Turkey

Turkish food is quite similar to other Mediterranean food, with lots of meat, feta, yogurt, and fresh vegetables. Lamb and beef are common, but pork is not as most citizens are Muslim. When I was in Turkey, my mother and I ate almost nothing but döner kebab (the Turkish version of gyros) and were totally all right with that. Unfortunately, making it involves taking ground lamb and beef, seasoning the crap out of it, and slow-roasting it on a spit. So when I decided to make Turkish food it wasn't an option.

I built the meal around a boneless leg of lamb I had in the freezer and needed to get rid of before a Groupon for Springfield Butcher expired. I found a recipe for something called pink leg of lamb, which was supposed to be Turkish and looked manageable. I decided to alter the recipe a bit to make something more like Iskender kebab, which is a seriously amazing Turkish food (chunks of meat in tomato sauce with yogurt and melted butter). To round it out, I made fried zucchini (it's an informal goal to fry zucchini as many times as possible throughout this endeavor) with yogurt sauce, cigarette borek, olives and garlic with pita, and a basic rice pilaf with saffron. I also mixed up a little ayran, which is a yogurt drink that's super popular over there. I hate the stuff so didn't have any myself, but I made my friends Ben and Katie try some. In general, everything was tasty. I'd hoped the lamb would come out a little more tender, and was upset that the yogurt separated despite my efforts to stabilize it. I didn't follow the directions with the phyllo, but the cigars were still really good. I think my favorite part was the olives; I couldn't find pitted black olives at the olive bar and didn't want to use canned or jarred so I used kalamata. I had the leftovers sauteed with mushrooms and pasta, and they were incredibly flavorful.