| Turkish food is far more sophisticated than you might think, says JUSTIN KEAY  FOR THE AVERAGE EUROPEAN, FOR WHOM TURKISH food is doner or shish kebab, the fact Turkish cuisine is regarded as one of the world’s core five cuisines may come as a surprise. Yet the misconception – reflecting the Turkish fast-food joints opened by migrants in the 1960s and 1970s – is easing as restaurants recognise the value of catering to more sophisticated tastes.
Old stand-bys like borek (cheese pastry), lahmacun (thin, round, spicy-mince pizzas) and pide (delicious baked flat bread with a variety of toppings), and traditional mezes, of which humus, aubergine dip and garlic yoghurt are the most common, are a good place to start. Interest is also growing in this vast country’s regional pantry, including high-quality Taris olive oil from the Mediterranean, hamsi fish from the Black Sea and herby cheeses from south-eastern Turkey. The best restaurants will use an open grill to cook a dazzling range of regional kebabs, including the spicy mincemeat Adana kebab, Tokat kebab – skewered lamb and vegetables – Urfa kebab, with onions and peppers and from Bursa, Iskender kebab, soft lamb soaked in spicy yoghurt sauce. “Anatolian cooks make honest, simple food in traditional ways – like grilling, where they are masters – unlike many Bolu chefs (in Istanbul) who make expensive hotel-style food and are, in many ways, the enemies of traditional Turkish food,” says Husayin Ozer, who founded Sofra in the UK in 1981 and now presides over a chain of restaurants.  He says the best Turkish food is midway between Greek and Lebanese, with other strong influences as well. Little wonder: for centuries Anatolia was the major crossing point between east and west and home to cultures as diverse as the Hittites, the Arabs, the Greeks and the Turks, with Persians, Mongols and others making their mark as well. As a result one encounters dishes common in, say, Greece – mussaka or dolma (minced lamb and aubergine and stuffed vine leaves) – alongside styles commonly associated with India (tandir, a tandoori oven set in the earth) or Iran (flame-grilling). However Turkey’s ace card remains the use of good, simple fresh produce combined with an imaginative use of exotic spices, once bought from Asia along the Silk Route.
Specialties at the Somine restaurant in Urgup include testi kebap, a slow-cooked stew cooked for four hours in red earthenware pots that are dramatically smashed open with a hand axe at your table, osbar – beans with Turkish pastirma (a pastrami laced with garlic, pepper and fenugreek), hot humus and pastirma, and firin kebab, lamb slow-cooked in a tandir. Nearby restaurants also cling to old methods of cooking. Aravan Evi, in Ayvali, Cappadocia, where you sit cross-legged sofra-style around low, round tables, uses an earth-based tandoori oven to serve up traditional spicy, red lentil soup, tandoori soup (bulgar wheat, mint and tomato) and kuru fusaye, white beans with lamb. Bizim Ev, in the ancient pottery town of Avanos, offers as its speciality Bostan kebap, a delicious stew of cheese, aubergine and lamb cooked in a locally produced clay pot. “Last year a French family came in here every night for a week and worked their way through our menu,” recalls Aydin Ayhan Guney, one of Somine’s owners. |