Turkish local food

The famous Turkish doner

Turkish are famous with the sweets they make.In my previous article I told you about lokum,that great delight but they have many others not less delicious ones.A good example is baklava.It's made by a special pie pastry,sugar and nuts and other ingridents depending on the special kind baklava.You can try it in one of the hundreds pastry shops in Turkey.Baklava is very sweet and syrop so be careful with it.It could be great present for your friends and family.In the special shops they have beautiful gift packages.Besides baklava also wonderful sweet is pismaniye - very different but also so tasty. It is something between sweet cotton and halva.

Different kinds of baklava. The picture is taken from this site.

As I like to do - start from the sweet and then I go through the main meals.One of my visits in Turkey was in Izmit for 2 weeks. I had the chance to try more of their kitchen.What I found out about Turkish is that they put eggplants in almost everything. Of course it is not exactly everywhere but they really like it.They have number of meals including vegetables:besides eggplant,another popular vegetable is pepper and hot pepper.I find it a little bit more spicy than I'm used to but anyway it is delicious.Another typical character of their kitchen is that they also cook a lot with more oil which is deffinitely needed for the vegetarian meals.

The salad is seen easily  and the other meal is our mix of bread,roasted meat,rice and vegetables.

When it is about meat,Turkish eat mainly chicken and beef(never pork,well...religion). A popular way to serve  meat is roasted or grilled in different variations,called kebab.Some of the most popular kebabs are sis kebab,served on a skewer and doner kebab,wrapped in Arabic bread with vegetables.
Talking about Turkish meat we should never miss the fish. Because of the 3 seas Tukey is situated at there is almost always and everywhere fish.Best places I've tried fresh fish are in Istanbul at one of the restaurants on Galata bridge and also in the restaurants by the Bosphorus.

Beef kebab with tomatoes

I think it was a troat fillet but I'm sure it was delicious

Restaurants beside the Bosphorus

Balik ekmek,meaning fish with bread that I didn't manage to try. I read somewhere that they don't serve in anymore accoring to some European requirements.

Turkish love bread.When you go to a restaurant they always serve you a plate with their bread,a small salad with chopped vegetables and some sauce to dip.For a main meal you could have pide,looking like pizza but the bread and the ingridents are different or lahmakun which dough is thinner and its shape is smaller. They both are usually covered with chesse,tomatos and minced meat but they could be also vegetarian or plain.Burek is a typical pastry in Turkey and has its variations in Eastern Europe too.It is made by very flat dough and usually is filled with cheese.

Pide is on the right and some other bakety goodies.

Going in Tukey you should not miss to try the local cai(tea). Turkish drink strong black tea on every hour or two.They made it in a special way in 2 pots - the smaller one is put on the top of the bigger one and it covers it. In the bigger one they put water and in the smaller one they put tea leaves with less water.It has to boil and it’s ready to be served. Be careful to pure one third of the cup with the concentrate from the upper pot and then refill it with the hot water from the bigger pot.They serve it in little beautiful glass cups and it's a real pleasure to consume it.

The 2 pots and the cups waiting to be filled

I didn't say anything about the Turkish coffee but you can read here everything.I'm ust telling you that it is strong and tasty and I loved that coffee cup.

I decided to finish this article with Yeni Raki , the local liquor drink. Yeni raki is an aniseed-flavored drink,looking like Greek ouzo,it's great with a couple of ice bars.Serefe! (cheers)