{"id":624,"date":"2025-10-31T14:36:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T14:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/?p=624"},"modified":"2025-11-13T11:25:40","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T11:25:40","slug":"port-leave-room-for-pudding-muhallebici-pudding-shops-named-after-an-ottoman-speciality-of-shredded-chicken-thickened-with-rice-water-sprinkled-in-sugar-and-rose-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"

Port <\/p> COOKING SECTIONS: LEAVE ROOM FOR PUDDING

Muhallebici \u2014\u00a0pudding shops named after an Ottoman speciality of shredded chicken thickened with rice water, sprinkled in sugar and rose water \u2014\u00a0serve profiteroles, baklava, s\u00fctla\u00e7 (rice pudding, with a burnt top), and kaymak (a rolled, sour, clotted cream) throughout Istanbul. They are traditionally made with buffalo milk… <\/p>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Muhallebici<\/em> \u2014\u00a0pudding shops named after an Ottoman speciality of shredded chicken thickened with rice water, sprinkled in sugar and rose water \u2014\u00a0serve profiteroles, baklava, s\u00fctla\u00e7<\/em> (rice pudding, with a burnt top), and kaymak<\/em> (a rolled, sour, clotted cream) throughout Istanbul. They are traditionally made with buffalo milk, which has a consistency more akin to cream than cow\u2019s milk, making for full flavour, rich puddings. The use of buffalo milk in Turkey has declined due to the complexity and cost of keeping water buffalo, as their habitat is compromised by urban development. As part of their research for Climavore: Seasons Made to Drift<\/em> \u2014 an exhibition and public programme that considered how to eat as humans change the climate, shown at Istanbul art institution SALT \u2014\u00a0spatial practitioners Cooking Sections (Daniel Fern\u00e1ndez Pascual and Alon Schwabe) looked into the disappearance of the wetlands in the north of Istanbul, which had been home to water buffalo since they migrated with Bulgarian herders during the Ottoman period. \u201cWe wondered: What could be an interesting move to protect the wetlands as free roaming space for buffalo? And for the herders, who have been taking care of them for centuries.\u201d
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\nThe wetlands were formed among the ruins of abandoned coal mines, in flooded pits that became wallows for water buffalo to rest while roaming the landscape. Now the land has been reclassified for real estate, and the wetlands drained. \u201cThere has been a cultural shift in the perception and understanding of how traditional dishes like s\u00fctla\u00e7<\/em> or kaymak<\/em> are made, and how they need the free roaming of buffalo for the production of milk, and for the ecosystem to function.\u201d Cooking Sections met with buffalo herders, and dug a new wallow along a stream, turning the extracted clay into pots for s\u00fctla\u00e7<\/em> and yoghurt. They collaborated with muhallebici<\/em>, serving buffalo milk dishes (in some cases from the 1,000 pots made with ceramicist Ba\u015fak G\u00f6kals\u0131n), introduced buffalo milk to the curriculum at the Culinary Arts Academy, and produced a new edition of mapping project Between Two Seas<\/em>, charting the network of buffalo wallows. \u201cWe were looking into different, or new possible seasons that are emerging in the anthropocene,\u201d says Cooking Sections. \u201cOver the last few years, we have been working on what it would mean if instead of the four seasons in Europe, we identified new seasons in action; periods of drought, periods of flash floods, or alterations to the sea shore, which are non-sequential yet repetitive and underpin contemporary food infrastructure and eating habits.\u201d
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\nFor this year\u2019s Istanbul Biennial, Cooking Sections elaborated on their research in Wallowland<\/em>, a project that seeks to preserve the wetlands, and highlight the cultural and ecological role of water buffalo. \u201cIt manifested in two ways, as a series of metabolic surveys, for which we commissioned experts to help us understand the digestive or metabolic relationships between buffalo, and other ecologies \u2014\u00a0the birds interacting with buffalo on the wetlands, the struggles and dependencies within the context of draught, the grasses, and songs about buffalo written in Turkish, Kurdish, and Bulgarian. These studies will manifest as an installation in Istanbul\u2019s Beyo\u011flu district, and as a manda festivali<\/em> (buffalo festival) \u2014 the first edition of what will be an annual event \u2014 which took place in the outskirts of the city, celebrating these interactions.\u201d Visitors enjoyed performances, cooking demonstrations, research presentations, and an \u2018open house\u2019 led by the herders, \u201calmost like a field work day\u201d.
