T is for Turkey

T is for Turkey

Guys and gals, this is really the home stretch now, eh? It’s like when you turn 27 and think ‘blimey, I’m legit in my late 20’s…I should probably start thinking about adulty type things now’. Except in this case, I’m reaching the late ‘bet (as not a single person has ever called it) and should probably start thinking about food a tiny bit less. Or not. Most likely not.

All. The. Butter

After the unbearably drawn out process of creating Spanish food last week, I decided to go for something I felt a bit more at home with, lest I produce yet another rock-solid death weapon masquerading as bread. The letter T certainly offered up a few interesting candidates, such as Thailand (yessssss to all dem noodlezzzzz) and Tunisia, which would have seen me once again reaching for almost every spice I own. Delectable as these and many other T cuisines undoubtedly are, living in Germany means that in actual fact, I only had one real option. Can you guess what it is yet? Consider for a moment German fast food: Currywurst, Bretzel, Bratwurst...what’s missing? Any fast food fan worth their unhealthy amount of salt knows that the best and only ‘snack’ (if you can call something that would feed a small family for 3 days a snack) worth having here is the döner, leading me to conclude that this week, Turkey was the one.

Turkish food – and for the most part, flippin’ good Turkish food – is ubiquitous in Germany. Turkish food here is kind of the equivalent to Indian food in the UK: no matter what hole in the ditch you find yourself in after following some questionable sat nav directions, you are almost guaranteed to find Turkish food there. It’s basically the law. And hey, I work at the courts sometimes, so obviously I know what I’m talking about! I remember vividly the pure elation that friends and I felt when, a couple of weeks into our year abroad, we realised that it is socially acceptable to eat a döner during the day. IMAGINE! Rather than resorting to it as a last option on the way home after a night out on the tiles (or sticky dancefloor) – then promptly regretting it the second you wake up – in Germany, land of dreams, you just saunter down to your local döner joint on your lunch break and not a single person would suspect you of having some kind of booze problem! I mean, co-workers might object when you come back to the office honking of garlic and fried meat, but they’re just being precious. Plus, they’re probably just jealous that they didn’t go with you, the fools.

Baklava station

But why is Turkish food so popular here? Well, the nub and gist of it is that, back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, West Germany was in need of a whole host of workers in the industrial sector to help rebuild the country after the Second World War, so it signed bilateral recruitment agreements which allowed it to take on so-called Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in industry to do jobs that required fewer qualifications. Italy, Greece and Spain were the first countries to sign, and Turkey followed in 1961. The whole history of Gastarbeiter is super interesting, but this little bloglet is not the place to delve into the topic. Important to know is that, over the years, the population of Turkish people working and living in Germany continued to grow, reaching 4 million in 2010 – a significantly larger number than any other non-German nationality. In fact, Berlin is home to the largest Turkish community outside of Turkey and accordingly, the common consensus is that the closer you live to Berlin, the better the döner. Heck, the döner is even said to have been invented in Berlin, by an enterprising Turkish immigrant. The day that fella passed away, Germany lost a piece of its cultural history, and it knew it: national papers and journals covered the story, highlighting just how much of an integral part of the national cuisine his invention had become.

Of course, the Turkish food available in Germany is not representative of all the grub that Turkey has to offer. Just looking at the sheer size of the country makes that pretty clear - it’s almost four times the size of the UK, man! A country that big, you’re going to be able to pack in a LOT of different dishes. Not only that, but it straddles two continents, bringing in flavours from all over the shop and throwing them all in a mixing bowl together to produce some pretty spectacular results. However, I felt a little overwhelmed by the task of giving a “brief insight” into Turkish cuisine in general (plus, I would just get hungry for ALL OF IT), so, when choosing a dish to cook, I decided to look a little more closely at the Turkish food I know and love from my time here in Deutschland.

Ready to roll

If I head out for Turkish food here, I generally try (and generally fail) to ration myself during the day ‘cos I know dinner in a Turkish restaurant means getting a LOT of bang for your buck. Döner aside, lamb is undoubtedly the star of the show, especially since Germans don’t seem to appreciate it in any other context (one of the few downsides to living here). In most joints, lamb lovers will have their pick of whatever form of the meat they want, from hunks of it hanging out in a dish of saç kavurma (chunks o’ lamb fried up with onions, pepper and peperoni), a saddle of it in the form of hünkar beğendi (grilled, on a bed of aubergine puree) or minced, skewered and grilled to produce köfte. Obviously, other meat does make an appearance, but to be honest, if it didn’t used to look like a cloud with legs, I ain’t interested. If you aren’t so keen on tucking into a monster portion of cute little lambs, you’re in luck – Turkish food is an absolute party for vegetarians, too. You barely even need to move past the starter page in a restaurant menu to sort yourself out with a bloody good feed, full of beauties such as sigara böreği (filo pastry “cigars” filled with white beyaz penir cheese and various herbs), cacık (yoghurt, garlic and cucumber) and patlıcan ezmesi (pureed aubergine with garlic and yoghurt). Even though my love of lamb can at times be overwhelming, I had the feeling that I’ve been neglecting my sweet tooth so far in this blog. And so, to make up for allllllll the weeks of savoury goodness, I thought I’d give my tastebuds the sweet equivalent in a single, teeth-rottingly sugary explosion. Friends, loosen your belts – it’s baklava time.

Daaaayyyummmm, lookin good

The origins of beautiful, heavenly baklava are unclear, but common consensus states that it was developed in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, with the Sultan getting his minions to roll out metres and metres of the stuff every 15^th of the month of Ramadan. Prior to this, it may well have developed from – sick bags at the ready, folks – Roman placenta cake (vommmmmmmmmmmm). Don’t worry, it wasn’t a cake made out of actual placenta, that was just a fun-time name for an ancient Roman dish of about a bajillion layers of dough, interspersed with a mixture of honey and cheese, then baked and covered in honey (almost as vomit-inducing as the idea of placenta cake, actually). Whatever the origins, baklava is a celebration of all that your dentist hates in life: sugary chopped nuts layered with buttery, crisp filo pastry and held together with either about a pint of honey or sugar syrup. There is an incredible variety of baklava to be had, featuring various nuts and ‘construction’ techniques, but for my own attempt I kept it simple, following a recipe in a fantastic book given to me by my big sis. After some initial scepticism about my capacity to create what I perceive to be the king of sweets, I was delighted to discover that simple baklava is precisely that: simple as you like! Sure, there are a lot of stages and it’s kind of time-consuming, but it is in no way complicated – a dangerous revelation. And my my my, was it worth the time and effort – Jesus, the SMELL in the flat was worth it alone! Hot, crisp and buttery out of the oven, I don’t know that I’ve ever produced any dessert that satisfying before. Whether my dentist would agree is another matter entirely.