Herbs and Spices

Herbs and spices have been used by mankind since ancient times for a variety of purposes. Sometimes a wild flower, the bark of a great tree or the fruit of a bush, spices show infinite variety in their form, characteristics and function.

The use of spices and herbs are very important in Turkish cooking. Turkish cuisine is healthy and nutritious. And spices are added due to increase  the dishes taste. Therefore spicing becomes crucial to add flavor to a Turkish dish.

The most famous place that it comes to your mind when someone talk about spice in Turkey is “Mısır Çarşısı” “Spice Bazaar” in İstanbul.

But you don't have to be in Istanbul to enjoy the best spices. Fresh spices are found everywhere from the local bazaars and markets to the largest supermarkets.

In fact, most spices used in Turkish cuisine are easy to find wherever you are. Just look in the spice section of your favorite market.

Here Yaren Çakır and Aleyna Coşkun visited for you some spice bazaar in Samsun.And took some photos to show our traditional spice markets.

EKMEK-BREAD

In Turkey,  the freshness of the ingredients is the reason that Turkish food tastes so good. The fruits and vegetables sing in your mouth. This guide will tell you about Turkish food, starting with bread.

The bakers of the Ottoman Empire thought that Adam, the patron saint of bakers was taught to make bread by the Archangel Gabriel. To this day bread has major cultural significance in Turkey. It is usually baked twice a day, early in the am and late in the afternoon so folks heading home from work can have fresh bread at dinner time. People in the west make do with packaged bread but in Turkey bread is bought fresh, when it is still crisp. There are many types of bread but here is information about four. The fresh baked elongated loaf of bread which looks like French bread is the bread that most people eat during the day. Then there is flat bread, familiar to all of us as pita bread (pide in Turkish) which is good for wrapping stuff up in, lavash a wafer thin type of bread also good for wrapping and simit, which is a round bread , rather like a bagel, covered with sesame seeds, sold everywhere - it is good for a snack on the run. There are many other varieties of bread and you can sample some of them at breakfast buffet's all over Turkey. The world for bread in Turkish is ekmek.