Geren – A Yoghurt-Based Meze With A Taste Of The Sea

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This is an updated post from the original so that the recipe is easier to follow and the photos are improved. It’s also an update because we’ve never seen geren in the meze fridges of restaurants since the experience we had in Dalyan.

We can tell you, though, that that means a lot of people are missing out.

Follow our geren recipe and make your own at home. Hopefully, you’ll agree with us.

Geren – A Samphire Taste Of The Sea

Turkish cuisine is abundant with meze dishes and those with a yoghurt base are always popular.

Turks love to add various herbs, spices, salad stuffs and vegetables to yoghurt to make a meze dish and geren is no exception – it’s just that you never see it anywhere.

We discovered geren in Dalyan in a restaurant along the river.

We spotted it in the glass fridges straight away as we decided what to order; it jumped out at us because neither of us recognised it.

The waiter introduced it as geren; a yoghurt-based meze containing sea beans. ‘Sea beans’ is how deniz börülcesi is usually translated to English from the Turkish.

For all you English speakers out there, you’ll probably be more familiar with the word, samphire.

In most meze fridges around the Fethiye area of Turkey, you’re more likely to see deniz börülcesi dressed and marinated in finely chopped garlic, lemon and olive oil.

We’ve enjoyed it served in this way many times in the past in the Fethiye’s eateries.

But, when we ordered geren, we were immediate converts and decided to try to recreate the recipe at home.

We think we came pretty close to the meze we ate in Dalyan.

A Turkish Recipe For Geren: A Perfect Summer Meze

Samphire grows wild along shorelines and in mudflats and has a real salty tang to it.

Lots of people will forage for their own and, as it tastes of the sea, serve it as a side to fish dishes.

It can be eaten raw but it’s salty flavour is strong, so, for this recipe, we’ll be blanching it to calm the flavours and make them more subtle.

When samphire is in season it is widely available on Fethiye market and, of course, around the stalls of the fish market.

It’s sold in bunches for around 1 lira and is always wrapped in white paper around its base. Easily recognisable if you’re not sure what you’re looking for.

If you can’t buy it where you are and you live near the sea, you could always go down to the shore to pick some of your own.

Okay, let’s make geren…

Preparing Your Samphire

Before we start, just a note on preparing your samphire. We’re only looking for the crisp young shoots of this succulent.

In places, especially around the base and mid section, samphire can be woody and tough and those are the bits you definitely don’t want in your geren.

Depending on the age of the shoots you bought – or foraged for – you could be discarding quite a bit.

Don’t worry; this is normal. You can always throw them in a stock to add a salty flavour.

If you have chilli flakes, use these as they’ll begin to rehydrate in the oil and you’ll get lovely swirls of redness running through the yoghurt and oil.

The geren in the photo above was made the day before and you can see the hints of red infusing into the yoghurt.

So tasty!

Anyway, back to our geren recipe…

And that’s how we make geren. Serve your geren as a meze, along with other summer Turkish meze dishes such as Antep Ezmesi or our barbunya pilaki recipe.

(After doing a quick scan around the internet, it looks as though geren could just be a name for a local variation of deniz börülcesi, rather than the name of another meze dish in its own right.

If anyone knows anything more about this, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks!)

Don’t forget to check out our full recipe collection so you can make your own Turkish food at home.

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