Yes you may well laugh at the plethora of evening gowns and wedding dresses in shop windows which are clearly designed to turn any self-respecting Turkish girl into Sydney’s next best transvestite (Miranda Hart and that purple dress, we’re looking at you).
Credit where credit is due, based on the one example of an actual wedding we’ve spotted, it’s not always about hot air and synthetic material:
Day zero
As far as meringues go, this one’s not too bad. The wedding party was spotted wandering around the corner at the Mevlana Museum in Konya. Incidentally, they’re having their piccies taken outside the huge-mongous mosque that KV casually wandered into, under the (remarkably shortlived) mistaken belief it was where the Whirling Dervishes were going to perform. Yes, I was amused, from a distance.
The Mevlana is meant to be the second best museum in all of Turkey, which is an excellent piece of trivia to have, had we known it some time earlier than 10pm the night before we flew out. Lucky for us, instead of a day at the museum, we took the Lonley Planet’s suggestion to visit Konya’s tile museum, which it promised us was simply fabluous.
Oh yes, it was a joy. And by joy I mean Lonley Planet really needs to reassess its markers of what constitutes exciting.
This, on the other hand was exciting.
150g of a special breed of lamb – judging by the landscape around Konya, it would be lamb that was good at living either in old Hitite rock caves, or somewhere on the barren, treeless, flat, windy and cold plains between Cappadocia and Konya. I digress.
It’s lamb, done in what’s called a Tandir kebab. Big piece of wholemeal bread, and meat. They bring a whole onion first, to be used as a palette cleanser. Bite of the onion, mouthful of kebab. The Turks take it so seriously that I saw one man in his mid forties, obviously treating his mother to an afternoon kebab, pick up the plate of onion, sniff it, then send it back to the kitchen.
What I would like to know is, how does anyone sniff an onion without (a) bringing tears to their eyes, (b) losing sight of what’s really important in life or (c) booking an appointment to get their OCD-meds upgraded. Honestly, an onion is an onion. Or so i thought.
This tandir place also had two jugs of liquid, one clearly identified via the highly technical sniff test (yes i sniff liquid but not onions) as cider vinegar. The other, KV rightly pointed out, was remarkably similar to pineapple cordial, but with a touch more of the ol’ dishwashing liquid about it. If anyone can identify what said yellow liquid is used for, speak up.
And while we’re on the subject of food – just in case you thought the sausages from a few days ago were an anomaly, look (look!) what I found when we got lost driving in the anatolyan back blocks… you’ll have to peer closely I was too scared to get any nearer the house, they had geese. As an aside, these sausages are excellent, tastes like they’ve been laced with cumin and maybe a bit of paprika, they’re softer than chorizo and nowhere near as salty, which is a blessing.
Oh and you can accidentally drop pieces of them in your satchel while you’re having lunch and pull them out two days later still fully formed. Nice work turkey.
Tra daaaaaa. More sausages.
SandPits + Sausages 