Turks have a big diversity of vegetables and of course this reflects on the dishes. One very important detail about vegetable dishes is whether they have meat in them or not. If a dish is cooked without any kind of meat then it is called zeytin yağlı — meaning cooked with olive oil. These kind of vegetable dishes are mostly served cold. Here are three good examples of zeytin yağlı dishes:
-Yaprak Sarma — Wrapped vine leaves with a filling of rice, onion and spices like mint, currant, pepper and cinnamon.
Dolma — Vegetables either fresh or dried eggplants, peppers, tomatoes or zucchinis are stuffed with a mixture of rice and onion with various spices.
-Taze Fasulye — Green beans cooked with tomato and/or tomato paste and of course onion.
Since Turks love meat very much, almost all the zeytin yağlı dishes are cooked with meat, too. But that’s not it. There are many other delicious meat dishes to discover.
