about us
We are a group of pseudointellectuals. Each month we come together to eat, drink, and discuss a movie or a book. This blog is a chronicle of those meetings.

links
The Daily Transcript
Tulula's blog
SocArt
The old Boston Bookclub site


upcoming meetings
- March '08 - Julie (with special guest, Junot)
- April '08 - Julie (again)


past meetings
- Jan 13th '07 - Veit (movie Blind Chance)
- Feb 10th '07 - Alex & Jenni (book Snow by Orhan Pamuk)
- March 17th '07 - Pepita (movie Steam)
- April 21ts '07 - Marius & Gerlinde (book The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello)
- June 3rd '07 - Alex & Jenni (movie Ballad of a Soldier)
- July 16th '07 - Andy & Leslie (book Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain)
- November 30th - Veit (movie Distant)
- December 20th - Sven & Celeste (book Atonement by Ian Mcewan)
- March 1st '08 - Gabriella & Phil (movie Gosford Park)


archive
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • March 2008

  • The Boston Bookclub.
    Sunday, February 11, 2007

    Turkish Delight

    We had a great time reading and discussing Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow.

    As promised here are the recipes for the Turkish dishes:

    Mercimek Soup (Red Lentil Soup)

    Ingredients:

    1 cup red lentils
    1 onion
    1 carrot
    1 bouillon cube (beef or vegetable)
    3 cups water
    butter
    lemon
    Fry onions in pot. Then add lentils, carrots, water and bouillon cube. Boil until the lentils and carrot are soft (about 30 mins.). Next, process the soup with a blender until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve in bowls. Melt butter and spoon into soup. Serve with lemon slice and bread. Enjoy!


    Biber Dolmasi (Stuffed Peppers)

    Ingredients:

    5 peppers
    2 1/4 cups water
    1 cup rice
    4 onions
    2 tbsp. currants
    2 tbsp. pinenuts
    1 1/2 tbsp. chopped mint
    1/2 cup olive oil
    4 tbsp. sugar
    1 tsp. salt
    Fry onion in oil for 10 mins. Add rice, sugar and salt. Cook on low until rice is translucent. Add nuts, currants, mint and 1 cup of water. Cook on low until all the water is evaporated and rice is chewy. Take off the heat. Cut off pepper tops and put aside. Remove the seeds. Stuff the peppers with the rice filling. Cap peppers with pepper tops. Place peppers in a pot with 1 1/4 cup water and cook on low heat until all the water has evaporated. Serve with lemon.


    Some pics from the evening:








    Some interesting links to articles that pertain to the book:

    'Virgin Suicides' save Turks' 'honour' (7/12/06 IHT)

    Suspects in Journalist’s Killing Came From a Hotbed of Turkish Ultranationalist Sentiment (2/8/07 NY Times)




    From the NYTimes article:

    For some of the city’s youth, the region’s culture of bravado and machismo
    seems to make a breeding ground for anger.


    “Black Sea people are dynamic, restless, energetic and have strong heroic feelings,” said Adem Solak, a prison therapist who works with the youth who killed Father Santaro. “Their environment, built on a single culture without interaction with diverse ethnicities, creates a greater potential for reaction to social
    issues.”


    Expressions of anger are easy to come by, as are defenses of Mr. Samast and the killing of Mr. Dink.


    “I don’t think brother Ogun did wrong,” said Murat, 19, a university dropout who, like many interviewed, refused to give his last name, saying he feared police harassment. “We heard that the Armenian cursed our blood, which we cannot accept.” He and his friend Hasan, 18, chain-smoking at a cafe near the town center, said they had known Mr. Samast for years in Pelitli, the suburb where all three grew up. They praised nationalism with a religious undertone.

    ...

    A colleague, who gave his name as Hamdi and said he was 21, went on from there. “What would you expect in a town where there are no social activities for young people, no job opportunities, and everyone around you loves to cause trouble?” he said.


    The problem with Mr. Samast was not his politics, they said, but his failure to leave it to the government to defend the nation.


    The city was populated by Greeks, Armenians and Abkhazians when it was a trading center, but after Turkish independence in the 1920s, the Greeks left, and Trabzon became overwhelmingly Muslim and Turkish. Since then the people here have been seen as having strong nationalist and religious values. Use of weapons adds another dimension to the pride of individual bravery.


    “We cannot do without weapons,” Asim Aykan, a member of Parliament from Trabzon, said on NTV.


    “They are a special part of the culture of our society. We cannot express our joy without firing guns. That is the culture, which is beautiful but can also turn bad.”

    On a cold and windy Sunday after Mr. Dink was killed, crowds attending a game at the soccer stadium here waved Turkish flags. One group opened a huge banner saying: “We’re from Trabzon. We’re Turks. We’re all Mustafa Kemals” — a reference to the founder of the modern Turkish state.


    That was a rebuttal to the many thousands of Turks in Istanbul who attended Hrant Dink’s funeral carrying signs that read: “We’re all Hrant Dinks. We’re all Armenians.”


    Nationalism of the former sort “embraces intolerance towards the other, superiority over minorities and not only fear but also hatred toward the foreigner,” said Professor Ali Carkoglu of Sabanci University in Istanbul.


    The feeling is stirred up by global events like the war in Iraq, the Danish cartoons satirizing Muhammad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Then there is Turkey’s ambition to join the European Union, which has brought many changes.

    That long process has its ups and downs, said Melek Goregenli, a professor of political psychology at Ege University in Izmir. She said that it “helped bring unspoken thoughts to the fore, made them more visible, but at the same time made those who spoke out as targets for those who couldn’t tolerate free expression of thought and equal rights for everyone.”

    But even in this city, there are people who try to revive the feeling of unity among ethnic groups that lived together for centuries. In a historic building once used as a prison, a local theater company performed an Armenian comedy classic the weekend after Mr. Dink was killed.

    There had been several sold-out shows, and the seats were sold out for that performance too. But because of fears about security, the theater was empty,
    Necati Zengin, the director of the play, said in a sad and frustrated tone.



    apalazzo
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