Urban Foraging, Ramazan

As you all know from my previous posts I am into Urban Foraging/Gleaning.  I have gone to ancient castles and picked caper berries, gleaned black pepper corns at ruins and picked various wild greens along the streets and parks. But what about something that is not technically gleaning or foraging but is still finding a full meal in a public place? Well in Turkey during Ramazan(Ramadan)this is made possible at various spots sponsored by local governments.  They set up huge tents and serve free food every night for anyone who is interested for the whole month of fasting.  So yesterday evening we lined up at our local tent to see what they were offering.  

The caterers happy to be serving

Everyone waiting for the signal to eat

The food was really good.  They gave out a lentil, rice soup and hot stuffed rice filled peppers.  There wa also a small amount of fried dessert and a couple of olives to break the fast.

I say be adventerous when it comes to foraging and gleaning(as long as it is legal) you just never know where it will lead you and what you can find.


http://verygoodrecipes.com/turkish

Semizotu, Soğluk, Pirpirim or Purslane

Purslane at the Bazaar

Semizotu, Soğluk and Pirpirim are the names given to Purslane.  Why there are 3 names for the same weed in the same country beats me.  I was confused when I ate a semizotu salad and it resembled soğluk, I asked the hostess and she said no no its semizotu.  Depending on where you come from depends on the name you know it by.  


I first ate this when my mother in law came back from her garden with a few handfuls of it.  She waved it in my face and said yemek, yemek (food, food). I wasnt so keen on it then but after making it myself and tweeking her recipe it is one of my favourites.


There are 2 simple salads that are both equally delicous and easy to prepare.  Also both are great for the Meze table.

Purslane yogurt salad 


500gr purslane
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt
500gr yogurt
1tbsp dried mint


Chop the purslane up very finely and place into a bowl.  Add in the yogurt and rest of the ingredients and beat well until everything is mixed in.  Place onto serving dish and serve.

Purslane with olive oil

500gr of purslane

3 cloves garlic, minced

salt

olive oil

1 lemon

Finely chop the purslane and place into a bowl.  Add in the minced garlic, pinch of salt and the juice of half a lemon or full lemon, depending on your taste.  Stir very well and kind of mash it at the same time or use your washed hands and mix and squeeze at the same time.  Splash in a bit of olive oil and serve.

Mulberries Leaves and Yaprak Sarma

Mulberries are a wonderful fruit and very healthy.  They are also very maligned as the trees drop their fruit then the bugs come, the poor trees get cursed and hacked at just because people dont harvest this wonderful fruit.  What can you do with them other than just eating them straight off the tree? in my opinon that is the best way to have them but if that dosnt grab you they are very versitile.

My parents have a fairly sizeable property(farm)that have or had (dont know as I havent been there for years)several prolific producers.  They picked them and either ate them raw or my mother would stew them and pack them into the freezer to be eaten later.  That is the typical western approach to mulberries as we really dont know how to use them.  If you dont have a mulberry tree look around your area/neighbourhood and see who has and see if they wouldnt mind someone coming in to clean up the mess made by them as well.  Sometimes you can find empty lots of abandoned homes and farms with trees as well.  I am all for urban foraging and suggest you do the same as you never know what treasures you can find. Since coming to Turkey and living an eastern lifestyle I have realised that there are many other ways to enjoy them.

Typical Turkish children eating white mulberries

Two Turkish women boiling the fruit juice to make Pekmez

 When we lived in Adana one of the houses we lived in had a yard(garden, backyard) and it had a couple of mulberry trees one was white and the other was dark.  The white ones are good for eating raw and they are not too sweet.  I also discovered at the local bazaars that they sold the white mulberries dried! I dont know how they dry them as they are not sticky so they must do something to them.  I tried to dry some on my roof and it all became a sticky mess.  When we first came to Antep we went to the main park and I was interested to see men selling drinks on the street, after taking a closer look I realised it was mulberry juice they were selling and for only 50 kurus a cup.  Thick, sweet with a slight bite it was wonderful.  They say it is liquid penicillin, whenever I go to the city centre I make sure I buy a cup of mulberry juice.  I also discovered Pekmez  which is a thick syrup used in cooking or as a general tonic.  With the help of my family we harvested the black mulberry tree by everyone holding a sheet under the tree and my oldest son climbed the tree and shook the branches.  We then squeezed the mulberries through a cheesecloth to get the juice.  I then took the juice and boiled it until it became thick and syrupy.  Making it is very easy if you have a supply of fruit.  Pekmez is a syrup so stays fresh in the cupboard without further processing.

