Döner

The Döner is an institution in Turkey and you can see it in restaurants and on the streets.  It can be cheap to expensive depending on the area you go to.  I have lived in various cities and different areas in regional cities.  Some give hearty servings on lavash bread, some go for bread rolls with very little fillings and if you are in Gaziantep you are the luckiest for Döner. 


Here we discovered the many faces of the Döner.  They use a full sized pide with generous serves of salad and hot chillies.  The fillings are varied as well.  Most places in Turkey really just offer chicken or beef but here you have more of a choice.

various fillings

liver without salad

liver

plain chickpea

hot chickpea

The above photos are showing a half portion of a chicken döner, a spicy and plain chickpea and the liver (Ciğer Kavurma).  There is another they do with red lentils and bulgur which is delicous but not many places do it and if they do they offer it in winter.

If you want to make these at home can you? yes of course you can and I will tell you how.

I have given the link for the liver one.  Liver may not sound tempting but let me assure you it really is.  For a chicken or beef all you need to do is use left over cooked chicken or beef slices. The chickpea one is very easy and a staple of most of the blue collar workers here in Gaziantep.  They usually get one or two of those with ayran for lunch everyday.  In Antep the price ranges from 1 lira to 2 for the non meat ones with the chicken or beef set at 1.75 to 2 lira.  It is a very good price and very filling making it an ideal quick well priced lunch.

1 can chickpeas or 1 cup of cooked 

pepper paste(tomato)

salt

dried chilli


Take your cooked chickpeas and half mash with a fork.  Add in the pepper paste to taste along with the salt and chilli.  Cut up some lettuce, tomato and parsley to make a salad.  Using arabic style pita bread or lavash and place 2 or 3 tbsp of the chickpea mix onto it then adding salad and rolling up.  


If you want the liver or chicken or beef follow the same process but just by substituting. 


http://verygoodrecipes.com/turkish

Flat Bread, Lavaş

During the last holiday I had great plans on making home made lavaş every day but then tragedy struck.  I cut my finger very deeply opening a can of something.  Slow food really is safer!  I am sure I had to go to the hospital for stitches but my husband calmly took a bandaid and taped it up.  It took 5 days for it to just seal and now I have a large scar on my finger tip. As a result my family got to partake of one day worth of lavaş and for the rest of the holiday we went bread free.  Very hard thing for a Turk to do as they need bread to feel full, if they dont have bread on the table they think thier throat has been cut. 


This is very easy to make.  I cooked this using my flat crepe pan but you can use an electric frypan or any telfon pan.  I rolled this out quite thin but not too thin.  If it is too thin it goes crunchy and breaks.  This stays soft and is nice and flaky when you rip it. 

Rolled out

Lavaş

500gr plain flour

water

salt

oil

Using the above ingredients I make a soft dough, knead it for 5 minutes until soft then let it rest for a few minutes before rolling out into circles to be cooked. I would use about 2 or 3 tbsp of oil as this makes the end product nice and soft.  These have been rolled out to about 3 mm thickness.