Scaled to however many of you there are.
Change the headcount and the amounts follow. Salt and spice do not scale in a straight line, and we account for that.
A recipe is how you make a thing: the amounts, the order, the timing and where it goes wrong. The dish pages explain what that thing is — where it comes from, the mechanism behind it, and why skipping one step makes it something else. One stays open in the kitchen; the other is read when you wonder.
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Eggy bread
The best use there is for stale bread. Fresh bread is no good here — it collapses before it has absorbed anything.
Porridge
Five minutes, of which the first one decides everything: the oats go into cold liquid, never into boiling.
Crêpes
Flour, egg, milk. The one condition for crêpes that do not tear is half an hour of rest.
Red lentil soup
Turkey’s default soup. Four ingredients, thirty-five minutes and one rule: the lemon is squeezed at the table.
Ezogelin soup
The lentil soup’s cousin, with bulgur, tomato paste and mint. The difference is one step: the paste is fried in the fat.
Tarhana soup
A yoghurt-and-vegetable mixture fermented through a summer, dried and powdered. Ten minutes to a soup — at the end of a year’s work.
Tomato soup
The taste of this soup is the taste of the tomato, which means a bad tomato cannot make a good one. In winter use paste and wait for the season.
Chicken broth soup
What makes a broth clear is not the ingredients but the temperature: a pan that passes 95 °C guarantees a cloudy one.
Vegetable soup
Throwing everything in at once is easy and wrong. These vegetables differ twofold in cooking time, and knowing the order is the only skill involved.
Pumpkin soup
Boiled pumpkin gives a watery, flat soup. Roasted pumpkin is the same vegetable and a completely different soup.
Celeriac soup
Celeriac starts browning the moment it is cut. Dropping it into acidulated water is a chemical intervention rather than a cosmetic one.
Flour soup
Three ingredients — flour, butter, water — and all of the flavour is in how long the flour is toasted.
Analı kızlı
The big stuffed dumplings are the mothers, the small plain ones the daughters. Both are bulgur, both cook in the same pan.
Onion soup
Forty minutes of frying onions sounds long. Stop at thirty and the soup comes out sharp instead of sweet: the time is the recipe.
Pan-fried meatballs
A meatball holds together because it rested, not because of what went into it. Kneaded mince does not meet the pan without half an hour in the fridge.
İzmir meatballs
Searing the meatballs and then baking them in sauce is two dishes in one: the crust stays outside while the inside drinks the sauce.
Taş kebabı
It is called a kebab and there is no fire in it: two hours in a covered pan in its own juice. Collagen becoming gelatin asks for nothing but time.
Slow-roast lamb shank
Three hours at 150 °C. There is no way to shorten it: collagen becomes gelatin with time rather than with temperature.
Karnıyarık
The one thing that stops an aubergine drinking oil is a soak in salted water: cells full of water leave no room for fat.
Musakka
Turkish musakka has no béchamel: aubergine, mince and tomato in one pan. Confusing it with the Greek version is a common mistake.
Saç kavurma
High heat, small pieces, an uncrowded pan. Miss any one of the three and it is not a sauté but a stew.
Kadınbudu köfte
Half the mince is cooked and half is raw. The cooked half stops it collapsing and the raw half is what binds it.
Lamb casserole
The meat has two hours and the vegetables have forty minutes. Put them in together and the vegetables vanish while the meat is still raw.
Roast beef
Not a dish to make without a thermometer. The answer to "how many minutes" depends on the temperature at the centre, not on the weight.
İçli köfte
Whether the shell thins without splitting depends on its temperature: cold bulgur cracks and warm bulgur stretches.
Oven lamb tandır
Four hours at 140 °C, then fifteen minutes at 240. Without the second number the meat is tender and pale.
Vine leaves stuffed with meat
Sarma holds together because the pan is packed, not because the roll is tight. Leave gaps and every one of them opens.
Hasanpaşa köfte
The purée on top is a lid rather than a decoration: in the oven it keeps the meat’s juice in.
Lamb and pea stew
The peas go in last. Boiled with the meat from the start they lose both their colour and their texture.
Whole roast chicken
The breast is ready at 65 °C and the leg at 75. Roasting a whole bird is entirely the business of hitting both at once.
