IT is an interesting premise for a cookbook - spawned as it has been from the mind and culinary skills of a fictional detective solving crimes in 19th century Istanbul.

Ottoman investigator Yashim in turn comes from the mind of Jason Goodwin, more familiar to the literary world as the author of a series of historical mystery novels than for his culinary expertise.

Yashim's adventures have been translated into more than 40 languages and have loyal fans who for years have been clamouring for recipes to the dishes Yashim cooks while conducting his investigations.

Jason, who lives in Littlebredy in west Dorset with his family, studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University and has written a number of critically acclaimed non fiction works.

So why learn how to take pictures of food, start your own publishing company and produce a hard-backed cook book?

It was in part about control but also in part curiosity and the urging of Yashim fans.

He said: "I made the detective cook partly because what else could he do when he went home to think? It is deadly just to have someone sitting there thinking, they have to have something to do.

"I like cooking. When he started to cook it became apparent that it was a really good way of introducing people to 19th century Istanbul and drawing them into this fascinating historical world."

His character's cooking was also a useful literary device for calming the tensions during his investigations.

Then the recipes started taking on a life of their own with readers writing in to know how to cook Yashim's dishes.

Jason said: "People started to write in and say they couldn't quite 'back engineer' the recipes from the book."

So Jason used his blog and for the past ten years that is where readers have gone to find out how to recreate the meals.

Although he and his wife are both good cooks he recognised there was a difference between being able to cook and writing a recipe book.

He said: "You've got to get a recipe book more right than a history book - if you don't you'll ruin their evening. If you get the date of the Battle of Hastings wrong no-one really cares."

The classic way to ensure recipes work is to hire a tester but that idea didn't appeal, not least for financial reasons.

So Jason appealed to the people who'd been asking for the recipes to test them.

He said: "That in a funny way was the best bit of the process because I got letters from people all over the world - from Pakistan, Albania, Australia, Singapore, America, France.

"It was really useful and they were absolutely brilliant.

"They taught me a lot and had all sorts of suggestions."

In a glorious bit of serendipity one of Yashim's fans was a book editor in Washington who'd written her own cook book with the wife of the Turkish ambassador to Washington.

She offered to edit the book for love and another Yashim fan interviewed him for American radio to spread the word there about the book.

Although it's been a labour of love for Jason it's been hard work - but he has at least been his own boss.

He said: "There was a certain amount of 'if want it done well do it yourself'.

"I'll never get the money back in the sense of the time it has taken me but it'll work in other ways."

Some of those other ways will be to bring new readers to the detective through the extracts interspersed with the recipes and interesting snippets about the dishes - witness pressed beef which stems from Turkish horsemen's habits of riding with meat in pockets on their saddles and pressing it with their legs as they rode.

Or imam bayildi (stuffed aubergines) the name meaning the Imam fainted - whether from the delicious taste, the cost of the olive oil or the suggestive look of the split aubergines is not established.

Jason has also been able to indulge in sharing the visual wonders of Istanbul with evocative pictures -something he can't do in his novels.

And not least he's been able to give son Isaac who has just graduated the opportunity to design the book from start to finish.

"He's done a wonderful job."

As has Jason.

A quick look through the recipes reveals they're accessible if exotic and not overly complicated. I'd like to give my copy to my daughter for Christmas but am not sure I can bare to part with it.

The book costs £25 and is available from bookshops and Amazon.

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