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Published: August 22nd 2006
It is not surprising that this huge topic has become my longest blog!
Elinize saglik
Elinize saglik means "health to your hands" in Turkish. It's what you must say to someone who has prepared food for you. Turkish seems to have a special thing to say on many occasions (future blog to come on that topic), but I think that the ones regarding food are some of the most telling. Food is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of Turkish culture. Of course, one can argue that it is important in many cultures, but I am quite confident that Turkish culture ranks among the top food-obsessed ones! So, if someone serves you food prepared by hand, you wish their hands health so that they can continue serving you food. And then they tell you
afiyet olsun, which means "may you have an appetite. So they can feed you some more.
As a person who does not eat that much, I am probably the Turkish cook's nightmare. I love Turkish food, but the fact that I don't eat much sometimes leads Turkish people to think that I don't like their food - that they
haven't been able to make something I like. In Turkish culture, when the person serving you offers you more food, you are obliged to decline the offer the first time, whether or you want more food. You are obliged to decline the second time, too. The third time, you can accept. Accepting food the first time can seem too direct. But if you really didn't want any more food to begin with, you may end up with more food served to you, even if you decline three times. When it comes to food in Turkey, "no" means "yes". So
afiyet olsun (have an appetite).
Turkish Cooking Classes
About a week ago, I taught a Turkish cooking class here in Munich (to a group of English-speaking international women). I have also taught classes in the US, when we lived there. It is a little bizarre to me that I am a person who has now taught four all-day Turkish cooking courses, because I am not Turkish. But the world knows so little about Turkish cooking that even I, an American who has never even lived in Turkey (as in had my own place there - I've stayed there for
Cayci
Behind the beautiful display of tomatoes and parsley is a cayci - a guy whose job is to serve tea to the farmers selling their goods. This one was pretty eccentric. long periods of time, however, and my in-laws have stayed with us for many months), have something to teach them. We can thank (in part) historical worldwide immigration patterns for the types of international cuisine we are exposed to. Mexican, Italian, Chinese, and Greek food are quite well-known in the US, for example, at least in their "americanized" versions. That is because the people who originally immigrated from those countries were often unskilled laborers, and the obvious businesses for them to open once they had a nest egg was a restaurant - most people, after all, knew how to make their national foods, and they had a ready-made client base in their fellow nationals. Later, the general public learned of the foods and they made their way into the mainstream cuisine. Skilled, white-collar workers, for example those from Turkey, Iran, and the Philippines, entered the US in smaller numbers, and had little professional incentive to open restaruants with their national cuisines, and so their cuisines are less known, though certain areas of the country have more concentrated populations and ethnic restaurants have popped up. There are also waves of popularity, on which Thai and Vietnamese food are now riding in
Summer crop
From left to right: barbunya (cranberry beans), green beans, zucchini, and okra. In Turkey, they manage to make okra stew that isn't slimy! the US. Germany has a large number of Turkish immigrants who entered the country years ago as unskilled laborers, and thus there are numerous Turkish restaurants here in Germany (though, unfortunately, most of them offer Turkish "fast-food" such as doner ("aka Gyro in the US) and lahmacun (a type of pizza with ground beef topping).
Back to the topic, I have taught some Turkish cooking classes. The hardest thing when planning these classes is where to begin. When people are completely unfamiliar with Turkish cuisine, where on earth in the vast array of Turkish dishes, does one start? I always try to teach things that people will be able to reproduce with ingredients they can find locally without too much hunting. I am always pleased by how much people like the food that I teach them to make - and they are always surprised at how much they like it. Even though they have signed up for the class with an open mind, I have gotten the impression that they nonetheless weren't expecting to like the food too much. A comment I often hear is that people expected the food to be "full of spices" (not in a positive
way) and they are pleasantly surprised at how few ingredients each dish has. I think that people must assume that "ethnic" food is complicated to make. Turkish food is often time consuming to make, but it is not complicated. And because it uses essentially the same ingredients as Italian food, Americans and Europeans are bound to like it, because we are very familiar with Italian food.
