Over the years, I spent more time in Istanbul than any other foreign city. Some visits were for business, some for fun. Istanbul, located 657 or so miles south of Kyiv, provided an easy escape from the Soviet dreariness that I encountered when I began working in Ukraine in 1993. Usually, at the end of a Kyiv summer, my husband Weldon, daughter Sophia and I would fly to Istanbul for a week of R&R and spectacular dining before returning to the States for school or work.
Known as Constantinople until 1930, Istanbul is captivating and mysterious, nestled on hills on both the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus, one of the narrowest and busiest shipping channels in the world. Connecting the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea, Istanbul was at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries and its historic legacy is visible everywhere: Roman aqueducts, Byzantine churches, ancient markets, Ottoman mosques and palaces. Yet, today’s Istanbul is a modern, dynamic city pulsing with a lively urban street life.
Wandering the streets and plazas of Istanbul, visitors notice everyone eating. Street food is varied and plentiful.
Vendors sell simit, a round, sesame-covered pastry, and mounds of roasted corn, mussels and chestnuts from carts.
Cooks in walk-up shops attend to cones grilling doner kebab, ready to slice and serve with lettuce, tomato and yogurt sauce on pita.
Eminonu harbor, at the confluence of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara near Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn, is lined with brightly painted boat restaurants where to shouts of Balik ekmek! Buyrun! (“Fish in bread! Help yourself!”), cooks grill large mackerel filets on huge blazing steel grills before they are folded into half-loaves of bread with scoops of salata, a mix of lettuce, tomato and onion.
Turkish food reflects Turkey’s varied cultural and regional influences. Ottoman cooking tradition has melded with culinary influences of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Caucauses and Central Asia. But bountiful fruits, vegetables, meats and seafood produced by Turkey’s regions are the stars.
My favorite part of a Turkish meal is mezze. In Turkish, “mezze” alternatively means taste, flavor, snack or relish. But Turkish mezze are more than a taste or snack; they are an assortment of little dishes served at the start of a meal to accompany alcoholic drinks, usually raki, an anise-flavored spirit or wine.
Although similar to other small plate Mediterranean cuisines of the Levant, Greece and Spain, few rival Turkish cuisine when it comes to mezze. Some Turkish mezze dishes have the same names and use similar ingredients as other countries, however, each has a decided Turkish riff as a result of Turkey’s greater variety of ingredients and preparations.
In Turkey, mezze are available everywhere. Whether you’re served a modest meal at someone’s home, or at a corner restaurant, or a fine restaurant in one of Turkey’s big cities, you’ll always be presented with a beautiful array of delicious meze to choose from.
And Turkish mezze are versatile. They may serve as appetizers before a meal or constitute an entire meal assembled from a collection of cold and hot meze. Mezze are made for sharing. Friends gather around a mezze spread called a “rakı table,” enjoying their favorite mezze, catching up over a bottle of ‘rakı’ and often skipping the main course altogether.
The first round of meze is usually cold selections, followed by a second round of hot dishes. An assortment of mezze is often presented, such as: red lentil balls (mercimek koftesi), tomato-hot pepper paste with walnuts (ezme), thick strained yogurt like the Levantine labne (haydari), eggplant stuffed with onions and tomatoes (Imam Bayildi), thin crust flatbread covered with ground lamb (lahmacun), chickpea purée (hummus), fried calamari (kalamar), marinated artichokes (enginar), zucchini fritters (mucver), yogurt with cucumber and garlic (cacık), rice-stuffed vine leaves or other stuffed vegetables, such as bell peppers (dolma or sarma), meatballs (köfte), savory phyllo-like pastries filled with a variety of fillings (borek), assorted olives, sliced tomatoes and salads, accompanied by pita, lavash and other breads.
The list above illustrates a possible mezze assortment but there are literally hundreds of meze to choose from. Most restaurants, from fancy, white-tablecloth houses to local eateries (lokanta or büfe), feature an extensive cold case with prepared meze from which to choose, or a maître’d can suggest a suitable assortment of cold and hot mezze to complement the entrée. There are no iron-clad rules about which mezze should be selected; it’s whatever you want or looks good. Here as elsewhere, “you eat with your eyes.”
In this post, I feature three of my favorite vegetarian mezze, a stuffed eggplant dish, a classic of Ottoman cooking called Imam Bayildi, sigara böreği and cacik. Each dish is simple to prepare, and each includes different staples of Turkish cuisine such as fresh seasonal vegetables, olive oil or cheese or yogurt. Each dish packs splendid flavor and combining all three mezze is a wonderful start to a meal of grilled lamb or fish. But these three mezze can also provide a foundation for a mezze cocktail party or dinner by adding assorted salt-cured olives, sliced tomatoes, slices of Turkish kaşer or similar Greek kasseri (a firm cheese now made in the US) and hummus, all of which can be bought. In subsequent posts, I will feature other mezze dishes, both cold and hot.
The name Imam Bayildi means “Imam fainted.” This dish, part of a vast array of Turkish olive oil recipes (zeytin yağlı), is customarily served at room temperature.
Two legends explain the curious name. In one legend the Imam, an olive oil lover, fainted because the eggplant prepared with a copious amount of olive oil was so overwhelmingly delicious. In the other legend, the Imam fainted when he learned that his young bride, an excellent cook, used her entire dowry of 12 man-size jars of olive oil to prepare this dish over 12 days and when she did not serve it on the 13th day, she told the Imam he needed to buy more olive oil.
