Turkish Cuisine
Turkey has 81 cities, and each city has its own unique cuisine. Today you are going to see 4 of them, with a recipe included so you can try to recreate one of the dishes!
Lahmacun (Turkish Pizza):
Lahmacun is a round, thin piece of dough topped with minced meat, minced vegetables, herbs, and flavored with spices then baked. Lahmacun is often wrapped around vegetables and sometimes people like to squeeze a little bit of lemon on it. Due to its shape and superficial similarity, it is sometimes described as Turkish pizza. However, unlike pizza, lahmacun is not usually prepared with cheese and the crust is thinner. The hometown of lahmacun, as well as the two cities where the best lahmacun is found, are Gaziantep and Sanliurfa, located in the southeast of Turkey. The name entered English from Turkish: lahmacun and it is pronounced like "lah-ma-june".
Sarma:
"Sarma", which is usually made with grape leaves, is called "dolma", which derives from a kind of stuffing in Turkish. This dish is a meal from the Ottoman Empire in the region stretching from the Middle East to Southeastern Europe. It can be made with cabbage and chard leaves as well as with grape leaves. It is stuffed with rice (or bulgur), onion, tomato sauce and so many other things which change depending on the type. Depending on the type, it gets named either minced meat sarma or olive oil sarma. The meaning of sarma in Turkish is "wrapped".
Baklava:
Baklava is a layered pastry dessert made of special dough called phyllo dough, filled with chopped nuts, and sweetened with syrup or honey. It was one of the most popular sweet pastries of Ottoman cuisine. The pre-Ottoman origin of the dish is unknown, but, in modern times, it is a common dessert of Iranian, Turkish, Arab cuisines, and in the South Caucasus, Balkans, and Central Asia. The word baklava is first attested in English in 1650, a borrowing from Ottoman Turkish:/bɑːklɑvɑː/. The name baklava is used in many languages with minor phonetic and spelling variations. Baklava is normally prepared in large pans. Many layers of phyllo dough, separated with melted butter and vegetable oil, are laid in the pan. A layer of chopped nuts—typically walnuts or pistachios, but hazelnuts are also sometimes used—is placed on top, then more layers of phyllo. Most recipes have multiple layers of phyllo and nuts, though some have only top and bottom pastry. Before baking (180 °C, 356 °F, 30 minutes), the dough is cut into regular pieces, often parallelograms (lozenge-shaped), triangles, diamonds, or rectangles. After baking, a syrup, which may include honey, rosewater, or orange flower water is poured over the cooked baklava and allowed to soak in. Baklava is usually served at room temperature and is often garnished with ground nuts.
Poğaça:
For the recipe, I have a pastry called Poğaça. This pastry is like Italian Focaccia. It is generally made from wheat flour, but barley and sometimes rye may be added. It can be stuffed with potatoes, ground beef, or cheese, and have grains and herbs like sesame, black nigella seed, or dried dill in the dough or sprinkled on top.
INGREDIENTS FOR CHEESE AND PARSLEY POGACA
For its dough:
4 cups flour
¼ cup warm milk
1 tbsp dry instant yeast
½ cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup mineral water
For its filling:
Half bunch of parsley
1 ½ cup feta cheese
For coating their top:
1 egg yolk
Poppy seeds
INSTRUCTIONS
Mix sugar and yeast with milk. Combine all the dough ingredients including this milk mixture and mix them well. You can add a little more flour or mineral water if either of them is not enough. You should have a pliable and non-sticky dough. Cover it with a moist cloth and let it rest for 45 min.
Chop the parsley and mix it with cheese.
Take a small piece from the dough and flatten it with your hands. You can do this on the counter. Put a tsp of cheese mixture on it and close it up, folding the edges upwards like a bundle. Do the same for the rest of the dough. Place a parchment paper in a baking tray and place the pogacas on it. The folded side of pogacas should be at the bottom to have a ball shape.
Preheat the oven at 180C.
eat the egg yolk well and coat all the pogacas with it using a brush. And sprinkle poppy seeds on each pogaca. Bake them for about 30 minutes until they get golden.
NOTES
These ingredients make about 40 pogacas as I make them so small that you can eat them in just two bites. You can make them bigger if you like or you can use half of these ingredients if you want fewer.
You don’t have to use cheese. For example, you can use minced meat or potato.
https://www.giverecipe.com/fluffy-pogaca/
A FIYET OLSUN ! - BON APPETIT !