Yoni & Ariane
We are Ariane & Yoni, musicians and partners in life based in Montreal. Turkish cuisine is an essential element in our household. Yoni grew up with grandparents who were born in Istanbul. His paternal grandmother's family, before she was born, had lived in Edirne but then moved to Istanbul. His mother's ancestors are from Eastern Europe. Ariane is a Quebecois Montrealer who has developed a fascination and a special connection with Turkish cuisine. Through the years, she has learned recipes through her partner Yoni, her travels to Istanbul and numerous cookbooks and it has become her cooking specialty.
We love hosting and offering a full table with a variety of mezes, served with raki and Turkish coffee, to our guests. We are both musicians, involved in Balkan and Turkish music traditions, and believe that food is best enjoyed around the table with live music in an attempt to recreate the memorable meyhane evenings that we had in Istanbul. Yoni favorite meals are turlu, falsuye, kuzu and güveç. Ariane’s favorites are manti, böreks, and anything dolma. On the sweet side, we both share a common love for Irmik Helvasi.
Adaptation
"It's just IKEA furniture -Turkish IKEA - I guess what's Turkish around it is the shelves and my pictures... and those little things all around. It's not very Turkish, but we make it Turkish by highlighting the Turkish stuff."
-Ariane
"My grandmother used to make green bean stew .. but funnily enough, my grandmother, what she used to do, is take the green bean and cut it down the middle like this ... and called it Çalı Fasulye'."
"I think there's actually a flat bean that is actually called Çalı Fasulye, but this is what we had in Calgary where I grew up so she just took what she had and cut it in half."
-Yoni
"We had the house in Calgary with a pretty normal Western kitchen upstairs... and then grandparents in the basement. There was a laundry room... where they lived and they just set up a portable two-burner electric stove and fridge... That's where they cooked all the big feasts for me and my brother... a two-burner stove with seven pots always rotating."
-Yoni
"It depends on how I feel. Now I have my butter. Sometimes I will use olive oil or sometimes I will use milk. Sometimes if I want it very crispy, I'll just use olive oil, but because we are a Jewish-Turkish house, we have a kosher kitchen so if I was to cook meat - which is not often - I would use olive oil and some eggs, or maybe sometimes almond milk."
-Ariane
"We have these curtain hangers because unfortunately we don't live in a super sunny-always place, so we can't dry things outside. So if we make fresh pasta or want to dry vegetables, this is our sunniest window - so we can hang it from this bar."
-Ariane
"We bought this when we got here because we have limited space for the dishes and stuff, and we like having some nice dishes."
-Ariane
"This side is meat, and this side is milk."
-Ariane
Giving to others
"We invited over 30 friends to play live music and it was wonderful ... !"
-Ariane
"We would have 30 people or sometimes 20 people sitting together, and for me, that was very important."
-Yoni
"I have a bunch of friends over for Turkish music and I highly encourage my musician friends to bring instruments so they can play around the table... "
-Ariane
"For me, socialization is me standing at the stove and people there hanging out!"
-Yoni
''The food is always super colourful and beautiful ... "
-Yoni
"I will put tiny plates of servings and 'please help yourselves' ... usually everyone tastes everything and... 'I don't know what this is, but it is SO GOOD!' "
-Ariane
"The way I do it is I just put the food in the middle of the table with tiny plates of servings, so they can serve themselves."
-Ariane
"We are really lucky to have very talented, musical friends, so when they pull out their instruments it's very blissful... everyone is in a food coma, listening to music at the table - and that's one of the happiest feelings for me."
-Ariane
"Me, I take care of cooking all the food. I like it - I love cooking for my family, and sometimes they try something new and they are very curious and happy to try new stuff... so it's a nice experience."
-Ariane
Space
"I can show you spice shelves here... I put some kind of stickers behind it... which is all our spices."
-Ariane
"This here is a little view of our garden... we like to take some seeds from the garden. There is a little table where we eat when it is just the two of us."
-Ariane
"We have limited space for dishes and stuff and we like having nice dishes... The kitchen is really the heart of the house. It's where we spend a lot of time... where a lot of the good feelings are. It's little objects here and there that make it a little bit tied to the past."
"The two main things that we changed... [one is that] we have this station here, and this is where I make most of my bread."
-Ariane
"We like to feature some very special things on top of it which is Turkish coffee cups... I always wanted [Turkish coffee cups], but Yoni already owned some, so we put them inside." (Referring to displaying Turkish coffee cups in a glass display in the dining area)
-Ariane
"What makes it Turkish is all the shelves around it and my pictures - but this is IKEA, this is IKEA, this is IKEA - so it's not very Turkish, but we make it Turkish by highlighting."
-Ariane
"It looks not so big, but it has two huge leaves so it basically doubles in size, so we have a nice big table... This is from friends that gave it to me who needed a new table... It's not necessarily one I would've chosen on it's looks or anything, but the fact that it's so huge is just so awesome."
-Yoni
Tradition
"These are real staples... I don't make them as much as my grandparents. There would always be a pot of this when I was growing up... almost every sit down meal. Every Friday night we had it and sometimes through the week... it was almost like bread."
-Yoni
"I will be making Böreks... I have been to Istanbul twice for a couple of months. My first trip, I was staying with a Turkish woman, and one day her grandmother came by... she was the one cooking for us. I got to taste all those things and I would some into the kitchen and observe her."
-Ariane
"So... three cezve; the big one for more than two guests; the middle one... more traditional for two people and when I used to live at my place... a single one."
-Ariane
"I would have my little booklet - and I think I still have it around - but I would have my little booklet and I would observe her and note the ingredients she was using."
-Ariane
"And then I'm just rolling like this, and then the way that the Turkish mother showed me, you just rolling very carefully and then I will tuck it, and then it's a cute, little Börek."
-Ariane
"What my grandmother used to do is she would take the green bean and cut it down the middle like this... so we would cut it like that and she would call it 'Çalı Fasulye' which, if I ever asked her what that meant, she would say it means 'special beans', and only recently I looked it up and I think there's a flat bean that's called Çalı Fasulye. So this is what we had in Calgary where I grew up, so she just took what she had and cut it in half to make it flat."
-Yoni
Informal Hospitality
"If I have guests, or if I have a meal with my family, I will always cook a Börek. Lately, I tend to do a full one, so I do a spiral and then go around that spiral until my dish is like one big square."
-Ariane
"I am a little bit introverted, but we like to have people over to play music and whatever, and that's always kind of where I feel comfortable - by the stove - and people are at the table and I can draw in a word here and there. And it's just such a pleasure to make something, and someone is eating it and they're enjoying it... It's the best feeling."
-Yoni
