Touring Turkey - Turkish Food Rundown, Part 2

**Hey, all! Well, Blogger went on a little vacation, i.e., it decided not to work, so therefore no post for me last Friday. Ugh! Any lovers of Wordpress, feel free to sing its praises in the comments section. I'm contemplating a change.**

I thought I'd continue talking about glorious Turkish food and show you some of what we ate while in the Cappadocia region. There's really not much going on restaurant-wise in Uchisar (that's probably an understatement), so we essentially stuck to our hotel's restaurant, Seki and another highly regarded (although not impressive, at least to me) restaurant, Elai, for our evening meals. For more restaurant variety, especially in the mid-range category, I'd suggest going to Goreme, the next town over if you decide to stay in Uchisar.

So, here's more of Turkey's varied cuisine...

Meze. Meze is a series of small dishes serving as an appetizer. It can include everything from commonly found hummus, eggplant salads (Patlican salatasi) to fried liver cubes (yum?). We had our first meze at Elai in Uchisar, considered one of the better restaurants in the Goreme/Uchisar area.

Meze plate at Elai restaurant in Uchisar

From left to right: Hummus, Cacik (cucumber with yogurt, mint and olive oil a.k.a tzatziki), Acili Ezme (spicy mashed tomato with onion and green herbs..the spiciest thing I had in Turkey!), and pepper stuffed with rice and currants.

Pide. Although it looks and sounds like pita, Turkish pide is distinctive from the pocket pitas prevalent in other countries. It's thicker and more like an actual pizza that a vessel for a sandwich. In Goreme, we had our first pizza-like pide at Mercan Restaurant right across from the bus station (The center of Goreme is not that big, so Mercan is easy to find).

Plain pide

Mixed Pide with egg, sausage, cheese and a pepperoni-like meat. Looks like pizza, doesn't it?

More meat and fruit mix....

Quail stuffed with spinach and dried fruits with a caramelized quince and teriyaki sauce at Seki, the restaurant at our hotel, Argos

Pumpkin for dessert. Actually this is tahin-pekmez, baked pumpkin with tahini (sesame paste) and grape syrup topped with walnuts. I was pretty surprised that I even liked this, but it was a great tart and sweet combination.

Baked pumpkin at Seki in the Argos Hotel

Those are some of the more unique dishes we ate while in Cappadocia. I'm still pretty shocked that we didn't have a bad meal in Turkey whether it was in our hotel, a small local place or even on the street. Turkish food is awesome!