Name: Çilbir review by diloyloyy at Frenchie Restaurant, Haarlem, Netherlands
Item: Çilbir
Rating: 3
Author: diloyloyy

Çılbır is the Turkish dish of poached eggs on garlic yoghurt, finished with butter that has been heated with Aleppo or red pepper flakes until it foams and turns red, and eaten with bread for breakfast or as a light supper. It has a documented Ottoman past: the word appears in fifteenth-century palace records as a general term for eggs cooked in water, and the yoghurt version is the one that survived into the Republic and onto the menus of Istanbul's breakfast places, where it now sits alongside menemen and sucuklu yumurta. Outside Turkey it has had a second life since the 2010s as "Turkish eggs" on brunch menus from London to Melbourne, often with the yoghurt whipped with feta and dill, which is a different and softer dish. The original is three things on a plate, and each has to be right.

The yoghurt is thick, full-fat and at room temperature, beaten smooth with a crushed garlic clove and salt; cold yoghurt straight from the fridge sets the butter and makes the plate taste of nothing. The eggs are poached in barely simmering water with a splash of vinegar for about three minutes, so the white is fully set and the yolk runs, then drained on a cloth. The butter is the step that goes wrong: it is melted in a small pan, the pepper flakes are added, and it is heated only until it foams and the flakes colour the fat, which takes seconds; longer and the pepper turns bitter and the butter browns. Some cooks use pul biber, some Urfa pepper for a darker, smokier note, and a few add a little dried mint. The eggs go on the yoghurt, the red butter is spooned over so it pools in the yoghurt and runs down the sides, and the plate goes out with warm bread.

Cut the egg first: the yolk should flood into the yoghurt and the white should be fully opaque with no raw jelly. The yoghurt should be thick enough to hold a spoon mark, mildly sour, with the garlic present but not raw-hot, and the butter should be bright red, lightly spiced and fragrant, not brown or acrid. Together on the bread the three should taste richer than any of them alone. Mark down a cold plate, hard yolks, watery or thin yoghurt that has been loosened with water or milk, butter that has been overheated to a brown sludge, pepper flakes that are scorched, and the brunch versions where feta, dill, chilli oil or dukkah are piled on to the point where the egg and yoghurt are lost. One egg is a snack; two is the dish.

Çilbir

Netherlands

Frenchie Restaurant

Eggs were cold, the yogurt sauce at the bottom was too liquified for cilbir. Lettuces are redundant for this dish. 

Çilbir review by diloyloyy at Frenchie Restaurant, Haarlem, Netherlands

Çilbir

Frenchie Restaurant

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