Turkish Food at Home

Turkey is truly a cradle of human civilization. For more than 5000 years it was home to one wave after another of different tribes and nations. There were Hittites,Phoenicians, Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonions, Greeks, Macedonions, Romans and finally the Turks themselves. The history of this part of the world is truly amazing and this is reflected in a vibrantly rich cuisine. In my last blog I mentioned my old friend Selcuk and that led to a somewhat fusion Risotto. Today I want to do something really Turkish and fortunately I have the help of a delightful Turkish delight.

Demet looks like an Egyptian princess. She could pass for a Nefetari, or Cleopatra in some Hollywood movie. Maybe she’ll get a role in Mummy 4 when they decide to make it. Whenever I am with her I always try and get anyone we meet to try and guess her nationality and hardly anyone ever gets it right. She comes from Adana actually. Yeah. Where’s that??? It’s actually at the south-eastern corner of Turkey near to Syria. Anyway, the only claim to fame is the Adana kebab. “What’s that as well?” It’s rather delicious actually so worth looking up on Google.

Anyway Demet is my stock broker and not my girlfriend. We got together nevertheless to make a Turkish dinner. Our only guest was a rather large Viking from Sweden named Peter. Peter the Viking! He didn’t bring his Viking longship along.

Kofte and Tzazik

This combination was inspired by several meals I had at the Sultan Ahmet Koftecisi in Istanbul, a really famous meatball restaurant near the Blue mosque which has been there for decades. A competitor started right next to it with almost the same name but everyone knows which is the original.

I suspect the original meatballs are made of ground lamb but this is not easy to find in local supermarkets and lean ground beef seems to work just as well.

I decided to make a lot of them so I could eat for a couple of days and feed my two hungry teenage sons as well. So, let us start with 1Kg of ground beef. Mix this with 2 chopped onions, several cloves of chopped garlic, salt, pepper, a dash of cumin and several handfuls of chopped parsley and mint.
I also chopped up two slices of bread and mixed it uniformly into the meat. Drench the mixture with the juice of one whole lemon.

Make the meatballs into the shape of American footballs or Stewie’s head in “Family Guy”. They should be about 4 cm long and 2 cm at the widest diameter. Coat a ribbed iron grill with olive oil and then melt a knob of butter over the grill. You can omit the butter if you prefer a healthier but less rich version. Lay the meatballs individually over the grill and brown each side of the meatballs. One has to be somewhat patients about this as it is best not to do too many at one time so that you can brown them just right. For practical purposes I prefer to consider each meatball a 4 sided object so that each meatball has 4 sides to brown individually. If you do about 10 at a time, you can turn them one at a time and once number 10 is turned it is time to turn number one again. It takes about 15 minutes to grill the lot.

Now for the Tzazik which is the sauce. Puree a handful of garlic cloves. Chop up a whole cucmber. Mix the garlic and cucmber together with a tablespoon of olive oil with a cup of yoghurt. Mix well.

Eat this with Turkish pita flat bread and a glass of Chianti.