Photos by Shannon Richardson
When we began seeing Facebook posts touting authentic Turkish food available in Amarillo, we were intrigued. When we actually placed an order and had the opportunity to eat sarma—lovingly prepared by Vildan Işsever and Eyel’s Kitchen—we were hooked. These rice bites rolled in grape leaves are somehow savory and tangy at the same time, with a deep, earthy flavor we couldn’t get enough of. Wanting to learn more about their story, we invited the Işsever family to share their traditions with us—including a step-by-step guide to making this delicious dish.
Originally from Turkey, Amarillo’s Işsever family came to the Panhandle chasing wind. Cüneyt, the father, works for GRI Towers, which manufactures components for the wind turbine industry. The multinational business is headquartered in Spain and has facilities from South Africa to Argentina—including one in Amarillo, and one in Turkey.
When the company brought Cüneyt to Amarillo, his wife, Vildan, and their two daughters Eylul and Elifsu eventually followed. “When they call you to the USA from your country, it’s an opportunity,” he says.
Turkish food is almost non-existent in Amarillo, and the local Turkish community is confined to just a handful of families (many of whom are associated with GRI Towers). But when the outgoing Cüneyt began bringing some of Vildan’s food to work, the response was tremendous.
Eylul, now a 16-year-old Amarillo High student who quickly achieved fluency in English, goes by the name “Ellie.” She does a lot of translating for the family. “He just wanted his friends to taste it,” she says of her mom’s traditional cooking. “His friends really liked it. It’s good.”
That convinced Vildan to open Eyel’s Kitchen Amarillo, a home business preparing Turkish food and dessert, mostly sold through Facebook. Eyel is a combination of the two girls’ names. “People were interested,” Ellie says. “We sell baklava and sarma almost every day.”
Most locals will be familiar with the rich, sweet baklava, a dessert with roots in the Ottoman Empire, which influenced many traditional dishes in Turkey.
The other traditional dish, sarma, is less familiar. Ellie says the classic finger food was once considered a luxury dish, prepared by the Ottoman Imperial Kitchen for the banquets and feasts of royalty. Today, the rice-stuffed, grape-leaf-rolled food is much more commonplace, and frequently prepared by families for
special occasions.
“It’s more for holidays, when you go to elderly people’s houses,” Ellie says. “It’s a dish we always make when people come to the house.”
For Muslim families like the Işsevers (pronounced “Uhsh-seh-VEHR”), the next big holiday event is Ramadan, the month-long period of fasting that began at the end of February and will continue through March 30. Every day during Ramadan, starting at dawn, Islam’s faithful fast from food and drink until sunset. The holy month concludes with Eid al-Fatr, a day of feasting and joy that marks the end of fasting. For most Turkish families, sarma will be part of that celebration.
The name, sarma, literally means “wrapping” in Turkish, and reflects the method of preparation. It’s commonly eaten as a side dish when prepared vegetarian, or served as a main dish when served with ground beef or lamb. Vildan prepared for Brick & Elm a vegetarian version, generously walking us through each step in the process as Ellie narrated and translated.
Prepare the leaves. Made with brined, preserved grape leaves, these leaves have been softened by blanching in hot water. Unlike spinach leaves, the fibrous texture and cellulose structure of grape leaves keep them from breaking down when cooking. Vindal gets her grape leaves once a month when she travels to her favorite Turkish market in Dallas. “The international market [in Amarillo] sells them, too, but she doesn’t really like those,” Ellie confesses.
Create the filling. Sarma is filled with heavily seasoned rice, flavored with onions and a variety of herbs and spices (including paprika, oregano and mint). “People add different things sometimes for taste,” Ellie says, like pine nuts or currants. The rice is blended with the seasonings on a stovetop, but not yet fully cooked.
Let the rice cool. The next step is to roll the rice preparation into the grape leaves by hand, so Vildan will often place the mixture in the refrigerator for a few minutes until she can comfortably touch it.
Roll the sarma. Vildan places a small amount of the filling at the base of each leaf, folding the sides of the leaf inward in order to roll it into a tight, closed cylinder—about the circumference of a short cigar. For our preparation, she rolled more than 40, based on the size of her cooking pot. “They have to fill the pot so they don’t unroll,” explains Ellie.
Cook the sarma. The individual rolls are then placed upright in the pot, packed tightly. Vildan pours water and olive oil over them, then tops with lemon slices. Covered with a lid, she allows the pot to simmer gently until the rice cooks completely inside the stuffed leaves. For the size of pot she used, this process took around 25 minutes. The tightness of the rolls in the pot means paying frequent attention to keep the simmer from boiling over. “It’s kind of messy,” Ellie says.
Let cool, then serve. Once fully cooked, sarma can be enjoyed as is—the rich, Mediterranean flavor stands on its own—but Cüneyt says the family also likes to dip them in plain yogurt or a mint yogurt sauce.
“It’s good, right?” Cüneyt asks after the photos have been taken and the Brick & Elm team samples multiple rolls.
It’s very good. Vildan sells sarma, baklava, homemade yogurt and traditional Turkish pastries like pogaca and börek via the Eyel’s Kitchen Facebook page, and Ellie always helps with translation.
