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Food Turkey

Elder JJZ Desires a Real Life (part II)

In Turkey , where Elder JPZ and I lived (1966-1967) on a NATO base (I’m sure the Turkish government was not paying their 2% of GDP to NATO and the US was likely flying U2 missions from this base to spy on Russia), we lived in a modest ranch style home on the base. I have vivid memories of riding my bike past the Q-Huts where the Turkish NATO officers lived and smelling the aroma of spices and foreign food.

 These were aromas not present in our household since (God rest her soul) our mom was not an adventurous cook. Anyway, I always associate Q-Huts with my first encounter with ‘exotic’ aromas and I have turned into a very experimental foodie.


Elder G Helps Us Imagine a Home-Cooked Turkish Meal

Let’s hop in the culinary time machine and land in Adana, Turkey, circa 1967—a place where the Mediterranean meets Mesopotamia and where kitchens were full of aroma, conversation, and a little bit of cay (Turkish tea) for fuel.

A typical home-cooked meal for a family in Adana in 1967 would have been hearty, spicy, and full of local flavor. Here’s a good sense of what might have been on the table:

Starter / Meze:
  • Çoban Salatası (Shepherd’s Salad): Diced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and green peppers with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt.
  • Yoğurtlu patlıcan (Eggplant with yogurt): Roasted eggplant mashed with garlic and yogurt.
  • Ezme: Finely chopped tomatoes and peppers mixed with parsley, pomegranate molasses, and sometimes crushed walnuts.

🍗 Main Dish:
  • Adana Kebabı (of course!): Spicy minced lamb (often hand-chopped with a zirh knife) skewered and grilled over charcoal. At home, it may have been made with ground lamb shaped into logs and cooked on a stovetop griddle or in a small backyard mangal (grill).
  • Bulgur Pilavı: Cracked wheat pilaf cooked with tomato paste, green peppers, and onions.
  • Domatesli Biberli Yumurta (Menemen-style eggs): Eggs scrambled with sautéed tomatoes and green peppers, a humble dish often added to round out the meal.

🫓 Bread:
  • Somun ekmeği (rustic white bread) or bazlama (thicker village-style flatbread), made fresh daily or purchased from a local baker on the way home.

🍇 Dessert:
  • İncir Tatlısı (Stewed figs with walnuts), or
  • Aşure (Noah’s pudding): A mix of grains, legumes, dried fruit, and nuts—symbolic and communal, though usually made for special days.
  • Fresh local fruit: Watermelon, grapes, or pomegranates, depending on the season.

☕ Drink:
  • Cay (Turkish tea): Always. Drunk in tulip-shaped glasses. Likely served post-meal with conversation.
  • In summer: Ayran (cold salty yogurt drink) was very common and refreshing.
  • Occasionally: Şalgam suyu (fermented black carrot juice with turnip), especially with kebab.

The cooking would’ve been done by hand—no food processors, no gas ovens for many families. Wood-fired stoves or simple cooktops were common. Recipes passed down orally, measured in handfuls and memories.


Elder G provided us with typical spice rack, and a humorously territorial grandmother grinding her own spice.

Turkish cuisine is like a spice symphony—flavorful, balanced, and deeply rooted in centuries of trade and tradition. Here are some of the most common spices and seasonings you’d find in a 1967 Adana kitchen (and still today):


🌶️ Red Pepper Flakes (Pul Biber)

The MVP of Turkish kitchens. Adds warmth without overwhelming heat. Especially key in Adana kebab.

🫚 Cumin (Kimyon)

Earthy and slightly smoky. Essential for meat dishes like köfte and stews.

🌿 Dried Mint (Kuru Nane)

Used in yogurt sauces, soups (like yayla çorbası), and even cold salads. Fresh and cooling.

🍋 Sumac (Sumak)

A tangy, deep-red powder made from dried berries. Often sprinkled on salads or onions to add a lemony zing.

🧄 Garlic (Sarımsak)

While technically not a spice, garlic was—and still is—used abundantly. In sauces, meat rubs, and yogurt dips.

🟠 Paprika (Tatlı Toz Biber)

Sweet red pepper powder. Adds a rich color and mild flavor.

🌿 Oregano / Wild Thyme (Kekik)

Fragrant and bold. Often used in grilled meats and sometimes brewed as tea.

🖤 Black Pepper (Karabiber)

Adds subtle heat and depth. Combined with salt in almost every savory dish.

🌿 Bay Leaf (Defne Yaprağı)

Used in soups, stews, and slow-cooked dishes for a gentle, woody aroma.

