Iradi Food Home

The walnut tree behind my uncle house in the village. The nuts are still green.

The old rule says you pick green walnuts on Yuhanna night, before they are hard inside, and you make jam. My uncle picked 100 for me. The hands are black for two weeks after! Wear gloves. I did not wear gloves.

Ingredients:

• 100 green walnuts (soft inside, you can go through with a needle)
• 1.5 kg sugar
• 1 litre water
• cloves, a stick of cinnamon
• lime or lemon

Instructions: Prick each walnut with a fork, soak in cold water 7 days, change the water each morning to remove the bitter. Then boil 10 minutes, rinse. Syrup from sugar and water, with cloves and cinnamon. Put nuts in the syrup, boil 15 minutes, leave overnight. Again the next day. At the end a little lemon. After one month in the jar it is black and soft and it tastes like nothing else in the world.

Some families make a liqueur of the same nuts, with vodka, 40 days in the sun, and open for Christmas. I only know it from my uncles :)

My uncle came from Iyık Janyl with a whole sack of apricots, the small hard ones that are not for eating. In Irad we make murabba from them, the apricot stays whole and you put the kernel back inside through a little hole. It is a work for the evening with the radio.

Ingredients:

• 1 kg small apricots, not too ripe
• 1 kg sugar
• 1 glass water
• the kernels of the apricots (crack the stones with a hammer, wrap in towel)
• a little lemon juice

Instructions: Take the stone out with a pin or a matchstick, put one kernel back. Make syrup of sugar and water, put the apricots in, leave 8 hours. Boil 5 minutes, leave again. Three times. At the end lemon juice. In glass jars, under the lid, and the jar goes to the guest, to the bride, or to the cupboard for winter.

We eat it with tea, one apricot on a saucer, never more. It is a guest food.