Mmm... You love Turkish food, right? Have you ever tried making it yourself? Well, you should, and don't worry: It's easier than you think.
This week, Today's Zaman aims to give you a short overview of the art of Turkish cooking.
Indeed, Turkish food ranks high on the list of the world's great cuisines. Some, pointing to its wide influence on many other national cuisines, even count Turkish culinary arts as one of the three main cuisines of the world -- together with French and Chinese.
However, Turkish cooking is anything but standardized, and so the uniform term “Turkish cuisine” may at first seem a bit misleading. In fact, Turkish cuisine today bears a nearly unmanageable range of flavors and ingredients. Largely the heritage of Ottoman cuisine, Turkish food integrates a wide range of influences, from Central Asian and Middle Eastern up to Balkan cookery.
And the different tastes of every region contribute once more to the complexity of Turkish cuisine. The expat online forum www.mymerhaba.com knows more: “Due to heavy rains, the Eastern Black Sea region is not appropriate for wheat production; therefore they specialized in dishes which rely mostly on corn and corn flour. The Southeast Anatolian region is famous for kebaps, as a result of its abundant livestock. The Aegean region, known for its olive production, is famous for its delicious olive oil vegetable and herb dishes while pastries are the specialty of Thrace,” the Web site writes, while also listing a couple of restaurants specializing in Turkish cuisine in İstanbul and Ankara in its yYellow pages. The Web site features an in-depth piece on a different restaurant each month.
In Turkey, cooking starts with breakfast. Along with the cold breakfast plate (“kahvaltı tabağı”), which usually consists of cheese, olives, vegetables and jam or honey, a range of warm meals are made early in the morning, too. What can provide you with a better start to the day than a good pan of egg stewed with onion, tomato and peppers and usually thickly covered with cheese (“menemen”)? A strong sausage with garlic (“sucuk”) or air-dried beef (“pastırma”) are definitely delicious, though probably not for sensitive stomachs, whereas the numerous varieties of filled pastry (“börek”) surely hold something for everybody's taste. Continue on with soup (“çorba”). Common soup varieties are made from lentils, yogurt, or various types of mashed wheat. A more hard-bitten foodie may choose those made from tripe (“işkembe”) or trotters (“paça”).
But always leave some space for the main meal. There are so many dishes to choose from. Though the dozens of cold appetizers (“meze”) may manage to fully stuff you, warm dishes will make you faint, as did, according to an old Turkish legend, an unknown imam when his wife served him eggplant stuffed with onion, garlic and tomatoes liberally soaked in olive oil. The meal still carries the name “the imam fainted” (“imam bayıldı”). Eggplant has a special place in the Turkish kitchen and is served in hundreds of variations -- cold or hot, in salad form, with or without meat. And though Turkish kitchens are especially famous for their creative preparation of meat, due to the abundant use of vegetables in cooking, vegetarians will definitely not remain hungry. Peppers, onions, garlic, lentils, beans and a skilled use of spices make every meal an unforgettable experience. When speaking of Turkish meat dishes, it is obligatory to mention “kebabs,” which can be any kind of grilled or broiled meat. Searching through the Internet, one comes across more than 25 different kebap specialties, many of them named after the region they come from. It's definitely worth trying all of them. If you want to find out what huge difference of taste lies in the usage of spice alone, just try an Urfa Kebap and an Adana Kebap right after each other -- the flavor difference is amazing. Seafood also has a special place on the Turkish menu. From the small fried anchovies (“hamsi”) -- eaten whole, with head, bones and tail -- up to the huge turbot pieces (“kalkan”), as well as mussels (“midye”) or squid (“kalamar”) -- there is nothing one cannot find on Turkish tables.
And last but not least, what would the Turkish kitchen be without dessert? Turkish desserts range from the famous sweet pastry “baklava,” over to the rosewater-flavored “güllaç,” served especially during Ramadan, up to milk-based chocolate or vanilla crèmes, the cheese-filled “künefe” or the superb “chicken breast” ("tavuk göğsü"), traditionally made with real chicken meat.
Learn how to cook ‘alla Turca’
Only a genius could know how to prepare all these, one may think. But no need to despair: “Turkish food is not complicated cooking; it is about getting simple cooking absolutely right,” a Turkish saying goes. And that means learning the art of Turkish cuisine is possible for everyone who enjoys cooking -- and eating.
For an overview of cooking schools or private cooking courses offered in Turkey, you can check the Web site www.turkeytravelplanner.com, which lists many opportunities. Delightful four-hour cooking classes in a fully equipped kitchen are offered, for example, by the Cooking Alaturka Restaurant in Sultanahmet. Its Web site is at www.cookingalaturka.com. Another recommended venue is Turkish Flavours, at www.turkishflavours.com, which also offers half-day cooking courses in İstanbul, as well as talks with gourmet experts, walking tours of the markets and visits to all the city's major points of historical and cultural interest. For real devotees, there's even a six-day culinary tour of İstanbul, including three half-day cooking classes. There are more tour operators offering culinary tours all throughout Turkey. For a start you can check out the options at www.turkishcuisinetours.com or http://www.foodvacation.com/id16.html. Another real treasure chest for everyone interested in Turkish cookery is the online blog “İstanbul Eats -- a serious eater's guide to the city,” which provides not only some very good restaurant addresses but also lists information about cooking classes for amateurs. Check it out at http://istanbuleats.com.
If you want to try it yourself at home, make use of the great online collection of Turkish recipes in English provided by http://turkishcookingclass. blogspot.com.
And for those who don't have a skilled grandma on hand to advise them, here comes a final selection of the best-known English-language Turkish cookbooks. “A Taste of Turkish Cuisine,” by Nur İlkin, explains how to make best use of beans, grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, mirroring the wide range of influences on the Turkish kitchen from Chinese and Mongolian to Persian and Greek. Sarah Woodward also focuses on these multifaceted influences in “Ottoman Kitchen: Modern Recipes from Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Lebanon, Syria and Beyond.” The book is a wonderful collection of practical recipes for modern-day versions of the region's classic dishes, interwoven with tales of history, culture and culinary tradition. A book exclusively devoted to the dozens of kinds of Turkish appetizers is called “Meze,” written by Diane Kochilas. Useful for expats' wishes and desires may be the book “Classical Turkish Cooking: Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen,” written by Ayla Esen Algar.
“Afiyet Olsun!” -- “Enjoy your meal!”
29 July 2009, Wednesday
KRISTINA KAMP İSTANBUL
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