In case it’s not clear, we like food. But not all food. In fact, some dairy products skeeve us out just the tiniest bit. Still, we’re managing to get our recommended daily allowance of calcium while we’re in Turkey. Here are our favourites, along with a few that we don’t love so much.
Labne
This is what you might be tempted to call Greek yog(h)urt. Don’t: it’s a LOT thicker and also salty, in a good way. Also don’t call it yog(h)urt cheese, because that just makes it sound gross. It appears across the middle east, so we’ve seen it before. But we love how Turks use it. They serve it over manti, which are amazing wee Turkish dumplings in tomato sauce. We weren’t sure about the combination, but it’s brilliant! They also put it on stuffed veggies, and use in dips with cucumber and garlic. We do all these things at home too, and also sometimes serve with herby omelettes. Finally, it’s excellent with muesli; the salt gives it that sophisticated something. This one is a winner: we’ll make a point of looking for it elsewhere.
Cheeses
Interestingly, lor and beyaz, the crumbly feta-like cheeses we’ve found in stores are not much like feta, and are not quite to our taste: they’re not salty enough. Restaurants seem to have it right, though; we’ve had some great goat’s cheese on salads and stuffed into borek. (So we obviously aren’t looking in the right places.) We have also found a lot of mozzarella-like things (Mihaliç, dil), all very much to our taste, and a string-cheese we love! Then there’s van, a soft cheese with large herbs. We’ve had delicious versions of this, but when we buy it in shops it’s too strong for us. Still, yummy when we can get it! There are also lots of other western-style cheeses: blue, gouda, cheddar, etc. They are good, and taste more or less as you’d expect.
Ayran
We have already had occasion to mention ayran, the salty dairy drink that everybody in Turkey loves. Everybody but us. We’ve seen a wide variety of ayran-machines in restaurants and stores which make clear just how popular it is. Nope! (Also in this category is yoghurt soup, often salty and sour. We are certain the Turks do it well, but it’s just not our thing.)
Dondurma
Turks also like ice cream, and here we are on much steadier ground. There’s lots of ice cream of the traditional sort, in a variety of flavours. Also, there’s goat’s milk ice cream. And there’s ice cream made with mastic, which we’ve mentioned in an earlier post: interesting to try, but not a keeper.
So, we’ll be honest: our reviews are mixed. But that’s not the fault of Turkey. We only like a small selection of dairy products in most countries we go to. Still, those we like, we like a lot; labne makes up for a multitude of weird stuff!
