Kol böreği is a dish made with puff pastry, rolled up into long pieces – hence the ‘kol’ (arm) in the name. It’s quite soft and a little greasy but so good. The fillings vary – potato, cheese, mincemeat etc. My favourite are the potato or mincemeat ones. We used to eat these for breakfast/brunch in Fethiye sometimes, with a glass of tea, my tummy is rumbling just thinking about it!
Turkish rice, the kind with the little brown bits in, is my favourite. It’s buttery, soft fluffy and a staple part of Turkish cuisine – a great side dish to any meal. It’s even a meal on its own with chick peas or beans. The little brown bits are şehriye ( you might know it as Orzo – a small kind of pasta) and it adds a little something to the flavour and texture. It can be cooked with oil or butter, or even a bit of both. Berkay has taught me to add chicken stock too to enhance the flavour even more!
It’s hard to master, but he’s given me a tried and tested fool-proof recipe which you can find on my blog HERE.
One of my favourite, quick, simple and most importantly – cheap, lunchtime snacks in Turkey is tost. Not to be confused with British toast, the type served with butter and jam, Turkish tost is a Turkish bread sliced down the middle, stuffed with delicious fillings, cooked in a heavy iron press and served with a side of spicy, hot pickles. Yum.
The most popular is a mixed tost, or “karışık tost” in Turkish, which is a toastie with cheese, sucuk (spicy Turkish sausage) and usually tomato too. My favourite is just a plain, simple cheese and tomato one. In Berkay’s village we had one with scrambled egg, sucuk and cheese in – some people put salca (tomato puree) and mayonnaise in too.
The only downside to how delicious they are, is how unhealthy they are, it’s a bit of a carb overload, eating half a small loaf of bread in one sitting, and the bread is usually covered in butter on the outside too so it can be rather greasy. Delightful though!
Keşkek is a very traditional part of Turkish weddings and they take great pride in cooking it. It’s a weird food, served at special occasions, weddings, funerals, religious celebrations etc. A lot of people are involved in the preparing and cooking. It’s made from wheat, locally produced from the villages in most cases, and ground meat, and is lovingly and slowly cooked in these huge cauldrons. It’s a hard job to mix it with the huge wooden spoon as it is so thick, it’s definitely a good arm workout! It’s reminds me of porridge… but porridge mixed with ground meat, butter, and lots of oil… once it’s ready it’s slopped in a bowl and covered in spicy pepper sauce. It certainly doesn’t look, or sound very appealing but it doesn’t taste as bad as you think and it’s a good, hearty food that definitely feels like it’s been lovingly homemade by your grandma!
Baklava is a sweet dessert, made from layers of filo pastry and melted butter, and layers of nuts (pistachio or walnut). It’s cut into rectangle, diamond or triangle shapes then baked. Once baked, a syrup is poured over, making it sticky and sweet. The thin, crispy filo pastry is softened by the syrup as it penetrates through every layer. It’s often served with ice cream or cream and sometimes has more pistachio nuts finely ground on top.
So naughty, but so nice!!
Ok, so not really a dish, but I thought it was interesting to write about. There’s an assumption that chips are only served with breakfast in holiday resorts in Turkey to please tourists, but that’s not true! Berkay’s family often serve up chips for breakfast, but usually cold, either leftovers from the night before, or freshly cooked. They even have them smothered in garlic yogurt with grilled peppers. Above is a photo of a breakfast we had in the village – boiled eggs, tomatoes, grilled peppers, chips, olives, sucuk and aubergine!
Kuzu şiş (lamb shish) is a simple kebab dish, but delicious. Marinated cubes of lamb on skewers, cooked perfectly and served with special flat bread (which is hiding some of the meat in my photo above), rice, grilled peppers, onions and tomatoes, and raw onion salad with sumac sprinkled on top. Perfect when the meat is tender! My photo above was taken at Mozaik Bahçe in Fethiye, their presentation is especially impressive.
I always feel like ordering lamb or chicken shish kebab is so boring when eating out, but it’s so tasty I can never resist!
A Turkish döner kebab is nothing like the ones you’ve come across in the UK. I’ve never had a lamb one, but chicken döner is one of my favourite fast foods!
The name relates to the way the seasoned meat is cooked slowly on a vertical rotisserie. As the outside layers of meat get cooked, they are carved off and served. There are various ways the meat is served – over rice with salad, in a wrap (dürüm) or in a half-bread like a sandwich (yarım ekmek). We usually get the half-bread – the perfectly cooked chicken is shaved off and put inside along with onion, tomato and lettuce.
It’s served with a side of pickled hot chili peppers. The English in me means I sometimes order chips, cover them in salt and vinegar and stuff them inside too!
Gözleme is a popular street food in Turkey, marketed in holiday resorts as ‘pancakes’ even though they aren’t really pancakes at all, they’re more of a flat bread. It’s made with flour, water and salt, which forms a basic pastry dough. The dough is rolled very thinly on a special low round table, then filled, folded and cooked on a metal plate. Traditional fillings are savoury – mincemeat, parsley and onion, cheese and spinach or potato and onion etc, but in some areas you will find sweet flavours too – lemon and sugar, nutella and banana, etc, flavours which have been highly influenced by tourist crowds!
My favourite is mincemeat and potato, and our favourite place go for one is the Korkmaz family’s stall in the Fethiye area weekly markets!
Kokoreç is a popular street food in Turkey – one that I’ve not yet been brave enough to try and I don’t think I ever will!
Kokoreç is made from sheep intestines. The intestines are cleaned then packed onto a large skewer and cooked horizontally over a coal fire, giving it a unique taste. The smell of it cooking is very strong and puts me off even more!
After it is cooked, it is carved off and finely chopped up into pieces then squished in between a half or quarter loaf of bread and eaten like a hot sandwich. Ayran is usually the drink which accompanies this feast!
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