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\nCooking Sections are known for their ability to communicate the complex narratives and systems that organise the world through familiar settings involving food. Their first collaboration, with Forensic Architecture, Modelling Kivalina, The Coming Storm<\/em>, took place above the Arctic Circle on the northwest coast of Alaska and sought to support the people of Kivalina, an I\u00f1upiaq village on the frontier of the climate emergency. \u201cTheir food practices organised a lot of the yearly cycles. As the climate changes, [it postpones the formation of sea ice, and exposes the shore to storms], changes the terrain, and impacts the seasons.\u201d Cooking Sections interviewed village residents, scientists, and political representatives, making a film and a series of models, seeking to produce a new negotiation platform supporting residents in their fight for oil and gas companies to contribute to their forced relocation costs, as the area became inhabitable. \u201cFood becomes a lens that allows you to chart these places in transformation\u201d says Cooking Sections. \u201cIt is also a practice that touches every living being of this planet. Food cuts across so many constructed strata of society, and between species. It becomes very effective.\u201d
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\nAs their practice progresses, Cooking Sections have maintained their interest in the overlaps between art, architecture, ecology and geopolitics. This focus has formalised in their ongoing, site-responsive project CLIMAVORE, which has manifested as an exhibition in Istanbul; an installation and performance \u2014\u00a0of a dining table at low tide, and an oyster table at high tide \u2014\u00a0exploring the environmental impact of aquaculture on the intertidal zone at Bayfield on the Isle of Skye; a series of dishes served at museum restaurants across the UK, made with ingredients that improve soil and water quality, and cultivate marine habitats; a series of interventions and performances delving into a holistic health model for the human body, the body of the mussels, and the body of the city of Los Angeles; and a salmon trilogy, exploring the gap between the appearance and the reality of salmon, and their inability to escape intensive farming.
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\nMulti-year investigations have proved integral to Cooking Sections\u2019 intention of practicing ecology, rather than discussing it for one project. \u201cWe have been on a big journey in the cultural sector, and there is a certain expectation to respond to the climate crisis. Raising awareness is important, but for us the growing question has been, \u2018what does it mean to practice ecology?\u2019 Not only for the duration of an exhibition, a biennial, or other inherited formats, which are in many ways counterintuitive to and ill-equipped for addressing these questions\u201d, they note. \u201cWe are focused on how we can use the infrastructure available for us to develop ecological projects in a rooted way. That requires us to continue asking the same question, in order to go beyond the level of highlighting harmful or violent practices, and transform them, or develop alternatives to them. It is a process that takes a lot of time.\u201d
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\nWhile they tackle complex, intersecting issues, across a breadth of contexts and practices, Cooking Sections settle their work in familiar settings \u2014\u00a0a festival, a dining table, a shop \u2014 with a light touch that makes multi-scalar investigations accessible and enjoyable to interact with. \u201cThe way we work is we start looking into questions that we find relevant or, at least for us, urgent to address, and from there we start having conversations with people. As questions emerge, we think about how to communicate those messages to other people, or reformat them into a platform\u201d. For Wallowland<\/em>, alongside the studies and festival, Cooking Sections worked with muhallebici<\/em>, serving buffalo milk s\u00fctla\u00e7<\/em> and kaymak<\/em>: \u201cWe thought the format of the pudding shop was interesting, because it interacts with the street, and is in peoples imagination\u201d. During their research, Cooking Sections found that only a few of Istanbul\u2019s muhallebici<\/em> still source buffalo milk from small-scale producers in the local area, and they wanted to convey the importance of local pudding shops supporting the ecology of the wetlands.
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\nThere is a long tradition of supportive ecology in Istanbul, with Ottoman bird pavilions \u2014\u00a0grand mosques and palaces in miniature \u2014\u00a0built high on the walls across the city; cat houses \u2014\u00a0made from wood or cardboard boxes \u2014\u00a0in parks or settled along alleyways; and bostan<\/em> (communal urban allotments) for growing and sharing food, and maintaining soil for microbes, insects, and birds. Building and maintaining habitats for other species is thought to bring luck; the practice is also grounded in a belief in the importance of treating animals well, as we can\u2019t ask for their forgiveness. The muhallebici<\/em> support the herders, the water buffalo, the wetlands, the birds
\nwho gather there, the people savouring rice pudding and clotted cream in the afternoon heat, and the stray cats curling themselves around chair legs, purring until a prize spoonful is dolloped onto the floor. Caring for other species, and practicing ecology, is nothing new: \u201cIt has been common sense for centuries. It is just within cities that it has been forgotten.\u201d<\/div><\/div>
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