peppers, tomatoes, and yogurt

Peppers, tomatoes, and yogurt all feature prominently in Turkish condiments and side dishes. Many restaurants keep a bowl of red pepper flakes on the table so people can add spice to their foods. This is also our practice at home in our apartment (I'm not sure the students have gotten to a point of doing this - it takes a while to start to adopt the eating habits of another culture). Unlike the other students, though, Nerlin has taken to the pepper flakes with a vengeance. Now just to be clear, these are HOT pepper flakes. A very light sprinkling over a bowl of soup is quite enough to inflame most American mouths. The main red pepper flake used in Turkey is called pul biber or maraş biber (I should note that I'm not 100% sure that these two are identical, but I've never seen both in a store at the same time, but every store has something that looks identical to pul biber and calls it by one or the other name). A few months ago Paul and I were surprised to find an American magazine article declaring Turkish pul biber the winner in unofficial contest pitting peppers of all nations against each other (and no, there didn't appear to be a bias on the part of the American editors). Although it's not easy to find in the US other than at Turkish grocery stores, apparently we're not the only Americans who appreciate it and go out of our way to keep it on our table at home. In any case, whenever we eat out at a restaurant and someone can't find the pepper flakes, there's a good chance that Nerlin has scouted them out and put them in their proper place next to her plate. The rest of the group has been quite impressed to watch her put a teaspoonful of pul biber on a single bite of bread and munch away quite happily (and with no screaming). I have not yet had the chance to introduce her to acılı ezme, but I suspect she'll love it. This sauce (labelled as "breakfast sauce," to the confusion of most of my family, who are not awake enough to appreciate intense hot pepper on their morning toast) is concentrated pepper in a paste. It can be made with tomatoes and nuts in it as well. The yogurt is often mixed with cucumbers and garlic and dill (in varying combinations) to make either a thick sauce or a thin soup. It can also be served plain or mixed with water and salt in a popular summer drink. Several of the students have had a hard time getting used to sour yogurt. To most American palates, yogurt should fruit flavored or at worst some type of vanilla flavor, but not plain. Turks shudder if you suggest that you are going to mix some fruit into your yogurt. It's just not done, and it makes them a bit ill to think about it. Of course, most Americans feel precisely the same way when you suggest drinking watered down sour yogurt with salt. My first summer in Turkey I realized that the yogurt drink (known as Ayran here) seemed to be a pretty popular thing and if I wanted to be able to graciously accept people's hospitality I'd better get used to drinking it without making a face. I made myself drink a glass of ayran every day until I got the point of actually enjoying it. It took a lot of the summer, but now I'm quite fond of the Turkish, Persian, and Arab versions, and will even go out of my way to make them at home on occasion. Essentially every Turkish or Persian restaurant has it available, whether or not it's on the menu. In the US I've found that when I ask for it at a restaurant where it's not on the menu, the Persian or Turkish waiters seem to chuckle at the question, as if I'm asking whether they have ketchup packets at a McDonalds. Speaking of ketchup, on our first night here we went to dinner at a restaurant my family has been to many times. We know the manager and some of the other employees, and they always greet us warmly from year to year. When the food came out on our first visit this year, however, we were served by a new waiter, who brought us a bottle of ketchup with the food. I gave him my most indignant face and said to him in mock horror, "ketchup?? What are we supposed to do with that?" Perhaps some of the students had been readily preparing to add ketchup to their food, but I had it whisked off the table so quickly they never had a chance ;-). At least they will not commit the horrid American faux pas of drenching any food that appears foreign in a layer of ketchup. The waiter laughed with us, but I could tell that he was used to having Americans do this on a regular basis. Sigh. At this point the students seem to be making a game of identifying the inappropriate things that Americans and other tourists do here. None of them but Hew, our TA, who came to Turkey last year and is thus a month ahead of this group in acculturating, are picking up on some of the more subtle things that they are still doing themselves, but they definitely are starting to get a better grasp of the culture and recognizing the most egregious tourist behaviors. They also seem to find those behaviors genuinely annoying, which suggests they are starting to see things from a little more Turkish point of view. It's fascinating to watch some of the differences between Hew and the rest of the group, though, and to know that by the end of the month most of them will have gotten to a point of becoming acculturated enough to be genuinely helpful to the next year's students (and to me, because with Hew here Paul and I can rely on him to do more of what we would need to be doing).