🧂 Allspice (Yenibahar)

More common in Istanbul and the Aegean than Adana, but still found in some festive meat recipes.


Recipes

Popular Turkish loaf

These loaves are extremely common and sold in every bakery (unlu mamüller) and convenience store (bakkal). Walking down the streets it’s impossible not to spot ekmek hanging in plastic bags on every corner. When I lived there you could still get a whole loaf for just 1₺ at any time of the day or night. It was so convenient and cheap, no wonder Turkey is one of the countries which consumes the most bread.

Picnic On A Broom

Somun ekmek (literally translated as loaf of bread) refers to a popular soft and fluffy Turkish bread. There are a lot of types of bread in Turkey, some regional ones, some only available during the month of Ramadan. However, somum ekmek is the loaf of bread you will find in every kitchen any day of the week….

Simple recipe

Ekmek is one of the easiest loaves of bread you can make at home, even if you’re a beginner baker. It’s a basic white bread that uses dry yeast as a leavening agent and that can be kneaded by hand.

Picnic On A Broom

Hi everyone ! I’m Amélie, a French girl in her mid-twenties who spends more time daydreaming about food or her favorite books than engaging with the outside world. Welcome to Picnic on a Broom, my recipe journal where you will find all of my favorite treats!


Turkish cuisine (Turkish: Türk mutfağı) is largely the heritage of Ottoman cuisine (Osmanlı mutfağı), Seljuk cuisine and the Turkish diaspora. Turkish cuisine with traditional Turkic elements such as yogurt, ayran, kaymak, exerts and gains influences to and from Mediterranean, Balkan, Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Eastern European cuisines.

Turkish cuisine shows variation across Turkey. The cooking of Istanbul, Bursa, İzmir, and the rest of the Anatolia region inherits many elements of Ottoman court cuisine, including moderate use of spices, a preference for rice over bulgur, koftes, and a wider availability of vegetable stews (türlü), eggplant, stuffed dolmas and fish.

Homemade food
Homemade food is still preferred by Turkish people. Although the newly introduced way of life pushes the new generation to eat out, Turkish people generally prefer to eat at home. A typical meal starts with soup (especially in wintertime), followed by a dish made of vegetables (olive oil or with ground meat), meat or legumes boiled in a pot (typically with meat or minced meat), often with or before Turkish pilav, pasta or bulgur pilav accompanied by a salad or cacık (diluted cold yogurt dish with garlic, salt, and cucumber slices).

Some homemade food selections

By Serragok – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86709855

In summertime many people prefer to eat a cold dish of vegetables cooked with olive oil (zeytinyağlı yemekler) instead of the soup, either before or after the main course, which can also be a chicken, meat or fish plate.

Wikipedia

And an Interesting Semi-Sequitur

Elder G:

Let’s take a twine-tangle dive into the linguistic threads that connect—and separate—the Turkish and Hindi words for “cheese.”

🧀 Turkish: Peynir

Word: peynir
Meaning: cheese
Etymology:

  • Borrowed from Persian panīr (پنیر), meaning “cheese.”
  • The Persian word panīr has been in use for centuries across the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia.
  • Peynir likely came into Turkish via Persian during the Seljuk or early Ottoman periods, a time rich in cultural and culinary exchange.

📎 Fun twist:
The Persian panīr is itself possibly of ancient Indo-Iranian origin, though it doesn’t have a confirmed proto-Indo-European root specifically tied to cheese. It may have older roots in pre-Iranian agricultural vocabulary, but nothing conclusive.

🧀 Hindi: पनीर (Panīr)

Word: panīr
Meaning: cheese (specifically fresh cheese, like cottage cheese or curds—think of the paneer in saag paneer)
Etymology:

  • Also comes from Persian panīr!
  • Entered Hindi during centuries of Persian influence over North India—especially during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal periods.
  • Became common in Hindi, Urdu, and other regional languages like Punjabi and Bengali.

📎 Note:
Unlike in Turkish, panīr in Hindi tends to refer to a specific kind of cheese: fresh, non-aged, usually unsalted. In Turkish, peynir is a general term and can refer to many kinds of cheese, from beyaz peynir (white cheese) to kaşar (aged yellow cheese).

🧵 Shared Etymology: Persian Panīr

So both Turkish peynir and Hindi panīr are like linguistic siblings adopted by different culinary families, both descended from that Persian ancestor, panīr.

Would you like an image of a Turkish kitchen with a block of beyaz peynir and an Indian kitchen with cubes of panīr sizzling in a pan, just to bring this edible etymology to life?

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