Customer Reviews

Turquoise: A Chef's Travels in Turkey

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The hefty price tag made that it has been on my wish list for a while.
But the book is worth every penny!
It has wonderful travel stories and the most beautiful pictures that take me right back to our holiday in Turkey.
And the recipes are absolutely delicious! There are a few original recipes, but mostly it's Greg Malouf's own recipes which are a modern take on the Turkish kitchen, but put together with the highest respect for it's origins.
The book itself is printed on beautiful paper and has a heavy duty binding.
This book is so good that you might want two.....one for the coffee table and one to get stained in the kitchen.
A delicious book!

I am avid cookbook collector and user, but am rarely moved to write reviews. I have also had the pleasure of visiting Istanbul and experiencing first hand the wonderful cuisine. Turquoise far surpassed my expectations. It is hard to know what pleases me more - the excellent collection of recipes presented with clear, easy to follow instructions or the amazing photographs and descriptions that place the recipes in their colorful contexts. It is definitely one of the gems of my collection, one which I would recommend highly both to someone looking for a gift or to treat themselves.

I am a collector of cookbooks and let me tell you, get this one. Some very different recipes with well written, clear directions. I could live on the yoghurt with chicken soup and the olive salad with pistachios, walnuts and pomegranate seeds is fabulous. I am cooking my way through it....Terrific book.

You spend the morning in the souk, window-shopping for gold bracelets and rugs. You pass by fruit and spice stalls. You can feel the scents of cardamom and rosewater begin to soak into your cotton shirt. You stop at a café and order a small, strong, sweet coffee and listen to the storyteller on the dias entertaining the crowd. You order a small, exquisite milk pudding, sprinkled with almonds and pomagranite seeds like little gems....

Greg and Lucy Malouf are your traveling partners as you peruse the vibrant, healthy cuisines of Turkey. You couldn't ask for better guides. The Maloufs travel all over Turkey and introduce you to regions and cooking styles you've NEVER heard about. If you thought (as I did) that Turkish cooking was greasy lamb, gooey Turkish Delight and bitter coffee, you couldn't be more wrong.

Aside from the recipes, this book is positively riddled with drop-dead photos--of people, regions, food, markets. And always the sea, as Turkey's almost surrounded by water. One photo in particular looks almost like an Orientalist painting: a young Istanbul man in a white kaftan and fez powdered in flour, holds the delicate sheets of phyllo he's rolled. It's as if he stepped out of the kitchens of the Seraglio a hundred years ago.

What's more, along with recipes for kofte and puddings, cookies, delicate chicken, beef and lamb recipes, The Maloufs have narrated a fascinating journey through the Homeland--vendors, chefs and housewives are pumped for advice and directions to the ferry. It reads like a novel. Enchanting.

The book's huge and heavy enough to hold a bank vault door open. But you'll never use it as a doorstop--it's so colorful, helpful and entertaining that it could happily sit on your coffee table, thrilling guests forever.

PS: I've tried the Kofte recipes. Delicious!

This is a lovely book full of stunning pictures from all around Turkey. It's pretty enough to prominently display on a coffee table or counter, but functional because the recipes are easy to follow and delicious! We just got this book 2 days ago and have already made three recipes (all successful). My only wish would be to see the Turkish name for every recipe (not just a select few). And, my husband (from Turkey) says the recipes are really tasty, but they're adaptations of traditional recipes. So, if you're looking to impress some Turkish friends, be aware you're making "new" versions of traditional foods- and they're quite tasty!!!

Enjoy Turquoise, it makes me want to go back to Turkey every time I open another page... makes me hungry too!

I have only recently discovered Turkish cooking and this book is certainly going to increase my appetite for it. A travelogue within a cookbook with the kind of photos that let you imagine the sunshine on your shoulders and the aroma of roast lamb with spices you have never tried before. Turkish cooking is basic, healthy, quick and tasty. The Maloufs explain the recipes in a straight forward way. Most of the ingredients are available in city supermarkets especially if you explore some of the smaller middle eastern shops. I tried the lamb shaslicks first up then the pomegranate drink. A real change from steak and 2 veg.

Beautiful coffee table cookbook introducing Turkish food. However, it is written by a total outsider so there isn't much depth in the book. So it is nowhere close to a book like Locatelli's "Made in Italy". Still there aren't that many books about Turkish cuisine and this book surely makes you hungry. Maybe a bit too generous but I give it four stars.

UPDATE: I think I was slightly too hard in my initial review. The books superficially looks like a coffee table book, but I would say it really is a cookbook. There are some travel notes and they are actually quite interesting. (Bear in mind that I don't know anything about Turkey.) The book contains both simple, everyday recipes as well as more complicated. My rating of four stars is still valid. It is not a five star book because it is not really the authoritative guide written by an insider. Still I want to say that I do like this book (maybe 4.5 stars)

I've just been to Turkey and I haven't found many good books in English about Turkish food. They might exist, but in that case they're a bit old and not to be found in book stores.
- The most interesting books I found were two books (translated into English) by Sahrap Soysal, who is a tv-chef personality. I didn't buy then, expecting to buy them on amazon, but they are not there.
- The Turkish Kitchen is not so bad. It contains mostly quite simple dishes (for good or bad). Lot's of detailed pictures about preparation. Each recipe covers exactly one page with 12 small pictures. I don't really like this approach.
- The same author also has Turkish Meze: The Little Dishes of the Eastern Mediterranean. Same format. This author writes lots of books and she doesn't explain the extent to which they contain the same or different recipes. She has written three books about Turkish food. I suspect the two mentioned here have a lot in common with her third book that is out of print.
- Sultan's Kitchen: A Turkish Cookbook doesn't contain many of the standard dishes. I think it has quite a bit of Ottoman cuisine in it.
500 Years of Ottoman Cuisine is another book available in Turkey. It looks quite interesting, but this is not really about Turkish food. It is about upper-class Ottoman food. Lower-class Ottoman food is probably a bit closer to Turkish food today.

A beautiful, beautiful, beautiful well written book about Turkey. As a Californian Chef who has just returned from a trip to Turkey I can truly say it captures what Turkish cuisine is really about. It does a wonderful job of explaining the culture and food to people who just enjoy eating and traveling. The text and photographs are excellent! A great item for anyone who enjoys culture, traveling, reading, great photography and eating. Isn't that most of us, anyway?

Turquoise is an exquisitie book....it excites through the superb presentation and photography; the writing of Lucy is both informative and enriching through the intimate stories of the people Greg and Lucy meet along their travels, and then comes the delights of the food. Greg is well known in Melbourne, where I come from, as an outstanding Chef, owning a number of award winning restaurants, so it is not surprising his recipes are well researched with excellent results.
But perhaps the best outcome is wanting to visit Turkey to personally feel the rich history and eat at the hand of some of the original producers and cooks.
Enjoy
SJJ-Melbourne
PS I am buying another copy for a friend.

I gave this book as a present to several of my collegues and they all loved it. I think a book about Turkish cuisine will be insufficient as long as you do not tell something about the culture behind it. I think this book does that nicely.
The quality of the print and the way the photos were picked is appropriate for a book of this price.