Bulgur Gets Its Own Food Festival

This is sushi, right? Yes, but with a difference. It's made with bulgur wheat instead of rice.

You've eaten rice in a pineapple in Thai restaurants. Here the pineapple is stuffed with bulgur.

I ate as much of this as I could. It's a sort of cheesecake made with bulgur. Delicious.

Bulgur risotto, bulgur ravioli (above), bulgur-stuffed artichokes--almost anything you could think of turned up at the recent Bulgur Festival in Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey. 

Even desserts such as the syrup-soaked shredded pastry kadayif (above) were tweaked to include bulgur.

Why a bulgur festival in this city? Because Gaziantep produces 70% of Turkey's annual output of more than 1 million tons of bulgur, serving as a processing center for wheat grown in the region.

If you're new to bulgur, it's wheat that has been cleaned, boiled and dried, then ground into a variety of sizes. 

The weekend festival promoted bulgur in the best possible way--by letting people eat as much as they could. The opening display of 101 bulgur dishes (above) was quickly demolished when ceremonies and speeches were over.  

Booths dispensed Turkish dishes such as pilaf and the bulgur salad kesir. One offered freshly boiled wheat called hedik, sweetened and combined with crushed pistachios. 

Cig kofte (above) is Turkey's version of steak tartare, made with raw lamb kneaded with bulgur and red peppers fermented until black. Eating it wrapped in a lettuce leaf is Prof. Dr. Mustafa Bayram of the Food Engineering Department of the University of Gaziantep. He's a leading authority on bulgur. 

Bulgur manufacturers were on hand to talk about their products and offer generous tastes. I saw long yellow grains of bulgur that could be cooked like rice. And bulgur combined with roasted vermicelli so that cooks preparing bulgur this way don't have to roast the vermicelli separately. 

Panels focused on how good bulgur is for you and how easy it is to cook--the grains have been boiled already, so they cook quickly. And how seamlessly bulgur blends into almost any cuisine. 

To prove this, chefs from international restaurants in Istanbul showed off their innovations. Olivier Piste, executive chef of the Shangri-La Hotel (above), made a bulgur salad with fried squid.

Giovanni Terricciato of the Movenpick Hotel (above) made risotto with eggplant, tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, sprinkling it with pistachios--Gaziantep is also the pistachio capital of Turkey.

You'll never find chicken biryani with bulgur in India. Nevertheless, Chef Imran Rana of Musafir Indian Restaurant (above) gave it a try, and festival goers clustered around as he showed how to cook it in authentic dum style, layered in a pot sealed with dough (above). 

Korean bibim bap with bulgur (above) was a great success.

I liked the way TV chef Yunus Emre Akkor, an authority on Ottoman cuisine (above), cooked bulgur with clarified butter and turmeric, then suggested using it as the base for sautéed lamb. Ottoman gourmands prized yellow foods, he said. If they didn't have saffron, they used turmeric. 

A fierce downpour with thunder and lightning sent people scurrying to tents and umbrellas. Others jammed into an open-air pavilion where food was handed to you as soon as you sat down.

Some escaped the rain in the restaurant Senfoni. My lunch plate there (above) included the bulgur salad kesir, a yogurt, eggplant and meat salad, another salad with tomatoes and walnuts and flat bread.

But mostly, the weather was good, and people enjoyed picnicking on the grounds. The camel behind this group is covered with bulgur. 

Outside in city markets bulgur is always on display because it is heavily used in Turkish cuisine. 

At a gala dinner (above), every course included bulgur. Sourdough bread was made with bulgur flour. Starters included diced beets in yogurt with bulgur. A creamy mixture blended two types of yogurt with bulgur, caramelized onions and spicy oil. Kesir was dressed up with squid ink, shrimp and pistachios.

A ring of golden turmeric yogurt surrounded beef cheek stew with bulgur "meatballs," spicy tomato sauce and thyme salad (above). 

Lamb shank (above) came with firik and bulgur risotto and bulgur crisps. Firik (freekeh) is freshly harvested wheat that is parched, not boiled like bulgur.

Dessert (above) was a bulgur tour de force. Even the cake was made with bulgur. Bulgur ice cream on a bed of caramelized puffed bulgur was fabulous.

What impressed me was that all the dishes at the festival "worked." Nothing seemed odd or forced. Bulgur was created thousands of years ago, the first processed food made from wheat. Thank heavens that happened. The first dish I cooked when I got home was bulgur pilaf. Even if you cook only that, you will have a great dish in your repertoire. 

Photos by Barbara Hansen