Turkey is a very large country and has incredibly varied geography as well - deserts, mountains, coastlines, plains, temperate rainforests and alpine landscapes all reside there. The food is as varied as the landscape. My husband's family is from western Turkey, so please keep that in mind when reading, as I don't intend to be knowledgeable about all Turkish food, though there are some universals. In addition, every family eats slightly differently, so if you are Turkish and reading this and disagree or have something to say, go ahead and send me a comment!
Breakfast
Classic Turkish breakfast doesn't have any bacon (Muslims don't eat pork, and 99%!o(MISSING)f Turkish people are muslim), pancakes, hash browns, or cereal. Even with those absences, Turkish breakfast is hearty, diverse, and filling. The central
Koy peyniri
In Turkey, there are many different cheeses that all fall under the category of "beyaz peynir", or white cheese. The closest equivalents in the US would be Bulgarian or French feta (the feta sold as Greek feta in the US is far drier than Turkish feta). ingredients are bread, cheese (various kinds), tomatoes, olives, peppers, cucumbers, and hard or soft-boiled eggs.
Simit(see-MIT) - bread shaped like a ring and coated with sesame seeds, not entirely unlike a large sesame bagel - usually makes an appearance, as do jam, butter, and fruit. The Turkish breakfast table may also have nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds),
sigara boregi(si-GA-ra bu-RAY) (thin dough filled with parsley and cheese), and
pogaca(po-AH-cha) (soda rolls). For you meat lovers, do not despair: the Turkish breakfast table often has
sucuk(soo-JOOK), a spicy garlic dried beef sausage, similar to pepperoni. To drink, along side optional juices, most Turkish people drink
cay (chai), black tea in tulip-shaped glasses. The only thing
not to like about Turkish breakfast is the amount of time it takes to prepare this spread, and the amount of space it takes on the table!
Lunch & Dinner
Breakfast gets its own heading, but lunch and dinner are combined? Indeed. Though, as I mentioned before, things vary family to family, and people on the run may grab fast food for lunch, it is my observation that Turkish people eat the same kinds of dishes for lunch as they do for dinner (lunch is
in smaller portions, though). Soups, meat dishes, salads, and most importantly, dishes from a category of food called "olive oil foods". These dishes have a stew-like consistency, and are comprised primarily of vegetables (though some have small amounts of ground meat), with a base of onions and olive oil. Most also have tomatoes, and quite a few have garlic. Sometimes, some carrots, potatoes, and rice find their way in there. The shocking thing for me, when I first encountered these "olive oil foods" is that most of them are eaten cold, and with a dollop of yogurt on top! The good news about that is that you can prepare dinner in the morning and it's ready at night without much work. The difficult thing is that, at least for me, it has taken some getting used to, to eat cooked vegetables cold. Eggplant, green beans, pinto beans, leeks - all cold. In addition, the vegetables are
very well-cooked - no crispy steamed veggies in Turkey. Those would be considered undercooked. Once, I made my parents-in-law steamed asparagus, and they really had a tough time eating it! And many people accustomed to lightly steamed veggies might consider Turkish veggies overcooked. Once
I got past the weirdness and overcame the psychological aversion, I found that many of them are quite tasty. I must say, though, that I don't think I could ever get used to regularly eating such meals at lunch - I much prefer a simple sandwich or salad with chips on the side. And green beans for me just have to be lightly steamed and have a dollop of butter. Some habits are hard to break!
Mezes
Mezes are finger foods that are sometimes just eaten as a snack, and sometimes as an appetizer. A well-known example of a Turkish meze is
zeytinyagli yaprak dolmasi, aka stuffed grape leaves. You might know them by the Greek name, dolmades. They also exist in Greek cuisine, though the recipes I've seen for the Greek version are slightly different. They are a delicacy. I actually hated them the first time I tried them. But then I tried the ones made by my mother in law, and they were delectable, amazing, heavenly. I am convinced that she makes them better than anyone in the world. And she taught me how (though I cannot claim to have mastered the art yet). They take forever
and a day to make when you're by yourself, and now that I have a young almost-toddler, I don't have time to make them. But they are my absolute favorite Turkish food.
