Pepper paste
Ground chile or pepper, oil, and salt — the jar that stands in for a puree.
Turkish cuisine · Pantry
The Turkish pantry
Every mix, leaf, chile, fat, and spice Turkish cooking names in the International Cuisines series — the full shelf a home cook actually reaches for.
The Turkish shelf from the book: what the recipes assume, what the free pages smell like, and what belongs next to the hearths of this kitchen.
Back to Turkish cooking · Open Turkish cookware · The full pantry
Special mixes
Special mixes
Herbs
Herbs
Bay leaf
The leaf you never eat and always miss if it is gone: 29 kitchens in the series drop it into a pot and fish it out later.
Dill
The feathery green of pickles, yogurt, and fish — and, in this series, of 23 kitchens that refuse to treat it as only a Northern herb.
Grape leaf
The wrapper of a dolma: brined, tender, and the taste of a Levantine garden.
Mint
The cool leaf of tea trays, chutneys, and lamb: a plant that refuses to stay in one garden bed or one continent.
Oregano
The pizza-and-souvlaki herb that is stronger dried than fresh — a rare plant that prefers the jar.
Parsley
The green that finishes a pot in 27 of the 30 books: not a garnish, a last bright note.
Tea leaf
Loose leaves for a pot and for a marinade — jasmine, black, or the ceremony tray.
Thyme
The small leaf that survives a long simmer: bouquet garni's backbone and the scent of a French Sunday pot.
Spices
Spices
Allspice
One berry that borrowed cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg: jerk, kibbeh, and a European braise.
Black pepper
The berry that paid rents, launched fleets, and still sits beside salt on almost every ComidaTime table.
Cardamom
Green pods that smell of eucalyptus and citrus — coffee's companion in the east, pastry's secret in the north.
Cinnamon
Bark rolled into quills: the sweet wood that traveled with frankincense and still perfumes both pastry and stew.
Clove
A flower bud that once belonged to a handful of islands — and to every power that wanted those islands.
Coriander seed
The seed that is not the leaf: warm, lemony, and the other half of cumin in a hundred pastes.
Cumin
The seed that smells like a courtyard after rain — and the backbone of more ComidaTime recipes than almost any other spice.
Mastic
Chios tears — a pine-sweet resin for ice cream, bread, and a glass of water that turns cloudy.
Paprika
The red powder the 30 books reach for more than any other named spice after salt and pepper: color, sweetness, and a little smoke.
Salep
Orchid-tuber flour that thickens winter milk in Turkey and Greece.
Sesame seed
A tiny seed that toasts into a whole aroma: bread, bagels, goma, and the crunch on a Korean banchan.
Sumac
A sour red dust: lemon without juice, the finish on onions, grilled meat, and a fattoush that wants tartness.
Vanilla
The orchid pod that sweet kitchens treat as air — and savory Mexican moles still remember.
Chiles
Chiles
Oils and fats
Oils and fats
Butter
The fat that appears in every volume of the series: pale, sweet, and older than the word cuisine.
Cooking oil
The unnamed bottle the books reach for when the fat should stay quiet: fry, coat, and get out of the spice's way.
Cottonseed oil
An old American fry oil the books still name in a handful of recipes.
Olive oil
The green-gold fat of 29 kitchens in the series: a fruit juice that learned to travel, and then to stay.
Walnut oil
Pressed walnut: a French salad oil that goes rancid if you treat it like a fry fat.
Flavorings
Flavorings
Honey
The first sweetener: Ethiopian raw honey, Spanish orange-blossom, a glaze on chicken.
Pomegranate molasses
Cooked sour-sweet pomegranate: the Levantine glaze for onions, walnuts, and grilled meat.
Rose water
Distilled petals for baklava, sheer khurma, and a Moroccan milk pudding.
Tahini
Sesame turned into a sauce: hummus, a dressing, a drizzle, and the jar the books open in twenty kitchens.
Tomato paste
The spoon of cooked tomato that turns a thin pot into a sauce — 28 kitchens in the series keep a tin.
Tomato sauce
Cooked tomato, already a sauce, when the recipe does not want you to start from fruit.
Vinegar
The unnamed sour the books reach for when lemon is not on the board.
Aromatics
Aromatics
Garlic
The clove that starts more ComidaTime pots than any other aromatic — smashed, sliced, or left whole in oil.
Leek
The long allium of soups and tarts — wash the grit, keep the pale green.
Onion
The first cut in almost every ComidaTime pot: sweet when slow, sharp when raw, the aromatic the books assume you already have.
Scallion
Green onion: the fresh allium you slice at the end, or fry into a pancake.
Keep cooking
The Turkish pantry, pots, and table
The spices, mixes, and hearths that belong to Turkish cooking — then the people around them, and the kitchens still joining the table.
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