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Merhabalar herkese, Güney Anadolu’ya hoş geldiniz. Hello everyone, and welcome to southern Anatolia, where simple, quality ingredients marry with intensive techniques and interesting flavor profiles to create some of the world’s tastiest foods. What is now considered southern Anatolia, or southern Turkey, has been part of some of the oldest known civilizations, as well as a throughway for trade routes over the course of millenia. Ethnoreligious groups such as Syriacs, Yezidis, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, and literally dozens of others call the area home; their food cultures share many common elements, but each group and each region has put its own spin on the flavors that arise from the fertile headwaters region of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, where the Syrian desert meets the rising mountains and plateaus of Anatolia. The foodways of northern Syria, northern Iraq, and southern Turkey reflect this complexity, and leaving aside the fraught politics of the region, the meeting of cultures, religions, traditions, and trade routes have created one of the finest food cultures in the world. I was lucky enough to live in Turkey from 2010-2012 and from 2017-2021, during which I spent a lot of time traveling in the southern and southeastern parts of the country, eating and drinking my way through every small-town pitstop I could find. I’ve brought that experience, as well as the copious amount of food and wine products I bought on those trips, to my current residence in Belgium for this pomegranate-themed ICSA. Turkish food generally is very vegetable-heavy, and that’s especially true right now with skyrocketing inflation and a tanking exchange rate driving prices for many (former) staples out of affordability for many people. Plus, boneheaded agricultural policies for the last decade have come home to roost, and most domestic commercial meat producers have gone bankrupt. However, people across Turkey are creative and have incredible produce to work with - I miss my neighborhood greengrocer in Ankara more than I can describe, and not just because the prices were substantially better than paying in euros for everything. In most parts of Turkey, food is prepared seasonally, with people in colder climates preserving produce by pickling or drying, and spices and herbs are often used sparingly to allow the quality of the ingredients to shine through. However, southern Turkey has a lot of influence from other foodways and historic trade routes, and it often shows up in the more liberal use of spices and spicy flavor profiles in foods, as well as using sour and tart flavors in combination with meats and grains. Of the eight recipes I made with pomegranates, not all are traditional dishes; however, I think the flavor profiles would be familiar to anyone from Hatay (on the Mediterranean) to Midyat (near the Turkish tri-border with Syria and Iraq). Menu Pomegranate shrub Kısır (spiced bulgur wheat salad) Pan-fried halloumi cheese with pomegranate-mint salsa Zeytin salatası (olive salad with pomegranate molasses) Yalancı yaprak sarma (vegetarian stuffed grape leaves) Bulgur with chickpeas and fried shallots Lamb stewed in pomegranate juice with root vegetables Pomegranate-tahini cookies Wine pairing: Kustan şarabı (orange wine from the largest Syriac Christian winery in Turkey), cremant d’Alsace garnished with pomegranate arils Music pairing: Barış Manço, Duman, Altın Gün Resources I collect cookbooks from my travels, and I have a great selection of regional books from southern Turkey. I also brought a ton of ingredients with me when we moved from Ankara to Belgium in 2021 - you can see olive oil from a monastery in Mardin, pepper paste from the pepper bazaar in Urfa, and pomegranate molasses I bought off a toothless old lady on the side of the road in rural Sivas. Some of my best food finds in Turkey were at roadside stands, concerns about phytosanitary safety notwithstanding.  Selection of cookbooks I used for this ICSA challenge. I also reached out to the professor behind http://eatlikeasultan.com/ for a few of his recipes, which I didn’t cook wholesale but integrated into my modifications of the lamb stew I made.  L-R: Cornelian cherry juice, sour sumac molasses, olive oil from Deyrulzafaran monastery, sweet and spicy pepper paste, pomegranate molasses.  My younger kitchen helper. He mostly provided moral support and cute noises.  My elder kitchen helper. Expert at stirring cookie dough and also stealing as much fruit as he can when I’m not looking. Pomegranate shrub This is an easy one - mix sugar, pomegranate juice, and apple cider vinegar to sit for a few days. In retrospect, I wish I had used fresh pomegranate juice; the Turkish grocery store we use here didn’t have any fresh, and I should have juiced it myself. However, given that we had two guests who weren’t drinking, I needed enough of the shrub that I wasn’t willing to put that level of effort in on a school night.  Shrubs are easy to make. My grandmother is probably rolling over in her grave that I’m still using her original Tupperware container that’s like twice my age.  