Kadaοfi and baklava, halva, sweets, Turkish delight, honey-and-sesame crunch, ritseli, must-jelly, and malebi. At the crossroads of commercial and cultural exchange, Thrace, with its sweetmeats, preserves the memory of a way of life that took shape when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans and the new arrivals in Thrace, nomads and townsfolk of various ethnicities (including Armenians and Jews), enriched the Byzantines’ gastronomic habits with their own cultural experiences.
In the bourgeois environment of the towns, sweets were an everyday pleasure; but until 1955, countryfolk considered them a luxury, permitted only at family and religious celebrations, which were associated with the consumption of specific kinds of sweetmeats.
Confectionery and sweets had hitherto been sweetened with honey and petimezi (a syrup usually made from grape-juice). Saragli, halva, Turkish delight, sweets, sugared almonds, roasted chickpeas, and fondants were all produced by the same empirical methods until industrialisation and wide consumption of sugar in the 19th century changed the products while facilitating production.
Lifestyles have changed and people’s diet is more varied nowadays, but the roasted chickpeas and the syrupy pastries of Thrace still draw us like magnets, giving us the pleasure and the magic of both tradition and luxury.
Roasted chickpeas
Fresh chickpeas are roasted for 5-10 minutes, then soaked in water and roasted again. The process is repeated 3 times, for different lengths of time and with different quantities of water, until they are dunked in salt water or a spicy sauce. The chickpeas are then roasted in the davas, a special receptacle with a copper bottom and a wooden stirrer, which revolves and stirs the chickpeas. They are then sorted by size using special riddles.
Icecream
Boiled sheep’s milk and sugar, egg yolks, vanilla, and mastic were all put into a cylindrical metal container, which was in turn placed in a wooden barrel with a larger diameter. Ice and coarse salt were packed between the sides of the cylinder and the barrel. The container was shaken continuously, and every so often the ingredients were stirred with an iron spatula, until they thickened into an elastic mass.
Turkish delight
Water, sugar, glucose, and starch were boiled together for 2 hours, and stirred constantly with a wooden stick. Towards the end of the boiling time, flavouring and colouring would be added, together with nuts (pistachios or almonds), depending on the type of Turkish delight that was being made. The confectioner would taste the mixture with his finger, and if he found it acceptable he would pour it into wooden trays sprinkled with caster sugar. When the mixture had cooled, he would turn it out onto the counter (also sprinkled with caster sugar) and cut the Turkish delight into cubes with a knife.
