CNN  — Turkey may be famous for its kebabs, but the popular dish is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Turkish cuisine. Covering over 300,000 square miles, the European destination’s rich and diverse food is largely thanks to its landscape. Plateaus and plains of fertile soil formed by now extinct volcanoes, snow-covered mountains and fast-flowing rivers lend themselves to a rich and varied table.

This includes olive oil based dishes from the Mediterranean Coast, hearty pastries from central Anatolia, subtle spicy flavors from the east and southeast, and that’s just for starters.

Traditional Turkish foods rely less on seasonings and more on tasty fresh ingredients rolled, kneaded, shaped and cooked to perfection with care, dedication and passion.

In fact, the Turks love their food so much they even write songs about it: “Domates, biber, patlican” by Anatolian rock star Baris Manco translates to “Tomatoes, pepper, eggplant.”

Here are 7 of the top Turkish foods beyond the basic kebab:

Piyaz

Antalya’s piyaz salad is one of the Turkish city’s most famous dishes – and its secret ingredient is its beans.

They’re not just any old butter bean, but a small version known as candir, named after the inland province where they’re grown.

Delicate and flavorful, candir are mixed, together with tahini thinned with a little water, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, garlic, flat-leaf parsley and olive oil.

In the very traditional version, a soft boiled egg is roughly chopped up and mixed through just before serving.

Ezogelin corba

According to legend, this dish was dreamed up by an unhappily married woman named Ezo who was trying to win over her mother-in-law via her stomach.

She concocted a zesty soup consisting of red lentils, domato salca (tomato paste – sweet or hot), grated fresh tomatoes and onions, served with dried mint and pul biber (chili flakes) sprinkled on top.

There’s no proof it actually worked, but just in case, ezogelin (which literally translates to bride Ezo), originating from a small village near Gaziantep, is still the food of choice for brides-to-be.

Saksuka

Turkish cuisine incorporates a huge range of vegetable dishes known as zeytinyagli yemegi – foods cooked in olive oil. The majority are vegetable-based and include green beans, artichokes and of course, eggplants.

One of the tastiest eggplant offerings is sasuka. Here silky purple skinned cubes of green flesh are cooked with zucchinis, garlic, tomatoes and chilli – how much of the latter depending on where in Turkey it’s made.

Kisir

Kisir is a salad made from fine bulgur wheat, tomatoes, garlic, parsley and mint.

There are numerous versions from all over Turkey, but the Antakya one includes nar eksisi (sour pomegranate molasses) and pul biber (hot red chili flakes). They like it hot down south.

Mercimek kofte

Known to Diyarbakir locals as belluh, mercimek kofte is a vegetarian delight.

Made from red lentils, fine bulgur, salt, finely chopped onion, scallions, tomato and aci biber salca (hot red pepper paste) and crushed cilantro, they come in handy bite-sized servings.

Just pop one of these nuggets of flavor onto a lettuce leaf, add a squeeze of lemon juice, roll it up and munch away.

Yaprak dolma

In the Isparta version of yaprak dolma, rice is cooked with tomatoes, a bunch of parsley, onion, garlic, tomato paste, olive oil, black pepper, salt and water.

A spoonful of this mixture is placed on a vine leaf, folded in and carefully rolled by hand into neat little cylinders.

While leaves are sold at most street markets, the best ones come from a neighbor’s tree, usually picked at midnight.

Yaprak dolma are part of Turkish Aegean cuisine and sometimes include a pinch of cinnamon in the mix, a nod to the Rum people, Greeks born in Turkey.

Inegol kofte

Meatballs are so much more than just balls of meat in Turkish cuisine. Each style brings its own unique serve of history.

One of the best known is Inegol kofte, invented by one Mustafa Efendi. Originally from Bulgaria, he migrated to Inegol in northwest Turkey in the 19th century.

Unlike other Turkish kofte, his mix uses only ground beef or lamb and breadcrumbs, seasoned with onions.

Cag kebab

The people of Erzurum take their meat very seriously. So much so, they’re prepared to wait more than 12 hours for a sliver of hot and tasty lamb cag kebab.

First the meat is smeared with a mix of onions, salt and black pepper and left to marinate for half a day. Then it’s fed onto a long skewer and cooked horizontally over a wood fire.

Divine on its own, cag kebab is also served wrapped in flat lavas bread with slices of tomato, white onion and long thin green peppers called sivri.