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

Perfect Pomegranate Syrup

Ok, I notice I'm writing a lot about food lately. Wonder if this blog is taking a turn?

One of the loveliest bits of my Turkish life is nar ekşisi, or pomegranate syrup (literally 'pomegranate sour'), which I buy not from the supermarket, but rather from a man who makes it himself and then sells it in recycled pop bottles out of a 3-metre-square storefront in the old part of town, just a few minutes' walking distance from our house. He also sells his own olives and olive oil, and nothing else.

Nar ekşisi is a staple in every Turkish household, I'd say, and is found on most restaurant tables where a Canadian might expect to find ketchup or vinegar, salt and pepper. It's most commonly used as the acid on salad; so add your olive oil and then, instead of lemon, other citrus, balsamico or any other vinegar, add your nar.

Supermarkets carry several brands, but most have all kinds of additives and don't even contain pure pomegranate, but rather pomegranate 'essence,' which we all know is food industry code for manufactured in a lab somewhere. Look for a natural brand, or even better, a family's homemade version. You'll really taste the difference.