Turkish Mezes: Samphire Salad (Deniz Börülcesi Salatası)

Samphire Salad is a very popular meze served in fish restaurants in the Aegean coast of Turkey (i.e. Izmir, Cesme, Kuşadası, Ayvalık, Cunda Island). Samphire is a vegetable found in sea shores around tidal creeks. It’s quite salty as it absorbs a lot of sea salt (so no need to add any salt when cooking!). You can find it in farmers’ markets in abundance especially in spring and summer months.  

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Artichoke Bottoms With Olive Oil

Once it’s April, you start seeing farmers selling fresh artichokes in little stands across the city. Artichokes are piled up on one side of the stand, a big bucket full of water with lemon juice sits in the middle. You watch the farmer skillfully shaving off the outer petals until all he’s left with is the artichoke bottom. He then throws it into the water to prevent it from discoloring.  When you purchase some, he puts them in a plastic bag with some of the water. Now the artichokes are ready to be taken home to be cooked.

Eating raw, fresh artichokes is quite popular as well. You can often see people buying artichoke bottoms from the stands, squeezing a bit of fresh lemon juice on them (yeah, they bring along their lemon!) and eat it right there like a fruit. I can’t tell you how nutritious this is. So if you have the chance to get your hands on fresh artichokes, try it raw. You’ll love it!

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Green Beans (With Olive Oil)

Green Beans cooked with olive oil (Zeytinyagli Fasulye) can be treated both as a main or as a cold meze (Turkish appetizer). It’s  an easy to cook summer dish if you're looking for something light to eat in hot summer days.

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Stuffed Green Bell Peppers (with Olive Oil)

Couple of weeks ago, I’ve reunited with three of my friends when they came to visit me in Istanbul. The last time we were all together was 12 years ago in Beijing. Needless to say, there was a lot of catching up to do! Before they left Turkey, they wanted to learn couple of new Turkish dishes to try back home, so we ended up cooking stuffed green peppers (dolma). Why this dish? Well, besides being extremely tasty, once you learn how to prepare the rice, you literally learned to cook many other dishes simultaneously- stuffed eggplants, red bell peppers, zucchini flowers and my all time favorite stuffed vine leaves!

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