In we go! I found the amount of sugar in the recipe to be about right for the shrub, but I like tart/sour flavors. Some people might need more sugar. Kısır (spiced bulgur wheat salad) Kısır is a common side dish or appetizer across Turkey, usually served at room temperature or cold, from a family of vegetarian starters/sides made with grains. It’s often served in lettuce shells, or just piled on a plate. I started by massaging sweet and spicy pepper pastes into the uncooked bulgur grains, along with spices, and then pouring boiling water into the mixture to cook it. After that, I added chopped tomatoes, parsley, and pomegranate arils to the mixture and putting on the balcony to chill. I had never made kısır myself before, and it was a lot easier than I anticipated. I may try a modified version with pre-cooked quinoa instead of bulgur and see how that works out.  Bulgur and pepper paste, ready to be mooshed up.  Post-mooshing, adding the hot water and letting it sit for 15 minutes to cook fully.  Fresh ingredients, chopped up and ready to add to the cooked kısır. Pan-fried halloumi cheese with pomegranate-mint salsa I would eat halloumi cheese in pretty much any guise, but putting a spicy salsa on top actually works really well. I didn’t get photos of the halloumi being fried (guests had arrived, and prosecco was more important) but here’s the salsa I made. I used the good Syriac monk-made olive oil for this one, since I wanted the oil’s flavor to shine. I went light on the spicy peppers because I had a wimp coming to dinner; were I making it just for my family, I would have done perhaps twice as much minced hot pepper.  Glug glug glug. Zeytin salatası (olive salad with pomegranate molasses) This dish is characteristic of Hatay, the southernmost part of Turkey, which was part of Syria until a questionable referendum in 1939 transferred it to Turkey. (Fun fact, the government of Syria has never recognized the results of this, and official Syrian maps and documents still show Hatay as part of Syria.) Hatay is one of the rare parts of Turkey where the population is probably plurality or majority Arab; it’s also got hosed up pretty badly during the early days of the Syrian war, when ISIS and other groups set off a few car bombs among refugee populations in the province. I haven’t been to Hatay since 2010 (so pre-Syrian war, when it was a sleepy outpost of the country), but it remains one of my very favorite parts of Turkey. Olives are omnipresent in most of Turkey, especially in breakfast spreads, but in Hatay it’s taken another step and made into a simple salad that can be eaten with bread. It’s wonderful - I’ll definitely keep making this.  LEMON JUICE FOR THE LEMON GODS. Also good olive oil and pomegranate molasses.  One of my favorite Turkish olive is the cizik - it’s pinkish-green, kind of small, and super flavorful. Real pain in the rear end to pit, though. SCIENCE BREAK!! My older kid got to make a vinegar and baking soda volcano in his class last week, and he wanted to replicate the experiment at home. Well, how else are we supposed to make magma and hot rocks than by including pomegranate arils?? https://i.imgur.com/c26l6RT.mp4 Yalancı yaprak sarma (vegetarian stuffed grape leaves) Stuffed grape leaves come with or without meat, though the latter is much more common in Turkey. They’re often called yalancı, or “lying,” because they don’t have meat in them. This particular recipe is usually made with chopped sour cherries, but the flavor profile is so similar that I decided to try it with pomegranates as well. It was a great success - one of our guests requested that I make more so he could take some to his office as a reward for them having a hell of a few weeks of work. I haven’t made stuffed grape leaves in years, since I was in graduate school, but the muscle memory came back after a few messy first attempts. My Arabic professor who taught me would be proud, I think! They’re not hard, but it is time-consuming to make them.  Adding soaked rice to sauteed onions.  Stuffing away!  Final product. Ohhhh yes. (Ignore the noodles in the nearby pan, those were my son’s lunch.) Bulgur with chickpeas and fried shallots I didn’t get any photos of this while I was making it, as it was the last thing to make when our guests had already arrived. Oops! I used the above recipe but used bulgur instead, as A) bulgur is much more commonly used in Turkey and B) I had a bunch on hand already. I added a good deal of pomegranate arils at the end, which provided an interesting textural contrast to everything else in the pilaf. If I had had more time, I would have fried some more shallots to get them crispy and used them as a topping on the bulgur. Lamb stew We tried making this recipe earlier in the week as written, but my husband isn’t a big fan of lamb chops, so we tried it this time with lamb stew meat + pomegranate juice instead of molasses. I have to say, I think it was better with molasses. Regardless, it still tasted drat good, and we have enough lamb still in the freezer that I can make it again and try it with the molasses instead. We served this over the bulgur-chickpea-pomegranate mixture from above.  Spice mix for the lamb.  Spices and ready to rest for a bit before cooking.  Making my chicken stock.  Got my aromatics ready to go.  Searing the lamb.  Aromatics in fond - a match made in heaven.  Added the stock and the pomegranate juice, bringing to a simmer before adding the meat back in. Pomegranate-Tahini Cookies This definitely falls in the category of something you’d never precisely find in Turkey, but mixing tahini with fruit flavors is common. This type of cookie isn’t really sold much in Turkey - you’re much more likely to find small shortbread cookies than bigger American-style ones - but I like to think these would be well received. My older son certainly loved them; he helped me make them (explains the sprinkles on one tray), and we’ll be making another set tonight for him to take to school.  