I nearly shouted with joy. Kanli portakal (blood oranges) are back in season!
I love blood orange season almost as much as I love nar (pomegranate) season. Lucky for me, both fruits are available around the same time every year.
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| How could you resist walking by a stall selling these sunset-colored oranges? |
In fact, blood oranges seem to have arrived slightly earlier than usual. I normally find them at the pazar in Istanbul from February through early April.
When a product first arrives at the pazar, the price is always higher. Only two stalls out of nearly 100 were selling blood oranges on Saturday. Thus, the price was set at 3 and 3.50 tl (about $2 USD) per kilo. Over the next several weeks, the price will decrease to 1 tl per kilo. Even regular oranges are 2 tl per kilo right now.
We made our rounds stocking up on fresh produce such as lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, mandalina, roka (arugula), onions, ginger Brussels sprouts and broccoli.
Since we didn�t see any other stalls selling blood oranges, we returned to the entrance and purchased just one kilo of blood oranges. I�ll wait until the price decreases to buy more.
On Sundays at home in Istanbul, my husband turns into a juicing machine. I help rinse off and slice the fruit while hubby uses his manpower to operate our crank juicer. We find it easier to do all the fruit at once and store the juices in the fridge to drink throughout the week.
It�s a messy job as juice splatters everywhere on our white kitchen counters. I often have to bleach out the blood-red nar spots.
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| Hubby juiced the blood oranges yesterday at home. |
Yesterday, he juiced 4 kilos of nar, 3 kilos of oranges, 1.5 kilos of lemons and 1 kilo of blood oranges. Meanwhile, I used the lemon juice to make a batch of my ginger syrup so we can have homemade ginger ale at home. Maybe I'll also make some blood orange sodas this week.
Our fridge is always full of strange concoctions in glass jars such as limonata mix, strawberry vodka or candied lemon peels.
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| Left to right: blood orange juice, ginger syrup, limonata syrup, orange juice and fresh pomegranate juice. |
This morning, I�m having a karisik glass of nar and portakal juice for breakfast. What�s your favorite winter fruit?