TURKISH CUISINE
Turkey is rightly famed for its cuisine, which is rich and savory, not particularly spicy-hot, with abundant use of vegetables.
Though based on lamb, it includes beef and chicken
(no pork of course), as well as all sorts of seafood. The most
common preparations are roasting and grilling, which produce
the famous Turkish kebabs, including Döner Kebab, the national
dish.
Every month has its own preferred fish, along with certain vegetables, which complement the taste. For example, the best bonito is eaten with rocket, and red onions, blue fish with lettuce, turbot with cos lettuce. Large bonito may be poached with celery root. Mackerel is stuffed with chopped onion before grilling, and summer fish, which are younger and drier, will be poached with tomatoes and green peppers, or fried. Bay Leaves always accompany both poached and grilled fish. Grilling fish over charcoal, where the fish juices hit the embers and envelope the fish with the smoke, is perhaps the most delicious way of eating mature fish, since this method brings out the delicate flavor. This is also why the grilled fish and bread sold by vendors’ right on their boats are so tasty. “Hamsi” is the prince of all fish known to Turks: the Black Sea people know forty one ways of making hamsi including hamsi borek, hamsi pilav (rice) and hamsi desert. Another common seafood is the mussel eaten deep fried, poached, or as a mussel dolma and mussel pilav. Along the Aegean, octopus and calamari are added to the meze spread.
Bread is baked fresh early morning for breakfast and lunch, and late afternoon for dinner, and varies from the common sourdough loaf to rounds of leavened pide (flat bread) to flaps of paper-thin lavas (lah-vahsh, unleavened village bread baked on a griddle).
Snacks and side dishes include gözleme (fresh-baked flat bread folded over savory ingredients-a sort of Turkish crepe) and börek, pastry filled with cheese and vegetables or meat.
If you are vegetarian, you’ll get along all right by choosing the few Turkish dishes made without any meat, and by dining in the increasing number of restaurants offering vegetarian plates. A popular traditional dish is gözleme, flat bread folded over various fillings.
As for drinks, pure spring water is always available.
Turkey is famous for its succulent fruit, and thus for its fruit juices. There is also ayran (yogurt mixed with spring water-tastes like buttermilk), which goes well with kebab (roast lamb)
Drinking alcohol, with meals: beer, wine, and raki (clear grape brandy flavored with anise and diluted with water) are the favorites, although gin, vodka, whiskey and liqueurs are also served. Similar to Spanish tapas, “meze” is the general category of dishes that are brought in small quantities to start the meal off.
These are eaten, along with wine or more likely with “raki”, the anise-flavored national drink of Turks sometimes referred to as “lion’s milk”, for a few hours until the main course is served.
Turkish Tea is the national stimulant, even at breakfast, and famous Turkish coffee only a distant second. Among the favored treats is Turkish Delight (lokum). You have to be in Turkey to get the real and the best taste variety of the desserts. However, in addition to the variety of Turkish Delights, there is a lesser-known type of dessert that can be taken back home in a sweatbox. These are nut pastes – marzipan made of almonds and pistachios. The best marzipan is sold at a tiny unassuming shop at Bebek, in Istanbul. A few boxes usually will last for a month or so and bring delight after dinners. Finally candied chestnuts, a specialty of Bursa, are among the most wonderful nutty desserts.
