Classical Turkish Cooking: Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen

This is certainly one of the best cookbooks on Turkish Cuisine. In addition to the wonderful recipes, the book details the history and background of Turkish dishes. The recipes are simple, yet elegant. While I certainly haven't examined the entire gamut of available cookbooks, this certainly was the best I have run across.

My wife and I love it! Not only does it have great recipes but it has stories about where the recipe comes from. This is actually our second purchase of the book because we gave one to our friend who loved this book.

`Classical Turkish Cooking' by Ayla Algar is a great exemplar of what a cookbook describing an important national cuisine should be, if there are few or no other books on the subject in English. At the outset, it is important to point out that the author makes an excellent case for the historical fact that Turkish cuisine, based on a long history of cuisine from the Ottoman empire, which inherited much from the equally important Persian / Iranian cuisine, is a truly interesting food culture, distinctive in enough different ways from the general Eastern Mediterranean milieu to make it worthy of study and emulation. The Turkish / Ottoman cuisine is in every way a confirmation of the thesis stated most firmly by Paula Wolfert in `Cous Cous and Other Good Food from Morocco' that one of the four requirements for the creation of an important, interesting cuisine is the presence of a sizable nobility and wealthy court in which chefs are well paid to create interesting dishes for the court and for entertaining diplomats to the court. Conspicuous consumption was not invented in the United States. Ms. Algar does us a great service by presenting a very nice thumbnail sketch of the history of the Turkish people who migrated to Asia Minor from central Asia and, on the way, picked up lots of culinary influences from the Iranians in the centuries following the rise of Islam throughout central Asia and the Middle East. Happily, unlike several other historical sketches I have seen recently in books on purportedly important cuisines, Ms. Algar ties her story in with actual culinary information, including linguistic and historical evidence for the origins of many different culinary trends in Turkey. I will not pretend to recount all of this. It is important, however, for your appreciation of this book to realize that this cuisine, and the material in this book reflects food influenced by the full range of the Ottoman empire which, at its peak, stretched from the gates of Vienna to the bottom of the Basra on the Persian Gulf to the outskirts of Fez in Morocco. The book is subtitled `Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen', however, I do not see a lot of effort devoted to making the recipes friendly to amateur American cooks. In many ways, this may be a good thing in that the author does not loose the `traditional Turkish' of the recipes in deference to what may be easy for the average American household. If it did, it would be much less valuable in our collection of books about traditional cuisines. Turkish cuisine shares much with the other cuisines of the Eastern Mediterranean. There is an especially strong family resemblance between Greek and Turkish recipes, and it is in no way clear in which direction the influence was strongest. While the Greek cuisine is older, it was also heavily influenced by Persian and Phoenician sources, so it is easy to believe that the central role of lamb, yoghurt, sesame, citrus, flatbreads, and very thin pastries all c

Let me just tell you how good this cookbook is.... When I met the man who would later become my husband, I wanted to impress him by preparing some food from his country. I got this book from the library (and later bought it). I had NO IDEA what Turkish food looked like, tasted like, NOTHING. Zero. I flipped through this book and asked him what he liked. He picked out some foods that he had really been missing since his move to the US. These items also happen to be about the most difficult to make--things most people in Turkey don't make at home anymore because they are easier to buy ready made...I made Baked Manti, Simit (Turkish bagels), and Asure the first night...and apparently I made them so well that the whole Turkish community in my town started showing up for our dinner parties for a taste of home. If a person who had no idea of the cuisine could make food THAT authentic on the first try, then the cookbook MUST be excellent. I have sinced moved to Turkey and after 4 years here, it is still my favorite cookbook above all the others I have.

This is a well laid-out guide to Turkish food. MS. Algar provides historic detail, method for unfamiliar techniques, and a good mix of recipes from savory to sweet that have a distinctive Turkish touch. It is a cookbook you can actually sit down and read. While she does not give the technical detail Julia Child brings to her books, this book is not about being a chef, it is about introducing Turkish foods into your home, and is an excellent reference. It also provides recipes for those things you may not find easily available - just how do you make rose water if you can't find it? There is a recipe! I want a copy for my kitchen library, and you might too.