Out and About: Auburn

What looks like Turkey, tastes like Turkey and exists only 20mins from my place? Why, it’s the Sydney suburb of Auburn, that’s what! (By Turkey, I am not referring to the large intimidating bird but the fascinating, East meets West country up near Greece and all our Aussie gold.)

On Saturday, Ma and I had a brilliant day exploring some of the busy, friendly community of Auburn. With the help of Rodney and Suzie of Gourmet Safaris, we spent our morning acquainting ourselves with some of the culinary delights Turkey has to offer from the convenience of Sydney suburbia.

We congregated in the dimly lit Mado cafe for Turkish coffee or apple tea, then feeling very authentic and proud of ourselves, the whole excited group staggered off up the road.

Our first port of call as quasi-tourists was the Afghan Bakery, for some hot bread and a bit of gawking at the team of bakers, going about their daily routine of flattening dough onto large cushions, slapping the loafs onto the inside walls of brick ovens the peeling them out, perfectly toasted and risen.

At the Menzel Turkish bake house, we greedily emptied three platters of different sweet Turkish short breads and biscuits, some covered in pistachio or walnuts, some soaked in honey syrup, all popular with the ooh-ing ah-ing group. From there we stopped in at the Gima Emporium to browse the endless jam varieties, honeys, Turkish fairy floss, tinned vine leaves, pomegranate syrup, sour cherry juice and olive oil soap all crammed into the shelves of the Mum & Pop store, all dirt cheap and hard to resist!

At the recently occupied new premises of "Real Turkish delight", we met the son of the migrant, Bahattin Pektuzun, who arrived here in 1970, experimented with Turkish Delight recipes with a small copper pot for two years and has been delivering beautiful Turkish confectionary to the Australian public ever since. For our visit, a small brass dish carried two flavours of Turkish delight around the group, marking everyone with the tell-tail, white icing sugar dust. Then I just had to stand back from the throng of excited women surging around the counter with wallets waving and shopping lists growing by the minute.

At Auburn Halal meat, we got a quick lesson on the product (Halal meat) before sampling some interesting Bastourma (a bit like pastrami) and Sujuk sausage. Then we headed off to Arzum Market for super cheap dates, tiny white dried figs, yummy golden raisins, pistachio nuts and nougat. By the time we left the last bakery, Buket Cake shop, where we were treated to some hot pide with lemon juice, the prospect of lunch seemed to me to be a little daunting after so much sampling!

The Mado café put on a great spread for us, including water imported from a Turkish spring and the most amazing Anatolian chicken I have ever eaten (a dish I sampled a hundred different times while in Turkey two years ago). I also fell in love with their Imambayildi (eggplant stuffed with mixed vegetables) and vow to return for some more of that in the near future.

For dessert, the most important meal of the day, we were treated to a piece of pistachio baklava with 2 scoops of the bizzare dondurma (Turkish ice cream made from Salep, an orchid root). The sour cherry was pretty tart and refreshing while the other, name already forgotten by Franky sieve-head, had a subtle light taste that perfectly complemented the sweet nutty baklava.

Having gorged ourselves on all manner of sweet and savory offerings, we gathered up our crackling gaggle of shopping bags and waddled over to the Gallipoli Mosque built by Auburn’s Turkish community, an exotic temple nestled between fibro and weather-board cottages. Our friendly Muslim guide showed us around the grounds and lead us barefooted into the Mosque to gaze at the ornate ceiling and soak up the tranquility as he murmured explanations and points of interest. We shuffled up to the balcony area, reserved for women’s prayer, and sat for a while listening to our guide explain aspects of the Muslim faith and lifestyle, as the stirring call to prayer went out.

The quasi-tourists sat, smiling and nodding, fascinated by descriptions of prayer obligations, marriage conventions, family responsibilities, and Halah rules, full of self-satisfaction with their own open mindedness and tolerance. We sat quietly in the welcoming spacious haven of Islam and listened to beliefs about the perils of over indulgence with our arms resting happily on our bulging bellies.