Ottoman-style Turkish asparagus salad: blanched green spears dressed with lemon, olive oil, garlic and sumac, served at room temperature as a meze in the tradition that has run unbroken from the ancient Greek and Roman vegetable garden through Byzantine Anatolia to the Ottoman table and the modern Turkish mezze spread
Origin: Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
From the journey of Asparagus.
The Turkish name for asparagus is kuşkonmaz ('bird cannot perch' or 'bird cannot land'), a vivid name that refers not to the edible spear but to the feathery, tree-like fronds that emerge when an asparagus plant is left uncut through summer: dense enough that a bird landing on the stem would find no purchase. This evocative naming is one of the most poetic botanical descriptions in any language. Asparagus has grown across Anatolia since antiquity: the region was part of the Roman Empire, then the Byzantine Empire, both of which cultivated it, and the Ottoman palace kitchen at Topkapı Sarayı absorbed the Byzantine vegetable garden tradition. The Ottoman court at its height (16th–17th centuries) employed hundreds of specialist cooks whose techniques synthesised Byzantine, Persian, and Arab culinary traditions. In that kitchen, asparagus was treated in the manner that the entire Eastern Mediterranean had used for spring vegetables since before the Romans: briefly blanched, dressed generously with olive oil, lemon, and garlic, served at room temperature. The addition of sumac, the tart, burgundy-coloured ground berry that is one of the defining souring agents of Ottoman and Levantine cooking, gives the Turkish preparation its particular identity, lifting the dish from a dressed vegetable into something unmistakably of the Bosphorus table. Kuşkonmaz salatası remains a standard spring meze at Turkish meyhane and home tables, made when the thin green asparagus of the Aegean coast and the Dardanelles region comes into season.
Sumac is the defining ingredient that makes this preparation distinctively Turkish rather than generically Mediterranean. The ground dried sumac berry has a bright, fruity tartness (drier and more complex than lemon) that is characteristic of Ottoman and Levantine cooking. It is available at Turkish and Middle Eastern grocery stores and online. Without sumac, this is still a delicious dressed asparagus, but it loses the specific Turkish identity. The optional beyaz peynir (Turkish white cheese, similar to but creamier than Greek feta) adds a salty, milky counterpoint to the acid of the dressing.
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