Reason Enough to Visit Turkey!

Without a doubt, one of the greatest discoveries of our year in Turkey has been the unbelievable cuisine. We have eaten so well this year. Just as we'd never heard of Ataturk, we had no idea that Turkish food was one of the greatest cuisines in the world! Like Ataturk, food is VERY important to the Turks, and they are fiercely proud of their food.

We have heard from many Turks, and have come to believe, that Turkish/Ottoman is one of the three true "grand cuisines" in the world, along with French and Chinese. According to the site http://www.tourismturkey.org/special-interest/cuisine/cuisine.html, a grand cuisine develops under circumstances of "a nurturing environment, the imperial kitchen, and a long social tradition." Turkey has all three: a rich and long-standing social fabric that has always cherished cooking and eating, as well as a wealthy imperial palace that worked for 500 years creating culinary art. When we visited Topkapi palace, we could see how important fine dining was to the Sultans: the kitchens dominate one whole side of the palace complex, and employed up to 1300 cooks! Some of the Sultans' favorite dishes are specialties which we've enjoyed. Besides the above elements, Turkish food is also very rich because of Turkey's unique geography and history, the nexus of trade and spice routes which connected East and West. Turkish food has some resemblance to Greek foods, and has some Middle Eastern elements, but it really is unique. We had no idea before we came; Turkish food is like nothing we've ever eaten!

The Turks have really impressed us with how much they cherish the processes of preparing and enjoying food. While there are Turkish versions of fast food, great things you find for very cheap on the street, we get the sense that Turks rarely eat alone and rarely eat quickly prepared food such as microwave meals. Preparing the evening meal is a big deal, and it is usually multi-course, very involved in terms of preparation and presentation, and enjoyed over a long time. We've been lucky enough to visit a few Turkish homes, including Ramazan's family, and were in awe: Turks really know how to feast! It should be noted that they tend to eat small portions of many different things (a soup, a pastry, some appetizers, some bread, a main dish, then some fruit) over the course of the meal, instead of the ridiculous American-portions heaping plateful of food.

Over the past two months, we've had the additional good fortune of taking cooking lessons with a Turkish friend, Ayse, at her house. She's got a large kitchen, and each Monday night we get together, prepare a big feast together, and then get to eat it. The very first week we prepared the dish called "Eggplants with stuffed tummies" pictured at the top of the page. We've made it ourselves now, and its SO good!

There is such a large variety of great unique things we've seen that it is hard to identify one characteristic dish. I will try to organize the following into some distinctive elements. Turks use lots of dill, lots of fresh vegetables, especially eggplant, cucumbers and tomatoes, and lots of fresh, thick yogurt. The Mediterranean climate, especially in the South near Antalya, allows Turks to enjoy fresh domestic fruits and vegetables all year, and they are so cheap! All year we've been able to get nice red tomatoes, all from Turkey, for the equivalent of about 25 cents a pound.

Meze: Hours of Wonderful Little Dishes

One of our favorite Turkish cuisine features is meze, or appetizers. When you sit down to a long traditional Turkish meal, there are typically two courses of meze, hot (sicak) and cold (soguk). The cold meze are served first, mostly cooked with olive oil and without meat. You are usually presented with a whole tray of them, and you can choose the ones you want, all shared by everyone. Many of them are spread with bread, found in endless quantities in EVERY Turkish meal. Some of our favorites include acili ezme, an olive-and-red-peper salsa-like spread, fried eggplant pieces with red sauce, and dolma, grape leaves or green peppers stuffed with rice, pine nuts and currents.

Mezes are usually accompanied with raki, the traditional Turkish aniseed drink. It is transparent until mixed with water and ice. While the Muslim Turks are not heavy drinkers, there is a type of very fun restaurant called meyhane, where people slowly eat mezes, sip raki, and later dance and sing with live music. These meyhanes are not just dinner, they are a whole evening (lasting until 2 am) of entertainment. Here is where you see the youthful enthusiasm of the Turkish people!

Kebaps are Everywhere!

Another central feature of Turkish cuisine are kebaps. While Americans may know sis kebap, small chunks of meat grilled on a skewer, kebaps actually are a large variety of different types of grilled meat. One of the most common are doner kebaps, either meat or chicken compacted on a huge turning spit and cut off in thin slices with a long knife (see picture). These turning doners are EVERYWHERE in Turkey, literally on every corner. They serve as the quick meal Turkish fast food, often served on half a loaf of bread with lettuce and tomato - a wonderful snack that usually costs less than 1 mTL or 60 cents! Another way they serve doner is called iskender kebap, where doner pieces are served over pieces of pide, with tomato sauce and yogurt, and butter poured over. Yum.

