The Secret Recipe — Gizli Tarif

Hakan has been a student in Cardiff since September. He loves the city, but he misses one thing. He misses his grandmother's red lentil soup. When he was a child, he used to eat it every Friday. Nobody in the family could make it like her.

She always said, "It's a secret recipe." One rainy evening, Hakan decided to cook the soup himself. He called his grandmother in Eskişehir. "Grandma, can you tell me your secret recipe?" She laughed and said, "Of course, my dear. Listen carefully."

"Take some lentils, an onion and a carrot," she began. "How many lentils exactly, Grandma?" Hakan asked. "Oh, a glass or two," she answered. "And how much salt?" "Not too much, not too little." Hakan wrote everything down, but he was a bit worried.

He cooked for an hour while his flatmates watched. Soon the whole kitchen smelled wonderful. His flatmates, Owen and Priya, tried the soup first. "It's delicious!" said Priya. "Can I have some more?" But Hakan wasn't happy. It wasn't the same as Grandma's. It was good, but it was less tasty than hers.

The next day he went to the supermarket. He wanted to buy some better lentils. On the shelf, he saw a packet of red lentils. On the back of the packet, there was a recipe. Hakan read it and started to laugh. It was exactly the same as Grandma's "secret recipe"!

That evening he called his grandmother again. "Grandma, I found your secret on a lentil packet!" She was quiet for a second, then she laughed too. "Yes, but I have used that recipe for fifty years," she said. "And the real secret is this: cook for people you love."

On Friday, Hakan made the soup again for his flatmates. This time, it tasted just like Grandma's.