Sharing her love for seasonal foods, Stellaa has been a real inspiration! The weather in Istanbul has now settled into the muggy summer heat that will be with us till late September. In the spirit of the hazy Istanbul summer, I decided to post about something that not only takes the edge off that heat but actually makes me look forward to it: sherbets.

When we here the word "sherbet," the first thing to come to mind is usually something like a sorbet - a mostly-fruit ice cream. But the word sherbet actually comes from the Arabic word sharaba, "to drink," and in this part of the world is a term for sweet cold drinks flavored with fruits or other ingredients. Pronounced "shehr-bett," not "sure-butt," and a very old tradition in this part of the world, they are either made fresh or from concentrated syrups are diluted with water. Until not so long ago, they were an indispensable item in almost any household. When I first went to Greece in 1975, almost any visit to a home involved a glass of "vissinada" - a sherbet of reconstituted syrup made by boiling down juicy morello cherries with sugar. Not only was the flavor magical, the color was too. Several years ago I was reminded of that when our neighbor came to pick plums from our tree which, prehaps aware in some way that the property was about to be expropriated by the city, produced a heavier crop that year than ever before. Later that evening she came back with a pitcher full of a beautiful pink drink - plum sherbet.

During the height of the Ottoman Empire, the water system was funded largely by charitable pious foundations as well as wealthy citizens. Some public fountains - the çesmes that are still to be seen all over cities of the former Ottoman Empire - were connected directly to a water source. Others, called sebils, had a reservoir of limited capacity and were filled from another source. At various times, especially during Ramadan and other special days, these were sometimes filled with sherbet which was free to the public.

As the Turks succumb with the rest of the world to the habit of eating out of boxes and packages, the sherbets have largely been forgottn,  replaced  by artificially-flavored drink powders (sugar, citric acid, not-found-in-nature colors and some sort of flavoring). But after you try the real thing, Kool-Aid just doesn't cut it any more!

 Most are very very easy to make; some require a bit more patience but once you've done it a few times it becomes second nature. There's a good amount of sugar involved, but the amount is considerably less than in a can of pop, and it's a damn side healthier than the high-fructose corn syrup that has replaced sugar  in prepared drinks nowadays. Of course you choose how much sugar you want to use. And the flavor of real fruit in a drink is so vastly superior to "natural fruit flavoring" (which means it is the same chemical that gives a fruit part of its flavor, not that it actually came from that fruit) and citric acid that they're much more satisfying.

For fresh fruits, the process is basically to boil the fruit in water until it's very soft and has released its juice, then strain, sweeten and cool. Among the most popular ones are sour cherry, plum, and green (unripe) grape. But other ones are made regionally and some were once common in Istanbul including tamarind, honey (with the addition of a bit of lemon and spices), and licorice root. The latter is still sold on the streets of Gaziantep throughout the summer; and is considered medicinal as well as refreshing.

For syrups, it's basically a matter of boiling down the fruits with very little added water, into a 2:1 sugar-to-liquid ratio, or until it tastes right, and adding a bit of lemon if needed. Be careful with high-pectin fruits though, or you will end up with narrow bottle full of inextricable jelly.

 My all-time favorite and one I always have around the house is actually not Turkish per se but Indian: Lemon-ginger syrup with cucumber. To make it, you'll need a good section of ginger root, about 12 lemons and around a pound of sugar. Grate the ginger finely, mix with a cup or so of the sugar and about an equal amount of water or less, and bring to a boil in a medium saucepan. Allow to simmer at low heat for around 20 minutes. While that's simmering, juice the lemons and strain the juice. Add the lemon juice to the hot ginger syrup, and then add sugar at about 2:1 to the volume of the liquid. I start with a little less, then after it's dissolved, I take a bit of the syrup and mix it with a small amount of cold water and try it. If it seems to tart, I add a bit more sugar till I like the result. Let the syrup cool a bit and strain into a bottle. I generally keep the bottle refrigerated. To make the drink, pour about a finger or two of the syrup into the bottom of a tall glass, add cold water and ice, then a sprig of mint and finely sliced cucumber.

