Selin Kiazim – Food for Thought
It’s a lively Saturday night in Dalston, and the brightly lit bars and restaurants gleam along Kingsland Road. Revellers swarm in and outside of takeaway joints, munching on kebabs in an attempt to soak up a nights worth of liver-bashing with some greasy and gristly meat. Whether you’re partial to a classic döner kebab or prefer a shish kebab, you are spoiled for choice in a city that breathes a range of Ocakbasi, or Turkish grill houses. Yet, in recent years, some chefs of Turkish-Cypriot heritage have been on a mission to prove that their nation’s cuisine is so much more than a sobering late-night kebab and chips. One of these chefs is the formidable Selin Kiazim.
Kiazim is the chef and owner of Oklava; a contemporary Turkish restaurant tucked away in Shoreditch, where the menu is inspired by her Turkish Cypriot heritage. Kiazim grew up in Southgate, north London, and spent long and dry summers visiting her grandparents in northern Cyprus. “My grandparents grew their own vegetables and fruits, had chicken and goats, and even made their own cheese,” explains Kiazim. “At Oklava, I find myself being automatically drawn back to those long summers and the taste and flavours.”
Kiazim refers to Cypriot cuisine as focusing on “island cooking”. In other words, whatever is grown on the little island in the eastern Mediterranean sea is harvested, cooked, and then splayed across long tables for all to enjoy. “Every meal was a bit of an affair,” says Kiazim. “We used lemons with everything and then fresh ingredients like tomatoes and parsley to have with meatier dishes of lamb and fish. My grandmother would have these big clay ovens, and from when she woke up, she would make sure there was always something cooking on it.” From enjoying the freshly-baked bread and pastries to slow-cooked chunks of lamb and vegetables, Kiazim and her family always returned to their north London home satiated and well-nourished.
Besides admiring her grandparents’ home-cooked food, Kiazim had no intention of becoming a chef, always seeing it as more of a hobby than a career. “At this point, I was cooking a lot at home and constantly had friends pestering me to become a chef, but unfortunately, as is still often the case, there are lots of unattractive downsides to becoming a chef,” she says. “From the long hours to the bullying, it can be very demanding mentally and physically.”
After deciding on a career in architecture, she was barely a year into her art foundation course when she had the dawning realisation that she had pursued the wrong path. Once Kiazim had completed her foundation course, she signed up for the three-year culinary arts diploma at Westminster Kingsway College, where she honed in her technical skills. “Within a couple of weeks, I realised I had found my calling,” says Kiazim, “it was the first time in my life that I was good at something.”
One competition at Westminster Kingsway saw Kiazim meet Peter Gordon – the New Zealand chef often seen as the “godfather of fusion cooking” – who would become a demonstrable part of her life. The competition prize was a trip to New Zealand, where she worked in Gordon’s kitchen. Afterwards, she took a job working with Gordon at The Providores and Tapa Room in Marleybone. “Peter’s attitude was very different to what I expected working in a kitchen would be like, and that was a breath of fresh air. They were all good people, good chefs, and they all took the time to teach you the trade properly.”
After The Providores, Kiazim could not fight a “burning desire” to do her own thing. She started running pop-ups and supper clubs, contacting a range of pubs, restaurants, and cafés to slowly but surely put her food on the city’s culinary map. But it wasn’t until a six-month residency at Trip Kitchen in Haggerston that she started to put together a concept of sharing plates with a Turkish Cypriot influence. After a rave review from restaurant critic Giles Coren, which said Kiazim’s dishes had the “potential to change lives”, she started to build notoriety as an up-and-coming chef in the city she grew up in.
Eventually, she would meet her business partner Laura Christie, a wine connoisseur who shared Kiazim’s vision for hospitality. Kiazim would run the kitchen and design the menus, and Christie would lead the front-of-house and source a regional wine list to complement.
Oklava opened its doors in 2015 and has received glowing reviews ever since. “I figured going down the route of food from my heritage was going to be the best way for me to put together a menu that could be as unique as possible,” says Kiazim. “Most of the menu is inspired by in and around Turkey. There are still many areas of Turkish cuisine that haven’t been explored in a contemporary context, and there is still a perception that it revolves around kebabs and big piles of meat and bread. Don’t get me wrong, I love that, but there’s much more to the cuisine than that, and we explore that at Oklava.”
