Yesterday evening was a big day in every bachelor's life: the first time scrambled eggs (washed down with exactly one half-glass too much wine) is made for dinner in a new apartment. In my previous life, this would have been tarted up with bacon or, ideally, pancetta. However, lacking access to the Ankara sausage underworld at present, I substituted sucuk.
Now, sucuk and I have a past: it is one of the vocabulary words listed in the very first chapter of Teach Yourself Turkish. Devotees will recall that this is the book that told me that public displays of affection were frowned upon in Turkey, a piece of ethnographic observation I find puzzling. At the time, I thought this was hilarious: an indication of how stupid language-learning books are with which I regaled all of my friends. Similarly hilarious was "motorcycle," a word that I feel I've learned about fifteen times, including in Attic Greek. But then I went out for what was literally my second at-a-restaurant meal in Turkey, and there was sucuk. My mastery of the word proved useful.
Now, on a pide,* sucuk is a lovely thing. But in eggs? Even with pepper and much bachelor-cooking expertise, they tasted--very specifically--like the absence of bacon. Bacon's non-union Mexican equivalent. That thing you put in your food because you can't find bacon. So, I may be closer to chartering a submarine to order pork products than I thought.
*Turkish flatbread, usually covered with cheese and a topping--absolutely unlike pizza, which is to say mostly like it. Thrill to the exotic food landscape of Modern Turkey, where Corn Flakes also come in bags rather than boxes.
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