Food in Istanbul

Food in Istanbul

Food in Turkey in general and Istanbul in particular, everywhere! Do you feel like it captures your thoughts and how it affects your daily routine, as its beautiful view confuses you with a pre-planned path. Opposed to this useless, and do not want to. After all, how else can learn more deeply and more precisely to another country and its people, not as a meal?

Yes, my friends, if you are vegetarian in Turkey you will not sweet.

Kebabs, shish kebabs, doner, duryumy at every step. Do not succumb to the seductive aromas of being only five seconds from the table, but not for long. After 30 minutes, after a hearty dinner, fragrances continue to tempt the next.

Only at the end of our journey, we started a little understanding of the types of kebabs and shish kebabs, before ordered at random. Now we know that everything at the round spit (what we call in Russia or shawarma shavermoy) - Doner is (döner means "rotate"), chopped meat on a skewer - it Adana kebab, shish kebab - shish kebab.

With meat is often served bulgur. The Turks sometimes referred to as his turkish rice. Very tasty cereals, something resembling a pearl barley, only a very, very gentle. And after all, strangely, despite the similarity of taste, is made ​​from barley barley, bulgur and millet.

When not know what to choose, caring owners institutions will always offer a mix of all possible kebabs.

No less important than the kebabs, the Turkish cuisine take stewed vegetables and meat. Ignore this is impossible, but try everything for a few days will not succeed. Only eggplant stewed with meat, we met with a dozen different recipes.

In second place, after the eggplant with meat dolma is. Marinated grape leaves dolma for sale almost everywhere. But not strange in grape leaves dolma we have not tried, but tried in a pub! Stunningly good. In fact stuffed peppers is also a variation on dolma.

In fact, begin a story about going to Turkey I had to chechivichnogo soup. In Turkey, not a great selection of soups, most of them preparing for yogurt, almost all soups - mashed potatoes, but the lentil soup with dry mint served in any establishment where food is better fed than tea. And we even thought that the lunch hours, this soup is served to all without reservation, although it may just all bought.

We tasted it too much. Even have prepared at home. It turns out very quick, tasty and unusual. Be sure to share the recipe later.

Or not. I had to start with either kebabs or the lentil soup and eggplant, and with bread. Tastier bread than in Turkey, we did not eat anywhere else! The trouble is that he served there for free, in the wild amounts (see above bowl), and there is no way it is not. At our house there is no balance, but it is suspected that for a week we got there a couple of pounds to our weight.

Grain stores must occur in every quarter. They do not sell anything except bread. But only the freshest bread and certainly not less than 6.7 species.

And this is the worst part of Turkish cuisine. Bagels with sesame seeds from mobile vendors. You know what horror? The fact that they are everywhere and they are terribly good. So you go out after dinner, it takes about 40 minutes, no, no, nothing like the feeling of hunger you still do not feel, but you can breathe freely after a meal. And then there are vendors with fresh bagels with sesame seeds and a few seconds you're standing with a bagel in his hand.

And with delicious bagels are freshly bought on the market bastourma and olives the size of a kitten's head.

And do not need any restaurants, cafes and fast food. You can bask in the sun and observe the life around him.

This is a pide. In Russian it means pita. These are the pita with toppings too sold on every corner. They are perfectly fresh. Here are the ones that brought in the picture for a few seconds before I photographed them. Half an hour later they will not be new and bake. You probably should not say that they are delicious?

Cheese. Cheese very much. Goat, cow, pigtail, soft cheese and hard.

You can buy the ubiquitous bagel with sesame seeds, a little pickled beans and cheese on a lira (about 20 rubles) and a nice dinner.

Another common type of "fast food" - burek. In general, we have tasted burek in Israel. But there they were basically cooked with potatoes and cheese in Turkey, which resembles cheese.

Usually burek sell the same place where doing (as well as almost all of Turkey). So there was nothing more beautiful in the morning, as two cups of strong tea and hot, straight from the oven burek. By the way, this is important. If you buy burek in a location where it does not bake, then it will be 99% and not half so delicious what could be. So the spy place where there is the stove.

