Andrew Lekashman
Manisa Kebabı Dürüm
Manisa kebabı sets thin charcoal-grilled köfte fingers over buttered pide with tomato sauce and yogurt; rolled in lavaş it is a dürüm, pinned to a 1927 family kebab house in Manisa.
Lüfer Ekmek
Bluefish sandwich; lüfer (larger bluefish) grilled.
Lavaş
Lavaş is the thin, near-translucent wheat sheet baked against a clay oven wall in seconds, the soft wrapper at the center of the Turkish dürüm, and named on the UNESCO heritage lists.
Lahmacunlu Pide
A pide raft wearing a lahmacun's coat: the thin spiced-meat film of the wafer laid on bread with real crumb and a raised rim, so the round folds around salad and eats as a meal, not a snack.
Lahmacun
Raw spiced-meat paste on a near-translucent dough round, fired together in a wood oven so the meat sets as a thin skin, then rolled by hand with parsley, onion, and lemon. Not "Turkish pizza."
Lahmacun Kaşarlı
Kaşarlı lahmacun lays melted kaşar over a thin southeastern round that Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa both claim and both protect by law, a cheese neither city's registered recipe will admit.
Lahmacun Dürüm
Lahmacun rolled up with fresh vegetables; the common way to eat it.
Lahmacun Acısız
Ordered without chili, lahmacun reads differently city to city. In garlic-led Gaziantep the paste already runs to garlic and tomato, so acısız is a small adjustment.
Lahmacun Acılı
What turns a lahmacun acılı is hot pepper kneaded raw into the lamb before the dough is touched, usually Urfa's dark sweated isot. Baked in, the burn arrives late, low, and stays.
Lahana Sarma
Stuffed cabbage rolls; eaten with bread.
Kuzu Pirzola Dürüm
Rib lamb chops grilled on the bone at the ocakbaşı, rested, then knifed off in charred chunks and rolled into warm lavaş. The bone is the thing the whole wrap is built around.
Kuzu Döner
Lamb döner; pure lamb, more traditional and expensive.
Kuru Fasulye Ekmek
Turkey's national bean stew: dry white beans simmered down in a tomato-red sauce, ladled over rice in the lokanta or pushed into a soft length of ekmek for a cheap hot lunch eaten on the move.
Kumru
The loaf is baked for nothing else: a soft, sesame-rolled, dove-shaped bread raised with chickpea leaven. İzmir later heated it and filled it with sucuk and melting kaşar.