Türkiye Part 4 : Yemekler (foods)
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One of the best things about Turkey is the freaking dessertssssssssssssssssss. YES. We finally reach this point. There are so many kinds of Turkish desserts or snacks that I would like to recommend. I love baklava, sutlac, helvasi, lokum (Turkish delight), ekler, puddings, and this stuff that is so chewy and cold and sweet and milky and all nice and nothing hurts but I don’t know the name, it is made from flour and milk and we put some nut toppings on the top of the chewy dough. They are all so nice I guarantee. I am even willing to pay you 50 kurus if you find it not.
I’m going to describe to you how some of those foods I mentioned above look like and taste like as best as I could, sorry if I can’t satisfy you with my description, the best description always comes from experience after all.
The first dessert is Baklava. Despite being not really known internationally compared to lokum (Turkish delight), baklava is indeed Turkish national dessert. Everyone loves baklava and even though I’m not the type to judge people by foods they don’t like, your brain must be upside down if you don’t like baklava. Baklava is made from dozens layers of flour baked with various kinds of nuts. In my opinion, the best kind of nuts they put into and onto baklava is this green nut from Gaziantep. Once it’s baked and ready to be served, it is poured by a fair dose of thick sugar water. I’ll probably inherit diabetes from my father and I still couldn’t care less. Baklava is very sweet and able to make you think of nothing other than the pleasure it gives and I regret nothing eating it regularly. You must try it if you get the chance to go to Turkey, I don’t care if you hate sugary things.
I graduated from a Turkish high school and therefore I at least knew one meal or dessert in Turkish cuisine, and from hundreds kinds of Turkish dessert, I happened to know this one called Sutlac. We had this Turkish culinary extracurricular back in high school and its most popular dessert was Sutlac. It is made from rice and milk. It’s basically milky rice or should I even call it rice-y milk considering the milk is dominant? Well, I don’t really care. I don’t know how to make it but I guess it’s pretty easy considering the fact that many amateur chefs from Turkish culinary extracurricular made it when they were given task to make desserts. They usually made it as a part of the catering when there’s a special occasion involving all aspects of the school. Once you’ve tried it, you will forever never be able to resist the chewy and juicy sensation of sutlac. It may be easy to make, but it’s still extraordinarily good nonetheless.
There’s one more kind of dessert that you might not have any idea about how much I love it and how I’ve been addicted to it since the first time I tried it. It’s helvasi. For Indonesians, you may be a little familiar with the form of helvasi. It looks like arum manis (or cotton candy). The only differences it has are that it tastes 100 times, oh no I start to exaggerate things, 10 times better than both arum manis or cotton candy and that it shapes like a cube and is more solid. I can’t describe it no more. You have to taste it by yourself.
One more thing that is actually very good in Turkish cuisine (I’m going to try it in Indonesia) is the rice. They put coconut milk and some salt into the rice when it is being boiled. It adds the savory feeling to the rice. In Indonesia, I only ate rice once a week due to the blandness of its taste that I didn’t quite favor. But here, I am willing to eat it thrice in a day. I feel like eating it not only because it’s necessary to support the glucose stock in my body, but also because it fulfills my need of the nice salty flavor to complement the taste of the dishes in satisfying my taste buds.
The Turks drink tea a lot. They drink it while studying, reading newspaper, chatting, in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, before going to sleep, at lunch breakfast and dinner. They basically drink tea every time they get the chance to stop from their busy activities for a while. (Note : They drink hot tea). The craziest example of this tea-drinking habit is the one I witnessed when I was in Istanbul. I was walking down the street at Taksim (a very busy shopping district in the centre of the city) in the middle of an afternoon of a very hot summer. The temperature was 40 degrees Celcius at that time and I nearly fainted due to the hotness. But there was a man sitting on a chair (it’s a chair that he probably personally brought from somewhere) on a pavement, reading a newspaper while drinking a cup of hot tea. He even brought the thermos with him. I swear there’s no any sane people I know drink hot tea under the sun in the middle of a very hot summer. It was seriously crazy.
A weird experience about the Turks and their extraordinary habit related to foods happened when I was in Eskisehir. It was probably 4 degrees Celcius at night. One of my ablas (the way we call an older woman in Turkish) asked me to go out with her to the nearest mall which was only 2 or 3 kilometers from home. We didn’t travel with transportation a lot in Eskisehir because everywhere was reachable due to the fact that my house was in the centre of the city. So we went out walking to the mall, seeing around and looking for stuffs. Due to courtesy, she asked me whether I wanted to eat something and I answered no (not without mumbling “I just want to go home now that it’s 10 pm and 4 degrees celcius” to myself). She then dragged me outside the mall to look for some restaurant and eat some snacks. Apparently, we were suddenly inside a café, eating two scoops of ice cream. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it that she treated me ice cream, I just found it extremely unusual to eat ice cream at night while freezing and trying hard to not grind my teeth altogether.
To be continued (not really sure when I will update it.)
