One of the
best features of the urban areas of Turkey, which I look forward to with every
visit is their farmer’s markets, called “pazar” in Turkish, a version of bazaar.
Interestingly, Sunday is also called Pazar in Turkish, perhaps because pazars
are held on Sundays… The first day, I wake up in my brother’s apartment in
Izmir is Sunday, a gift for me. I can spend hours at the farmer’s market. My
dear brother Mehmet is so kind he always drives me to the farmer’s market at
least once when I visit and allows me get lost in bliss among the rows of fresh
produce and in his benevolent words “bring half of the market home” that
accompany a loving grin on his face…
Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey would probably have at least 30-40 if not more of Sunday farmer’s markets. Each neighborhood has its own designated farmer’s market site, usually a covered open air market area with vending platforms, all waiting at attention for their bosses and customers all week long. Come Sunday, they lie in submission under colorful tarps or large wooden trays or baskets that are laden with all kinds of and all colors of fresh produce. Many if not all farmer’s markets are held once during the week as well, either on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
However, Sunday farmer’s markets are by far the largest and most well-attended by the residents in every neighborhood since vendors of Sunday markets bring everything from fresh produce to dairy products, to grains, to fish, to clothing, to shoes, among other goods. Majority of the population does their fresh produce shopping as well as that for seafood and cheese/olive (staple foods for Turkish breakfast) from farmer’s markets! It is the authentic Turkish culture still resisting globalization: Although global supermarket chains along with national chains have dotted the country from north to south and from east to west, people have still not given up making their Sunday farmer’s market their must-visit-destination every Sunday.
Thus, every
Sunday, the refrigerators in town are filled with vegetables and fruits for the
week. Chicken and meat usually come from either local butchers or, mostly from
modern supermarkets, greater share to the latter, which is the reason behind
local butcheries’ gradual and unfortunate disappearance from neighborhoods. The
families then are ready to face the week with a heavily vegetarian diet
enriched with small amounts of meat and chicken and some fish. Most families
consume fish at least once a week, considering Izmir being on the Aegean with a
very long coastal line. My younger brother being the most devout fish monger in
my family is proud to report that they eat fish 2-3 times a week. He is one,
who could eat fish even at breakfast!
Farmer’s markets have two types of sellers: The professional “manav”s that buy their goods from vegetable/fruit wholesale centers in town that are perhaps at least the second intermediaries between the producer and the buyer, thus, they sell their goods at relatively higher prices. Their produce, displayed on elevated platforms is similar to what you would find in any supermarket around the world, same size-same shape-same color fruits and vegetables, almost manufactured under fully controlled conditions, almost always non-organic. Throughout the day, their prices will remain fixed unless they have visibly poor quality goods that they have to get rid of at all cost that day. Otherwise, these gentlemen (always males) sell whatever they can and at the end of the day, repack the left over and go to the next day’s farmer’s market all over the city to continue selling the same produce until their next wholesale purchase.
Thus, there
is no guarantee that these mobile manavs’ produce will be fresh although they
shower their produce throughout the day, or wipe each one of their fruit to
make them shine and look good on the outside. Bring them home and take a bite, the inside
may not turn out to be what you expected at all. Just as I type these lines, I
can’t help but reminisce this to mankind: How many times we get impressed with
someone’s appearance, charisma, rhetoric and promises and find out all to be
fake with no reflections on the inner core, once we reduce the personal space
between them and our soul?
Notice the uniformity of fruits at a professional seller's stand at a pazar
The type of seller on the other hand is peasant women, my favorite, who bring their produce from neighboring small towns and villages for that one day. They usually spread a tarp on the floor in between platforms usually with permission from the professional manavs. Their produce may not be in uniform shapes and sizes, sometimes not even as good looking as that of the manavs: Their fruit may have imperfections, their quince may look brownish, their tangerines warped…
Notice the peasant women at the pazar are traditional, yet not fundamentalist muslims: their head scarf is not burka style
However, a knowledgeable female shopper knows which one to prefer: I have never been failed by these “koylu kadin”s (peasant women). Not only the freshness of their produce but the innocence, the natural attitude with nothing fake in their demeanor, and their generosity have always appealed to me. My mother coming from farming background and being the best cook I have ever met would instantaneously kneel down in front of one of the “koylu kadin”s and start picking tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, apples, oranges, whatever they have brought to the market.
