that reads, "Paris is always a good idea..." (Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina.)

A shot of culture? Maybe a whirl through the World of Khubilai Khan at the Metropolitan, then back down to earth with Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen at MOMA. In between the two, a walk down Madison is mandatory, with stops at La Maison du Chocolat and Frederic Malle for a whiff of his new perfume, Portrait of a Lady. (Think rose and spices.)

Best show in town? The holiday windows on Fifth. You'll find me outside Bergdorf's, nose pressed up against the fantastic window pane. Surely that white satin frock with red roses comes in my size....

See you in a couple of weeks.