Turkish Cuisine offers endless Vegetarian cooking ideas

Turkish Cuisine offers endless Vegetarian cooking ideas

Turkish cuisine has many influences, mainly Ottoman but is really a fusion of its neighbours and old Ottoman lands. Turkish itself has been blessed by fertile soil which produces an abundance of fruit and vegetables along the Agean and Mediterranean coastlines.

Fruits such as apples, plums and quinces are stuffed and cooked while others such as figs dates and apricots are dried.Fresh vegetables such as leek, cabbage and capsicums can be eaten raw in salads, whilst eggplant, zucchinni and okra along side pulses such as lentils are used for vegetable claypots and stews.

Turkish food offers a wide variety of vegetarian food recipes.Turkey views eggplant as the "king" of all vegetables. Eggplant is very prominent in Turkish cuisine and particularily in vegetarian cooking. The most famous eggplant recipe in traditional Turkish cooking is "Iman Bayildi" which directly translates to mean "the Iman has fainted". Its a baked eggplant or aubergine with a tomato, onion and current filling topped with herbs and spices for added flavour.

Lentils are widely used for thier nutritional value but also as they are cheap and make filling yet tasty and healthy dishes. Green lentils are often used in salads where red lentils are used to make vegetarian kofte or a creamy red lentil soup.

The english word Yoghurt is derived from the Turkish word yogurt. Yoghurt takes centre stage when looking at Turkish cuisine as its added to almost everything. Yoghurt has many uses in Turkey, it can be watered down to make the popular Ayran drink, can be mixed with crushed garlic and used as a dressing for chargrilled or fried vegetables, for pasta dishes such as manti or even the base for the world famous dip cacik or more widely known by its greek name tzatiki.

Turkish bread is eaten with every meal and is said that no meal is complete without bread. Turkish bread has many forms, shapes and varietys, There are flat breads, lavosh, round bagel like sesame bread named simit are just a few. Most Turkish breads use yoghurt in place of butter or oil when making the dough therefore a low fat healthy option.

Salads play a huge part in Turkish cuisine with no meal being served without a salad being added to the centre of the table. Recipes for salads vary with the use of vegetables such as cabbage, pulses like chickpeas and lentils or even fruits such as pomegranates.Pomegranate molassess is often used along side the pomegranate with its jewel like seeds as a dressing in salads.

Cooking for a vegetarian using Turkish recipes such as dolmades, stuffed peppers, eggplant dips, lentil koftes, turkish bread is easy with endless options. With recipes for salads, dips, mezes and mains using vegetables, pulses, pastas, fruit and nuts, simple vegetarian cooking no longer needs to be boring.

To learn more about cooking vegetarian food and Turkish food, vegetarian cooking lessons are offered at Melbourne cooking school, Turkish Thyme. Vegetarian gourmet recipes along side traditional vegetarian food recipes are taught and practices in the Melbourne cooking classes.

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