Turkish cuisine

Turkish cooking grew out of the Ottoman court and the Anatolian village at the same time, so the most intricate pastry sits next to a soup of four ingredients.

Turkish cooking almost always starts with onion and tomato paste fried in oil until they darken. The step is called burning the paste, and without it a dish stays flat however much spice goes in later.

The other pillar is yoghurt. It goes into soup, onto meat, over vegetables and into dough rather than into pudding, and its acidity does the job lemon does in Greek cooking.