And this famous Istanbul sandwiches with mackerel - balik ekmek (or rather until the inscription, about which they are sold here), but to see him back a bit later. White fluid on the right photo is probably the pillar of all Turkish Cuisine Turkish or food - Ira. Me with my hatred of all the milk, did not try this drink, but the local drink it completely with any meal. It tastes salty, and spoke very well with meat dishes. By the way, in a cafe with food often is not tea, because the Turks drink tea only with sweets, but there is always Ira!

So, the sandwich with the fish. To make it clearer, I am strongly of fish cool, especially the sea and especially the mackerel, but even with all of this seemed to me that balik ekmek the most delicious food in the world. Just imagine svezhayuschuyu fish, fried on a grill directly on the boat and immediately filed for eaten bread, with lettuce, onion and lemon juice. A?

All you can eat it right here on the waterfront.

And this is how it looks like a miracle.

Yes, in Istanbul, with fish everything is fine. You can drop in on one of the many fish markets, and there, right among the rows, you will find tents cafe with freshly-cooked fish, which will be served with the same tub of fresh bread and salad.

But the most delicious of all fish were small inconspicuous anchovies (hamsi). They gutted and fried in boiling oil, after which the fish can eat completely bridou onions, green leaves of strangers and bread. In this cafe, we got into the habit of going to taste the fish, there were only local residents, with their families and all the ordered portions of fried anchovies. It looks like the cult place.

Not to mention about a very important discovery! More precisely misleading. We were confident that the pickled tomatoes, cucumbers - a lot of Russian cuisine and more draw. Something like a business card, our cuisine. Not so! The Turks know how to do the same and make a delicious salinity, and they are very similar in taste to do that as the salinity of our grandmothers house. In addition, the salinity in the wildly popular in Turkey.

They even sold on carts, usually on the waterfront.

For 1 lira (20 rubles) you can buy a plastic cup pickled cabbage with chopped cucumber and all bathed in a delicious pickle. It is a pity that we did not have time to Istanbul to cheer with a hangover. I am sure that there is such a pickle, hangovers trifling matter:)

But the steady sales of delicacies on the market. Choice is quite impossible. Only 3.4 of cucumbers, 5-6 species of olives, cauliflower, cabbage, peppers, beans and all that you can think to come up with a pickled.

And after breakfast or dinner, you go out, and there you meet a trader of fresh juice. And now you tell me who renounces a cup of freshly squeezed juice in April and only 20 rubles? It does not matter that neither eat or drink there is no effort:)

Oh yeah! Then you go on a small street and out of each gate in addition to magical odors kebabs, pilaf and burek, the smell of freshly brewed Turkish coffee.

That's all it would seem. Tested meat, fish and vegetable dishes, juice and coffee is drunk, what else? But we must not forget that it is Turkey. And do not try Turkish sweets would not be forgiven.

It's good that we do not sweet-toothed! Because otherwise the streets would be almost impossible to move! Because so many sweets that are sold in all possible halls, shops, markets, kiosks and carts, does not know any other country.

Sweets in Turkey so much that if we are to kinds of kebabs poorly understood ill for six days, here we did not even try to understand. From a mere pohlavy, to completely banal halva not at least 10 varieties, and really quite unexpected krube 5-6 species. (All life is thought that the Soviet kurabe biscuits with a French name. It turns out that age-old oriental sweet!)

And it's awfully tasty Turkish kunafe (künefe). It seems that it is prepared of cheese, but we do not vouch for.

All possible kinds of halva.

Pieces of fruit in syrup. Especially beautiful amber dried apricots!

You'd think that now everything exactly? And you can safely proceed with looking at sights? Go to the Hagia Sophia, for example? No. It's too early. The meal can not end so simply, sweets and tea. On the street you must meet traders chestnuts.

And even if you do not like chestnuts as a class. Pass by and have a look even for a second to the sellers of chestnuts - is blasphemy. You should have seen with what care, with what tenderness and care they take the chestnuts for roasting. As they shift from side to side of a charcoal fire. How carefully cleaned of their husks. Honestly, you can look at it infinitesimal. And the smell, the smell of roasted chestnuts! If you know the smell of roasted chestnuts, you know the smell of Istanbul.

Just do not forget to add the smell of kebabs, fish sandwiches, freshly ground coffee and newly baked bread. Now just turned out the smell of Istanbul!