Where the Soup Became Square

How Turkish Lentil Soup and Danish Pea Stew Brought Us to the Same Table

I studied Journalism in high school. While dreaming of becoming a war photographer or a columnist, I eventually realized that in Turkey, the words "journalism" and "prison" are hopelessly intertwined. So I gently shifted my path toward the less political realm of writing into food and enrolled in a university program for Gastronomy and Culinary Arts. For four years, I occasionally stepped into the kitchen, but mostly immersed myself in the science, art, and history of food. Naturally, I came to understand that food is inherently political too. And as long as I was within Turkey’s borders, I made sure to keep my voice just a touch quieter because, as you know, voices can’t be heard from inside a prison.So it was that my most joyful high school memories weren’t tied to writing news stories, but to food.

Those who live in Istanbul know, traffic has no schedule. It’s always just… there. Every day felt like a battle to make it home, especially since my journalism dream had placed me in a school far away, requiring a two-hour journey each way. There were four of us who shared that same long road. Over time, surviving the commute became a kind of food ritual. Our mission was simple: finish class, head straight to the little eatery on the corner, have a bowl of soup, and make it home in one piece.

Every day… same place, same soup. One of our friends would cover their bowl with a mountain of pul biber (that fiery Turkish pepper) and brace themselves for the reflux, clutching a soda with baking soda like a shield.
Four years passed like that.
Lentil soup, politics, the news, traffic…

Now let’s zoom in on that soup, with the lens of a camera, like in a scene from a film.

Wherever you go in Turkey, in every eatery, kebab house, or restaurant, one item always stands tall at the top of the menu: lentil soup. The warm, comforting dish mothers whip up by tossing everything into a pot in two minutes flat, saving the day with its golden simplicity…

Years later, I made that soup again.
My Danish husband took one spoonful and said;

No… It was our lentil soup!

I didn’t think much of it at the time. The soup faded into memory.

But as I began to nourish my roots through Kavata, I wanted to build the foundation of my recipes using local ingredients here in Denmark. I spent hours thinking about how to adapt my recipes to what grows and thrives here.
I ordered kilos of dried beans. Fuego beans, dried peas, Ingrid ærter…
Fuego beans reminded me of our fava meze, but they also evoked the taste of that old lentil soup from back in the day.
So I made a classic bowl of lentil soup with fuego beans.

My husband immediately commented;

No! It is our fava meze. I didn’t use

ingrid ærter!

To me, it tasted like a cross between fava meze and that golden-yellow lentil soup from my school days.

And just like that, two people from entirely different cultures found themselves at the same table, through a bowl of soup.
I was over the moon.
I decided then and there to create a new recipe from those beans.

A little Danish, a little Turkish…
Paying homage to fava, that beloved meze.
Infused with the aroma of fennel and cinnamon…
Blended with the fresh, grassy note of asparagus…
A Danish lentil soup transformed into a Turkish-style meze.

What we ended up with was a tiny, spoonable soup, a bite-sized meze, that left a big smile on our faces.

Cultures, ideas, beliefs, people…
No matter how much we try to separate them, in the end, they’re this close.
At the heart of it, we’re all just a simple bowl of soup.
A warm memory.

May the abundance of beans be with you always.

Nesrin Eren