Çeşme Kumrusu, the OG of Turkish Street Eats

Çeşme is a city on the far western coast of Anatolia, the Asian portion of Turkey, less than 20 kilometers from the Greek island of Chios. It is according to my Turkish friend Deniz a vacation spot, where Turkish families might keep a summer home and go windsurfing off the coast; or spend sunny days on the beach, enjoying the warm waters of the Aegean Sea; explore the castle, the traditional Turkish architecture, or the ruins of the nearby Ionian city Erythrai. And whatever else someone might do while in Çeşme, they are almost certain to try the local sandwich, an OG of Turkish street food, Çeşme Kumrusu, often simply called the Kumru.

I’m told you can find Kumru in many casual Istanbul eateries these days. But it’s still associated with Çeşme. Three years ago another friend, Matt, visited Turkey with Deniz and sent me these photos of a Kumru that they ordered there.

Some sandwiches are named after a person who enjoys them; some are named after a key ingredient; some have seemingly random or nonsensical names. Many sandwiches though are named after the special bread in which they are served, and Kumru is one of the latter. The bread, kumru, is a “smushed oval” according to Deniz–the word is a name for the Eurasian collared dove and the shape is said to be reminiscent of that bird, narrow at either end and chubby in the middle. It is a hand-sized roll of sesame seed coated sourdough cultured from dried chickpeas–the bread is made with wheat flour, not chickpea flour, but the leavening yeast is cultured from chickpeas which are cracked, mixed with flour, salt, and boiling water, and then allowed to sit and naturally ferment for 16 or more hours until the mixture builds up a thick layer of foam.

The foam is skimmed and strained and must be used immediately.

This starter is mixed with an equal volume of flour to create a preferment, which must also be allowed to ferment for quite a long time before is is mixed with water, salt, sugar, olive oil, and more flour. After this mixture kneaded into a supple and only slightly sticky dough it must, again, be allowed to ferment and rise before finally being shaped into flattened ovals with narrow, pointed ends and coated with sesame seeds. It took me a couple tries to make the bread and even so, I don’t believe I got it quite right. It should be softer than it is, and the shape isn’t quite right either–it sure doesn’t look like a dove to me, collared or otherwise. But what I made is among the more interesting-flavored breads I’ve ever tasted.

The smell of the dough was more sour than any I’ve encountered, a deep funk not unlike what you’d encounter in some Belgian beers, more of a lactic sourness perhaps than the hot horseblanket of a brettanomyces–I’m not sure exactly what wild yeasts or bacteria are cultivated from the dried chickpeas but they make the dough a real feast for the senses and result in a very flavorful finished bread.

In it’s simplest form, a kumru includes the special bread roll, split in half, buttered and grilled, and thickish slices of a Turkish cheese called Kaşar, a medium-hard pale yellow cheese much like Greek Kasseri or Kashkaval from the Balkans, a cheese that should be able, to some extent, to retain its shape under heat. However, most places will also add some form of sausage, usually Turkish Suçuk, though salami or even hot dogs may also be used. The sandwich is also generally served with tomatoes, sometimes pickled gherkins or the pickled Turkish chilies called Turşu, and dressed with mayonnaise and ketchup.

Sometimes the sausages may be cut into long narrow strips; other times into medium-thick slices like I’ve done here. They’re cooked on a griddle long enough to heat through and brown a bit, and the cheese added atop the sausage grease to prevent it from sticking. The cheese should most likely be sliced thicker than the 1/8″ or so I did here–Kaşar should not melt quite this easily, and a thicker slice may help prevent that.

It only took a couple of minutes for the suçuk to brown up and the kaşar to melt–unexpectedly–and then I was ready to assemble. Sausage slices, then cheese, tomato, pickle slices, chili peppers, and drizzles of mayonnaise and ketchup before replacing the top half of the kumru roll.

It’s a sloppy looking sandwich, in part because of the rigidity of my homemade kumru roll, which as I mentioned should have been softer, compressing itself around the sandwich fillings to contain them. And of course the cheese was meltier than expected, spilling out the sides of the roll in a way that bordered on pornographic.

This is a good combination of flavors as well. I don’t often give sausages that are made without pork fat their due–it is, along with salt and garlic, one of the trifecta of ingredients that I’ve often asserted are required to make a perfect sausage. But suçuk is better than I expect it to be, not aggressive in flavor but full with salt and garlic, black pepper and cumin, studded with bits of fat that render as it cooks and keep the meat moist. This layer of hot sausage is blanketed in mild, buttery kaşar cheese enhanced by the sweet, tart, juicy and savory tomato. The Turkish pickles are closer to a German gherkin in flavor than to many Mediterranean pickled cucumbers, sweetish with just a hint of spice, but the Turşu make up for the lack of aggression with a pungent brininess and a heat level a bit spicier than, say, a jalapeno. The rendered fat from the suçuk soaks into the highly flavorful bread, keeping the overall impression from being too dry.

Though a softer bread would also do a lot to make a sandwich edible in that way. I like the flavors of Kumru quite a bit, and I wish I had more time to perfect the bread. Time may be an illusion (and lunchtime, doubly so) but June is almost up and we have yet one more sandwich to cover after the Kumru before July, so we’ll turn our efforts to that final sandwich in the closing days of the month. As ever, I hope one day to try this sandwich in its native environs–Çeşme looks like a paradise, and Turkey in general has a lot to offer. For now though, I must count myself satisfied with the effort I’ve been able to give this sandwich so far. Thanks for reading, and look for one more post from us by the end of the day on Sunday!