During my first week with my language partner, Hazal, I watched multiple videos on YouTube about Turkish foods, delights, and places to visit. As Hazal asked me questions about the country and its culture, I realized that I did not know much about either. Therefore, I decided to make a more general post about Turkish culture; however, I will focus on Turkish delights later in my post.
One of the things that sparked my curiosity was the different ways to greet someone. One can say either “merhaba” or “selam”, however, most people tend to say merhaba, and the older generation tends to say “selam”. Hazal said that “selam” has a tie to religion, so recently, people are attempting to say “merhaba” more than “selam”. Turkey is a secular country, however, according to turkeytravelplanner.com, 99% of Turkey’s population is Muslim. Some websites say that 76% is a better estimate, but it is established that most of the population pursue the religion of Islam. A lot of their history, architecture, arts, and literature is based on Islamic principles.
One of the Turkish delights that I am familiar with is baklava. My first year seminar professor was of Turkish descent, and she brought us Turkish delights. Baklava is a dessert made of layers of filo, and it is filled with a variety of chopped nuts and covered with honey or syrup. It is a very sweet pastry, and Hazal recommended having it with Turkish coffee. Hazal also mentioned one of her favorite delights which is kanafeh. She described it as a mix of everything. Kanafeh is a traditional dessert which is made with a thin noodle-like pastry or dough. It is soaked in syrup, and layered with cheese. This pastry also has a variety of nuts. We watched a video of foreigners trying to eat Turkish delights, and some did not like the mixture of everything in the kanafeh. To me, it looked similar to a chicken pot pie from the outside.
One of the turkish foods I was familiar with was pide. Pide is similar to a pizza, but it is more like a flat bread with a cracked egg on top. I was familiar with pide because a famous Korean chef did a Korean variation of pide after a visit to Turkey. I think pide is one of the Turkish foods that I want to try the most. It is very popular in Turkey because it is considered a “to-go” food. Also, it is a dish that can be made to fit the eating lifestyle of many people. It can be vegetarian if needed. Also, many people in Turkey only eat halal meat. Halal is the Arabic words that translates to “permissible”. Halal meat adheres to Islamic law, and refers to meat that is not a forbidden cut. An example of halal meat is pork.
http://https://cleobuttera.com/middle-eastern/pistachio-baklava/
Replies
Thank you for this post! I love learning about other cultural foods, especially when they sound delicious like kanafeh and pide. I know what baklava is and had no idea it was Turkish. I'm vegetarian but it sounds like I would be able to eat the three foods you mentioned. I've also heard of halal meat before but never really understood what it meant until this post.
If I am not mıstaken, Turkish delights are a particular sweet. In Turkish it is called lokum and is a gelatinous block flavored in various ways and most of the time topped with confectioner's sugar.
The part on pide is interesting. I cannot confirm it, but pide and pizza are probably cognates. What they signify and how they sound are so similar it almost has to be the case that the words are related. While pide can be served with an egg, I have never seen it. Typically, it is oiled, covered in kaşar cheese, and then finished with ground lamb or sucuk. It is also interesting that a Korean chef would make pide. I was not aware of it until Hazal showed me, but Turkey fought on the NATO side of the Koran War. Since then, Turkey and S. Korea seem to have some sort of relationship. The Korean pide chef may be but one manifestation.