Rustic Dill Biscuits

One thing is obvious about Turkish baking. It is what has become trendy to call rustic. Set aside baklava and Turkish attempts to recreate French pastry and you will see something awkwardly shaped without much fuss and frills. Cut with a tea class, shaped with a fork, or pressed with fingertips. Rustic was a necessity decades ago as women were juggling the chords of raising many children, working in a field, doing homework and cooking. With less children per houseful and no working in the fields rustic has become a fashion. So these dill biscuits of mine are terribly trendy.

When I see my mother-in-law as she is planting the cat’s tongue cookies on the baking tray as if she is stacking pickles into a jar or when she is cutting her corn bread into free-style pieces I realize this is how things are in her world. Food has to be put on the table no matter the presentation. And it is hard to blame her who served two scrumptious fresh meals daily as she managed to keep up with her running routine, two growing up children and the police officer job.

My world is different. I have been lucky to pursue cooking as self-expression after I quit my strategy consulting job. And my own perfectionism combined with a rigorous consulting training makes me anxious to excel in what I do. To bring it to the next level. Even if it means impossible - making mouth-watering Turkish food look good too. Meaning no rustic stuff. Unless the dill biscuits.

These biscuits represent an important category of savory baked treats that Turks enthusiastically munch down with their afternoon tea. Generously seasoned with seeds such as sesame, nigella or sunflower they are crowd-pleasers which should be made in huge batches.

I first saw these dill biscuits - in their cookie existence - at a neighborhood bakery where they were - rather dangerously if you ask me - shaped as a bite-size rounds. They were salty and slightly sweet at the same time; full of dill flavor and dotted with the tiny dashes of the chopped wispy leaves. I got enthusiastic to turn these cookies into biscuits at home - light and crumbly and full of dill.

Making biscuits is like painting with large strokes. With swift and light movements I combined the dry ingredients and then worked in the cold butter and then the eggs. Shockingly enough there is no yoghurt in the biscuit dough but - even better news - I sneaked in Turkish white cheese, cousin of Greek feta, that lends a hint of sourness and lots of creamy substance to the biscuits. They were in the oven before my husband arriving from the countryside found the parking spot (even though the impossibility of the task in Moda where we live in Istanbul may give you wrong idea of the timing).

Özgür, a fan of savory pastry, certainly loved the dill biscuits. He mentioned how folks at a bakery chain in Istanbul sell them as “homemade poğaça‘ (read’ rustic take’) and don’t feel shy to charge a premium. I laughed. Thinking how easy they are to put together and how unpretentious they look I was bewildered by the fact that someone would pay premium for them.

But then I recalled myself a strategy consultant alienated from the world of baking and manual work in general. I was going crazy about sourcing rustic foods as these dill biscuits. Spending Sunday afternoons in the bakeries, marveling their rustic pastry and thinking that with buying bag of a misshaped cookies I was getting a little part of something very real.

By the way I have just learned about the controversial bankruptcy of the firm I used to work for (if you care about the future of professional services and consultancy specifically check out this engaging discussion at an Economist’s blog). Which makes me very glad I have timely chosen to cook and bake. Something very real and .. rustic if you wish.

So here they come, my rustic dill biscuits: bake them and, please, gift them to your friends who have not time for baking however little. They will appreciate your effort more than you could imagine. As an ex-strategy consultant I can promise you that. And being ex- make me much more credible these days.