The Turkish Food!

Before we left for Turkey, our friend - Henry, kept emailing us about different places he wanted us to go to and different foods we had to eat!  And then, the day before our trip, following brunch with our friends, Henry made us watch Anthony Bordain during his food visit to Turkey!

After, all that info, we were prepared for a delicious trip to Turkey!  So, this post is dedicated to all the foods that we ate in Turkey!!  Cheese Rolls (in Kusadasi):

Turkish Rolls in Kusadasi (meat filled in pastry rolls):

Russ' Sea Bream in Kusadasi (grilled with lemon):

Two types of Baklava (in Kusadasi):

Camel Milk (served w/ coffee in Kusadasi):

This is our Turkish Breakfast (in Kusadasi):

This is what they regularly have for breakfast!!  Sesame bread, sliced cucumber, sliced tomatoes, different types of olives, fig jam, cherry jam, goat cheese, cow cheese with blackberry jam on top, two types of butter.  There's more in the pics below (over easy egg and potato, onion, red peppers and Turkish sausage stir fry):

Owen Bayti (in Kusadasi).  It's basically kebab meat in pastry rolls:

Also, if some of the pics look like we ate part of the food before we took the pics, it's b/c we did!!  I always had my camera out and ready to take a pic, but then I would totally forget to take it!!  I would start eating, remember that I didn't take a pic yet, yelp, and then take the pic!  And so, to help me remember, I told Russ to remind me.  Of course, due to Russ' memory issues, we both failed to do our job in a timely fashion!  OK...back to food talk:

In Goreme, we had a clay pot kebab, which they called Testi Kebab:

The dude just chopped open the top of the clay pot w/ the giant butcher knife and is pouring out the kebab for us.  Can you see the giant butcher knife in his hand?  It was a bit scary!  This is the final product:

In Urgup, we had this crazy ravioli thingy:

It was covered in yogurt and looks kind of gross (in the above pic), but it was DELICIOUS!!!  Instead of ravioli like dumplings or Italian shaped, it was a giant long skinny pastry roll filled with meat (like a ravioli).  Then they twisted it into concentric circles (sort of like a Cinnabon), and then covered it with yogurt.  Yum!

Here's the Lamb Kiremit (which is basically a lamb stir-fry):

And the famous Turkish Pizza - Lahmachun:

The Anthony Bordain episode talked about eating Turkish pizza.  So Russ and I had to make sure we had it or else Henry would be visibly disappointed in our Turkish honeymoon!  This pizza was super thin and had some ground meat, tomatoes and cilantro.  You would sprinkle it w/ parsley and other veggies and squeeze some lemon over it, roll it up and eat it.  They sort of eat it rolled up (like an egg roll) instead of flat.

We also went to this pastry shop and saw the cutest cakes (the pic turned out terrible b/c of the glare):

We ordered a Turkish flan, a baklava and some coffee:

In Istanbul, we went to Topaz Restaurant, which had floor to ceiling views of the Bosporus Bridge/Strait!  It was gorgeous!  We got so lucky b/c the rain stopped and the view was just amazing (as was the food).  Here's our scallop appetizer that we ordered:

I ordered a lamb dish.  Check out the presentation:

Russ ordered a beef dish w/ risotto:

We had wanted a more authentic Turkish meal, but it didn't seem that authentic, esp b/c of the beautiful presentation.  We made up for our non-authentic Turkish cuisine by ordering the two most authentic Turkish desserts.  The donut ball recipe is even patented by the Topaz Restaurant!!!

This is the patented donut ball thing.  It was soooo good:

This was the bread pudding dessert thing.  Initially it was super sweet, but when you ate it with the cheese and the sour cherry sauce, it was delish!!

For our last lunch in Istanbul, we had the Fistikli Kebab (lamb kebab w/ pistachio):

And we topped off our trip w/ a late afternoon snack:  goat milk ice cream and coffee.  The goat milk ice cream is definitely an acquired taste.  I almost didn't have anymore after the first bite, but I thought I should give it a chance.  In the end, we got used to the taste, but we still prefer the sugar-laden American style of ice cream!

As you can see, eating in Turkey is an adventure in itself!  There was all kinds of food there that we're not used to eating, but we made it!  Turkey is probably not for a true vegetarian though.  Everything had meat in it!

We had sooo much fun on our Turkish honeymoon traveling and food-eating adventures!  We're not ready to return to reality!  Boo!