Frozen Rose Water - Güllü Dondurma

We have seen Rose Water slushies, Rose Water Bicibici and now Rose Water Ice.  There is a man here that makes Rose water like this and it is a real treat, if you have an icecream maker at home you can make this very quickly and serve as a sorbet replacement at any dinner party.


If you dont have an icecream maker you can see this man has butchered a large water cooler and placed an aluminum container in it to make his icecream.  

This has a softer texture and is much nicer than the slushy.

http://verygoodrecipes.com/turkish

Şırdan - Stuffed Sheep Gall Bladder

We are having lots of adventures whilst saying farewell to relatives and friends in the past couple of weeks and some of those have been culinary.  This delicacy is definately for the adventurous.  This is a sheeps gall bladder that has been cleaned and stuffed then boiled.  One man even told us that there is a sheep gall bladder maffia in this area and they make sure that no one is hogging the market as they are buying and selling.  In this town there is only one man that comes out at night selling this dish. 

one of these costs 3lira

This dish is famous as a alcoholic bing after food.  Personally I couldnt think of anything else worse to look at let alone eat whilst being drunk.  Maybe you need to be a bit sloshed to eat it.


For all of you out there that slaughter your own food I have the recipe.  It is very easy and you can make it out of either sheep or goat.  Since animals only have one of these it makes it a delicacy.

I tasted this and it didnt taste that bad actually, the stuffing was a bit dry 

The recipe


1 gall bladder
rice
tomato paste
chilli paste or powder
cummin
salt
pepper
oil




Take your gall bladder, clean it out then boil until soft(dont know how long that would take as I havent made it and am not likely to).


Im thinking you would need at the most half a cup of rice per gall bladder.  Take 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, spices to taste and 3 tablespoons of oil.  Mix all this together and stuff the gall bladder.  Take some thread and stitch the opening closed.  Place into boiling water and cook until the gall bladder is soft to the fork.  Drain and serve.


http://verygoodrecipes.com/turkish

Mosiac

We are saying farewell to Gaziantep and to Turkey for awhile returning to Australia.  Before we left Antep I had to see the new Mosiac Museum.  It was fantastic and well priced at 5 lira per person.  New modern buildings with a fantastic amount of mosiacs.  They found these mosiacs on the banks of the Euphrates River and took most whole and put them into this museum.  If you have a chance to see it it is worth the trip.  Todays Zaman had this to say about it.

Turkish Delights

In my own country we have a brand name that sells Turkish delight which is covered with chocolate and marketed as Turkish delight.  That is delicous but when in Turkey it is interesting to find out that Turkish delight - Lokum covers a whole range of sweet meats and not just the globulous squares we usually see. They start with the squares with or without nuts, long sausage things on strings, marshmallow rolls to not so sweet triangles with nuts in the middle.  There are a whole lot more that I havent spoken about but will likely do in the future.

This is string dipped in a juice and starch mix made into this

Usually grape juice and starch boiled together then poured onto a cloth to dry then cut into rectangles and folded into triangles with some crushed walnuts in the centre

Typical type of turish delight roll

this probaly has pekmez and pistachios

Mixed tray with the Antep speciality

This one looks nicer as it is full of walnuts

Antep speciality - paste made from pistachios and (honey)sugar made into rolls

I say let the kids have the lollies for the festival, I will take these any day over those. 


http://verygoodrecipes.com/turkish

Şeker Bayram

My posting this month has been slow as we are on holiday and I cant always access the net.  Şeker Bayram (Lolly festival) follows the month of Ramazan, this holiday lasts for about 3 days during which the Turks go and visit thier families and hand out lollies (candy) to the children and some give money.  Some children will go door to door of known neighbours and family members collecting as much as they can. Its probably not the Turkish version of Halloween as there is no dressing up.  The streets of some areas are filled with large bins of lollies. 

These are all very tempting, we were given about 2 kilos of lollies from a close friend.  My babies were very excited.  This is a very popular holiday with the kids.  What is your familys favourtie holiday?