Other mezes include spreads made out of beans (like fava beans), veggies, cheese, garlic, you name it. I won't go on and on about them because the only meze that means anything to me is dolma (stuffed grape leaves).
What is significant is what you drink with the meze. Turkish is a muslim country that, famously, has a national drink: raki (pronounced rah-kuh). It's liquor made from grapes and flavored with anise. When it comes into contact with water, it turns milky. If you don't like the anise/black liquorice taste, don't have any. But if you do, it is fabulous. So fabulous that Turkish muslims have a special agreement with God that they can drink it!
Freshness
Like every other modern country, Turkey has modern grocery stores that offer vegetables that are not necessarily in season - for example, tomatoes in January and cauliflower in July. Food tastes infinitely better, however, when it is in season, and when it comes from the place that
Our neighbor making Tarhana
Huriye Teyze is pushing the tarhana dough through a sieve here makes it best. Aydin is known for its figs, other places are known for their mandarine oranges, and other places for their eggplants. In the US, even though we have local farmer's markets to provide us with foods that are in season, let's face it: most of us shop in the supermarket, where there are very few clues as to what season we're in, and we buy accordingly. In Turkey, people are more attuned to what's in season, and they eat accordingly. And, due to the fact that it is believed that certain things taste better when they come from certain place, a road trip to anywhere involves stopping at the places famous for this or that, and buying kilos of it. By the time a Turkish family arrives at their destination, everyone except the driver has bags and bags of fruits and vegetables by their feet. It is always more than it seems possible for one family to consume, but it always manages to get eaten.
Tarhana
Turkish cuisine gives a new name to instant soup. Think it's something that has just popped up in modern times? Perhaps because Turkish people were originally nomadic tribes from central
Summer peppers
drying on the rooftop for winter use Asia (what is now Mongolia), they have adapted to the reality that many vegetables are abundant in the summer and scarce in the winter. Tarhana soup is illustrative of this. In the summer, when everything is plentiful and cheap, women cook together tomatoes, parsley, mint, onions, garbanzo beans, and peppers. Then they add flour and yogurt. The dough is then fermented for anywhere from a week to a month, and stirred daily. Finally, the dough is dried and pushed through a sieve until it is a fine powder, and then stored. In the winter months, to make Tarhana soup, a small amount of the powder is rehydrated, then boiled together with garlic, tomato paste, and salt. Sometimes, whole garbanzo beans are added. It looks somewhat like cream of tomato soup, but is a lot richer. Everyone has their own, slightly different recipe for tarhana, and I am sure that most people prefer the one made by their own mother! But I think there is little doubt that tarhana is the original instant soup.
Coffee, anyone?
Turkish coffee deserves its own blog entry, so look forward to that one in the future!
Learn about Turkish Cooking
To learn
Women making gozleme
Gozleme are large, flat pieces of unleavened bread with a variety of fillings. more about Turkish cooking, please visit Binnur's Turkish Cookbook at
http://www.turkishcookbook.com. Its author is a Turkish woman living in Canada, who has written the recipes in a way that they make sense to non-Turkish cooks. She also responds very kindly to any recipe questions you may have.
I hope that I have whetted your appetite for some Turkish food. In spite of the long length of this entry, I have not exhausted the subject of Turkish food. There are still boreks (savory pastries), kebabs, desserts...So seek out a Turkish restaurant in your town - and if there isn't a good one, the only thing left to do is to go to Turkey. One thing's for sure: nobody goes hungry in Turkey!
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Aunt Marilyn
non-member comment
Turkish food is good
Last year when we were in Turkey. Our guide recommended a small family style restaurant in Kushidasi. Luckily the owner spoke English and explained each dish. It was wonderful and very reasonable. What percentage of Turks eat out and how often? I remember I had a wonderful dessert. It was not too sweet,but I believe made with honey.The veggies reminded me of Southern cooking.(well seasoned and cooked alot)