| Turkish Cooking |
| Cooking |
| _______ |
| o |
| Morocco |
| Spain |
| France |
| Italy |
| Greece |
| Turkey |
| Egypt |
| Tunisia |
| Site Directory |
| Links |
| Turkish Cuisine and Recipes | Mediterranean Cooking and Diet | Mediterranean Diet and Cuisine |
17th century Ottoman palaces employed cooks in countless dozens. There were some thirteen hundred career chefs housed in the Topkapi alone. Separated into divisions, each specializing in a different category of dish, chefs worked with the sole aim of pleasing the royal palette. Spanning ten domes and several buildings, the enormous kitchens of the Topkapi palace speak of the high importance placed on the culinary arts by the Ottoman sultans.
From the start, Turkish cuisine has concentrated on direct flavors - fresh produce, lightly spiced, and prepared in simple and varied combinations. Mint, parsley, dill, and bay leaf are flavor a variety of dishes. And while many recipes are built around lamb and fish, those calling for eggplant as a primary ingredient are plentiful.
Cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the Seljuks were the earliest inhabitants of the Anatolia peninsula. As nomads, they lived in round domed tents, migrated continuously, and settled in a place only temporarily to trade and collect supplies. Food traditions were simple, for the most part meat, animal produce like yogurt, cheese, butter, and eggs, but also fruit, honey, and grain. The kebap remains a Turkish favorite, and has been a constant in the Turkish diet since those early days of freedom and open fires.
Early on, the Ottomans became inspired by Arab, Persian and Byzantine food traditions. The Ottoman cuisine was refined and expanded in the course of experimentation with the ingredients and practices found in former Byzantium and the newly conquered mid-eastern territories. As the empire grew, they spread their own traditions as far as Egypt and Tunisia in the south and west and the Balkans and Russia in the north and east. Within the larger Ottoman cities, the Turks themselves did their best to imitate the recipes of the sultans’ chefs. The kulliye, community soup kitchens whose doors the Sultan opened during the month of Ramadan, were significant in introducing Ottoman cooking to the humblest of hearths.
| Turkish Cooking and Recipes | Mediterranean Diet and Cuisine | Healthy Cooking, Mediterranean Recipes |
Byzantine cooking had much in common with middle-eastern cuisine and the cooking of the Islamic peoples. So much so that it could be difficult to find the separation and direction of influence between them. Interestingly, some of the eastern Mediterranean’s most famous dishes bespeak their general origins. Moussaka and Halva (or halwa), for example, are Arabic words. While moussaka, meaning “soaked,” refers to a dish of eggplant brimming in meat and vegetable juices, halva is both a Turkish dessert sweet and the term for “sweet” in Arabic. Versions of both recipes can be found in Greece and Turkey, but also in Lebanon and Egypt. The Ottomans transferred to the Greeks many new takes on older regional recipes. Still, despite a significant period of Ottoman rule, the line between Turkish and Greek cuisine is not obvious.
The majority of Ottoman recipes, contained in recipe books written in Arabic, were lost in the language reforms of Turkey. Only by the peculiar names of dishes can we recognize surviving dishes as distinctly Ottoman. These have names which refer to Ottoman court personages or various Ottoman pleasures of the sultan. Hunkar begendi, meaning “the sultan was pleased” is one such dish. Another is called imam bayaldi, or “the priest fainted,” a dish alternately known as, the “lady’s flower.” Perhaps equally tantalizing is the hanin gobegi, or “lady’s navel,” a molded dessert sweet made with a thumbprint at its center.
A dish most associated with Turkey, but also common throughout the middle-east, is the mezeler. Like the tapas of Spain, this meal course is a combination of delicacies served together, but in a number of separate plates. Individually, these specialties are called meze, and are typically stuffed grape leaves, tomato and cucumber salads, spinach and cheese-stuffed filo pastries, roasted eggplant, yogurt dip, and a variety of other small platters.
Mediterranean Kitchen, Turkish Recipes |
Mediterranean Diet Recipes |
Tour of Turkey, Travel Turkey |
