The atlas · A cuisine · Turkey — Anatolia and Thrace, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean

Turkish

Also Anatolian, Ottoman, Türk mutfağı

Kebabs off the charcoal, yoghurt with nearly everything, vegetables slow-cooked in olive oil and pastry rolled thin as paper — the cooking of Anatolia and the Ottoman table.

Where it comes from

Turkish cooking draws on three worlds: the Turkic peoples who came west from Central Asia with yoghurt, dumplings and flatbreads; the far older farming kitchens of Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean; and the palace of the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries gathered cooks, ingredients and ideas from the Balkans to Arabia.

Istanbul's Topkapı Palace is said to have kept hundreds of cooks, and many dishes now thought of as homely — stuffed vegetables, pilafs, milk puddings — were refined there. Out in the regions the food stays distinct: kebabs and pistachios in the south-east, anchovies and cornbread on the Black Sea, olive oil and wild greens along the Aegean.

Much of it is shared, under similar names, with Greece, the Balkans, the Levant and Iran — the legacy of a long common history that every country tells in its own way.

Where in it

  1. IstanbulThe old Ottoman capital, where palace cooking set the standard — olive-oil vegetables, stuffed dishes, pilafs — and street food runs from simit to fish sandwiches on the Bosphorus.Dolmaİmam bayıldıÇılbır
  2. BursaThe first Ottoman capital, home of İskender kebab — credited to a local kebab-maker in the nineteenth century — and of candied chestnuts from the slopes of Uludağ.İskender kebab
  3. Izmir and the AegeanOlive groves, wild greens and fish: the Aegean coast cooks lightly, with olive oil and herbs. Menemen is usually said to take its name from a town just north of Izmir.Menemen
  4. KayseriCentral Anatolia's city of cured meats — pastırma and sucuk — and of mantı, folded so small that a spoon is said to hold forty.Mantı
  5. GaziantepThe south-east's great food city, known for its pistachios and the baklava made with them, for kebabs and lahmacun; UNESCO lists it as a creative city of gastronomy.BaklavaLahmacun
  6. Trabzon and the Black SeaA green, rainy coast of anchovies, cornbread, collard greens and butter; its boat-shaped pide, with cheese and a cracked egg, is made all over Turkey.Pide

How it cooks

Zeytinyağlı
Vegetables cooked gently in plenty of olive oil and eaten at room temperature — a whole family of dishes, from vine-leaf rolls to braised beans.
The mangal
Charcoal grilling: kebabs, köfte, peppers and whole aubergines charred over the coals.
Pepper butter
Butter foamed with pul biber or dried mint and poured over yoghurt, soups and dumplings at the last moment.
Yufka
Dough rolled paper-thin with a long, slender pin, for börek, baklava and flatbreads.
Dolma and sarma
Vegetables hollowed and filled, or leaves rolled, round rice or meat.

Always in the kitchen

yoghurtred pepper pastepul biberurfa biberdried mintsumacolive oilbutterbulgurred lentilsauberginepistachiosbeyaz peynirtomato pasteyufka and filopomegranate molasses

Cook from it

Tonight, with what's good in October

Its classics

TurkishBaklavaMany sheets of paper-thin pastry layered with chopped pistachios or walnuts, baked in butter and soaked in syrup.No one here has made it yetTurkishDolmaVegetables hollowed and filled, or vine leaves rolled, round rice with herbs and spices and sometimes meat.No one here has made it yetTurkishLahmacunA round of dough rolled very thin, spread with raw minced lamb, onion, pepper and tomato, and baked for a minute or two in a very hot oven.No one here has made it yetTurkishİskender kebabThin slices of döner over cubes of pide, with tomato sauce, sizzling browned butter poured over at the table and thick yoghurt alongside.No one here has made it yetTurkishMenemenEggs stirred soft into green peppers and tomatoes stewed in butter or olive oil, eaten from the pan.No one here has made it yetTurkishMantıTiny meat-filled dumplings, boiled and served under garlicky yoghurt, with butter sizzled with red pepper poured over.No one here has made it yetTurkishİmam bayıldıWhole aubergines, split and fried, filled with onion, garlic and tomato and baked in olive oil until they collapse — eaten cool.No one here has made it yetTurkishPideBoat-shaped flatbread baked in a wood oven with cheese, minced meat or egg in the middle, brushed with butter as it comes out.No one here has made it yetTurkishÇılbırPoached eggs on garlicky yoghurt, with butter foamed with red pepper poured over the top.No one here has made it yetTurkishMercimek çorbasıRed lentils cooked with onion, carrot and a little potato, blended smooth, with red pepper butter and a wedge of lemon.No one here has made it yet

How it got here

1550s · from Ethiopia's highlands to IstanbulCoffeeCoffee grew wild in Ethiopia, and by the fifteenth century Sufis in Yemen were drinking it to stay awake through night prayers. It reached Istanbul in the 1550s, where the first coffee houses opened — and Turkish coffee, boiled fine in a cezve, is their descendant.

Cooked here

No one here has cooked Turkish yet.