we're in Istanbul, Turkey
the food culture here will blow your mind we're
so excited to be filming a bunch of food videos, let's get to hunting
Istanbul has an exciting and vibrant food scene
this city's diverse heritage is reflected in
its incredible food culture in this five-part series we're going to show you
some delicious local Turkish food and eat where the locals eat this is our
third video of the series and we're hunting down the popular snack of
lahmacun eating a kebap drenched in browned butter
and visiting a historic sweet shop for Turkey's famous Turkish Delight you don't
want to miss this video get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry, let's eat
we're starting our food hunting day over on the Asian side of Istanbul and the
first thing we are going to eat is a thing called lahmacun so lahmacun
you'll often see described as Turkish pizza but it is nothing like it
it has its really own unique identity and it is super delicious
so this is lahmacun now I reckon it is called Turkish pizza
because it's round, it's made up of dough and the dough has got some topping on it
but it is really different in my opinion they take a small clump of dough and
they roll that dough out until it's really thin, paper-thin and then they
smear it with a thin minced mixture of lamb, parsley I think there's a little bit of
chilli on there and then they pop it into a really blazing hot, wood-fired oven
now you can see that the dough is just perfectly blistered and then it's got
that whole minced meat mixture on the top but it's so thin that you can
see like parts of the dough coming through so the way that it's served is
it comes with fresh parsley and some lemon so what you do is you grab some
parsley, pop it in the middle and then give a little bit of squeeze of lemon
over the top of it and then you take the whole thing and you roll it up so you
wouldn't think that the dough is very pliable but it is, it's like beautifully
soft
alright let's give this thing a taste
oh that is so good it is beautiful the dough is so soft but it has the perfect
amount of crispiness it's almost a little bit floury but in a pleasant way
and the minced meat mixture, the lamb, it's got so much flavour and there's
just enough on there, there's the perfect balance of meat and dough, this is good
my initial bite didn't get any of that parsley in there so let's go for another
one
that fresh parsley imparts such a beautiful vibrant flavour and then that tiny squeeze
and hint of lemon juice adds an acidity to that bite
oh man this is so good
that was a great start to this food hunting day, don't let anyone tell you
that dish is like a pizza, it's nothing like a pizza, stands out on its own for
its own reasons and it is incredible we're on to find some more food now
our next stop is taking us down near the coast and how beautiful is this city? So
I'm going to show you some shots of this beautiful coastline before we start
eating again
I'm really excited about our next stop we're gonna be eating a thing
called an İskender kebab now kebab is like a common term for meat
that's fashioned onto a skewer and then grilled and this kebab is made up of a
plate of meat with tomato sauce, creamy yogurt and brown butter it looks insane
and the restaurant which is just over there is owned and operated by the
family of the man who created this kebab way back in 1867
so there's a real history with this restaurant, let's go and eat
wow, thank you very much
our kebab has just been delivered and this is unreal and it's pretty different to
what you expect when you get some form of kebab here in Turkey so
normally there's bread around the outside but in this case there's a
little bit of bread hiding underneath but it's all about the meat so all of
this lamb is just piled on top and then to go with it a ginormous dollop of
yogurt, some grilled chilli peppers and then some fresh tomato and on top of
that meat is browned butter so that's gonna just make it super rich and creamy
so they bring over the big pan of brown butter and pour it all over the
meat and you can actually see the tomato sauce that Sheena mentioned as well so
you can see the slight orange colour in there and then look at the butter just
glistening on that meat so let's just grab some meat, get some bread from under
there as well a whole lot of yogurt and get right on in
oh wow wow that is good hmmmmm wow
the meat is so soft it's not been charred right down so it doesn't have
like the crunchy bits you often get with this type of meat, it's just really soft
it's quite salty it's got a beautiful saltiness to it and that butter it just sort of
coats your mouth I was expecting maybe it to be a little
bit buttery a little bit oily on the top of my mouth not at all, it's super rich and
juicy I'm gonna get some more but this time I just want a couple of bits of
meat so I don't want the yogurt or the bread, the yogurt flavour was very strong
so the sourness of the yogurt I think overtook from the meat flavour a bit
oh yea
oh that is good hmmm
oh the butter flavour really really came home that time so it's got quite a
sweetness which I guess is coming from that tomato sauce oh this is really
good
I'm gonna make up a mouthful here with the flatbread the lamb and also
some chilli pepper and the bread has gone quite soft because of that tomato sauce
and the butter and then that yogurt in there
hmm that's really good, it's very rich from that butter, creamy from that yoghurt
but then you can really taste the flavour of the meat that's delicious
I'm also washing it down with a drink called
Şıra and it's a slightly fermented grape juice, sweetened grape
juice and this is sort of the traditional accompaniment
hmm cold, sweet, refreshing, a tiny little bit bubbly it's the perfect thing to go
with this
look how all that butter is just sitting
in the bottom of the plate now so I'm gonna grab some more meat and that really
soggy bread get it right through that butter, super oily
now I can really taste
the butter, in my first bites I could taste the butter but it wasn't a big
flavour that is a super bold flavour really rich and creamy and it's super
oily so there's oils from the meat the tomato sauce and from the butter so
you're getting this combination of different oiliness down there and it
works a treat, just hoeing into this plate is really really good
no day in Istanbul is complete without a ferry ride or two so now we're
catching the ferry from the Asian side back over to Europe we we're going
to continue our food hunt
we've made it back to the European side of Istanbul and next up we're gonna have
an absolute classic snack here in Turkey and that is Turkish Delight
now you will see this stuff piled up all over the city in the windows of shops
massive piles of colourful Turkish Delight but we're not going to one of those
places we're gonna go to this really traditional place here that's been
around since 1926, you won't see those vivid colours here from food colouring
it's all natural and this stuff is really really good let's go grab some
hello, how are you?
