Turkish dinner in Spanish

Last week, my colleagues' Spanish translators and friends Ana, Claudia, Esperanza and me, we planned a dinner together. The place selected was the Turkish restaurant Anatolia, located in West Toronto.  This place is famous for prepare traditional Turkish food.

Many dishes were consumed. As an appetizer, I am going to mention the dish called “Yaprak Sarması”. Yaprak is a generic name for meals made with grape leaves.  They are rolled and filled with minced meat and rice. But there are vegetarian versions that use rice with some other vegetables like onions, parsley, tomatoes. Our dish has the vegetarian version with olive oil and aromatic herbs.

Among the grilled dishes, we had “Adana Kebab”, also known as “Kıyma Kebabı”. This dish owes its name to the city of Adana. It is a mix of ground beef and lamb prepared with onion and garlic and packed by hand around a flat metal skewer. Then it is slowly grilled over open flame. Its flavour is a little bit spicy. It is served with Bulgur, vegetables and “Domates Ezmesı”, this last is a Turkish meze dish. Domates Ezmesı is a spicy tomato sauce that uses ingredients such as Paprika, Pomegranate syrup, onions, cucumbers and some spices.

We also had “Alinazik Kebab”. This dish has pieces of grilled lamb served over eggplant puree mashed with yoghurt, served over rice.

This is the first time that I have a culinary gathering in Spanish, my mother tongue. For me is an honour to have shared this important moment with my translator colleagues. We chose to taste food from a different culture, although not at all far from ours. In the last years, Latinoamerica has been enjoying some new telenovelas from Turkey in the TV. Thank you, Ana, Claudia and Esperanza for this happy moment.  

I finish this article with a sad note. 3 days ago, we learnt about the sad demise of the great celebrity Chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain. He knew how to inspire people and how to introduce dishes from different cultures. I never met him personally, but he will be missed and always remembered.