Another group of koylu kadini selling the season's produce in small batches
My mom would also have a favorite koylu kadin or two that she looked for every Sunday: After all, koylu kadins also come in a variety of personalities. My mom being an angel on earth would also look for the more friendly and generous ones. They would recognize my mom as their loyal customer and would add to her kilo of apples a few extra for free. Especially, those who brought to the market one of my mom’s favorite “hortas”, wild greens in Greek, would always earn a visit from my mom every Sunday.
Radika is one of the staple edible wild greens in Cretan cuisine, also known as hindiba in Turkish
The type of seller on the other hand is peasant women, my favorite, who bring their produce from neighboring small towns and villages for that one day. They usually spread a tarp on the floor in between platforms usually with permission from the professional manavs. Their produce may not be in uniform shapes and sizes, sometimes not even as good looking as that of the manavs: Their fruit may have imperfections, their quince may look brownish, their tangerines warped…
Notice the peasant women at the pazar are traditional, yet not fundamentalist muslims: their head scarf is not burka style
However, a knowledgeable female shopper knows which one to prefer: I have never been failed by these “koylu kadin”s (peasant women). Not only the freshness of their produce but the innocence, the natural attitude with nothing fake in their demeanor, and their generosity have always appealed to me. My mother coming from farming background and being the best cook I have ever met would instantaneously kneel down in front of one of the “koylu kadin”s and start picking tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, apples, oranges, whatever they have brought to the market.
My mom would also have a favorite koylu kadin or two that she looked for every Sunday: After all, koylu kadins also come in a variety of personalities. My mom being an angel on earth would also look for the more friendly and generous ones. They would recognize my mom as their loyal customer and would add to her kilo of apples a few extra for free. Especially, those who brought to the market one of my mom’s favorite “hortas”, wild greens in Greek, would always earn a visit from my mom every Sunday.
Hortas have
been the major determinant in all my siblings and I identifying ourselves more
Cretan than Turkish. All my ancestors having migrated to Turkey in early 1900s
from Crete, and Crete being known with its some 1400 wild edible greens, this
shouldn’t be much of a surprise. When I first moved to Iowa City, I was
delighted to find out that my health food store New Pioneer Coop carried
cultured greens similar to some of the greens I used to savor in Turkey:
Variety of dandelion greens, fennel, and curly endive. When I discovered deadly
night shade and purslane growing as weeds in my own yard I was in heaven!
A woman foraging for edible wild greens
I recall a
beautiful memory around deadly night shade, which we know in Greek as “stifno”.
When I fixed it as a steamed salad one day for dinner for Bill, my late partner
and I and our best friends Nukhet a Turkish woman and her American husband Don,
I didn’t even know it had a name in English and was known as a plant in America!
Sure enough my safety oriented loved American bred-and-raised friend and
partner went online and somehow they found the very plant I showed them: The
name certainly was scary, more so for them than I: As we read on, it became
clear to me why my mom and grandmother taught me to remove even the smallest
flowers let alone the green seeds.
Deadly night shade or stifno in Greek with its benign flowers, semi toxic green seeds and verrrry toxic purple/black seed: the green leaves on the other hand are delicious and very healthy!
I had never seen stifno picked when it had purple black seeds that are apparently loaded with strychnine! No wonder their faces had turned pale gray as if they had already eaten a cup of the seeds. The two men chose to stay safe while Nukhet and I thoroughly enjoyed the salad as they were rationalizing their deference with “As Americans we may have a different sensitivity to even the leaves of the plant that you may be immune to because of your origin. Nukhet had never eaten this green, either, and she is still enjoying a happy life… This story filled many dinner parties to come in our core circle with laughter and loving embraces. To make the long horta story short, Aegeans on both sides of the “water” steam hortas in boiling water briefly, then dress the wilted greens with some of the boiling water, olive oil, lots of lemon juice and salt. When served cold, hortas are the best accompaniment to fish, which invariably was purchased every Sunday in my house from the farmer’s market along with hortas. Once my mom used to lay out the fresh hortas onto the kitchen table to be sorted (fresh from not so fresh), we knew with watering mouths that escalated our excitement what was to follow in the evening.
