Ali nazik kebab is one of my favourites! Cubes of marinated lamb on a bed of patlıcan (aubergine) puree mixed with yogurt and served with rice and salad. I love the smoky taste of the creamy aubergine mashed with garlic yogurt, so delicious!
Would you believe, before I lived in Turkey I had never tried aubergine, now I always look for it on the menu!
P.S Sorry I missed a day of posting yesterday – I was just so busy!
Sütlaç is Turkish rice pudding. There are two types – simple rice pudding cooked on the stove, and ‘fırın sütlaç’ – where it’s put in the oven afterwards to brown off, which gives it a different taste. It’s always served cold and can be flavoured with lots of different things, but usually vanilla. The first photo was a simple banana flavoured rice pudding made by Berkay’s aunt, the ones below are oven-baked rice pudding, vanilla flavoured with coconut on top.
I do like the taste, but the texture puts me off a bit, especially when it has the skin on!
Bazlama is a kind of village bread. It’s big, round and flat. It’s quite heavy and thick, kind of like a cross between a naan bread and a crumpet? I can’t really explain, but it’s really yummy.
My favourite way to eat bazlama is at the gözleme stalls in Fethiye or Calis market. They slice the bread in half and fill it with your choice of filling, cheese is the most popular but I love cheese, tomato and chili flakes. It’s then cooked on a metal plate. It’s like a giant toastie! So delicious and so filling. One whole bazlama is definitely enough for two people and is usually served with salad or pickled vegetables.
Berkay’s stepmum made some bazlama bread from scratch while we were there in September – the family goes through so much bread that it’s cheaper to make their own sometimes!
Turkish coffee is very strong and very thick black coffee. It’s unfiltered, so you really need to master the art of avoiding swallowing the grains at the bottom of the cup, otherwise it won’t be a very pleasant experience! It’s always served black, with a small glass of water, and is often accompanied by a piece or two of sweet Turkish delight.
It’s served in tiny, porcelain espresso cups, some of which have beautiful brass or copper cases, with intricate designs and patterns, making it look rather regal!
Turkish coffee has it’s own traditions. When a boy wants to marry a girl in Turkey, the boy and his family have to visit the girl’s family’s house to ask for their blessing in marriage. Whilst there, the potential bride will make Turkish coffee for the guests. Sometimes, she puts salt in the potential groom’s coffee, instead of sugar, and waits for his reaction. If he doesn’t react negatively, or show his disgust, it’s said to show his good character.
Turkish coffee also has fortune-telling abilities. After you finish your cup, turn it upside down on the saucer and wait for the grounds to form a pattern. Some people are able to read these grounds and interpret the meaning. Last year, when Berkay was awaiting the decision of his visa application, he had a BBQ with his friends. One of their wives made coffee and they sent a photo of the remaining grounds from the bottom of the cup to an app which reads them and tells you the meaning. The app said Berkay’s meant the following: “you’re waiting for some results and they’ll be on the doorstep tomorrow, it’ll be good news. You’ll be going on a long journey”.. and how right they were too, because the very next morning the visa arrived in his hands!!
Beyti kebab is a popular kebab dish. Minced beef or lamb is cooked on skewers, then wrapped in thin lavaş bread (similar to tortilla wraps). It’s then sliced up into inch-thick pieces and arranged in a circle on a plate. A tomato based sauce is poured over the top, and yogurt placed in the middle. It’s a bit spicy, and usually served with rice. The combination of the rice and lavaş bread makes it very filling!
I’ve actually never had this dish in Turkey, but have in two different Turkish restaurants, one in London, one in Essex. It was served slightly differently in each place, one served it with peppers and tomatoes, and a thicker sauce, the other served it with cucumber.
It’s a good one to try – as long as you’re not put off by the sight of yogurt on your dinner plate. It took me years to get the hang of that!
Lokma are balls of dough, deep fried then covered in sweet, sticky syrup, best served while hot or warm.
Crispy on the outside but soft in the middle, when you bite into them they are slightly chewy, they are similar to donuts, but less cakey.
Lokma is often made in large batches and is a popular choice of food at celebrations or festivals, given out for free by families to all the local people during weddings, henna nights, openings of new shops/restaurants and even during sünnet (circumcision celebrations) and funerals (a certain amount of days after someone dies, their family arranges to serve food to local people).
When we were down in Ölüdeniz in April, there was a parade and celebration marking the official start of the summer season and they were cooking fresh batches of Lokma in the street and handing them out to everyone passing by. Wherever you find a stall giving them away, you can be sure there will be a huge line of people waiting!
Delicious, sticky, gooey, crispy… and full of sugar!
I flew with Turkish Airlines for the first time last year, and wrote a post about it on here (click HERE to read). We flew with them again last month and it was a little different, so I thought I’d do an updated post.
Going out, we flew from Gatwick to Dalaman via Sabiha Gökçen airport in Istanbul, which I’d never been to before. The previous 4 times I flew with them, the cabin crew came around with a small piece of Turkish delight and a menu, just after take off, but this time they didn’t – I think they must have stopped doing this now! The menu was handy as it told you the meal options in advance, rather than just waiting for them to come around with the trolley and having to make an on-the-spot decision! When they did come around, about 45 minutes into the flight, we got given the option of a meat dish or a pasta dish – I chose the meat. We had chicken, vegetables, mash, salad with feta cheese, tomato and cucumber and a bread roll with butter. Dessert was some kind of mousse, I think it was mango or something similar with chocolate flakes on top! We also had a little carton of water, and a drink of whatever we wanted, including alcohol! I love that you get a little sachet of olive oil for the salad, we all know how Turks love their olive oil, and salt, pepper and ‘real’ metal cutlery too – nothing worse than trying to cut meat with a plastic fork!
