19 - A symbol of Turkey: Çay

Çay (pronounced chai) is Turkish for Tea.

It is an omnipresent, fundamental aspect of Turkish culture. Turks drink çay all the time: with meals, after meals and in between meals. I wouldn't be surprised if it was proven that Turks drink more çay than they do water.

In many restaurants çay is complimentary, offered after you've finished a meal. Çay is an essential part of being a gracious host. Whenever you enter a Turk's home, the first thing they do is bring out çay. When shopping in Turkey, many shop owners will invite you to sit down to drink çay and chat. I've spent over an hour in one store going through many glasses of çay with the owner.

Turkish çay is a "black tea" or oxidized green tea. It's fairly close to a loose leaf "english breakfast", but not exactly. Turkey grows most of the çay it consumes in the north eastern area of Rize (which I had the pleasure of driving through a few weeks ago - scroll down to the Black Sea post).

Proper çay is prepared by first boiling water in a large metal teapot, then pouring some of the boiling water into a smaller teapot, which contains the looseleaf çay and sits atop the larger pot. After filling the smaller pot with boiling water, you let it sit for 15 minutes until the tea has steeped long enough to settle on the bottom of the pot.

Using both pots, you pour the çay into your tulip shaped glasses (see above). If you want your çay koyu (dark) you add about 50-70% çay and top off the rest with hot water from the big pot. If you prefer your çay açik (light), use more like 30-40% çay.

Turks have an insane sweet tooth. They usually drink their çay with 2-3 cubes of sugar (really really sweet considering the size of the glasses). Personally, I prefer my çay "çok koyu" (really dark) with only one cube of sugar. I guess I'm not very Turkish when it comes to çay.

Çay is quite flavorful, and an excellent complement to about anything you may be doing in Turkey (playing tavla, smoking nargile, socializing, enjoying a view, waiting for a bus...). It's definitely one of the top 10 things I will miss most.