Chicken shish
A yoghurt marinade is a mechanism rather than a tradition: its calcium and lactic acid loosen the meat’s protein.
Chicken casserole
Made with thigh, and there is no alternative: breast certainly dries over forty minutes in an oven.
Chicken pilaf
When the water for the rice is the water the chicken cooked in, the dish becomes something else. Made with plain water, the same recipe is only rice.
Chicken schnitzel
Beating the meat thin is a requirement rather than a shortcut: a 1 cm breast cannot cook before the coating burns.
Oven chicken wings
Crisp wings without a fryer are possible, on one condition: a night uncovered in the fridge to dry the skin.
Poached chicken
There is one reason poached chicken comes out dry: the water was boiling. Poached at 80 °C it never does.
Home-made chicken nuggets
Half the meat in a shop nugget is skin, cartilage and water. At home you know what is in it, and the difference shows up in the salt.
Chicken curry
Frying the spices in fat is not a step but half the recipe: their aromas dissolve in oil and not in water.
Courgette fritters
A mücver made without squeezing the courgette falls apart. One courgette gives up half a glass of water, and with that water in the batter nothing binds.
Tray-roasted vegetables
A vegetable that does not fit on the tray does not roast, it steams. Using two trays instead of one is the only trick in this recipe.
Spinach with rice
A kilo of spinach cooks down to a handful, which is why the size of the pan is part of the recipe.
Leeks in olive oil
Leek grit hides between the layers and rinsing does not reach it: it has to be cut first and soaked after.
Türlü
The name means "all sorts" and the recipe means it: whatever is in the house goes in. The one rule is the order they cook in.
Sautéed mushrooms
Mushrooms are wiped, not washed. And the salt goes in last: early salt draws their water out and makes browning impossible.
Potato and mince bake
Without a pre-cook the potato slices boil rather than brown over forty minutes in the oven.
Garlic-sautéed broccoli
The broccoli is blanched two minutes and dropped into iced water. That shock locks the green in, and the sauté cannot take it back out.
Oven potato wedges
The secret of a crisp wedge is not in the oven but before it: a boil and a shake. Without roughening the surface there is no crust.
Chickpea stew
Dried chickpeas, tomato paste and olive oil — and a pinch of bicarbonate that halves the cooking time.
White beans
Beans stay hard for almost always the same reason: the tomato paste went in early. Acid locks the pectin in the skin.
Borlotti bean pilaki
A pilaki is eaten cold, and that is why there is sugar in it: perception of sweetness drops as food cools, so what tastes right hot tastes flat cold.
Hummus
Smooth hummus is not a question of the blender but of the skins: no machine makes it velvety while they are still on.
Broad bean purée
Broad beans are not boiled in their skins: the skin cooks but never chews, and the purée comes out gritty.
Falafel
The chickpeas are never boiled, only soaked. Falafel made with cooked chickpeas disintegrates in the oil, and nothing rescues it.
Green lentil stew
A green lentil keeps its skin and holds its shape; a red one is already skinned and split, so it collapses. The same plant, two different dishes.
Red lentil dal
Twenty minutes of boiling lentils tastes of very little; almost all of the flavour is made in the last forty-five seconds, in hot fat.
Spinach with chickpeas
Under a lid, spinach turns olive-drab in its own acid. With the lid off, the colour and the taste both stay where they were.
Black-eyed pea stew
The one common dried pulse that needs no soaking: its coat is thin and permeable, so it goes from dry seed to tender in twenty-five minutes.
White bean patties
There is no protein network here to bind the patty. What takes its place is gelatinised starch, which firms as it cools: the fridge is what holds these together.
Buttered pilaf
Separate grains are not a recipe but two steps: rinse it, and leave the lid alone.
Bulgur pilaf
Bulgur does not cook, it takes up water. It is wheat that has already been boiled, so what matters is not the time on the flame but the time under the lid.
Bulgur pilaf with lentils
Two grains, two rules: the lentils must boil, the bulgur only absorbs. Put them in together and one collapses while the other stays hard.
Tomato bulgur pilaf
The acid in tomato slows how fast bulgur takes up water. The answer is not more water but putting the tomato in after the bulgur has swollen.