Pomegranate Syrup Revisited

A few weeks ago we finally tried making our own pomegranate syrup, or nar ekşisi.  I've written about this delicious staple of our household's diet before, so click here and here if you want a little history of our love affair with this condiment.  

C bought 15kg of pomegranate from a small local grocer's for about 20 Turkish Lira, a bargain in Istanbul, and one Sunday afternoon after brunch, we put our friends to work peeling the lovely fruit!  There's nothing like good company and conversation to make a job fun and easy!

We then squeezed the juice out of the seeds, drinking several glassfuls of the sweet-sour juice in the process.  (Hint: if you're careful about separating all the white pith from the fruit, you don't get any of the bitterness that comes with pressed pomegranate juice, where an entire half fruit is simply squeezed.)


We lit the mangal and let the juice condense in a cast iron pot for several hours, until it reached the consistency we wanted.  15 kg of pomegranate produced 1 Litre of pomegranate syrup, which explains why the pure stuff is so expensive and difficult to find!

Nar Recipes

For all the things I stock up on and bring back to Turkey with me each time I travel, nar ekşisi is the one thing I always pack to bring with me on trips back home. I've written before about this thick, syrupy pomegranate syrup that is sweet and sour at the same time and has the power to transform a dish from ordinary into extraordinary; but my friends keep asking me what they should do with it. Here are two simple ways to incorporate nar ekşisi into your diet.

Arugula Salad:

• Wash and dry fresh arugula (roka) leaves; chop leaves into one-inch lengths and discard stems.
• Chop heirloom (yerli) tomatoes and crush garlic (crush, do not chop!).
• Toss the vegetables with olive oil, nar ekşisi, salt, black pepper and isot (a dark sun dried pepper) and serve.

Turkish Tabouleh:

• Measure and pour fine bulgur into a pot or other sealable container; a good rule of thumb is one Turkish tea glass of dry bulgur per person. You want to use köftelik bulgur as opposed to one of the coarser grinds.
• Pour boiling water over it just to cover, and immediately drain off excess water; cover and let stand.
• Finely chop parsley, fresh mint, and any or all of the following: green onion, tomato, cucumber, green pepper, bulb onion, red cabbage, carrot. The key is that everything should be chopped extremely finely. If for the same volume of veggies as you have bulgur. Set aside the veggies.
• Uncover your bulgur; it should be soft and plump. Add a tablespoon or two of salça, or red pepper paste (or, if you can't find it, tomato paste) and begin to work it into the bulgur with your fingertips. Add black pepper, salt and cumin to taste; add the juice of at least one lemon and some olive oil and drizzle nar ekşisi all over. Add the reserved vegetables and stir it all together.
• Can be served with whole leaves of Romaine lettuce, which you fill with tabbouleh and bite into!

Image via Wikipedia

Relaxed about Hygiene and Appreciating Turkish Cheese

Perhaps it's motherhood; perhaps Turkey has just relaxed me in general. But as I calmly pulled a piece of hair from the cheese on my plate this morning and went right on eating, I smiled at myself.

I should add that it wasn't human hair, but rather a piece of goat's hair -- the cheese was a lovely strong dry white goat's cheese, cured in a (hairy) goat skin sack. Deri peyniri has made up for the lack of cheddars and some of my other favourites (Appenzeller; Monk's Head) here, and the best ones come from one of the many little bakal or grocer's in the neighbourhood, not sterile or packaged in a factory.

Many of my favourite edible things here are indeed homemade and I happily consume them at my own risk -- something I would have thought twice about when I first arrived in Turkey four years ago. Most notably, I now buy all my eggs, olive oil and nar ekşisi (the gorgeous pomegranate syrup I've mentioned before -- I think one day soon I'll devote an entire post to the magical genius of this ingredient) from small local shops selling their own or a friend's product. I'd buy fresh milk from the cow's owner, too, if I could get organized enough; our supermarkets and grocer's only sell UHT milk, which I begrudgingly continue to buy.

Image by vincen-t via Flickr

And now I'll leave you with a small story, just to show you how far I've come. It was October 2005 and I was on a whirlwind trip to Turkey for the first time. Determined to have me see and taste and experience everything in two short weeks, my Turkish hosts took me into a sort of delicatessen to taste nar ekşisi for the first time. The obliging proprietor took a bottle off the shelf, twisted off the lid despite the safety seal, and poured a little syrup into the cap. He extended it to me, but I declined, feeling sorry for whomever would later buy the bottle after I'd stuck my finger into its contents. My surprise turned to shock, however, when my guide took the proffered red cap and with one swift movement lifted it to his lips and let the syrup run into his mouth.

Unimpressed with that particular brand, he shook his head and repeated the taste test with another bottle, while the proprietor nonchalantly screwed the cap back on the first bottle and returned it to the shelf. Needless to say, I was left speechless.