Bone-dry Freshness; Dried Vegetables in Turkish Cookery

Winter preparations are a very important task that is taken very seriously in the Anatolian villages of Turkey even today. Some of these preparations include jams and marmalades made from summer fruits, ‘tarhana’ (dried yogurt with spices and vegetables used to make a popular soup), pickles and dried vegetables. Dried vegetables are usually made from popular summer vegetables such as eggplants, zucchini, and red peppers. During this seminar, Ms. Tan, journalist, and a culinary researcher explained the significance of these dried vegetables including their preparation, usage and popular recipes associated with them. She also showed a short clip that she shot in Gaziantep that showed the preparation and cooking of dried vegetables.

In her words:

“Vegetables are always associated with freshness. A vegetable is fresh when it still retains its full water content. Once picked, time mercilessly flows to erode the freshness of a vegetable. When this lifeline with soil is disconnected, decay is imminent. The water going to the vegetables is cut from the source, life stops.

Yet precisely at this hour of death, human beings have discovered the secret to a second life; drying vegetables, which have lost their water and hence their life, are given a new lease of life.

Anatolia is home to one of the oldest and most diverse traditions of drying vegetables. Anatolian people, living in a land of bounty, discovered long ago that drying is the ideal way to preserve fresh vegetables. “

At the end of the seminar, the guests got a chance to taste some regional specialties such as; dried okra soup (from Konya), dried green bean stew (from Black Sea region), herbed rice stuffed eggplant, zucchini and red peppers (from Gaziantep). 

To read Aylin Tan's article published in Hürriyet Daily News on the subject, please click here.

22 October 2014

The lecture video is in Turkish.