Cooked, ready to go radika salad shimmering with olive oil and lemon juice
Deadly night shade or stifno in Greek with its benign flowers, semi toxic green seeds and verrrry toxic purple/black seed: the green leaves on the other hand are delicious and very healthy!
I had never seen stifno picked when it had purple black seeds that are apparently loaded with strychnine! No wonder their faces had turned pale gray as if they had already eaten a cup of the seeds. The two men chose to stay safe while Nukhet and I thoroughly enjoyed the salad as they were rationalizing their deference with “As Americans we may have a different sensitivity to even the leaves of the plant that you may be immune to because of your origin. Nukhet had never eaten this green, either, and she is still enjoying a happy life… This story filled many dinner parties to come in our core circle with laughter and loving embraces. To make the long horta story short, Aegeans on both sides of the “water” steam hortas in boiling water briefly, then dress the wilted greens with some of the boiling water, olive oil, lots of lemon juice and salt. When served cold, hortas are the best accompaniment to fish, which invariably was purchased every Sunday in my house from the farmer’s market along with hortas. Once my mom used to lay out the fresh hortas onto the kitchen table to be sorted (fresh from not so fresh), we knew with watering mouths that escalated our excitement what was to follow in the evening.
There are
other hortas in Cretan cuisine that are cooked with lamb, the best part of lamb
at that, the lumbar chops. As soon as meat enters a dish, it becomes the main
dish, preceded with soup and followed with rice. My younger brother Mehmet
takes me to the first farmer’s market of the week as soon as I arrive in Izmir,
every time I visit Turkey. When I get into a trance, lost among all the greens,
reds, purples, yellows of all the gifts of the holly earth in these parts of
the world, my dear brother becomes my porter until he exclaims “sister, enough
already, we can’t take the entire market home!” or “sister let’s leave the other half of the market to
the rest of the shoppers.” with all the good humor in his heart and a loving
smile on his face. I then, awoken from my trance realize, “OK, time to go home
and spread all this in delicious dishes on the dining table.”
The Black's hair in English, Arapsaci in Turkish, Maratha in Greek: this pile must have cost an all day's work with bleeding hands since this green is usually found mixed with thorny bushes
The Black's hair in English, Arapsaci in Turkish, Maratha in Greek: this pile must have cost an all day's work with bleeding hands since this green is usually found mixed with thorny bushes
As I am cruising
through the market this very day, I am not only searching for the produce that
I cannot find in the US to satisfy my own palate but also for goods that I can
serve my older brother and his wife, my mother, her care taker, and Mehmet and his
wife, who will come to a family reunion for dinner tonight. I was planning to
make a special lamb dish for them as the main dish; lumber lamb chops baked in
the oven under a cover of a yogurt-eggs-flour dressing that keeps the meat
extremely moist and tasty. However, I still have an open mind, you never know.
All of a sudden I see something with disbelief, which is “Maratha” in Greek,
arap saci in Turkish, that can be translated into English as “Black’s hair”
(black as in skin color), in fact the term literally translates to Negro’s
hair, political correctness is still not as infused into Turkish culture as it
is in American culture, perhaps because Africans brought to Anatolia by
Ottoman’s did not suffer as gruesome and severe slavery as their American
counterparts did. Thus there is no perceived
stigma on either part of the equation in calling colored people from Africa “Arap”,
which is a term between negro and black in English in terms of its derogatory
attribution. I wonder when the discrimination against Kurds will be eliminated
at least in the laws that may trigger a need for political correctness toward
all ethnic minorities.
The woman selling Arapsaci among other wild greens made my day!
