The Turkish Cookbook By Musa Dagdeviren

★★★★★ (Essential) Best for: Adventurous cooks, food historians, lovers of lamb and eggplant. Hardest recipe: Çiğ börek (raw dumplings fried in a wok). Most surprising recipe: Kereviz dolması (stuffed celery root with walnuts).

The famous stuffed eggplant. Most versions are sweet and syrupy. Dağdeviren’s version is savory, sharp, and uses a 3:1 ratio of onions to tomatoes. He insists on frying the eggplants until they are "leathery," not crisp, so they absorb the olive oil like a sponge. The result is so intense that, legend says, the Imam fainted not from the cost of the oil, but from the ecstasy of the taste. the turkish cookbook by musa dagdeviren

For most of the world, Turkish cuisine begins and ends with the doner kebab, the simit (sesame bread ring), and perhaps a glass of sweet, mud-like Turkish coffee. But for those who have traveled the Aegean coast or wandered through the spice bazaars of Istanbul, the country’s culinary landscape reveals itself to be one of the world’s great, underappreciated treasures—a complex tapestry woven from Byzantine, Ottoman, Armenian, Kurdish, and Mediterranean threads. The famous stuffed eggplant

If you are looking to expand your culinary horizons and stock your pantry with pomegranate molasses, sumac, and Aleppo pepper, this book is the essential starting point. He insists on frying the eggplants until they