Turkish surprise number 19

Occasionally, hubby will bring something new from the market and ask me "Did you have this in Pakistan?"

Thank you for rubbing in the wounds my love, no, even if we did I won't remember it because I haven't been back in ages!

This time though, we had an interesting argument. He brought back "Kızılcık," a small berry that grows on trees the height of apple trees. It looks like a cross between cherries and cranberries. My first bite into it, I cringed...it was extremely tart! While I was trying to bring myself back from tart-induced-confusion, Wizards exclaimed "I KNEW you'd like it!"

Huh?

I about died from the possibly poisonous berry and what part of my flailing for water and gacking into the sink did I look like I enjoyed it?

"Oh you ate the unripe one, they still need to sit and ripen a bit."

Why thank you for that important piece of information!

Three days later, I bit into the now darker berry tentatively. There was still a hint of that fruit of death tartness, but it was more pleasant this time. The flesh left my mouth feeling dry and it reminded me of...

Jamun!

Could it be? Have I found jamun in Turkey?

Jamun you see, has some beautiful memories associated with it. It gets harvested from tall trees late summer into the monsoon season. My earliest memory of Jamun happened at our neighbor's home where older girls seasoned the purple berries with salt and pepper. With the jamun in one bowl, and another bowl held over it, they would shake the berries till the salt made some of the juice start leaving the fruit. "To lessen their tartness," they explained.

Most other times I ate jamun, the memories were ruined by the stupid worms creeping out just before we were about to pop the entire thing in our mouths. There were a few times when after finishing off half a bowl of the purple fruit, we'd realize that every berry was in fact compromised and o.m.g. we already ate like half a kilo of worm infested fruit!!!!

Thank fully, the worm prefers to reside not in the flesh of the jamun, but the seed. Or so I like to tell myself every time I remember that god damned (yet extremely tasty) fruit.

To replicate the same memory, I seasoned kızılcık with salt and pepper, shook them till they got watery and inspected for worms.

No worms.

As I dug into my bowl of jamun-related-but-better berries, I realized, I had found yet another silver lining.