rose, pistachio and mint
thank you very much
we're loaded up with our bags of Turkish Delight, I wanted to stay in that
sweet shop forever it had such a beautiful old-world feel about it and
the staff were so friendly, they had these gorgeous huge candy jars filled with
sweets, tonnes of Turkish Delight and they even had big pots of homemade jam so you
can take your own jam jars from home and then get them to fill it up oh it was a
beautiful spot, we're now going to head off and find ourselves a Turkish coffee
to wash these babies down
it's a holiday here in Istanbul today so the coffee place we wanted to go to is
sadly shut it's known as one of the best places to get a Turkish coffee here in
Istanbul so that is why we wanted to go to that particular place so we've
scrapped the coffee idea, we're gonna do the next best thing here in Turkey and
that is tea they have these brilliant little street side cafes just little
mini cafes right on the footpath we're gonna grab a tea there
we've sat ourselves down at a small table at this tea cafe ordered up a
couple of glasses of Turkish tea and we are going to crack into this Turkish
Delight so Turkish Delight in Turkish is
lokum and if you've never had lokum before it's like a jelly-like sweet
almost like a gummy and it's made out of corn flour and water and sugar and then
they dust it with icing sugar once it's cooled and we ordered rose,
pistachio and mint flavour and we've had this before and we know that it is
amazing so I've got the pistachio here
it's beautiful, the flavour of the pistachios is really strong so a really
earthy flavour and the pistachios still have a bit of crunch they're not soft
they're quite crunchy and then the texture of the Turkish Delight or the
lokum is really sort of a little bit sticky, tiny bit chewy but very soft
and it's very sweet so this tea is gonna go perfectly with
it so they like to serve their tea with sugar, the Turks so I'm gonna pop the
two sugars in because I find that the tea can be quite strong and quite bitter
so we'll just give that a bit of a stir
all right let's have a sip of this cay
or tea
oh yeah that's really good so it's very strong quite bitter and I don't know if
Thomas mentioned but drinking tea is like a national pastime in Turkey people stop
and have a cup of tea like all throughout the day right from the early
morning right through to the evening late late at night and both of us have
really gotten into this pastime it's really nice to just take a moment out of
your day, sit, watch the world go by, sip your tea and this is a perfect combination
you've got the really sweet Turkish Delight and then the bitter tea to wash it down
I am
gonna grab a piece of mint Turkish Delight and this is my favorite flavour
for Turkish Delight by a long way I've got great memories of Turkish Delight as a
young boy eating it because it was a bit of a treat in my family both my parents
and my auntie and uncle came to Istanbul in the 70s they got a taste for Turkish
Delight back then so it was always the treat thing we had on our family's dinner
table for after a meal let's try this mint
ohhhhh
Oh that's delicious, the flavour just builds, you know when it's natural mint flavour because it
comes on slowly and like Sheena said we've had this Turkish Delight before
and I know that this mint flavour just evolves and evolves and even ten
minutes later it's still in your mouth incredibly strong that's a beautiful
beautiful flavour and I love that it's not bright green like I talked about
before when you see Turkish Delight in the shops on the main road the tourist strips
bright greens, bright pinks for the rose one these are not like that at all
they're just very subtly coloured, little flecks of mint in the mint one and the
taste is absolutely incredible so if you're here in Istanbul you've
definitely got to have a taste of Turkish Delight and make sure you get it
from this place or one of the few places like this one
but this place does an incredible version of Turkish Delight they're really
good
another great day of eating here in Istanbul and we're finishing with one of
the Turkish Delight places behind us that I've talked about a couple of times
so the colourful stuff piled up on the touristy strips so don't go to one of
those go to where we did, this place is incredible for food though
thank you so much for watching we really hope you enjoyed this one
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