Celery Root Salad with Yogurt (Yoğurtlu Kereviz Salatası)

There are two common lies that Turkish moms tell their non-celery root liking kids. If celery root is cooked, the mom forces the dish as a potato dish. The different smell and taste? Oh, it's just the spice she used! However, if celery root is to be eaten raw, as in celery root salad with yogurt, then the kid is told that it is radish salad. I loved radishes as a kid and tried this so-called radish salad served on a New Year's Eve dinner, which is...

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Cheese Pastries (Peynirli Poğaça)

Although there are tens of different kinds of poğaça (savory pastry), none resembles anything like Italian focaccia, where the term poğaça derives from. There are two main ways of preparing savory pastry dough: with or without yeast. Non-yeast pastries are favored by many for their rich-in-butter-nature; yet, most people make pastries with yeasty dough because it requires less amount of oil. Since I don't bake poğaças very often, I see no harm in...

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Bulgur Kofte (Çılbak Köftesi)

Bulgur Kofte is a different version of another traditionally Turkish recipe, garlicy bulgur buttons, from southeastern Turkey. Koftes are usually made with ground meat but this one requires only bulgur, which explains the name: Çılbak Köfte. "Çılbak" means "naked" and "poor," so we can translate the name for this dish as "The Poor Man's Kofte."These koftes are easy to make and delicious. You can have them with the garlicy yogurt, as well as with...

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Sultan's Delight (Hünkar Beğendi)

I have heard two different stories surrounding the name of this dish, Hünkar Beğendi, which literately translates as "the Sultan liked it." The first one is that the dish was created for Sultan Murad IV (1612-1640) and obviously he liked it. Where the dish was created--in the palace kitchens or in the kitchen of a moderate house that Murad IV spent a night on his way back from a hunting trip--is not clear. The second rumor is that the same dish was...

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