Turkish Cuisine

Turkish cooking is one of the three largest cuisines in the world by variety, for a historical reason: the Ottoman Empire gathered the cooking of the Balkans, the Levant, the Caucasus and North Africa into a single palace kitchen, and that is what reached us.

Red pepper and pepper paste

Pul biber (crushed red pepper) and red pepper paste are the clearest Turkish signature. Both give colour, moderate heat and a faint sweetness at once, and they run through the kebabs, the mezze and the soups.

Kebab

Turkish kebab isn't one thing — there are more than forty recognised types, and every city has its own. The best known are Adana (spiced minced lamb on a wide skewer) and İskender (doner slices over bread with tomato sauce, yoghurt and butter).

Lahmacun

A very thin dough spread with finely minced meat, tomato, pepper and parsley, baked in a stone oven in three minutes. It's eaten rolled with lemon and parsley.

Mezze

The Turkish mezze table resembles the Levantine one but with a different spirit: hummus, cacık (yoghurt with cucumber), vine leaves, smoked aubergine and salted fish — all served alongside rakı cut with water.

The sweets

Turkish baklava with Aleppo pistachios is the most famous, alongside künefe, kazandibi and lokum. All are built on syrup, nuts and very thin pastry.