Despite the legend, I use a modest amount of olive oil in preparing this stuffed eggplant. Imam Bayildi is best prepared a few hours in advance, chilled and then brought up to room temperature for serving. Imam Bayildi made with larger eggplant can also be served as a vegetable side dish.
Imam Bayildi
Serves 4-8
8 eggplant, long and narrow like the Japanese variety
3 medium-sized onions, sliced into thin strips
1 large green pepper, sliced into thin strips (optional)
¼ cup (2 fl oz, 125 ml) extra virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
3 medium-sized tomatoes, peeled and diced with juice reserved
¼ cup (⅓ oz, 10g) chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
A pinch of sugar
½ cup (4 fl oz, 125ml) water
Wash eggplant. Peel the skin lengthwise in ½ inch strips, removing the stem end for a striped effect. Slice each eggplant in half lengthwise. Salt all sides and place in a colander for 30 minutes to leach out bitter juices. Rinse salt off and wipe eggplant dry with paper towel.
With a teaspoon or melon baller, scoop out the center of each eggplant half, leaving at least a ¼ inch wall around. Chop the scooped out eggplant flesh, salt lightly and set aside for later.
Heat 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan. Add onions and peppers, if using. Cook gently until onions are translucent. Add chopped garlic. Squeeze reserved eggplant flesh to extract liquid. Add eggplant flesh to onions and cook for about 3 minutes.
Combine mixture in a large bowl with chopped tomatoes, parsley, salt and pepper, lemon juice, sugar and water.
Arrange eggplant halves in a shallow roasting pan with cut sides up and fill with stuffing mixture so that each eggplant is firmly packed and mounded with stuffing. Cover with a lid or parchment paper and aluminum foil and cook on stove for 40-45 minutes at medium heat until tender. As an alternative, bake the eggplant in a covered oven-proof dish for 40-45 minutes at 350 °F (180ºC).
Remove eggplant from stove-top or oven and cool to room temperature. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Sigara böreği (cigar-shape pastries) are Turkey’s most popular savory phyllo meze. These böreği can be assembled in advance, stored in the refrigerator covered with a damp cloth and baked or fried just before serving. While this cheese filling is traditionally formed into a cigar shape, any other phyllo shape can be used as well, although then the name “sigara” would inappropriate.
Sigara böreği
5 sheets phyllo (16 “ x 13 “; 40.6 cm x 33 cm) or yufka,* if available
8 oz (225 g) feta, crumbled
60 g whole milk mozzarella, shredded
½ flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh mint, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh dill, finely chopped
1 tablespoon milk
1 large egg
3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (optional)
2 cup sunflower oil, or a depth of 1 inch (optional)
In a large bowl, combine feta, mozzarella, herbs, milk and egg into a smooth paste. Adding a few drops of additional milk if the paste is too thick.
Place phyllo sheets on a dry counter with the long side facing you. Fold phyllo sheets in half lengthwise and cut down the middle forming two long pieces. Then cut each half along the diagonal to form 2 triangular pieces from each half. You should have 20 triangles of phyllo. Take one triangle to form one borek (singular of böreği), keeping the remaining pieces covered with plastic wrap to prevent drying.
Place one heaping tablespoon of cheese filling within a half inch along the short end of the phyllo triangle; form filling into a narrow strip along the edge, leaving an inch on the right and left edges free of filling. Fold in the two sides over the mixture to prevent seepage and roll up the pastry into a tight cigar shape. Stop rolling when you reach 2 inches from the end of the triangle, moisten the remaining phyllo with water and finish rolling. Cover with plastic wrap on an oiled dish until all böreği are made.
If baking these böreği, brush each pastry lightly with olive oil, arrange on a well-oiled baking sheet and bake in an oven preheated to 400ºF (200ºC) for 8-10 minutes or until golden. If frying, in a shallow frying pan heat the sunflower oil until 350ºF (180ºC), fry a few böreği at a time until golden. Remove to rack lined with paper towels to drain excess oil. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 18-20 depending on how much filling is put in each borek.
*Yufka is a 60 cm round Turkish dough similar, but thicker than phyllo, but often hard to find in the US.
Cacık is customarily made of thick yogurt, salt, olive oil, crushed garlic, chopped cucumber and mint and is somewhat similar to the Greek tzatziki. Dill and thyme (fresh or dried) or sumac and sweet paprika may be used as an added flavoring and garnish. Cacik is versatile: when diluted with water or milk or ice cubes, it becomes a refreshing cold summer soup or a sauce with grilled meats; when thicker, it is used as mezze and often scooped up with pieces of Turkish bread.
Cacik
18 oz/500 g plain Greek yogurt
2 to 3 Kirby cucumbers, peeled in strips (some green peel should be left) with seeds scooped out with a spoon and grated on large grater
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup water or milk
1 teaspoon salt, more or less to taste
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 to 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped (optional)
¼ cup fresh dill weed, finely chopped
¼ cup fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
½ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes or sweet paprika (optional)
2 tablespoon olive oil for garnish
Whisk the yogurt and olive oil together to make a smooth mixture. Gradually whisk in enough milk until you get desired consistency.
Next add the cucumbers, garlic and spices and mix thoroughly until smooth. Adjust herbs and spices to taste.
Chill for a few hours before serving. Drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil over the cacik. Garnish with herbs used in the recipe or dust with sumac or sweet paprika. Serve with wedges of lavash, pita or other flatbread.
Afiyet olsun! – Enjoy your meal!
Photo credits: Slava Johnson
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