  An alternative is to grate a cucumber with the peel on (but make sure it's not one with a bitter peel!), then squeeze the juice into the drink with a piece of cloth. This works better if you're making a pitcher of it at once. It gives the drink a beautiful green color, but keep in mind that the color will fade to yellow in a few hours. I've also boiled some mint in with the syrup for a few minutes, it's nice but the mint tends to overpower the ginger.

In Gaziantep, they collect the fruits, including a proportion of half-ripe fruit as well, press the juice out and strain it, dilute it somewhat (it's much too intense to drink straight), add sugar and chill. The result is a still-intense, sweet-tart-astringent drink that seems made especially for the sweltering heat of Southeast Turkey. I brought back a litre and a half to Istanbul. It was good, but somehow not as satisfying as when I drank it there, where the daytime heat was so withering that there was little else to do but laze on a park bench, reading or people-watching, and drinking mulberry juice! Collecting them is not something you can do neatly; many tend to cling tenaciously to the bough and squirt their brilliantly colored juice in every direction. A fingernail helps in coaxing them off but the stem is so short that you will have to crush the fruit a bit to get to it. It's not a job to do in good clothes, though the stain washes right out. Here's what your hand will look like after collecting black mulberries:

One of the more unusual ones - and one which require a bit more work - is poppy syrup. Each May, fields in Turkey are cloaked in the dazzling red of millions of poppies. The species is the same as the common "corn poppy" of western Europe but there are distinct races; the farther south you go, the deeper red the petals are. To make the syrup (which with the addition of pectin becomes a delicious jelly as well), you first need a lot of poppies. Collect them in the morning when they just open, just grab the petals, leaving the developing seed pod and stamens behind.

Now the bad news - if there is a big black blotch at the base of the petals, you have to remove it. You can either do it with scissors after you've collected them or (the method I find easier), tear it off as you collect the petals, four at a time. If you're lucky you'll find a stand with no blotch or a very rudimentary one; you can leave that. But too much black and you'll have ugly syrup, and bitter too because the black part contains a nasty-tasting chemical.

Now add sugar to the petals and knead them together, let it sit for an hour or so to macerate, then boil with half the amount of water as you added sugar - If you added 4 cups of sugar, then add 2 cups of water. When it begins to thicken, add some lemon juice and try a bit mixed cold water for taste. The flavor will be odd, fragrant but a bit musky and slightly bitter as well. When it's done, strain and bottle it. I usually don't tell people what it is at first, the response is always "it's odd...but it's really good!" It tastes wonderful on a really hot day. You can also use the syrup over ice cream, or as they do on the island of Tenedos/Bozcaada, over a snow-white milk pudding called muhallebi. There's nothing else quite like it; the color is dazzling as well. It works with roses too, and rose sherbet was once very popular, but I find it just a bit too cloying.

Another nice one is mint sherbet. It's also one of the easiest, and if you have an overbearingly invasive patch of spearmint, it's just the thing. Make a 2:1 sugar syrup, bring to a boil, then add a lot of mint leaves - as in the leaves of about 20 or so stems for a liter of syrup. (Try to wash the mint leaves as lightly as possible so that the mint essence will go into your syrup instead of down the drain.) Let the leaves simmer in the syrup until they shrivel up, then take off the heat and add lemon juice to taste. It should not be lemonade, but rather just enough to balance the sweet of the syrup when you put a finger or so in a glass of water. Serve cold with a sprig of fresh mint to reiterate!

In addition to balancing the flavor, the lemon also prevents crystallization. Though this syrup is good made into a drink, I use it more often to sweeten ice tea. Also try making the drink with soda water instead of plain water.

Almost any fruit makes a good sherbet - raspberries, sour cherries, plums, good ripe blackberries; loquat is one I want to try some time. I tried a combination of apple, quince and lemon that was amazing, and a sumac sherbet was both delicious and beautiful. You have to use whole sumac berries though, not the ground form! For syrups, sour fruits such as lemons, limes and especially calmondin/sour oranges are great. Sherbets from things like green grapes or plums are best made fresh rather than as syrups, because they don't have as much natural juice yet, and the high amount of pectin can cause them to set up into jelly.