When we came in to land at Istanbul, the view of the city from the plane window was really interesting, the airport is so close to so many buildings, and there are some really fancy tower blocks too. All you can see when taking off/landing at Gatwick is fields, so it made a nice change! We had an hour and 25 minutes between flights, but our first one was delayed by around 30 minutes, so it was a bit tight! We walked down the steps off the plane and onto a waiting bus to take us to the terminal. There was a MASSIVE queue for passport control and we panicked a little as we only had an hour to get through, go to the international terminal, find the gate and board the plane. Luckily, there were airport staff directing people with domestic connecting flights to go through a fast track passport control desk and straight into the international terminal, without having to re-enter through security so that saved us a lot of time. After a quick wee, we checked the board, found our gate number, walked down to it and breathed a sigh of relief as we sat down in the seating area. We must have been sat down for less than 60 seconds when they announced that it was time for us all to go towards the desk and have our boarding passes checked, then taken onto another bus on the tarmac ready to take us to the plane!
We got to walk up the steps to the plane which I always love doing, so much more fun than walking through the tunnel to board! This particular plane was different to any others I’d been on and had little footrests under the seats which I loved – really comfortable. By the time we sat down, the sun was just beginning to set outside, which made it feel like a really long day of travelling as we had left our house at 7.15 am that morning!
The flight from Istanbul to Dalaman is really quick, less than an hour, and almost straight after take off the cabin crew came around with some snacks. On the domestic flights you don’t get a full meal, just a snack, and no alcoholic drinks, just soft drinks or tea/coffee. The last time I flew the food was given in a little paper tray and had a sandwich, pot of salad and dessert, but they have changed this, now it’s only a toastie or something similar. We had cheese, tomato and olive toasties. Berkay, being the growing man that he is, asked for two, and they gave them to him, he was very thrilled about this as you can tell!
The domestic terminal at Dalaman is currently under construction so when we landed we were taken to a corner of the International airport through a door to collect our luggage from the carousel, then it was straight outside, down the ramp and into our transfer car to Calis!
Fast forward two weeks and the inevitable journey back home again began. Of course the flights out to Turkey are always much more exciting than the flights back home again, right? We had been awake since 5am for our 8.30am flight, and although the excitement of going on holiday keeps you wide awake on the way out, when you’re tired on the flight home and facing the reality of going back to work the next day it’s not quite as fun! With one last glance down at Dalaman, the plane soared up to 30,000 ft and we waited for our in-flight breakfast snack – a cheese and tomato panini!
As soon as we had finished that, it was time to land in Istanbul again, this time at Atatürk Airport. We had longer between flights this time – almost 4 hours to wait, so we actually left the airport for an hour and hopped in a taxi to a local shopping mall. On our return to the airport, we went through security, passport control, one more security with full body scanners, then through to Duty Free. When we checked the departure boards, our gate number was already up so we found that and had our boarding passes and passports checked not one, not two, but three times, and Berkay had his hand luggage thoroughly searched in a spot-check too! The security there is really good, but I suppose it’s expected. We didn’t have to wait too long before boarding once again, and Berkay had his last sniff of Turkish air before stepping on the plane.
The meal on the flight home was again a choice of a meat or pasta dish. We had kofte (meatballs), rice, vegetables, cacik (yogurt with cucumber), a bread roll and a chocolate mousse for dessert.
Other than the food, my favourite things about Turkish Airlines are the personal entertainment touch screens on the back of all the seats. They have lots of games, music and films on them, including some films not even released on DVD yet! The ones on the plane home even had USB ports so you could charge your phone through them, really handy! I’m a big kid and can’t travel without a a bear, I always get him out on the plane as you can see! By the time I had watched a film and had a sleep, making the most of the empty seat one side of me, the Captain announced it was time to descend into Gatwick, right back to down to earth with a bump, literally!
Overall I love flying with Turkish Airlines, and this time they were actually cheaper than Easy Jet, Thomas Cook etc with the added bonus of 23kg hold luggage included, 8kg hand luggage and the free food and drinks. The only downside is the waiting time between flights but I think it’s well worth it!
I can’t believe the whole month of August is over and this is the final day of the photo series! I’ve saved my best photo til last, it’s without a doubt my most favourite photo I’ve ever taken. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve shared it a million times before, I just LOVE it. This is Boncuk as a puppy, we’d had her 4 months and were just taking a late afternoon stroll one day in February, along Calis beach. I was trying to get some good sunset photos and she just sat down and posed – pure luck, it’s not easy getting a puppy to sit still! I love her little smiley face, tongue out, ears flapped over, sitting up straight. The sunset in the background, the waves rolling in and Boncuk’s little doggy paw prints in the sand. She was the cutest puppy!
I’ve enjoyed looking back over my old photos this past month and sharing them, showing you all the beauty of Turkey in it’s many forms! I think this photo sums up everything I love most about Turkey personally, Calis beach, sunsets, the sea and our beautiful Boncuk dog.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the photo posts too, thanks to everyone for liking, sharing and commenting over the last month!
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I think Fethiye is overlooked by a lot of tourists, with some people not straying further than the Tuesday market, but it has so much more to offer. The harbour area is so pretty, especially early in the morning when it’s quiet, the only people around are those getting the boats ready for a day trip around the islands or going out fishing. I love the green hills in the distance, the masts of the boats and the calm water the boats bob up and down on. If you’re lucky, you might even see a turtle or two popping his head up for food!
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Today’s photo is another Calis Beach sunset, but a slightly different one, with a sky full of clouds creating a beautiful patterned, glowing sky! Cloudy sunsets are the best, they look more intense! Love the reflection on the sea too. I still maintain that Calis Beach is the best place to watch the sun go down!
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