Turkish food and dishes

The Turkish table

Turkish food splits neatly by where you eat it. On the street, breakfast means simit (sesame bread ring)

simit — a crisp sesame bread ring sold from red carts every morning — and börek (filled pastry)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. kebab

kebap is the umbrella word for grilled meat dishes; dönerdöner — literally the turning one, from dönmek — is meat sliced from a rotating spit; meatballs, köfteköfte 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: beans

fasulye — beans, usually white beans in tomato sauce — served over ricepirinç. Note that pirinç is rice as a grain, in the shop; cooked on the plate it becomes pilav. pastamakarna is any pasta, and pepperbiber covers every pepper, from sweet green to hot red.

Sweet things

cake (plain, sponge-style)kek is the plain sponge-style cake you bake at home — the cream-layered bakery cake is *pasta*, which you already know. And ice creamdondurma is ice cream; the famous chewy kind is made with orchid root.