For A Tummy Pleasure

Assalamualaikum

Hi everyone! As you look on the title, it is obviously that this time, I am going to share with you about the foods and drinks in Turkey! First of all, I want to make an early apologize if throughout this sharing session, you will feel so hungry until your saliva coming through your lips. Haha :DD So let's get started!

Turkey is undoubtedly famous with its cuisine that is rich and super duper delicious! It is not so spicy and with a lots of vegetables used. So to those who are vegetarian, I bet you will find Turkey is your heaven of food. Even though its based food is lamb and mutton, Turkey's cuisine is including the beef and chicken and 100% sure that there is no pork at all. Plus, a lot of seafood as well. Their common preparation of food are roasting and grilling which produces the popular Turkish Kebabs. Moreover there is plenty of the cuisine from grilled meat. As what is said by Chef Eveline Zoutendijk (2002), "It is not a complicated cuisine. It can be labor-intensive, but it produces an amazing variety of colors and bold flavors." It means that preparing Turkish cuisine is not so difficult and arduous, in fact many Turkish can make it as their business to sell the foods. Whatever matter is that you need to be very confidence with yourselves to try something new or invent plenty of new recipes to come out with marvelous dish.

 

Kebab is kind of important food in Turkish cuisine that there a numberless of kebab stalls and restaurants in this country

Thus, we can consider that Kebab is Turkish's traditional food. Ok let's talk about Turkish breakfast. Well basically, the Turkish usually prefer a rich breakfast, which mean that a typical breakfast is consists of cheese, butter, olive, eggs and several kind of vegetables. One of the breakfast in Turkey is called Sucuk where it is a spicy Turkish sausage that is eaten with eggs.

Spicy baked sausage with eggs

 Another breakfast in this country is Borek. Well, Borek is general Turkish term for filled pastries. The filling is often white sheep's milk cheese and a chopped vegetable such as parsley or spinach. The dough is rolled or folded around the ingredients, then they can choose whether want to bake, steam or fry it. Instead of taking Borek for breakfast, the Turkish also consume it for lunch or as their daily snack. As what I already mentioned earlier, Turkish cuisine is so great for those who are vegetarians.

Spinach Borek

 Next is Simit. Simit is also a Turkish favorite dish to take for breakfast. Generally Simit is made with sesame seeds.

Delicious and crunchy Simits

Anddd here is Menemen. This savory Menemen is a tradtional Turkish dish which consists of eggs, onions, tomato, green peppers, and some additional ingredients that they prefer. It is so much tasty when you add Sucuk (spicy Turkish sausage) together with the other basic ingredients. 

Menemen cooked with Sucuk or spicy Turkish sausage

Oh yes, before I forgot, the Turkish word for breakfast is Kahvalti, it brings the meaning of 'before coffee' :)

Enough with the breakfast. Now, it's a lunch time! 

The bread and butter of Turkish lunch

Tavuc or Et. This is literally consists of meat as the main ingredients and of course, vegetables :)

This is a typical Turkish salad. Some of the restaurant in Turkey would provide you this salad for free and served together with your meal. And for your information, almost every dish ordered is provided with bread. This salad is obviously contain a lot of vegetables and it is mixed with semi-sweet pickle carrots and cabbage and many other additional ingredients just to make the salad so delicious

This is Turkish pizza! Or they called is as Pide :) It comes in all sorts of varieties and it is generally a simpler form of pizza compared to the American kind of pizza that we usually eat. The dough is semi-crispy with just a right amount of chewy. Most of the restaurants cook these pides in wood-fired brick ovens.

The tasty Iskander Kebab. This is the special dish in the town of Bursa, but you can always get it all over Turkey. This dish is named based on the original creator himself "Iskander". On the bottom is a piece of soggy bread, with strips of lamb or chicken meat on top, The whole thing that you could see in maroon color is actually tomato sauce, butter and the white sauce is yogurt. You can add some peppers to make it even tastier. 

Did you want to know what are the desserts that is made originally from Turkey? Well, I am going to tell you some of them that is famous and commonly consumed by the Turkish or the tourist as desserts.

Baklava. It is made either with pistachio or walnut and prepared in a large trays and cut into a variety of shapes

The most famous in the entire world - The Turkish Delight or can be called as Lokum. Lokum is eaten for digestion after meals. Lokum or Turkish Delight is a sweet/candy with range of varieties

Sutlac. A baked rice pudding. To produce a marvelous rice pudding or Sutlac is using fresh milk slow cooking, constant stirring and lots of patience. The sutlac is commonly served in a traditional bowl which is a small clay dessert cup that's glazed or shiny on the inside

That's all for the foods in Turkey. Well, of course there must be thousands kind of meal in that country, but if I list it all out in this entry, it will never ends, trust me. Haha. So next is I am going to tell you guys about the drinks or beverages in the country of Turkey :)

That is not so many rare beverages in Turkey as they served the same drinks as the other countries. So basically they have mineral water, fruit juices and some of them take alcohol though it is an Islam country, yet there are some of the Turkish who is not a Muslim. Alcoholic beverages are as widely available as anywhere. While most of the Turks avoid to drink alcohol in Ramadan as they respect the holy month. Though whatever it is, there are some Turkish beverages that are non-alcoholics. As an example is Black Tea. The Turkish is usually take the black coffee during breakfast. Secondly is, Ayran. Ayran is a cold yogurt beverage mixed with salt. Next is Salgam Suyu. In translation, Salgam Suyu means "turnip water" is a popular beverage from Southern Turkey's cities of Adana and Mersin. It is actually made with the juice of red carrot pickle, salted, spiced and flavored with aromatic turnip. Salgam suyu is traditionally served cold in large glasses with long slices of pickled carrots, called 'tane'. On the other hand, there is a drink named Boza in Turkey. Generally Boza is a popular fermented beverage in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Albina and so other Mediterranean country. It is a malt drink made from maize (corn) and wheat in Albina. It has thick consistency and a low alcohol content (usually around 1%), and slightly acidic sweet flavor. Lastly is Sherbet drinks. Sherbet is a syrup which can be made from any of wide variety of ingredients, especially fruits, flowers, or herb. As an example, it includes pear, quince, strawberry, apple, cornelian cherry, pomegranate, orange, rose petals, rose hips, or licorice and spices. Sherbet is drunk diluted with cold water.

Turkish Black Coffee

Ayran drinks 

Salgam Suyu

Boza

Salep drinks

Sherbet

That is all about drinks in Turkey. Do they look so tasty and tempting? Well, to be honest, my mouth watered when writing this whole entry. Look at those pictures and it makes me so envy to those who went to Turkey and get to eat and drink all these. Well, we can get it in Malaysia but of course it is not as original when we have it in Turkey. Alright, thank you for reading and see you in my next entry! Till then, bye! ☺