Turkish-ish

A long time ago, I asked my roommate Paul to cook some Thai food for dinner because he could always make better Pad-Thai than I could. What I got was not only a delicious meal, but also an insightful lesson. The lesson was this: no matter what kind of dish that you make, it is your interpretation of the dish. It is your take on a recipe to show people what you believe that the dish should taste like. This lesson is all inclusive and all encompassing. Most notably it extends to restaurants. So what is authentic and how do we make our food authentic food? Authentic is originating from the source; there are no deviations from the traditional way that things are made or where they are made. The where is key here. To be truly authentic something has to be made in country with the ingredients that are from the place of origin. To have authentic food, the ingredients from the country have to be combined with the mastery and skills provided from tradition for it to be able to be called authentic. Authentic spices, authentic tools, and authentic techniques must all be combined to produce an authentic dish. But how does this apply to my Turkish travels? Well for starters, I have been trying to familiarize myself with the food, or the food that is an interpretation of the food that I will experience. I have become particularly fond of the meze:

Traditionally Meze is a Persian or Mediterranean in origin but many different cultures have adopted what they have thought meze should be and tweaked it in delicious ways how they see fit. Over the centuries, Turkey has made their Meze authentically Turkish. They use their own ingredients, their own techniques, and their own history to produce it. But, what exactly is Meze?  Meze means a taste. It is a snack and an appetizer but really it is so much more. It is sharing and taking part in a banquet of flavors. It is enjoying comraderie through delicious food and drink, the sharing of stories before a meal, and the drinking of wine or anise seed flavored liquors. I cant wait for all the different types of Meze that I will get to experience and I feel that this post is an adequate start to the journey that I am about to begin.

You are what you eat & I eat well!

JD