Food and Drink in Turkey
With the growing popularity of the healthy Mediterranean diet, the basics of Turkish cuisine are surprisingly familiar to many visitors.
A typical meal begins with a choice of up to a dozen meze (hors d’oeuvre), including yoghurt with garlic and coriander; diced, fried liver; houmous (chickpea puree); various aubergine and spinach dishes and dolma (vine leaves stuffed with rice, pine nuts, currants and herbs). With these comes the seemingly compulsory shepherd’s salad, a sharply refreshing blend of tomato and cucumber, onion and green pepper, with a simple dressing of lemon and coriander.
Main courses:
Fundamental to the diet is the kebab, which comes in many guises: the siskebabi (shish kebab), cubed lamb or chicken grilled on a skewer with pepper, onion and tomato; the doner kebab, the country’s most popular form of fast food, with a huge joint or layered slab slowly spit-roasted and thinly sliced as required; the kofte kebab, flattened meatballs grilled on a skewer and served with a hot tomato sauce, and local specialities such as the hot adaner kebab – a long skewer wrapped in spicy minced lamb or goat.
Alternative main courses include simply grilled meat or fish and a variety of stews, most containing some of the key local ingredients of lamb, chicken, tomato, onion, peppers, aubergines, beans and chickpeas.
In the east, the break is usually pide, a delicious pitta-style flat bread, sometimes served topped with vegetables or minced lamb as a type of pizza. Another common and delicious snack is borek, layers of thin pastry stuffed with minced lamb, cheese, spinach or other vegetables.
Puddings:
Desserts are rare: the meal ends with fruit or simply with tea or coffee. Cakes, pasties and sweets abound, but are sold separately in pastry shops (pastahanes). Many are variations on the well-known baklava, flaky pastry filled with crushed nuts (pistachio, walnut or almond) and drenched in honey or syrup. There are also milky puddings such as muhallibi (rice pudding with cinnamon and rose water) and keskul (a paste of milk, ground almonds and pistachio, topped with coconut). In Antakya, the local speciality is kunefe, a sweet, syrupy cheesecake (a cross between Welsh rarebit and crème brulee). The most famous sweet is, of course, jellyish Turkish delight (lokum), which comes flavoured with pistachio, lemon or rose water.
Drinks:
Alcohol is surprisingly free-flowing for a Muslim society, even away from the tourist areas. The local beer is a rather gassy lager, Efes, while the spirit of choice, raki, is an aniseed drink similar to ouzo or Pernod. There are some reasonable Turkish wines: most grapes are grown in the Agean coast or in central Anatolia. The best names include Yakut, Villa Doluca and Dikmen.
Non-alcoholic options include fresh fruit juices and ayran, a thin, slightly salty yoghurt drink which is both refreshing and an excellent antidote to hot chillis. Tea (cay) or strong Turkish coffee (kahve) are both traditionally drunk black, strong, and very sweet, in tiny glasses, as are various herbal or aromatic teas, such as apple tea (elma cay), a favourite with tourists.