In Turkey, It’s All About Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? For Turks, breakfast is serious business, and we don’t hold back on taste, quality, or variety. The spread is enormous, more than you’d ever see in a standard American breakfast. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes. We’re very selective about the foods that accompany a bright new day and mark the day’s first social event. This is what’s “on tap” in a traditional Turkish breakfast:

Bottomless pots of tea, olives, a smattering of cheeses, blood-red tomatoes, crisp cucumbers, creamy butter, sticky fig jams and honey, boiled eggs, crusty bread, spicy sausage, simit, poğaça, börek, and more. But if you’re in a hurry, simit and freshly brewed black tea is the way to go.

In case you’re wondering, simit is a circular bread, like a bagel (but better), encrusted with sesame seeds. Poğaça is a savoury pastry stuffed with cheese, potatoes, or olives. Börek is a thin phyllo pastry envelope filled with cheese, spinach, ground meat, potatoes, leeks, and more. They're baked, fried, or cooked on a flat iron surface and are made in many different shapes and forms. Every region of Turkey has its own signature börek, so many in fact, I could write a whole book just on börek!

Did I mention this is the standard weekday spread? The weekend's deliverance would make you think we fasted all week! It’s everything on that list and more, and more, and even more. That’s because weekends are a time for socializing. We gather, often in large crowds––families, friends, neighbours––and catch up on each others’ news. It’s not uncommon for breakfast to span several hours. Really, this first meal of the day is just an excuse to stay connected in real time with everyone who matters, but it’s a delicious one!

Every city in Turkey makes a big deal out of breakfast. Many places scattered throughout the city are designated breakfast haunts. My favourite breakfasts happen at home with the family, but I’d never turn down an invite to one of the many special breakfast spots in Istanbul. I love sipping a fresh, hot, post-breakfast Turkish coffee right next to the Bosphorus. The sun slices across the water and scatters diamonds of light across the lineup of fishermen, crouched on the banks. I turn my face up to the sky and close my eyes to listen and absorb the resonance of home, the sounds that remind me of what really matters.

And I recall this poem from Orhan Veli:

“I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed:

At first there is a gentle breeze

And the leaves on the trees

Softly sway;

Out there, far away,

The bells of water-carriers unceasingly ring;

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.”

But let’s return to the food, shall we? I love the company, but perhaps its enhanced by the flavours and colours and veritable decadence in variety and appetites.

Olives, cheese, bread, and tea are major highlights of a Turkish breakfast spread. Many varieties of olives grow all over the country, and many of them show up on the breakfast table. Cheesemakers abound too, and Turkey is well known for producing some of the best, richest, creamiest, punchiest cheeses in the world.

Don’t even get me started on bread. If the table was empty but for bread and coffee, I’d still be a very satisfied lady!

I’d like to say that you can create a traditional Turkish breakfast right at home in North America, in a snap, and that it will taste exactly the same, but I’d be lying. Truth be told, breakfast never tastes the same when you’re away from Turkey. The tea isn’t as sharp. The cheese, bread, and olives lack… something, but I can’t say what. The sensory experience just can’t be matched with a real, live Turkish breakfast in Turkey.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t try!

I still get my Turkish breakfast on in my Mississippi home, otherwise I’d never get it––especially these days.

I arrange my breakfast table, brew the tea, and place all the delectables on my plate. I sit down and I take a bite of this and a bite of that. I sip my tea and imagine I’m home or next to the Bosphorus’ blue waters. And if I let my mind go, I can hear the ferries and little fisher boats and mischievous seagulls...

“I’m listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed;

Then suddenly, birds fly by,

Flocks of birds, high up, with a hue and cry,

While the nets are drawn in the fishing grounds

And a woman’s feet begin to dabble in the water.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.”

I leave you with a photographic sampling of all the mouthwatering parts of a traditional Turkish breakfast.

These photos were taken by the lovely Mina Cebecioglu about two years ago during a marathon photoshoot for my upcoming book, which will feature TONS of healthy and delicious Turkish recipes. Enjoy!

