What Is Falafel and How Is It Made?

delicious Falafel

Falafel is one of those foods that people recognize immediately but often know very little about beyond the fact that it is crispy, round, and found at Mediterranean restaurants. You have probably eaten it at some point, maybe tucked into a wrap with tahini sauce, or served on a plate alongside hummus and warm pita.…

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The Most Underrated Turkish Dishes You Need to Try

vegetarian turkish cuisine- A turkish dish

Most people who have eaten at a Turkish restaurant have ordered the same things. Kebabs, hummus, warm pita, maybe a gyro or some doner. Those dishes are popular for a reason and deserve every bit of attention they get. But Turkish cuisine is one of the deepest and most varied food traditions in the world,…

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The Difference Between Doner and Shawarma

chicken doner salad

They look almost identical. A tall column of stacked meat rotating slowly on a vertical spit, getting shaved off in thin slices as the outer surface reaches the right temperature. The setup is the same. The visual is the same. And yet Doner and shawarma are not the same dish. If you have ever ordered…

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Mediterranean Diet: Myths vs. Facts

Mediterranean cuisine- Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet gets talked about constantly. Doctors recommend it. Nutrition researchers study it. Food writers praise it. And somehow, despite all that attention, a surprising number of myths have grown up around it that give people a distorted picture of what this way of eating actually involves. Some people think it is just Greek…

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Best Turkish Comfort Foods

iskender kebab in San francisco

Comfort food is a deeply personal thing. For some people it is a bowl of mac and cheese or a plate of fried chicken. For others it is whatever their grandmother made on cold evenings when the whole family gathered around a table without much reason except that food was ready and everyone was hungry.…

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What’s the Difference Between Pide and Pizza?

Pide in San Francisco

Flat dough topped with good things and baked in a hot oven. That description fits both pide and pizza, and it is also where the similarity ends. These two dishes come from different continents, different food cultures, and different centuries of culinary development. They solve the same basic human desire, something satisfying, portable, and shareable,…

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