Breakfast as a spread
Turkish breakfast, , isn’t one dish. It’s a table of small plates shared slowly, especially at weekends: white cheese, olives, sliced tomatoes and cucumber, honey and clotted cream, jam, boiled eggs, fresh bread, and glass after glass of Turkish tea. One or two hot egg dishes come out of the kitchen in the pan they were cooked in.
The hot dishes
Menemen is eggs softly scrambled into tomatoes and green peppers cooked in butter or olive oil. Pakistanis will see the resemblance to khageena, but menemen is wetter, less spiced and eaten by dipping bread straight into the pan. Çılbır is poached eggs on thick garlic yogurt with butter sizzled with red pepper poured over the top. It looks elegant but takes only a few minutes.
Setting a kahvaltı table in Pakistan
- Cheese: feta-style white cheese, or paneer crumbled with a pinch of salt.
- Olives: green and black, from larger supermarkets.
- Fresh vegetables: tomatoes, cucumber, green peppers and parsley or mint.
- Sweet things: honey with fresh cream or malai, jam, and dried apricots or murabba-style fruit preserves.
- Bread: fresh naan, a crusty loaf, or gözleme if you have time.
- Tea: keep a or two kettles going.
Tips
- Cook egg dishes last so they arrive hot.
- Serve in the pan. Menemen is meant to be shared from the skillet.
- Make it slow. The whole point is to sit together; a weekend morning works best.
Our Turkish breakfast at home post has a full shopping list and timing plan.
More to try
Sucuklu yumurta is eggs fried with spicy beef sausage, and simit and poğaça are the breads that go with every Turkish breakfast.