Olives

Variety of jams & honey

Bread and pastries, including baguette, walnut bread, olive bread, pogacas, acma, borek, simit (below) and gozleme

Variety of cheeses

Eggs - boiled, fried, scrambled, sucuk & eggs, menemen, and cilbir

Kaymak (clotted cream)

Tahini and grape molasses

Fruit, salami, cemen, and acma

Sliced tomatoes and cucumbers

Parsley, fresh mint, and other fresh herbs

Fresh squeezed orange juice

Turkish tea & Turkish coffee

Kitchen Is My Therapy is a one-woman enterprise born of love, passionate encounters with food, and wholesome, feel-good food therapy. If you have any questions, ideas, or inspirations you wish to share, feel free to reach out anytime.

Blessings,

Ginger Kroeze

A Virtual Traveller Goes Back to the Bosphorus

Getting back in touch with my roots and cooking up my favourite Turkish fare is how I travel right now. Thankfully, there are no restrictions on our imagination or diets!

I started writing, “if you’ve had a tough year…” but that’s pretty much a given for everyone. This year demands that we find happiness in small places, doing simple things very nicely. It’s the only way to keep an ounce of sanity as this year comes to a close with little relief from all the hardship in sight.

It’s easy to get trapped in a dire outlook, but that doesn’t mean we’re subject to it at all costs. I think it’s important to keep in mind that this situation is as temporary as it is extraordinary. It will pass. So let’s keep our outlook positive, focused on that beautiful horizon. Keep your travel dreams alive!

For now, we can travel virtually, visiting countries like Turkey where the food is rich and flavourful, alive with spice and colour, texture and fragrance. And it’s possible to create these sumptuous, nutritious dishes right at home (if you don’t have a digital copy of my book, Recipes With Bulgur, you can get it here).

Every culture has a flagship tradition. Something they’re known for. In Turkey, we have too many to count. But one that stands out for me is a very special aperitif called raki.

Raki is a popular anise-based alcoholic drink traditionally consumed with a fish dinner. Raki & Balik (with fish) is an old tradition in Turkey; it even has its own etiquette. I love raki for the way it brings people together. Just like most Mediterranean cultures, Turkish people love getting together for big meals. We’ll pass hours eating and listening to music and saluting each other, our glasses full of raki. For me, it’s like therapy, especially after a long and tired week. We take our time, drifting from one conversation to another. It’s not unusual to move from simple chit chat to boisterous laughter to a good old fashioned cry in the company of good people.

There are bonafide health benefits of raki too, beyond the social connectedness it creates. It relaxes the veins thereby promoting blood circulation and reducing blood pressure. When our blood flows unrestricted, the whole body relaxes and brain function improves. The combination of grape and anise supports liver health too.

Sounds like a prescription for good health, doesn’t it? Who needs vasodilators, anticoagulants,, antidepressants, or even chocolate?! (Note: Raki is alcoholic so one too many can disable optimal brain function. Moderation is advised!––And chocolate always has a place on my table).

Not everyone drinks raki, but we all gather, and we all eat. In Turkey, we love fish. It’s almost mandatory given our geographical location, which touches the sea on three sides. In my family, we eat fish with lots of herbs, salads, pickles, onions, slices of tender turnip, crisp radish, fresh lemons, baguette, and cornbread. Arugula salad, for example, is a class side salad for Turkish seafood meals.

Istanbul is home to many fish restaurants. Tiny, tucked-away gems on an unnamed street to famous sprawling diners teeming with patrons. No matter what your style is, they all serve delicious fish, especially in winter, which is fish season in Turkey. In seafood restaurants, we typically start with cold mezes and salads, followed by warm mezes, and the fish comes after.

Of course, the restaurants serve many desserts for your indulgence, but chocolate soufflé is special.

