This post will be about food :)
Now, I am not a food expert, and in fact I am really bad
when it comes to eating food, so this post might not be spectacular, but I will
try!
So, Turkish food is very interesting. I have never had
Turkish food before I cam here, and I didn’t know what to expect except for the
obligatory kebab, lamb, and yogurt. Interestingly enough, these stereotypes are
at least somewhat true. For anyone that doesn’t know Kebab, it is practically
meat on a stick. However, it seems to be that it is most commonly found being
cooked on a stick, and not eaten on one, contrary to what I believed. And oddly
enough, I have not had lamb yet.
Yogurt is very common and very popular here. This only seems
appropriate that like kebab, yogurt is a Turkish word, too (but it is spelled
“yoğurt”). The yogurt here is not like it is in the states: it has a very
strong taste (quite tart) and it is either quite fluid or a bit jello-like. They
also don’t always eat yogurt alone. They love to use it as a dressing on pretty
much anything (pasta, salad, sometimes meat) and they also like a drink, called
Ayran, which is some sort of yogurt-based drink.
However, I was surprised by the amount of other things this
country has to offer. I discovered that Turks also love bread, cheese, and
fruit. The cheese is usually quite soft, or quite tasteful, something that many
Americans might not be used to (as I found out here, American cheese is quite
bland). However, I really do not care for soft cheese, so I rarely eat this.
They also love their fruit, with pomegranates being the most popular.
Turkish people are generally found eating dark-colored
bread, which is very good. However, my favorite type of bread that I have found
here has to be Simit. Simit is a ring of bread, like a bagel, that is usually
twisted around and always covered with sesame seeds. It is quite abundant here,
often sold on the street for only 1 Lira. This is definitely my favorite food
here, and I eat it every day.
Here is a list of some more popular foods:
-Mantı – a meat-filled pasta with yogurt and some orange
sauce on top, I am not sure what it is. (It might actually be ketchup… the
Turks love to use it on everything and they also cook past in it sometimes,
which is something the Italians found upsetting)
-Lahmacun – a pizza-like object. It is a wide, flat piece of
bread that is covered with a lot of things, too many for me to recall.
-Pide – a flatbread that is topped with practically anything
you want.
-Sucuk – a type of sausage, that is dark red and a bit spicy
(it’ really good on pide)
I have some pictures of some of the food I've had:
^This is Simit^
This is a simit stand in Kadıköy, close to where I live
This is some guy preparing kebab
This is a pudding that my host family made for me that is apparently customary for this specific week
Piranha. I do not know why. But it was not half-bad.
I do not know what this was, but it looked like hair and tasted like chocolate. It was good
This is the table at breakfast. There is bread, butter, honey, cheese, jelly, and Nutella
