Keşkek

A village feast 

This is a guest post written by Josh, a travel blogger and photographer at The Art of Wayfaring, a blog and guide for all things Turkey!

So I don’t normally blog about food but this particular dish that I’m writing about is as much about experience and culture as it is about the food itself. This dish is called Keşkek and it’s so tied to culture and tradition that it’s been inducted into the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. But we’ll get to that later!

I went with my family to visit some friends in a village in the province of Balıkesir (which means Fish Prisoner by the way) late in the fall just as the oak-covered hills had turned to gold and the village chimneys started to smoke. While we were there our friends decided that we needed to try Keşkek in a neighboring village that was particularly famous for making it well and often.

Arriving in the town of Gündoğan we stopped in front of a house with a couple long rows of tables set in front on the street while a large crowd of women were milling in and out. It turns out it was actually the one-year memorial of the passing of a local that was being commemorated with a feast and we were crashing it! That being said showing up to small town gatherings like funerals or weddings just for free food is totally normal and we were made perfectly welcome.

The moment the food started coming out the chaos began. Nearly all the village women (around 400 apparently) had arrived for the feast, which had been announced over the loudspeakers on the minarets and, began passing out plates, cutlery, and buckets of food. Everyone had one shallow bowl that would be refilled with the next course as the first was finished. Thankfully I had someone there to warn me to only take a little of each as there were many courses to come, all of them incredibly filling!

The first course was a milk-based soup with rice in it, which was followed by a dish of white beans in a tomato sauce. Then there was a pasta in a yogurt sauce, followed by the main dish of Keşkek topped with chickpeas in a tomato sauce. (pictures posted below)

If I’m to be totally honest I doubt Keşkek would have ever become famous if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so deeply tied to elements of Turkish and Central Asian Culture. The food itself is a fairly bland mash made of wheat boiled in bullion with some onion and a small amount of spices. It’s not that it’s bad but it’s not exactly something that you’d ever think of going to a restaurant to order.

As soon as we finished, I was pulled out to the back of the house so they could show me exactly what Keşkek is and how it’s made.

Behind the house, in the midst of the sounds of cooking, cleaning, yelling, and laughing they explained the long arduous process required to make Keşkek the traditional way. 

The first necessity is an occasion. Keşkek is a food associated with ceremony and is most often made for weddings, circumcisions, or funerals. The process begins with washing the wheat grain in water while it’s prayed over. Then the grain is poured into a large stone basin where its beaten with long wooden mallets until its fine. While this is going on music is played and a crowd often gathers to watch or take turns with the heavy mallets.

As shown in the picture here, the crushed wheat is then poured into a large kazan, a type of massive, wide-bottomed copper pot, where its cooked over a fire with meat (usually sheep, I’m told, as a cow would be too much meat even for 400 people) bullion, and onions. As it cooks the young men of the village mash the grains against the side and bottom of the kazan with long wooden paddles until the Keşkek becomes thick and sticky. This also explains why all the normally flat-bottomed kazan pots had become so rounded!

With such incredible quantities of food being made many people made sure to bring their own containers to take home some of the leftovers.

While Keşkek is okay as a food, it’s amazing as an experience. With so much religious and cultural meaning tied to it, it’s no wonder Keşkek is on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List!

This is a guest post written by Josh, a travel blogger and photographer at The Art of Wayfaring, a blog and guide for all things Turkey!

Below is a picture of the milk and rice soup being served

Second course served was white beans in tomato sauce

Third course served was pasta in a yogurt sauce. Below is a picture of the women preparing this dish.

Next the main dish of Keşkek was served, topped with chickpeas in a tomato sauce

Below is a picture of the Keşkek being prepared in the large kazan pots

Can you imagine the large amount of dishes needing to be washed after a feast like this?