Kiazim explains how she designed the kitchen at the restaurant to mimic her grandmother’s oven and charcoal grill. “We won’t necessarily get the same vegetables here as I would in Turkey, but I’ll find the best that I can get and treat them in the same way,” Kiazim says. She gives the example of their chilli roasted cauliflower dish; “it’s not a traditional Turkish recipe, but we use Turkish pepper paste and rub it all over the chunks before serving it with a sharp sumac dressing and crunchy pistachios.”
Other food on the Oklava menu includes whipped feta and candied pumpkin with sourdough crackers, Seftali kebab with lavash and lemon, Pekmez glazed grilled quail with fregola grapes and rosemary brown butter, and malt custard, caramel ice-cream with summer fruits and a pecan wafer. You can also find a number of these recipes in Kiazim’s debut cookbook Oklava: Recipes from a Turkish-Cypriot Kitchen.
Kiazim’s latest endeavour – the result of lockdown boredom – was a new cookbook called Three: Acid, Texture, Contrast – The Essential Foundations to Redefine Everyday Cooking. The book looks at the elements that make a plate of food come into its own: acid, texture and contrast – the building blocks that can “transform a modest dish into the star of the show.” Whether you want a simple midweek meal or a crowd-pleaser, Kiazim provides the know-how on how to harness ingredients and combine them in a way that can make a chef out of anyone.
“The book has been put together to give people the confidence to trust their instincts and build up their cupboards to have the important ingredients,” says Kiazim. “I wanted to be really generous with the information. I didn’t just want a book of recipes; I wanted one you go to time-and-time again where you learn something different each time.”
Starting with a guide to the basic foundations of a dish, along with ideas for pickles, dressings and condiments, the recipes are divided by type of food, from pulses and grains to poultry and meat. You can find recipes for everything from crispy fried aubergine with a chilli sauce and garlic yoghurt to hot and sour lychee salad with fresh herbs and coconut sauce and charred hispi, yoghurt, apple sauce and bergamot.
For Selin Kiazim’s last ever supper, she opts for a “carby, spicey and citrusy” starter of a “thin flatbread with spiced lamb and chopped salad with lemon wedges.” For her main course, she picks a “selection of fish and meat cooked over a charcoal grill with some nice bread to soak up the juice.” For her dessert, “peaches and figs poached in a vanilla syrup with pistachios.” And to wash it all down, “a white wine followed by a heavy, fruity and robust red.”
You can pre-order Selin Kiazim’s latest cookbook here.
Selin Kiazim’s recipe for chilli roast cauliflower.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
Chilli Roast Cauliflower
1 large cauliflower, leave some of the green leaves on if they’re nice
2 tbsp of Açi biber chilli paste (Hot Turkish pepper paste)
4 tbsp of Tatli biber chilli paste (Mild/sweet Turkish pepper paste)
50ml of extra virgin olive oil
1 pinch of sea salt
Plain oil, drizzle for searing
Sumac Dressing
2 garlic cloves
2 lemons, juiced
300ml of extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp of sumac
Fine salt, to taste
Garnish
1 big handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves
5 tbsp of pistachio nuts, toasted and crushed
1/2 medium red onion, sliced as finely as possible
1 tsp sumac
Flaky sea salt, to taste
Method
Preheat the oven to 200ºC fan or 220ºC conventional
Cut the cauliflower into 6 equal wedges – make sure you keep a little of the stalk on each piece to keep the wedges together. Rinse under cold water and pat dry
Mix together the açi and tatli biber chilli pastes with olive oil and a little salt. Rub the mix all over the cauliflower wedges (you might want to wear a pair of gloves whilst you do this), then place onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Roast the cauliflower wedges for 15-20 minutes – the cauliflower should be cooked but still have a good bite to it
To make the sumac dressing, combine all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Set aside for later
Take the cauliflower wedges out of the oven and leave to cool. In a hot, non-stick frying pan, drizzle in a little plain oil and fry each side of the cauliflower wedges for a minute or so to get a slight charring on the surface.
Place a cauliflower wedge onto a large plate and top with parsley, red onion and pistachios. Drizzle with plenty of the sumac dressing and an extra sprinkling of sumac