Kitchen glossary

Come across a word on our menu you don't recognise? Chances are you'll find it here. Many dishes are simply named after their main ingredient, so knowing the word tells you what is in the bowl.

Bulgur

Cracked, parboiled wheat. Bulgur is the base of dishes like kısır, çiğköfte and mercimek köftesi, giving them their firm, grainy texture. We use the finest bulgur there is.

Nar ekşisi (pomegranate molasses)

Reduced pomegranate juice: thick, dark and sweet-sour. A few drops give meze and çiğköfte a fresh, full flavour.

Sumac

Dried, ground sumac berries with a fresh, lemony sourness. Essential in çiğköfte and sprinkled over salad or meze.

Pul biber

Mild Turkish chili flakes. They add colour and a gentle kick, without making a dish truly hot.

Yaprak (vine leaf)

Brined vine leaves in which the filling is rolled. The base of yaprak sarma, rolled by hand.

Sarma

From sarmak, to wrap. A leaf rolled around a filling of rice and herbs. Read more in what is sarma.

Dolma

From doldurmak, to fill. A hollowed-out, stuffed vegetable such as pepper or courgette. Not the same as sarma, which is rolled in a leaf.

Fermentation

Vegetables that develop flavour in brine. This is how turşu is made: crunchy, sour and long lasting. Read more in what is turşu.

Turşu (pickles)

In English: pickles, or simply soured vegetables. Most people reach for the pickled gherkin as a comparison, but far more than cucumber goes in: cabbage, cauliflower, carrot, beetroot, hot pepper. A brine of water, salt and vinegar, and then time. We make six kinds, and what is turşu explains how.

Tahini

Creamy paste of ground sesame seeds, with a full, nutty flavour. Used in dips and sweets.

Meze

Small dishes to share, on the table together rather than one after another. A meze table is not a starter but the meal itself: hummus, havuç tarator, atom and a handful of other bowls, with bread in between.

Köfte

Anything shaped by hand into a ball or roll. It does not have to be meat: mercimek köftesi is lentils and bulgur, çiğköfte is bulgur and spices. The name describes the shape, not the filling.

Tarator

A sauce or meze built on yoghurt or nuts, usually with garlic through it. In havuç tarator it binds grated, cooked carrot into a creamy bowl with walnut folded in.

Zeytinyağlı

Cooked in olive oil, without meat, and eaten cold. Our sarma yaprak is zeytinyağlı, which answers the question of whether there is meat in it.

Börek

Dishes built from thin pastry (yufka), rolled or layered around a filling. Sigara böreği is named for its shape: rolled as thin and straight as a cigarette.

Sac

A domed cast-iron griddle on which thin dough cooks in a couple of minutes. No oven and no oil: gözleme gets its blisters and its dry, crisp crust from the hot plate itself.

Lahana (cabbage)

Cabbage. The leaf of the white cabbage is simmered soft and rolled around the filling: that is sarma lahana. The same cabbage, cut into strips, goes into the brine and becomes turşu. Cabbage leaf is softer and sweeter than vine leaf, and a good deal milder.

Pancar (beetroot)

Beetroot. Boiled, grated and stirred through yoghurt and garlic it becomes pancar mezesi, deep pink and faintly sweet. In brine, a single beet colours a whole jar of turşu.

Havuç (carrot)

Carrot. Grated, gently cooked and bound with yoghurt and walnut, it becomes havuç tarator. Raw and cut into batons, carrot also goes into the turşu.

Patlıcan (aubergine)

Aubergine. Charred over the flame until the skin is black, then peeled and drained: that smoke is the whole point of patlıcan mezesi and of baba ganoush.

Kabak (courgette)

Courgette. We fry it in slices until the edges colour and lay it on a base of yoghurt and cream cheese: that makes our kabak mezesi. In Turkey you will also find it grated, with yoghurt and dill. Frying rather than boiling keeps it firm, because boiled courgette turns watery.

Halal

Permitted under Islamic dietary rules. Almost everything on our menu is vegetarian; the two dishes with meat, chicken curry pasta salad and lahmacun, are made with halal meat. Each carries the label on the dish itself.