Steph Food

I finally tried to make the bulgur salad I was obsessed with on my trip to Turkey.

This salad is the reason I bought the cookbook I bought. There were a few different cookbooks in the tourist shops, and I found that this one was the only one that had the bulgur salad in it.

One problem – I couldn’t find it in English.
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For the second installment of my Turkish Food Log, I’m exploring the world of cheeses, and finding a connection back home.

While we were in Turkey, we got to try many different kinds of cheeses – generally in styles a little different than “the usual” selection in Canada. In general, the cheeses tended to be saltier, with textures that varied from stretchy (like a Mozzarella) to soft and crumbly (like a soft Feta). There were even some cheeses that tasted a little bit bluey, like Gorgonzola.

Breakfast was the best time to find a great assortment of cheeses, and the selection varied from place to place. Each location offered a variety of cheeses, and I was excited to try them all. Most of the time, they weren’t labelled – so I have no idea what kinds I tried for most of the trip. Luckily, there were signs at the buffet in Ankara, so I made sure to get some pics. Notice the English translation – mostly “Cow Cheese” and “Sheep Cheese”, whereas the Turkish offered the real names of the cheeses, so I was able to look some up when I got home.

One of my favourite cheeses was Çeçil Peyniri – a very stringy, salty cheese that was dry on the outside. This was a strong and different cheese, and I ate as much of it as I could. At the time, I wrote that it tasted a little bit like Parmesan. We didn’t see it everywhere — I think I mostly ate it in the last half of the trip, in Cappodocia and Ankara.

On my trip to Akram’s last week, I found that they carried lots of different Middle Eastern style cheeses, including one that reminded me of the Çeçil peyniri.

Tressé is a cheese made in the same style as an Armenian cheese, called Mshallaleh. It is also sometimes referred to as “Angel Hair Cheese”. It’s like a very salty and stringy Mozzarella, and the one I bought was spiked with Kalonji (Nigella) seeds. The Kalonji have an almost oniony taste to them, so it’s pretty interesting in the cheese.

It may not be a Turkish cheese, but it definitely has the spirit, and the taste reminded me of my trip. Yet another reminder that there’s so much food out there for me to explore…

I definitely need to go back to Akram’s to get more, and to try some of the other fun cheeses there.

I know it’s taken a while, but here is my first in a series of posts about my food exploration in Turkey. I thought the best place to start would be the best meal of the trip.

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