For those who are Australian born and don’t have a connection with the story of Asia Minor (Anatolia), in brief it goes like this…Asia Minor is a geographical area in what is Turkey today, mostly on the coast and a little further. Its history goes back to human settlements of the Neolithic times over 10,000 years ago. The Hittites settled about 1650BC who migrated from the area east of the Black Sea and south west of the Caspian Sea. According to genetic bio-makers, almost all European and Asiatic peoples trace their origins to Central Asia (today’s Kazakhstan) via a common ancestor of about 45,000 years ago. In the 12th century BC, the Assyrians of Mesopotamia overran the Hittites. It then fell to the Greeks who colonized the coast in the 8th century BC. Legend has it that Greeks first laid siege to the city of Troy after the Trojan War. In 663BC, Croesus mounted the throne of Lydia in western Asia Minor and soon bought the Greek colonies under his rule, he was overthrown by the Persians. Major trade roots passed through the Asia Minor region and two hundred years after the Persians, Alexander the Great spread the Macedonian-Greek homogeny militarily over the peninsula that Hellenized it for the most part. The young Macedonian Alexander, was denigrated as a barbarian by the state Athenian elites but was later, embraced as one of their own. Following the conquest of Asia Minor by the Romans in the 2nd century BC, the area then sustained relative tranquillity except for the local infighting among the feudal powerhouses. Under the Byzantines that followed the East Roman Empire, Asia Minor became a Bastian cradle of Christianity and the guardian of Greco-Roman cultures. As the power of Byzantium declined the Caliphs of Bagdad penetrated Asia Minor with the first partial Islamification and cultural Arabization. Then from early in the 11th century AD and continuing right through to the late 14th century AD came the continuous westbound migratory forays of the Turkic tribes (Mogul, Tatar, Oghouz, Seljuk etc) of Central Asia who had become Muslims following Persian influence. The Moguls established their capital first in Konia in Asia Minor and then in Constantinople. Asia Minor has also been enriched by the presence of Jewish (Sephardic) communities who had (along with Muslims) been pushed out of the Iberian Peninsular. The Ottoman Turkic tribes began to spread into Asia Minor after the Moguls pressured them westward as early as the 1300’s. As they moved westward they captured more land and subjected the local populations till they reached Constantinople and captured it in 1453. The Ottoman Empire came to a complete end in 1922 with the formation of the Turkish Republic. Today it can easily be said that the people of Turkey are polymorphic. In 1922, it was estimated that approximately 2 million Greek refuges came to mainland Greece, bringing with them their culture of food, music, trade, art, literature and more. The Greeks of Asia Minor were reasonably well off and the city of Izmir (Zimrni) was at the time one of the most sophisticated cites in the world. It was definitely the most multicultural city in the world. With the influx of this population to the mainland, Greece was never the same again. Our great Nobel Laureate George Seferis was from Izmir as was Aristotle Onassis. These men, along with others, bought much to mainland Greece. While living in Greece I saw a very interesting documentary on TV of what influence the two million refuges had on Greek culture. All agreed that it was the best thing that happened to Greece, but all agreed that it was a violent way for this to happen. It is imperative that one understands some of the history of the area to get an insight to Greek culture today. There are the local tribal influences that still permeate to this day and in most cases the language, be that a Greek dialect, is still spoken, or the Vlach language that is Latin based. There is the Western influence from Italy on the other side of the Greece, the coming of the Asia Minor refuges that bought the orient to mainland and with modern western culture, making Greece extremely diverse even though small in size. During the Ottoman rule Greece was made up primarily of semi-nomadic tribes who moved their animals according to the season and farmers. There were no cities as the policy of the Ottomans was not to allow them as this way they had more control and were able to keep the population in check. Given these conditions the food of mainland Greece was very fresh but very frugal. The previous week I wrote about the food of Constantinople that basically covered the urban cuisine, the food of Asia Minor covers much wider area but again it is influenced by all the different cultures that passed through over the centuries. On closer inspection, all the outdoor cooking – for example souvlaki, lamb on the spit and other similar – is either local, tribal or Turkish, as it is food cooked outdoors. Never forget that the Turkic peoples were also nomads. The refined kitchen that sometimes is claimed by the Turks is the product of two thousand years of Roman and Byzantine refinement that evolved from the ancient Greeks. The famous British chef Rick Stein in the series The Odyssey where he travels all the Mediterranean from Spain to the Turkish coast was adamant as to this evolution of food in the area.