Cooking with a five-year-old means adding sprinkles to everything or explaining that no, really, I do not want sprinkles on my roasted chicken.  Luckily though, I don’t mind his sprinkle enthusiasm. We still have fun. The Meal  The before. Clockwise from top: Syriac orange wine, pomegranate arils for garnish, salsa, pan-fried halloumi, lamb stew, yaprak sarma, olive salad, kısır, pomegranate-tahini cookies, mint for garnish, bulgur pilaf.  The after. I am feeling good about the outcome here.  We had some of the pomegranate shrub left over. I couldn’t let it go to waste, after all - once the kids were in bed and the dishwasher was running, I decided to make space for the leftovers in my belly. Closing thoughts I really had fun with this ICSA! I just returned to work following parental leave for the younger helper’s birth, so it was nice to invite a few coworkers over and just go all-out for something more complicated than box mac and cheese. I ran out of time and didn’t make everything I wanted to make; I also wanted to make pomegranate and pear crostinis as an appetizer, plus gavurdağı salatası, a rich salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, green onions, and walnuts in a pomegranate molasses sauce. I also wanted to make my half-assed recreation of an appetizer from one of our favorite restaurants in İstanbul (where my husband and I had our wedding reception actually), with halloumi cheese wrapped in grape leaves and pan-fried, then served with cherry tomatoes, black olives, and balsamic reduction; I wanted to try it with pomegranate molasses and pomegranate arils instead of balsamic and tomatoes. Maybe we’ll do that later this week; I still have lots of cheese and grape leaves left over!
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Feb 7, 2022 23:14
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Loving this stuff. We eat dolmas like, once a week? Gonna add that to the rotation. Also, thanks for the new bulgur recipe!
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Feb 8, 2022 03:20
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Now that's a meal! Thanks for all the info, I love the term "yalancı" lol. Wanna make that stew and the cookies. Tell your helpers that a stranger on your weirdo forum thinks they're adorable 
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Feb 8, 2022 06:55
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This is wonderful, extra kudos for making it all at the same time for multiple people
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Feb 8, 2022 08:10
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Great entry! I love the background and info you provided on your dishes. I'll definitely be making those stuffed grape leaves!
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Feb 11, 2022 15:01
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I love all of this, especially the domlades! THAT IS GREEK FOOD DO NOT STEAL YOU TURK
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Feb 14, 2022 16:27
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Hey Goons, long time no cook. I know you’ve seen the news about the massive earthquakes that have hit southern Turkey and northern Syria. All of the food I made in this thread - and many of the actual ingredients I bought - are from that region. If you have  to spare, I recommend World Central Kitchen (https://wck.org/) or Ahbap (https://ahbap.org) as reliable organizations getting help directly to the people who need it most in Turkey. The government is failing at providing even basic relief efforts in many ways. For Syria, SAMS (https://www.sams-usa.net/donate/) is your best option. All of these are reliable, trustworthy organizations. I don’t recommend many of the official Turkish organizations for reasons, but WCK and Ahbap are on the ground saving lives. Anything you can give will help. If you are just overrunning with cash, one of our best friends is doing daily runs back and forth from Istanbul to the disaster zone to distribute generators, power banks, and blankets. I can put you in touch with him if you want. Thank you all.
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Feb 12, 2023 08:38
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Donated to WCK. Andreas is truly doing the lord's work all over the world. Who's next?
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Feb 12, 2023 13:22
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Wroughtirony posted:Donated to WCK. Andreas is truly doing the lord's work all over the world. Thank you. SAMS is one of the only groups on the ground providing assistance in NW Syria - at least four of their hospitals were destroyed in the earthquake, and I'm sure more are damaged. They're a trusted partner funded by the US and multiple EU member state countries, and the crisis in NW Syria is basically the last remaining pit of true misery in Syria. In short, the prewar population of the region was less than a half million, but it's 4.5 million now, almost all of whom are on their third or fourth displacement within Syria. 4.1 million of them needed humanitarian assistance prior to the earthquakes... which came amid a massive cholera outbreak. So yeah, that's where my money's going.
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Feb 12, 2023 20:58
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to both WCK and SAMS. Thanks for the information.
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Feb 12, 2023 23:27
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