When Meat Becomes Dessert

Photo by Michele Humes

To try Tavuk Göğsü, click here for the recipe.

In today's culinary conventions, sugar may intrude upon meat dishes, particularly where chopsticks are involved--I'm thinking of General Tso's beignets, of pad thai that's a few raisins short of a kugel--but it's strictly a one-way street: the mains may be sweet, but the desserts won't be savory. It's been decades since mincemeat contained anything resembling meat.

Until recently. Suddenly, at least in the West's more rarefied culinary environs, meat has become dessert. In Paris, Pierre Hermé's extensive macaron selection includes a chocolate-and-foie-gras flavor, shimmering with gold leaf. At Chicago's Grocery Bistro, chef Andre Christopher tops a seared lobe of foie gras with shards of Heath bar. And out of her tiny boutique in New York City, Roni-Sue Kave sells handmade "pig candy": whole strips of deep-fried bacon coated in dark or milk chocolate. But these are almost culinary jokes. The confections seem to trade as much on the striking incongruity of their ingredients, each a paragon of sweet or savory indulgence, as on any natural harmony of flavors. One Turkish dessert, however, provides a more serious attempt to fuse meat and sweet.

A Turkish menu is a picturesque place, with dishes named for swooning imams (