How about starting your day with an amazing Turkish breakfast?
Turkish breakfast is both a meal and an event. In any case,
it’s an unmissable experience on any trip to Istanbul.
A
classic Turkish breakfast, better known as 'kahvaltı' consists of fresh cheeses
like feta, black and green olives, fresh-baked white bread, black
and/or green olives, fruit preserves, honey, kaymak, mihlama, börek, fried
egg with sucuk,sliced tomatoes and/or cucumbers, jam and plenty of
brewed black tea served in Turkish tea glasses.
Highlights of Turkish Breakfast:
1- Fried eggs with sucuk - A Turkish breakfast
favorite is sucuk cooked on a pan mostly with eggs (sucuklu
yumurta). Sucuk is dried sausage made of ground beef
with garlic and a variety of spices like red pepper, cumin and sumac. It may be
somewhat spicy and fatty, but it sure is awfully delicious.
2- Simit - Simit is a circular bread with a
hole in the center, covered with sesame seeds. You can buy simit at
bakeries across Turkey, as well as from street sellers in the mornings.
3- Börek - Börek is a dish made with yufka, a dough
much like phyllo pastry. Inside the layers of yufka you'll find a
display of Turkish creativity: from minced meat to eggplant, cheese to
potatoes, börek comes with various fillings each designed to give you
a different experience.
4- Mıhlama - A quintessential Black Sea dish made with butter, corn flour and cheese; can be eaten any meal of the day...
5- Bal/ Kaymak - There is nothing more decadent than a bite of bal kaymak (honey and cream). Kaymak is clotted cream, scraped off the top of fresh milk and refrigerated. Because nothing here is ever done half-heartedly, Turks spread kaymak on a slice of bread - and on top of that, a layer of honey.
6-
Olives (zeytin) - Black zeytin range from small, luscious oil-cured to rather dry, too-salty ones. Green olives are flavorful but tart, sometimes bitter, and rarely stuffed with pimiento.
7- Menemen - Turkish style scrambled eggs with tomatoes, cheese and sliced green peppers..
