Vegetarian recipes from Turkey

Turkish cooking without meat rests on wheat in two distinct forms, cracked bulgur and flour worked into thin sheets, on red lentils, and on two fats used differently, olive oil for cold dishes and butter for hot ones. Seasoning combines onion, tomato and pepper paste, dried mint, sumac and paprika. Kisir shows the base plainly: fine bulgur swollen without cooking, bound with paste, lemon and herbs, then served cold as a shared dish.

Red lentils carry much of the meatless repertoire, because they cook fast and break down into a puree. Red lentil soup opens the meal, finished with paprika butter poured in at the last moment; lentil koefte turn the same lentils into a firm paste mixed with fine bulgur and shaped by hand, eaten spooned into a lettuce leaf. Hot morning dishes follow another logic: menemen scrambles eggs into a base of peppers and tomatoes, and sigara boeregi rolls fresh cheese and parsley in a fried sheet of yufka.