After my sucess with making Mulberry Pekmez I decided to make Mulberry wine.  I did the same thing, collected the fruit-squeezed to get the juice then let it sit in a container for a couple of months.  I tasted it drained out the dregs and let it sit again.  After 6 months it became a thick, sweet syrupy wine.  Absolutely delicous.  If I could find another 20 kilos of fruit I would make this wine again in a heartbeat.

So what has all this to do with Mulberry leaves? well Im getting to that.  The mulberry leaves are also edible.  You can use them to make yaprak dolma, dolmades and stuffed grape vine leaves.  All you have to do is to substitute the grape leaves for mulberry ones.  Mulberry leaves are furrier than grape leaves you say, yes they are but that all goes away when you boil them.  To prepare them for stuffing you need to blanch them for a few minutes in boiling water.  Drain.  Click on this link for the recipe to stuff the leaves.  You might notice a difference between the stuffed grape leaves you might be used to seeing in your local deli and these ones.  Turkish ones are usually thinner than their Greek counterparts.  I like both but do prefer the thinner ones.  For the Turks the thinner the better, if yours are not rolled tightly enough or are too fat expect to hear disparaging comments. Less is more again in this situation. The plate you see below was prepared by me not by a relative or neighbour.

Mixed plate of stuffed vine and mulberry leaves

Urban Foraging, Wild Greens and More

Who dosnt like getting stuff for free! Urban Foraging is a great term that just means getting stuff for free and either eating it or reusing it.  I am a great believer in recycling also.  Recycling and Urban foraging are really quite similar.  In my other life, in my native country I used to seperate my plastics from the paper and deposit in the appropriate bins.  I bought a paper making kit to make my own paper from used envelopes etc then moved into selling that product at the local markets.  I grew my own veggies and used discarded car tyres to grow herbs in.  Used an old tractor tyre for a sandpit for my kids.  Used old carpet to kill weeds. Harvested fruit off trees in parks, picked up unwanted furniture off the side of the road and used it. Gone to recyling depots to get craft supplies for my kids and had many more urban foraging/recycling adventures.

Since coming to Turkey I have found out the value of weeds, learnt how to identify them cook them and even know the best places to buy cultivated and source out wild ones if necessary. I have gone to castles and picked capers and caper berries, gone to an ancient city and picked pepper corns off  huge pepper trees, visited the local park and got my not so willing husband to pick a few kilos of beautiful black figs which I then turned into fig jam. Watched my son harvest mussels off the pier for the locals, harvested olives out of a very old garden, picked stinging nettles, threaded orange blossom chains and given them to the old ladies, stayed in an old orchard and picked chamomiles from the beautiful carpet that comes in the spring, gotten the seeds from red poppies to use as a mild pain killer plus many more.  My lounge at the moment came off someones roof after they used it for the summer, my dining table and wall cabinets were free after being discarded and various other bits and pieces have all been foraged.

My favorite weed here has to be the stinging nettle.  It tastes fantastic, can be found if you know where to look or bought very cheaply at the local bazaars.  It also has a wealth of health benefits, good for your hair and they say if drunk everyday will help you overcome cancer and loose weight. I have dried some and will be making a shampoo bar very soon with that.  In regards to eating it the locals seem to cook it with onion and tomato paste and use it as a filling for böreks(filled savory pastries)To take the sting out of it for cooking all you have to do is give it a good shake(yes it does work) and when you cook it the sting goes so there is no problem.

This was bought from the local bazaar

BÖREK FILLİNG  

500gr stinging nettle

2 onions, chopped

2 tablespoons tomato paste

salt

chili powder

oil

You need to give it a good wash first and if the stems are fairly woody using kitchen gloves take the leaves off the tough stems.  If it is younger you can just cut the stems up with the leaves. Chop it up.

Fry the onion in a pan until clear then add in the nettle and sautee for about 5 minutes.  Add in your salt and chili then taste.  İf you need to add more salt, add now.  Stir in the tomato paste and cook for another minute.

You could aslo add in about a cup of fetta cheese for a variation.

This filling can be used for any börek from filo pastry triangles to a layered pastry in a baking dish.