Journal · Notes from Alaçatı
What to eat in Alaçatı: wild herbs, kumru, boyoz and the Aegean year at the table
What to eat in Alaçatı depends on the month: wild herbs and şevketi bostan, the Çeşme kumru sandwich, boyoz at breakfast, spring artichokes, fish, and new olive oil in autumn and winter.
What to eat in Alaçatı? Whatever the season brings. The local food of Alaçatı and Çeşme is wild greens (ot) cooked in olive oil, şevketi bostan with lamb or on its own in oil, the sesame-crusted Çeşme kumru sandwich, boyoz with breakfast, artichokes in spring, fish from the sea, and in autumn and winter the olive harvest and the new oil. We count the year by that order at the table.
Late winter and spring are for herbs: radika, cibez, labada, mallow, arapsaçı, kaya koruğu, körmen. They're blanched and dressed with olive oil and lemon, and that's all. The most prized is şevketi bostan, a prickly Aegean plant. Its spines are trimmed patiently and the stems go into lemon water so they don't darken. Then it's either cooked with lamb and finished with an egg-and-lemon sauce, or kept simple in olive oil. The Cretan way leaves out the onion. In spring the Alaçatı Herb Festival (Ot Festivali), run by Çeşme Municipality, brings all of this into the streets. The municipality announces the dates each year, and recent editions have been in April. To see the greens on the stalls, go to the Saturday market, which has a story of its own on our pages.
Artichokes are the other star of spring. Çeşme is one of the main growing areas, along with Urla, Seferihisar and Karaburun, and the harvest of the geographically protected sakız artichoke peaks in spring. Artichokes in olive oil, cooked with broad beans or with greens, are on our table all through those months. The sea keeps a calendar too. Every year, fishing by large boats closes on 15 April and opens again on 1 September, while small coastal fishermen go out all year within the rules. So autumn and winter are the richest fish months, and in summer you eat what the small boats bring in.
Two baked things fit any hour of the day. Kumru is a sandwich that grew up in Çeşme and spread across İzmir. Its bird-shaped roll is dipped in grape-molasses water, rolled in sesame and baked in a stone oven. The hot version is filled with sucuk, salami and kaşar cheese, the cold one with tulum cheese, tomato and green pepper. It's protected as İzmir Kumrusu. Boyoz is İzmir's breakfast: an unleavened pastry, coiled in thin layers, that came from the kitchens of the Sephardic Jews who arrived from Spain. A hard-boiled egg and a glass of tea go with it, and it's best straight from the oven.
In autumn the olive groves fill with pickers, the olives go to the press, and by early winter the new oil reaches the table. Dipping bread into that green, peppery oil is the simplest winter pleasure on this peninsula. We leave mastic to its own page: 'Mastic in Çeşme' covers the ice cream, the sweets and a taste to take home. For what each month feels like, see 'Alaçatı weather and sea temperature by month'. Whenever you come, we hope you'll step out of our house in Hacımemiş and go looking for that season's plate. If you have questions, Uğur 2.0 on our site is happy to help.