As we reach the end of our time in Istanbul, we’re feeling nostalgic about the great food we’ve been eating. So we thought we’d summarise a few of our favourite Turkish ingredients and the dishes we love them in. We’ve discovered that despite all that food-writing, we haven’t said much about some of the best ingredients here!
Tomatoes: Menemen
We mentioned menemen in our post on Turkish breakfast, but not how much we love it, or why. It’s scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and green peppers (and sometimes onions). But somehow the sum is much greater than its parts. It’s beautifully seasoned, with just a touch of spice. There are more tomatoes than we’re used to in an egg dish, and yet the dish is not watery. We’re working on our own recipe, which we’ll share once we’ve perfected it. Clearly one secret is the world’s freshest tomatoes and peppers, and that’s why it’s the dish we’ve picked to highlight the glories of the Turkish tomato. (But we also eat them in dozens of other ways…)
Pomegranates (and also Walnuts): Fesenjan
We’ve given you a simplified recipe for the Persian dish fesenjan, but we want to take this opportunity, again, to thank the world for giving us pomegranate juice, pomegranate seeds, and especially pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate vinegar is a new one on us, but we’ve been loving in in salads, especially with walnuts. And we drink pomegranate juice, sold everywhere, pretty often; it’s the perfect pick-me-up. Also – hot off the presses – pomegranate juice is not bad at all mixed with bourbon. (It’s hard to find sweet vermouth here.)
Filo dough: Borek
There is never anything bad about stuffed dough, and we’ve been fans of spanakopita and tyropita for years. But they are effortful to make, and they get soggy pretty fast. Enter those hard-working Turkish bakers, who make them once a day for us. We’re big fans of the spinach sticks found in our local supermarket, pictured above. They are flaky and crispy and they contain leafy green vegetables, so surely we ought to eat them as often as possible, no?
Labne: Manti
We did mention labne, the thick yog(h)urt, in our dairy product post, and we even mentioned that we like it on manti. But we haven’t really said anything about them! They call them ‘Turkish ravioli’ but that’s not quite right. They’re much smaller, and so much more concentrated doses of pasta. The inside is small bits of well-seasoned beef, and they are best served in a sauce with just a little tomato, a lot of labne, and a serious dose of pepper oil. Our lives are pretty great at the moment, but if we did find ourselves in need of comfort food, here is where we would go.
Eggplant: Pretty much anything
We’ve eaten them mashed, roasted, grilled, and boiled. We’ve even stuffed our own! We love eggplants, in pretty much any form. Among our favourites are served with kebabs, so they soak up meaty juices, and in a dip we know as baba ghanoush. Only here it sometimes has seafood on top, as if eggplant needs anything to make it great (again).
Potatoes: Kumpir
This doesn’t get talked about enough: potatoes are really great. We know the carb-haters out there have it in for potatoes, but it’s actually a much healthier food than, say, pasta or white rice. (Not that we spurn those either!) We don’t think of potatoes as especially Turkish, but we have seen some VERY LARGE ones here as street food, and – this being a country of plenty – they are jam-packed with all kinds of amazing ingredients: butter, sour cream, beets, sausage, olives, corn – pretty much anything you could imagine plus three or four things you couldn’t . This is a super-handy snack for those moments when you are walking around in Istanbul and have not JUST had an enormous meal. (This does happen, occasionally.) They fill you right up, especially on a cold day.
Here’s the good news: we’re headed to Cyprus next, where we expect to find not only more excellent food, but even some of these very same ingredients, or their close cousins. So don’t feel bad for us: we are probably going to be ok!
