mandarin oranges

Mandarin Oranges

One really great thing about Turkey is the availability of good, cheap

mandarin oranges. To me, mandarin oranges smell like Christmas.

Specifically, satsuma mandarins-- the kind with the loose, thick skin

that are a bit pithy and really, really sweet.

When I was growing up, we never had satsuma mandarins in the market.

They were a rare treat, given to us by the case as our yearly

Christmas present from my father's aunt. She died this year, and no

one remembered to tell me. I found out in passing this summer. That's

one thing I hate about living so far away from home. I wasn't able to

be there for either of my grandmothers' funerals, or even to say

goodbye, and sometimes people forget to tell you about stuff like your

great aunt dying.

reading old stories in which the children would wake up excitedly to

find oranges and walnuts in their stockings. 'Lame,' I thought.

'What's the big deal about oranges?' But we would sure get excited

when our box of mandarins showed up. They were like no oranges I had

ever seen, so small and sweet and easy to peel. You could nibble them

section by section and not get the juice all over your hands. My

brothers and I would compete each year over who could find the

smallest orange section. Fights broke out over this. It's amazing what

siblings can find to argue about. We all believed that the smallest

orange sections were not only the cutest, almost too adorable to eat,

but the best tasting, and so we ate them with cannibalistic pleasure.

One year, I found the smallest section ever. It wasn't much bigger

than my pinkie fingernail. I ate it right away, forgetting to save it

to show my brothers. Later, when they were claiming to have found the

smallest sections, I kept telling them I had found it, but that I'd

eaten it, and naturally they assumed I was lying, and my youngest

brother found a section that was very small indeed, and I was forced

to concede victory when my mom snapped at us that his was the smallest

section ever, and to please shut up already or Santa wouldn't be

coming that year.

Produce in Turkey is fresh and good. It's also seasonal, meaning in

the winter, especially towards the end of winter, the choices get

pretty bleak, and some things, like carrots and onions, look a little

worse for wear. In theory, I believe in the goodness of the eating

seasonally. In practice, though, carrots, celeriac, and potatoes get a

bit old after eating them for weeks on end. Non-seasonal staples are

available here, or what most people consider staples: tomatoes, green

onions, and cucumbers, for example, but they are either imported or

from greenhouses, and so are predictably tasteless.

I think I wouldn't find eating seasonally so objectionable if there

were more variety here. I'm spoiled for varieties of produce, coming

from Oregon where heirloom fruits and vegetables are all the rage.

But, in Istanbul at least, the variety is depressing. One type of

tomato that's red and perfectly round and travels well, and the

occasional red or yellow cherry tomatoes in the summer. Two types of

cucumber, one for pickling and one for salads, again quite uniform.

Iceberg lettuce is everywhere, green leaf almost as much, with the

occasional romaine. What galls me about the lack of variety is that

Turkey has perfect growing climates for almost everything, from hot

season crops like peppers and eggplants, to cool season ones like

brassicas and salad greens. Citrus grows in the south just as well as

apples and pears grow in the north. I often think it's the huge chain

markets controlling the availability of things, as I've heard in

villages there are really interesting varieties of fresh produce, and

people love them. I'm sure Istanbullites would buy different things if

they could, but they just aren't offered the choice from the

mainstream markets, though there is a slightly wider variety of things

at bazaars or from street sellers.

Occasionally, one of the big markets has something interesting.

Ginger, for example. Whenever there's ginger, I buy a big load of it

and freeze it. Limes are another oddity, which I always buy a few of

and make some semblance of Mexican food. BE hates my taste for these

occasional treats, as the cashiers never know what it is and won't

enter its code without waiting ten minutes for some guy to run off and

find it out while every one behind us in line oofs and shuffles and

gives us dirty looks for buying weird vegetables and holding

everything up. BE sometimes tries to placate them by shrugging with

shame as if to say 'She's foreign, what can I do?' Sometimes the

cashier does it for him, saying 'Foreigners buy these strange things.

I never what to do.' Sometimes people ask how you cook with crazy

things like ginger, and I'll try to explain something like gingersnaps

or Chinese noodles, and they smile and say 'How very different!' which

in Turkish is a polite way of saying, 'How disgusting that sounds!'

Last week, Migros had celery (good celery, I was told, not the

stringy, dark green kind they occasionally have which I've never

bought because it's expensive and looks awful). A few of my friends

preparing Thanksgiving dinners were thrilled to bits. They also had

butternut squash. This caused a great buzz on both continents, as I

heard about the butternut squash from several different people. Things

like butternut squash and celery are so rare that word of their

appearance hits the foreigner underground and spreads like wildfire.

In Turkey, mandarin oranges aren't precious or rare. You can have

pounds and pounds of them pretty cheaply. But to me, they're still

special. I can't stop myself from buying more and more, though I still

tend to eat them slowly so as not to waste them. There are two big

bags in my fridge right now, and when LE wakes up, I intend to buy

another bag. I feel like I have to own as many as I can before the

season is out. I might even do what my mom does to create instant

Christmas house, which is to steep a sachet of mandarin orange peels,

cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon on the stove, filling the house with a

delicious smell.

If I find a very small section in one of my oranges, you can be sure

I'll photograph it with the digital camera to tease my brothers with.