Delicious food: A common legacy for Greeks and Turks

Turkish and Greek cuisine share many more similar traits than just similar names; in fact, the two cuisines are remarkably similar. Whether it's dolma in Turkish or dolmades in Greek, both cuisines share a fascinating journey into the senses with a variety of scrumptious food. Elements of both cuisines are a mixture of Western and Eastern food.

"The similarities the two cuisines share are a long story," said Elias Mamalakis, a well-known Greek TV chef and the author of several cookbooks, a story "which cannot be covered in just one chat."        

"Greek food has been influenced by İzmir, Istanbul and the surrounding areas coming to what it is now, a mixture of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans," he said. "However, every recipe, like every song or dance, travels from place to place, gets molded and takes on a different character. In Greece, some dishes share the same names as the Turkish ones, and have kept their original names up to now. The differences are small and simple, and they just take a bit of a different character, but there is no secret if you think about it, each place adds its own flavor to the dish."

The dish sarma or yaprak sarması (also known as yalancı dolma) in Turkish cuisine is called Ntolmadakia yalantzi in Greek, but they are almost exactly the same, only differing in the sauce that is used.

This dish dates from Ottoman times, where the word dolma comes from the Turkish verb doldurmak, meaning to fill.

"When we think of the similarities in the two cuisines, the first things that come to mind are dolma and imam [bayıldı]," Sofia Stavrou said. 

Stavrou, born and raised in Istanbul, has a number of ties with her old motherland, as she calls it. Cooking and food is one of them, and she speaks...