Turkish Meal Mondays: Peynir Salata

Turkish Meal Mondays are a glimpse into the food we enjoy here in Turkey, accompanied by a recipe.  Mondays are one of our favourite days, because they're Market Days. Ever since our first market day a year and a half ago we have only missed two, due to torrential down pour a few weeks ago.  Our trips to the market will continue to focus on selecting fresh and delish produce to use in our weekly Turkish recipes.  Get ready... This blog just became appealing to foodies. 

Our school makes lunches for us every day.  They're usually pretty good, and usually pretty Turkish,  (though sometimes we get pizza and bitterballen).  Most of the restaurants in our area cater to tourists, either serving sad versions of food from other countries, or serving the fanciest Turkish foods.  Sometimes I think the school food we eat is the closest we get to home cookin'. 

One of my favourite dishes is this cheese salad.  They use a salty white cheese, like feta, and cut it into cubes.  When I say cheese salad I don't mean cheese in the salad.  I mean CHEESE.  This cheese is the base of the salad.  There are veggies too, but they play the support role. 

This is the cheese we bought.  "Beyaz Peynir" just means white cheese.  Spoiler alert:  This isn't the right cheese.

Along with the cheese, I added cucumber, tomato, sweet red peppers, and a red onion.  I ended up not adding the avacado because it was too soft.  I diced all of the veggies (after peeling the cucumbers in stripes), and tossed them into a bowl.  I also added corn.  (I used frozen corn, because I don't like fresh Turkish corn, but I bet fresh California corn would be AMAZING.)

The salad they serve at work has fresh mint, but ours was older than I thought it was, so I used dry mint. 

I also added some pepper, lemon pepper, lemon juice, and sumac.  And olive oil. Don't add salt, because feta is so salty to start with.

I used the entire container of cheese (because it's the star), and cut it all into cubes. (.5 inch cubes?).   

Here's why this is the wrong cheese.  The cheese in the salad stayed in its cubes.  But this cheese crumbled and smooshed.  It was still delightful, but it didn't have the same look. 

I talked to one of the cheese guys at the farmers market yesterday, and got some new cheese.  I asked for "az sert, küp peynir salata" which translates to "a little hard, cube cheese salad,"  (I know, my Turkish is remarkable).  He seemed to know what I wanted.  So we'll add some more pictures if it turns out.

Afiyet Olsun!