Watching gözleme, a flat dough parcel, being made from the scratch is not unlike witnessing a miracle. A woman sits on the floor, legs crossed, in front of the low round table that serves her as a minimalistic kitchen counter. She deftly rolls paper-thin dough yufka with oklava, a long thin stick that a novice of Turkish cooking would hardly believe to be a rolling pin. The woman rolls a small ball of dough into a 10-15cm round, then she rolls the dough on the pin and unrolls it leaving the perfectly round sheet of dough slightly larger and thinner as it was just a moment ago. And so she rolls and unrolls, rolls and unrolls until she makes an impossibly thin, round and large sheet of dough.
Recipes: Breakfast
I have kept wondering how come that Turkish cuisine has absorbed so much from the countries it borders with in the West, South and East but the influence from its northern neighbors (Ukraine and Russia) has been barely noticeable. I understand it may be harder to import food traditions by sea than it is by land but it did not seem a problem when it came to importing beautiful women from the North to populate the Harem. Besides such random occasions as the Black Sea ravioli - piruhi that look a lot like Ukrainian vareniki you don’t see Ukrainian- Russian food heritage around much. Or so I thought until I made blini..
