Nuts in the Kitchen (18 page)

2½ cups (400 g) basmati rice

2 tablespoons clarified butter (Chapter Main Courses)

6 cardamom pods, cracked

One 4-inch (10-cm) cinnamon stick

1 star anise

2 cloves

20 whole black peppercorns

½ teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ne sea salt

FOR THE GARNISH:

2 to 3 tablespoons clarified butter (Chapter Main Courses)

3 medium onions, sliced paper-thin

2 teaspoons black mustard seeds

²
/
₃
cup cashews or peanuts

Fine sea salt

½ cup (4 g) cilantro leaves, lightly packed

¹
/
₃
cup (28 g) unsweetened shredded coconut

Gaziantep, Turkey, sits on the western border of the Fertile Crescent of eastern Anatolia, a flat region of rich fields and arid plains ringed by foothills. Crossed by the Tigris and the Euphrates, punctuated by the drama of Ataturk’s dam and Mount Nemrut with its haunting temple ruins and huge stone heads, it is that conundrum of an ancient region in development. Its people practice agrarian and artisan principles honed over centuries; its cities and towns burst with energy, and a common dream is to join the West, in the form of the European Economic Community.

Western-style development in Gaziantep shows in the neighborhoods of stocky, multi-storied apartment buildings surrounded by traffic-choked streets. A lack of aesthetics is made up for by environmental consciousness; each building has a forest of solar panels on its roof, and residents rarely resort to any other type of power.

Tucked into the center of all this is the ancient quarter of lovely white homes and shops, sinuous and climbing cobbled streets, cafés, and pastry shops. The heart of it is Elmaci Pazari, a cacophonous market of narrow, covered alleys and streetside shops whose wares spill out onto the uneven sidewalks. Between vendors and hagglers, the constant, steady tapping of tin and silversmiths, the cars and scooters, noise issues from everywhere, punctuated by the occasional shout of a particularly vociferous vendor. Money and goods change hands with blurry speed; boys balancing trays piled with delicate etched glasses and pots of mint tea run through the crowds, stopping at a whistle or a call to pour some in exchange for a few pennies before racing off again. Mint tea is offered by merchants to conclude a deal large or small. Thus, everywhere amid the bustle are tranquil, tea-sipping moments.

Markets are rich with the aromas of spices and the overwhelming scent of peppers, which are a signature of Gaziantep cuisine. Strings of them, bright red and sun-dried, hang from shop ceilings and walls; baskets hold the same peppers ground to a rough powder, and wide bowls offer thick, sticky
biber salcasi,
a sweet-to-searing paste made from the peppers.

Second only to peppers in quantity and variety are nuts, displayed in huge jute bags or smaller wildly colored ones that sit right on the floor. The pistachio is queen, for Gaziantep is the center of Turkey’s pistachio-producing region. Her suitors are the walnut, the almond, the pine nut, the hazelnut, and an array of toasted seeds. Women, many dressed in the body-shielding manto and head-covering esarp, and men, often wearing the baggy shalwar pants, nibble constantly on nuts and seeds as they go about their business.

Just outside Gaziantep, spare, dry fields and rolling hills stretch on forever, the soil chunky red and iron-rich. Gnarled pistachio trees are planted alongside olive trees and grapevines so there is always a crop to harvest, no matter the year or atmospheric conditions.

I’m in a tiny car with Kamil Sarpkaya, a research scientist with Gaziantep’s pistachio research station. A solid young man with a mass of deep brown corkscrew hair, he perspires with pistachio passion, particularly the growing and treating of the trees. How to explain this passion? He says he cannot; he’s got it, it consumes his life, it has him taking an afternoon off to share it with me. Fortunately we have a driver, Naci Gulgun, so Kamil’s hands are free to make line drawings in my notebook to illustrate the life cycle of the pistachio tree, the way the trees are planted, the way they are trimmed, the way the nuts develop and grow, and any other fact that comes to his mind.

We see a crew in one of the pistachio orchards lining the road, and Kamil signals Mr. Gulgun to stop. We get out and, defying overloaded trucks careening down the road on their way to the city, run to the other side and hastily clamber over the guardrail.

“The germ plasm of the pistachio is here, right here,” Kamil said, gently stamping his feet in the red soil. “This is where it began.”

Kamil strikes up a conversation with Hussein Turan, the field owner, and his crew. I stand in the shadow of these men whose skin is burnished the color of red oak, their hair abundantly black and thick, their eyes and smiles open and frank. They are curious about what might have caused us to stop and run to their field, yet at ease with our presence.

The trees surrounding us remind me of suffering sculptures, their gnarled limbs reaching out as though starving—for air, for water, for sustenance. Their bark is like skin. Thin and silvery. I know if I touch it, it will be warm. Mr. Turan leads me right up to one and, indeed, when my fingers slide along the bark it is warm, as though sap were coursing just below the surface. It turns out that the pistachio trees look as if they suffer because they do. It takes ten to fifteen years for a tree to produce enough nuts to harvest, in part because the roots must pierce a layer of porous rock below the surface of the red soil. Once the smaller female trees are in production, they produce in a three-year cycle with one productive year, one nonproductive year, and one year that yields a small production. A wild pistachio will have random production cycles; those planted together like the ones in this field self-regulate so their productive years coincide.

According to Kamil, yields could increase substantially, and “off” years could become productive if growers would irrigate. “They use their beliefs to grow pistachio nuts,” he said. “And belief has it that irrigation will kill the pistachio tree.” He shakes his head with frustration. “I tell them it isn’t true, but they don’t trust me yet. I’m from Ankara, and I’ve been here for only two years; it will take time.”

I learn from these men that the nuts they’ve just finished harvesting by hand, one bunch at a time, are destined for the snack market. One of the workers gives me a handful, and I open one—it is fat, pale yellow, and slightly crisp with an exquisite, browned butter flavor.

It is October, and the harvest has been going on since June. At that early date, the pistachios are embryonic, with all of their adult savor and color concentrated in a kernel that is a fraction of its adult size. Called “green gold,” these small, electric green kernels that are covered with a fine, grayish white film are prized for Gaziantep’s famed pastries, which include buttery-crisp baklava,
katmer
—also called the “whirling dervish pancake” because of the way the dough is thrown and twirled into the air to get its paper-thin texture and pizza-round shape—and jellied
loukoum
. Each tree yields about 100 pounds of the immature nut and about 50 pounds of the larger, more mature nut.

The pistachio has three hulls to protect the meat inside. The first is very hard, and according to Kamil, the growers spread them out and drive a truck over them to crack it off. Underneath is a wrinkled rosy sheath, which either drops off or is removed by machine in small factories set up in and around Gaziantep. Under that is the ivory shell we know, most of which pop open in the fields, within their protective coverings. Any nuts that haven’t opened naturally are sent out into the countryside, where women crack them open by hand, using tiny, etched nutcrackers destined for that purpose.

The workers’ day is finished. They politely say good-bye with smiles and nodding heads, then take themselves to a large old wagon piled with nut-filled crates and climb in, sitting wherever they can balance. The owner steps up into the aging tractor to pull them home. We all wave good-bye as the tractor lurches out of sight amid the trees.

Kamil, Mr. Gulgun, and I clamber back over the guardrail, run across the death-defying highway, and settle back into our sleek little car as two worlds separate.

Zest of 2 lemons

1½ cups (300 g) sugar

¹
/
₃
cup (80 ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 quart (1 liter) half-and-half

¼ cup (35 g) poppy seeds