Powdered orchid and water-buffalo cream: Turks delight in Ottoman dishes
Authentic Turkish dishes, some going back to Ottoman times, remain popular with locals, but are hard to reproduce abroad.
In this age of globalization, most of the local tastes can be found in other parts of the world. But some local delights remain outside that trend — either because the basic ingredients are only available locally or the traditional and often laborious preparations are too much of a burden in modern-day life.
Three authentic dishes are among those mainly sold in Turkey. The first is the Turkish dish tavuk gogsu, which literally means chicken breast, a remnant from the Ottoman palace whose creative chefs regularly used meat and sugar in their dishes, just like their European counterparts at the time.
Tavuk gogsu is a dessert even the most courageous home cooks would not attempt making as only few possess the skill to beat the chicken into silk threads so that the meaty flavor is almost unnoticeable. Almost everyone in Turkey purchases the dessert from pastry shops, and only few establishments have perfected the proper consistency of the dish. The most prominent pastry shops, many located in Istanbul, that make tavuk gogsu use the Ottoman recipes. Konyali Restaurant, founded in 1897 and now a chain, used to be one of the few places that offered the dessert on its menu.
Mehmet Yalcinkaya, the executive chef of Wyndham Grand Istanbul Kalamis Marina Hotel, told Al-Monitor, “Mass production in some instances could lead to quick but unimpressive results of tavuk gogsu. The original recipe used wheat milk, but today rice flour is common and some even use cheaper options like starch. The taste suffers significantly."
