Let’s start with the word for “market” in Turkish: Pazar. I love saying I am going to the pazar, and love even more being able to say organik pazar. Is there anything more satisfying to a newcomer of any city than encountering the markets of that place? For me, the answer is no. And the markets of Turkey, with their abundance, color, vibrancy and variety make me want to snatch everything up and go home and cook. In Istanbul, there is a market almost every day of the week in a different area of this metropolis of 17 million. Naturally, I was not able to visit all of them during my six-month sojourn, but I managed a few. There are those only accessible by car, those on islands accessible only by boat, those where someone who speaks the language is a necessity, and those where directions from locals are required every few blocks.
On a Tuesday in June, my young friend Melinda, a fellow cookbook addict and food connoisseur despite her youth, invited me to accompany her to Findıkzade Market, a place I had never even heard of. She became aware of it from her Turkish roommate’s mother’s sister-in-law. It was not a place normally visited by foreigners, which made me love it all the more.
To prepare for the outing, we each carried an empty backpack into which we had stashed several canvas bags. Our Turkish counterparts all had carts on wheels, which I envied terribly, but I did not possess one and nor did Melinda. No matter, I thought: we’re not buying that much.
After a tram ride that took us deep into a very conservative district (this usually signifies women who are covered), we alighted. Melinda launched into her fluent Turkish and immediately started asking directions. She had only been there once and had been accompanied. It was not as near to the tram stop as she had remembered. In and out of neighborhoods we walked, a right turn here, a left turn there, traversing parks and playgrounds, eyeing hardware stores and sandwich shops, bypassing banks and fabric stores, not even glancing at the occasional grocery store, we only had the pazar in mind. After about a half hour or forty minutes of this meandering, we began to see the makeshift canvas tents that signaled the beginning of the market. Melinda and I looked at each other with glee: Where should we begin? “Let’s take a sweep through before we buy,” I suggested, “and get a sense of it.” She agreed, and we began.
Many Turkish markets feature the eggs and cheese right at the beginning, or perhaps it was the end and we were going in the wrong way. Packed as they were in adorable little baskets with hay, the eggs looked straight out of the village. In my half year in Turkey, I had acquired some vocabulary and “village” was one of the Turkish words I had under my belt, “köy,” since it popped up all over the market as a great selling point. I was wishing I lived closer, but did not imagine how eggs could survive my tram ride home.
The cheeses were also alluring, and in all Turkish markets it is expected that you will want to try something before you buy it. Melinda asked for a piece of white cheese, “beyaz peynir,” otherwise known to us as feta. There were at least 5 varieties to choose from and I did not believe myself enough of a connoisseur to be able to distinguish them. How salty was it? How crumbly? How did it taste? These were my benchmarks.
String cheese was also available and seemed easier to transport. We both bought some. It turns out that olives and cheese are sold either next to each other or nearby, and who could resist the many varieties and colors of olives? An important component of the famous Turkish Breakfast, you would have these two ingredients next to each other on the plate to serve up that meal.
It was early summer and the market showed it with its juicy and blood red tomatoes, its glistening eggplant, its abundance of cucumbers, arrays of herbs, fava beans, green beans, cranberry beans, okra, zucchini, onions, garlic, scallions, and fresh grape leaves. Suddenly, I thought I could hear the word for mother, realizing that the vendors had taken us for mother and daughter, a combination that thrilled both of us: “Anne” (mother), I heard them call. We role-played our situation a little by exaggerating the affiliation: “What do you think, daughter,” I said, “do we need more mint?” And she responded, “Oh, Anne, did you forget we are growing it in the garden?”
In just a few days time I was taking a trip and really did not want to get loaded down with produce, but it was irresistible, not only for its beauty but also because the prices were so much lower than in our neighborhood, a trendy hipster one crawling with ex-pats like us. I filled my backpack with eggplants, zucchinis, cheeses, tomato paste, red pepper paste, melt-in-your-mouth peaches and plums, organic strawberries, the sweetest cherries, Himalayan salt, and a few more items, and carried them through the market. Melinda did the same and all the while we discussed the recipes that these foods would inspire.
Doubling back through the market did not work out for us. The place was immense, easily stretching a mile of the city street, and it was crowded. That made it impractical to wend our way back through carts on wheels to meet up with that perfect peach we saw at the beginning.
All that shopping made us hungry and thirsty and it was a while before we came to an “exit” to search for some prepared food. Finally we came upon a borek shop, a place that sells pans of pastries filled with all kinds of varieties where we were able to sit, drink some cold water, and take a break.
It was only after our hunger and thirst were sated, when we had a chance o rest our aching feet that we thought out loud: What about the spices, the clothing, the kitchen implements, the other housewares, the shampoos, and the shoes? All the more fortified by the börek we ate for lunch, we launched ourselves back into the traffic, “just for a little longer.” Who could resist the curtain of shoes after all?
