I woke up in my tiny attic room: ignoring the chill on my skin I bravely got out off my thick blanket, did a quick morning brush-up and came down to the kitchen to figure I was right on time - the guys were running around and taking things upstairs for the breakfast. Pure luck! Here in Turkey, just like anywhere else I lived a big challenge of getting accustomed to a new culture for me is figuring out meal timing and customs.
My first days at the farmhouse in Sapanca made me recall my hanging out in the family houses of my friends in India. When not being entertained by the English speaking male group I would be left to the mercy of the sisters, wives, daughters and grandmothers: as they would carry on with gossiping for hours I would be trying to make sense of the happening.
With my non-existent Hindi and only emerging insights into the culture I always struggled with understanding the dynamics and - what created a big drama for me - the meal timing. I could never understand when exactly we are having snacks, whether it is just snacks or why we are not having any after such a long time, why a simple meal preparation is taking 5 hours and whether it is just me who gets hungry too soon. The only place I felt secure food-wise was my host family (and I am eternally grateful to them for that in particular) - I would always be invited for food and food I would get without endurance-testing conversations before.
So I started with facing the same challenge at the farmhouse here in Turkey: as my language ability just starts popping up and I don’t feel comfortable to ask for food all the time I am struggling to find out what and when we will eat. But as the times goes by the things become more clear.
Day in Turkey starts with an elaborate breakfast - morning meal that brings the family together and sets for a long working day ahead. My sister calls Turkish breakfast a “Greek Salad That Wasn’t Chopped” as they have prepared the ingredients - tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, feta cheese, olive oil - but have forgotten to chop them. Anyway, I have gone into a great detail about Turkish breakfast in my previous post and I will spare you details here.
Lunch is clearly a no-fuss affair in Turkey and rather a short break off the working day you take around noon. A bowl of soup with a half of a bread loaf you will see served to the shop-keepers around Istanbul t is a very typical lunch fare in Turkey: quick to make and quick to eat it doesn’t interrupt the working day and keeps you going till the dinner.
Soups in Turkey come in great variety and are often made with meat stock and / or lentils and feature bulgur (cracked wheat), small pasta and vegetables; flour and butter are often added for extra heartiness. In addition there is a shortcut to a delicious soup that bachelors and young wives must be swearing by - it is called tarhana and essentially is cracked wheat (or flour), yogurt, and grounded dried vegetables: comes very handy as you just need to mix in some water, bring it to boil and forget about all that Knorr and alike.
Besides a soup another simple dish or any leftovers from yesterday would be put on the lunch table. A generous serving of bread and a jar with ice-cold water will top the lunch and a few glasses of tea will wash down the whole deal afterwards. Here are some of my recent Turkish lunch menu examples:
- Courteous communal lunch: The other day as there were no guests Zeliha Hanım showed the courtesy to the construction workers that are currently expanding the kitchen here so she served a large lunch under the walnut tree in the garden. We had tomato soup, eternal Turkish salad of finely chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers and red onion seasoned with lemon and olive oil, then small pasta with a cottage cheese and parsley and a watermelon for desert.
- Hungry after shopping lunch: On other occasion Zeliha Hanım took me for her shopping to Adapasari, the nearest town: we visited a few wholesale shops where you point at the things you need and sip your tea over a chitchat with the shop owner as your order is being collected; a vegetable market where the sellers are looking down at your from their towering fortifications of the fruits and vegetables; and a plain vanilla supermarket which too have their place under the sun in Turkey. We came back hungry and what was quickly made is a genius dish called cacik (jajik), a soup of homemade yogurt cut with water, grated cucumbers, crashed garlic, salt and pepper - served with ice. We had that with white bean stew and this was one of the amazing and simplest lunches I’ve ever had.
- Home alone lunch: As Zeliha Hanım and Ali Bey were gone to Istanbul the other day, Nusret (one of the guys working here) made a soup with chicken broth with two types of small pasta, orzo, looking like large grains of golden rice - and the other one which is very thin and short . Besides the soup the lunch was graced by the actual chicken of which the broth was made - it came with rice.
As the lunch takes place early afternoon and the dinner tends to the latish 4-5 o’clock comes a legitimate tea time break when you sit down to sip your tea with some pastry - sweet or savory: kurabje cookies, simit (sesam bagels) or börek.
Dinners in Turkey take place when all the family members are back from work. In the realities of a farm it means we sit down for dinner when the guests are served with the main dish and have not got down to desert yet - which gives us some time. The dinners are more serious deals then lunch - if a meat dish is served that day it will be served for dinner. But grasping these realities of Turkey you actually get to understand what’s the deal with the kebab stalls all over the country - it is not because people are such meat-eaters here. It is because in the traditional settings home meals are not that rich on meat and you actually go out to cater to your carnivore cravings.
