Food for Thought:
Çilbir
  (Poached Eggs in Yogurt)

Those of you who have been in Chicago Area Mensa for a while may remember the column “Cheap Eats” that I wrote for ChiMe for nearly thirteen years. (If you're interested, you can still see it on the CAM website, thanks to the remarkable efforts of web-mistress Barb Pohl.

But that ended in May 2009. My mom needed care and then passed away (Dec. 2021), so too much to do to keep the column going. Plus, at the same time, my career was moving away from textbooks and in the direction of writing about food, starting with Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland, published by the University of IL Press in 2015, and travel has morphed from “ends of the earth” adventures to exploring the Midwest in depth (with the book Destination Heartland the result, also from the U of IL, and the manuscript for a second book on Midwest travel was just turned in). I've expanded my speaking career, which has included 10 years with the Illinois Humanities Council “Road Scholar” program. So essentially a rebuild of life, especially after losing mom.

However, I'm still in Chicago Area Mensa and I'm still interested in history, travel, and food. So I thought I'd see if I can fit writing for ChiMe into my schedule again. I did think I should change the title, however, just because it is sixteen years later, and things have changed. Besides, I don't always want it to be cheap. But I'm still thinking about food.

I thought I'd restart with something simple but tasty that I brought home from one of my overseas jaunts: çilbir. This dish is from Turkey, and it is one of the easier dishes I fell in love with there—which means I make it regularly.

In Turkey, a buffet of salty cheese, hard-boiled eggs, olives, peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, and fresh bread is common in hotels where breakfast is included. However, if a cooked breakfast is offered, çilbir, a combination of eggs and yogurt, may appear. (Note: unlike the ç in French, the ç in Turkish is pronounced “ch.”)

You might wonder why this uses Greek yogurt if it's a Turkish dish, but remember that Turkey, while it was still the center of the Ottoman Empire, pretty much owned Greece. So a few centuries of overlap means that both countries today have things that started in the other country. (For example, baklava likely developed in the Ottoman Empire, so both Turkey and Greece have this pastry. Likewise, yogurt.)

As is true of many traditional recipes, there are multiple variations. Eggs can be hard boiled, scrambled, or poached. I've eaten multiple versions, but when I'm making this at home, I poach the eggs. Also, if you find you don't have a fresh clove of garlic, the taste difference is hardly noticeable if you use garlic powder. And, of course, you can substitute olive oil for butter. If desired, any of the items mentioned above—bread, olives, tomatoes, etc.—can be served with this, to make it more substantial.