The Turkish table
Turkish food splits neatly by where you eat it. On the street, breakfast means simit — a crisp sesame bread ring sold from red carts every morning — and börek, thin pastry filled with cheese, meat or potato. Both go with tea, never with coffee.
The grill
The grill house gives Turkish its most famous exports. kebap is the umbrella word for grilled meat dishes; döner — literally the turning one, from dönmek — is meat sliced from a rotating spit; köfte are grilled patties of minced meat, onion and spices.
| dish | what it is |
|---|---|
| kebap | grilled meat, the family name |
| döner | meat shaved from a turning spit |
| köfte | spiced grilled meatballs |
| simit | sesame bread ring |
| börek | filled thin-dough pastry |
Home cooking
Daily home food is quieter: fasulye — beans, usually white beans in tomato sauce — served over pirinç. Note that pirinç is rice as a grain, in the shop; cooked on the plate it becomes pilav. makarna is any pasta, and biber covers every pepper, from sweet green to hot red.
Sweet things
kek is the plain sponge-style cake you bake at home — the cream-layered bakery cake is pasta, which you already know. And dondurma is ice cream; the famous chewy kind is made with orchid root.
