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Seasonal Food in Turkey – Hurma of a Different Variety

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This is another new and mysterious Turkish seasonal food that has just hit our radar. Anyone ever seen it before?

When we went to our friends’ house on Christmas Day to eat aşure, this was handed over to take with us. Neither of us had ever seen it before nor had a clue what it was!

Mangled brown shape resembling tangled twigs with light seeds on the end.
‘Hurma’ is a term used for various fruits

Our friend told us that the person he bought it from explained to him that it was hurma.

This is where the Turkish language can become a bit confusing as hurma is generally used to mean currents and raisins.

But, as we discovered and wrote last year, hurma is also used to describe the super-sweet fruit, persimmon.

We’ve all had a taste (it’s the gnarled brown shapes that you eat) and agree that it tastes a bit like a mild-flavoured raisin but with a drier texture.

If anyone knows an alternative name to the hurma in this photo, we’d love to know as we’re very curious about it.

Having never seen it before, we also noticed it was for sale on Çalış market on Sunday.

It’s serving as a festive decoration in our house at the moment. Well, I think there’s something oddly pretty and festive-looking about it.

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Turkey's For Life

Sunday 13th of November 2011

@ Anonymous: We'll look those up. Thanks a lot for the information as none of us had seen them being sold anywhere so we had no name for them. Great info.

Anonymous

Sunday 13th of November 2011

These are the dried fruit of Hovenia dulcis also know as "raisin tree" the fruitstalks swell as the seed matures and these taste very sweet and are dried as raisins and used in the same way.rgds,Dithmar

Anonymous

Wednesday 29th of June 2011

hurma is a fruit which grows on dates, phoenix dactylifera. date palm tree.

Turkey's For Life

Tuesday 28th of December 2010

@ Anil: Hurma is hurma - it must just be one of those special Turkish foods. :) I'm starting to feel a mission coming on. It must have another name (even a Latin one)...

Anil

Tuesday 28th of December 2010

Hmmm, don't know of any other names for it...

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