The moment I
see the “Negro’s hair” in front of a peasant woman, Mehmet will tell everybody
throughout my stay there, “She turned around with a childish delightful grin on
her face uttering in disbelief “Oh my, Negro’s hair!!”. It must be true, I
recall the happiness and the anticipatory sense of delight I felt in my heart
and in my mouth, respectively! I buy three pounds of it with an abrupt but
not-surprising change in my dinner plans. Now we urgently need the right kind
of meat… We will end up going to three butchers until finding it, it will soon
be very well worth all the wandering.
The lumbar chops that is the most preferred cut of lamb in Cretan cuisine that is a must for Arapsaci
I fill the market carriage twice until I am satisfied that the family and I have all the produce we will need throughout the week. Little do I know that we will consume most of it by Wednesday and will need to visit the mid-week farmer’s market for our Thursday dinner party with the entire family including my niece and her husband. One may wonder and in fact my friends can’t believe why in my one week of stay in Izmir, I do so much food shopping and cooking. It is all about my mother and family that I just can’t have enough of due to this dual life of mine between two continents.
My brothers, mother and one of my sisters in law around breakfast table in my brother's summer house in Foca (Phokai), a unique town that shouldn't be missed during a visit to Turkey
My mother has been disabled both physically and mentally for 15 years now and cannot do anything in the kitchen. It hurts me to see the elaborate dinners she used to cook for all my friends, all our extended family members over monthly family get-togethers that earned her the “best and most generous-ever cook in Izmir’s hollow!”. Now that she is not able to do that, I find delight in doing that in her stead, which continues her tradition of bringing not only my brothers, sisters in law and our kids to her house around her dinner table but also my closest friends over the week. A bonus is to see her devour some 6-8 different kinds of dishes on her plate with no complaints with the delight she takes in seeing her house one more time enriched with all her loved ones at the same time.
Arapsaci after being cooked with lamb: A pure delicacy in Cretan cuisine
I fill the market carriage twice until I am satisfied that the family and I have all the produce we will need throughout the week. Little do I know that we will consume most of it by Wednesday and will need to visit the mid-week farmer’s market for our Thursday dinner party with the entire family including my niece and her husband. One may wonder and in fact my friends can’t believe why in my one week of stay in Izmir, I do so much food shopping and cooking. It is all about my mother and family that I just can’t have enough of due to this dual life of mine between two continents.
My mother has been disabled both physically and mentally for 15 years now and cannot do anything in the kitchen. It hurts me to see the elaborate dinners she used to cook for all my friends, all our extended family members over monthly family get-togethers that earned her the “best and most generous-ever cook in Izmir’s hollow!”. Now that she is not able to do that, I find delight in doing that in her stead, which continues her tradition of bringing not only my brothers, sisters in law and our kids to her house around her dinner table but also my closest friends over the week. A bonus is to see her devour some 6-8 different kinds of dishes on her plate with no complaints with the delight she takes in seeing her house one more time enriched with all her loved ones at the same time.
Arapsaci after being cooked with lamb: A pure delicacy in Cretan cuisine
Another goal I
have for this visit is to introduce mindfulness and meditation practices to my
family and inner circle friends. The first attempt around the dinner table in
the presence of my two brothers and their wives doesn’t create too much
excitement. As is usual, in Turkish culture, everybody knows every solution to
every problem better than everybody else! I am not disappointed, though. This
first attempt is just the first pebble dropped into the lake to create mild
ripple effects. Although they see this politely and respectfully as “Another
new idea sister brings from America…”, it is clear that they are all skeptical
even if they may also be thinking about these ideas deep down! Nobody shows it
to me, yet… I let it be, let it go; it took me over ten years to get bought
into studying these concepts, they need time, too.
freedom is possible even in this political climate
Throughout
the week, I send them links related to what I read such as teachings of Thich
Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Dalai Lama, and others. I receive the best responses
from texting lovely quotes about inner peace, freedom from fear, insight,
self-compassion. At least my older brother sends me approving texts, let’s see
when he will be able to internalize them into his daily life. I hope I can find
credible websites in Turkish to refer them to upon my return to USA and let
them explore on their own, if they do… Even if they don’t, carrying the positive
energy of mindfulness will, I believe, reflect upon them even when I am far
away. I trust that…
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| I wish half the world population could understand this and learn how sometimes the darkest happenings are for better futures. |
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