Start your day with these delicious Turkish breakfast dishes

Gulf Today Report

Breakfast is not a single meal in Turkey, it is a journey of multiple tastes where one samples a little from everything.

Because of the unlimited options, no breakfast is alike in Turkey. Breakfast is called “kahvaltı” in Turkish, meaning “before coffee.”

Anatolia’s gastronomy culture, which reaches us today after being blended by thousands of years of old civilisations, shows itself at breakfast tables.

A smorgasbord of dishes make up the country's breakfast staples.

These include different cheese, varieties of black and green olives, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, fresh or dried fruits, butter, fresh or roasted regional herbs, honey, jams made out of regional fruits etc.

Then there's Turkish cream (a type of clotted cream), sesame butter with grape molasses, honey with Turkish cream.

Among pastry dishes that vary according to the region, you'll find simit (a Turkish pastry covered with sesame seeds), flatbreads, börek (stuffed pastry); salami, sausages, eggs prepared according to different recipes and cooked as per order and many more regional and traditional delicacies along with a well-steeped tea of course.

The sheer melange and vibrancy of the dishes make Turkey the country with the world’s richest breakfast.

To help you create a lip-smacking Turkish breakfast yourself, we bring you two simple recipes: sesame seed speckled and molasses coated Turkish pastry bread simit; and the ubiquitous egg dish menemen. 

Simit is a type of Turkish bread.

SIMIT

Ingredients

For the dough:
1 glass warm milk
1 glass warm water
700g or 5.5 glasses flour
1 glass oil
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 small packet of yeast

For the molasses sauce:

1/2 cup grape molasses
1/2 cup water

Method

1. Start by placing all the main ingredients in a bowl. Mix well and knead until the dough comes together and becomes a little sticky. Leave the dough for about 45 minutes.

2. Divide the dough into apple-size pieces and then divide each piece in two halves and roll them out into tubes.

3. Place them parallel to each other and roll them in opposite directions to make a twist. Meet and pinch the ends on both sides together to form a circle.

4. Dip each twisted dough in the molasses-water combination and make sure it’s covered on both sides.

5. Then dredge them in sesame seeds and make sure they are fully coated.

6. Preheat the oven to 200^oC and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Bake the simits in the oven until they are brown and fully baked. Bon appetite!

The ubiquitous eggs-based dish menemen.

MENEMEN

Ingredients

Serving size for one person

1 tomato peeled and finely chopped

Method

1. Add some oil to a pan. Once heated, add in the chopped peppers and stir fry. If you'd like to use onions, they should be cooked a little before and then we    add the rest of the vegetables.

2. Now add in the peeled and chopped tomatoes and cook lightly.

3. The required number of eggs are beaten in a different cup and poured over the cooked vegetables.

4. To prevent them from drying, the eggs are quickly stirred until the whites are cooked.

5. Menemen should have very little water. The key part is not losing their water when peeling the tomatoes and the tomatoes and eggs being cooked to a turn.

6. Once cooked, season with salt and pepper.