Restaurants aren’t the only place to get incredible grilled fish steaks and fillets. You can buy it in balikici (stores), supermarkets, and bazaars. Or you can hook one yourself from the Bosphorous during fishing season. Fry it with cornmeal or flour, bake it, throw it on the grill, or steam it. Just a few shakes of good-quality salt and pepper is all you need. Simple is better.

Simple cooking. Simple chats. Simple thoughts. Simple things done with love, joy, and good food. Always good food.

Everything I Know About Cooking I Learned In My Mom’s Kitchen

Some of the most precious memories I have of childhood involve being in my mother’s kitchen, which is to say, everyone’s kitchen.

For my mom, cooking was a community affair that invited all the women (yes, only women) in her family into the closet-sized nook in her home that stood for her kitchen. What and who she could fit in there was something of a miracle. Yet, it never felt crowded or cluttered. Never did disarray touch my mother’s kitchen, until we were seriously into the process, then it was organized chaos. Everything had its place and everyone had enough space to work, and move, and dance when they felt inspired, which was most times. A cacophony of voices flooded the air, bounced off walls, and filled my heart with joy.

Once the process ignited, out came the pots and pans with a delightful clang, manual appliances seemed to emerge from thin air, a tool for every task. From the tiny refrigerator burst forth an entire farm of fresh produce––shiny olives, blood-red tomatoes, zucchinis the size of a baby’s chubby leg, tender figs that revealed the secret of life. Bunches of curly green lettuce. Wedges of cheese, fat stuffed sausages, and whole chickens. My mother’s kitchen contained the whole nine yards of any cook’s paradise, and then some.

I loved to watch the whisking, rolling, grinding, smashing, kneading, and beating. The fervour with which these women worked was not without joy. Their hands did all the work––electric kitchen appliances just weren’t a thing in my family. You know how some people have overfull cupboards stuffed with every appliance imaginable? Well, that was not my mom’s kitchen. She came from frugal means and so she learned how to cook with the most basic supplies. And her cooking was incredible, not in spite of manual tools I believe, but because of them.

This is one of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned, and one that I pass on to my daughter. Anything of value usually has some elbow grease behind it. When it comes to cooking, I find food tastes better when there’s effort behind it. The effort of physical labour, the effort of creativity, the effort of love and commitment to an idea, a task, and the effort of follow-through. Effort demands that we care, and caring about something this deeply is indeed a kind of skill that requires consistent seasoning.

My mom used her hands to cook, much like her mother used her hands to cook. We had a grinder, a chopping board, a hand-cranked whisk, a skillet, and a few pots and pans––just enough to share among the 1001 dishes my mother seemed to whip up from nothing. We had one, maybe two, chopping knives, a ladle, a few spoons and forks, an old mesh flour sifter and equally aged colander, a jumble of mixing bowls, a couple of long wooden rolling pins, and a hand-cranked whisk for making our daily ayran drink.

Our most impressive culinary tools included a hand-cranked copper spice grinder, and my favourite––a mortar and pestle. Let this be testament to how much I loved to be in my mother’s kitchen. I would do anything just to smash garlic into an unrecognizable fragrant smear of pulp with the likes of that smooth, heavy pestle that made me feel like something of a superhero (I think my grandma had an equal enthusiasm for the grinder).

We also had one of those old round dough rolling boards with legs, like a child’s table. The one exception was a small round electric oven that was portable, which is to say that it could also greet my grandma’s kitchen or my aunt’s kitchen, or one day, just maybe, my kitchen. We also had one burner to cook on. Imagine that––in a day and age where four-burner stoves are akin to having just one pair of shoes, my entire family enjoyed feasts made on one simple burner.

I know I sound a bit like I’m dwelling on the good ‘ole days (I certainly do sometimes, but I prefer to see it as reminiscing). It’s because I know the value and joy that come from simple tools and more effort. I’ve upgraded in size since having my own kitchen (I can’t work in a shoebox), but I keep up the good old fashioned effort. The bonus? Copper, hand-cranked anything looks gorgeous on my countertop!