Kebapcis, kebap houses, are the most common type of restaurant in Turkey, usually serving a pretty simple menu of a variety of kebaps. You can usually find lamb or chicken sis kebaps, kebaps such as kofte involving balls of reformed ground meat, and sometimes doner. Often the meat is served in a durum, a soft tortilla-like wrap. Kebaps are found all over the country, including every village. There are regional specialty kebaps, too.

Seafood from Four Seas

Look at a map of Turkey: surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean, the Sea of Marmara, and the Black Sea. Fish is an important part of the cuisine, especially along the coasts. All around Istanbul are amazing fish markets displaying GORGEOUS, fresh fish of many types and sizes. In many fish restaurants we've been to, you can pick your fish and they will cook it for you. The cooking is very simple, grilled just right,served whole, with lemon, an onion and a tomato, that's all. They appreciate fish, just fresh and simple. Our favorite is cupra, a mild, sweet white fish. In the Black Sea region, they often eat huge piles of fried small fish.

Borek and Other Specialties

Borek is a name given to a large variety of savory pastries made with layers of thin dough. Some are made in pans with cheese and egg, and taste something like quiche. Some are made in rolls and come out something like egg rolls. They all take a large amount of careful work. They are eaten as appetizers, snacks or side dishes. Gozleme are flat breads cooked on portable skillets. Many authentic restaurants have women like the one on the right rolling and cooking the gozleme, which can include cheese and sometimes spinach or potatoes. A peasant specialty.

Pide is the equivalent of Turkish pizza: it is a doughy pita bread in a pointy oval shape cooked in a brick oven. We have a great pide delivery place near us, and it provides our "Friday night pizza."

Manti is pasta dish equivalent to Turkish ravioli. A small bit of spiced meat is wrapped in a small square of dough, and is served with yogurt, spices and a butter-paprika sauce.

Turkish Breakfast

Traditional Turkish Breakfast centers around beyaz peynir, a white cheese which is something like a very salty feta cheese. At first we found it strange, but now like all Turks we are addicted to it! The cheese is eaten with fresh tomato and cucumber and fresh bread. The breakfast always is served with olives, and sometimes includes hard-boiled eggs, a sesame bagel called simit, fresh honey and a sort of clotted cream. Another breakfast thing we love is called menemen, eggs cooked with onions, pepper, tomato and served in a hot metal pot.

Cay and Kahve

Turkish coffee is famous: thick, strong, unfiltered, and served in a small espresso glass, usually with water to rinse when you get to the grounds at the bottom. Turk kahve is mainly drunk after a large meal. The national drink, however, is cay (pronounced chi, rhymes with pie), in other words, tea. Turks drink tea all day long, every day. In every office and workplace tea is served all day long. It is always served in small tulip-shaped glasses with saucers. It is strong tea made with the leaves, and has a reddish-brown color. When you stop at a highway rest-stop, when you ride a ferry, when you have a break or a meeting at school, when you have a snack, or for no reason at all, you drink cay.

Turks are not heavy alcohol drinkers, probably due to the Muslim prohibition on drinking. Unlike most of the US, entertaining guests doesn't usually include serving alcohol: more often tea. On the few occasions Turks do drink, they prefer raki, wine, and to a lesser degree, beer. There is a large wine-producing industry in Turkey, and they are very proud of their wines. Honestly, we haven't been very impressed, and find it strange that you can't buy foreign wines here at all!

Baklava, Lokum and More

Turkey is a great place for dessert, too. We are often too full from dinner, but there are some sweet things to eat. There is usually a dessert course, and many times it starts with sliced fresh fruit, a gift from the house. There are many varieties of baklava-type sweets: layers of dough drenched in honey. There are amazing puddings like rice pudding and a mixed pudding with nuts, beans, raisins, fruits. A visit to Turkey would not be complete without a visit to the local baklavaci, to check out the amazing tray after tray of beautiful sugar-art. Lokum, or "turkish delight", a chewy candy created for the Sultans, is a famous export and gift, but Turks seem to eat more helva, a drier cubed candy made from semolina and sesame.

You've Got to Try It!

Our year in Turkey has been a gastronomic joy. We recommend you try Turkish food as soon as you can. We're going to miss it, and we're going to miss the prices. Eating here, both at home and out at restaurants, is cheap and yummy. The service is always excellent, often with 3 or 4 people hovering around, changing plates and ready to bring anything you want. If you can't come to Turkey, we hear there are two Turkish restaurants in Boston, Sultan's Kitchen in the financial district and Istanbul Cafe near the State House.

Much of the information and pictures here are from this great site. If you want to learn more, check it out: http://www.tourismturkey.org/special-interest/cuisine/cuisine.html