Fresh Turkish breakfast is a delight for eyes, stomach
It’s a wonder tables don’t break constantly in Turkey — they tend to be so laden with breakfast dishes, I wouldn’t expect them to be able to bear the weight.
While weekdays tend to start with tea and simple fare at home, weekend breakfast is an all-out feast of the country’s freshest produce, expertly cured meats and a few unique bites that help define Turkish breakfast as a meal that should never be missed.
Known in Turkish as kahvalti — literally “before coffee” — Turkish breakfast finds its joy in the bounty of choices. As Turkish tour operator Murat Ozguc told me during a trip last year, “First, your eyes should be satisfied — then your stomach.”
Gather tomatoes, olives, cheese and honey to re-create a version of this spread at home for a fun, yet leisurely brunch option — and a bit of armchair travel especially distracting during the COVID-19 travel
shutdown. A typical spread will be accompanied by many tulip-shaped glasses of steaming hot black tea, but thick, chocolatey Turkish coffee — which requires a ritual all its own — is often served separately from the morning meal.
Here is a Turkish breakfast roll call of delights to display at your table:
• A plate of sliced cucumbers and ripe tomatoes — from the garden or farmers market.
• Olives of all colors: Explore a Middle Eastern market and look for grilled olives, a unique choice, or buttery castelvetranos.
• Fresh and aged cheeses: Turkey has dozens of native and local cheeses — from beyaz peynir, a brined white cheese similar to feta, to mozzarella-like string cheese, to tulum and aged kashkaval. Breakfast is a great time to show off a selection.
• Yogurt: Plain or fruitflavored — or try ayran, the popular, lightly salted yogurt beverage.
• A rainbow of chunky fruit preserves made from cherries, apricots, figs or rose petals. You’ll also need honey, preferably still dripping from its comb.
• Kaymak, a wondrous, spreadable clotted cream often made from water buffalo milk. It makes butter seem obsolete (although top-quality butter is a great addition).
• Grape molasses: Pekmez is made from grapes and must be boiled gently to create a sweet syrup. For breakfast, it is typically served in ramekins next to pots of toasted sesame tahini. When spread together on bread, they make for the best PB&J you’ve never had.
• Hazelnut spread: Serve a plain hazelnut butter or a decadent one that contains cocoa, like Nutella.
• Acuka, a flavorful spread of walnut and roasted red pepper.
• Fresh fruit like figs, apples and grapes, or whatever is in season at the market.
• Bread. Oh! The bread. Stacks of warm pide and other flatbreads; simit, the sesame seed-encrusted bagel sold on every Istanbul street corner; country loaves; and savory breakfast pastries like flaky pogaca, layered borek, acma — a soft, ringshaped bun topped with poppy seeds; and crisp gozleme filled with cheese, lamb or potatoes.
Then come the egg-andmeat dishes like sucuklu yumurta, which boasts sunny side-up eggs fried in a crock with sizzling sucuk, a mouthwatering beef salami spiced with fenugreek and cumin. Another popular dish features eggs scrambled with dry-cured, jerky-like meat called basturma. And then there’s the classic menemen, a satisfying shakshuka-like scramble of eggs and aromatic vegetables, often seasoned with a bit of Turkish red pepper.
A tradition that crosses cultural and geographic borders, kahvalti is taken daily at home, but is frequently enjoyed with friends or family at a restaurant — like American brunch, it has become a Sunday ritual. Dining outside is common in good weather, and Istanbul hotels like the luxurious Raffles put out a particularly copious spread — Raffles includes a local cook preparing gozleme to order.
The recipes below offer a couple of homemade Turkish pastry options and an easy recipe for menemen, the ubiquitous egg dish presented in a cast-iron pan. Make it the centerpiece of a relaxing weekend meal, or introduce the basics to your table — along with plenty of hot tea.