Archaeobotanical findings counsel that menengiç – or one thing resembling it – could have even deeper roots. On the Neolithic web site of Göbekli Tepe, a Unesco-listed web site two hours east of Gaziantep, researchers have discovered the stays of untamed pistachios amid its art-inscribed megalithic constructions erected practically 12,000 years in the past.
At the moment, the panorama surrounding the positioning is dry and sparsely treed. However researchers imagine that within the early Neolithic interval, it was much more temperate – a forest the place resident hunter-gatherers might harvest the fruits of untamed pistachio and almond bushes.
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When Zor defined how his household harvests menengiç, I discovered it simple to image the area’s historical folks gathering wild pistachios in a lot the identical means. “We simply roll out a curtain beneath the tree, and we shake it till the menengiç falls to the bottom,” he’d stated. Archaeologists have discovered 1000’s of grinding stones at Göbekli Tepe – the biggest such assortment from Neolithic Mesopotamia – suggesting that these harvests might have been crushed and processed into pastes like these nonetheless bought within the Gaziantep bazaar.
They could have used extra inventive preparations, too. At Tahmis Kahvesi, espresso is served with a small dish of nostalji çerez, a crunchy mixture of roasted menengiç, chickpeas and hemp seeds that is typically given to youngsters as a wholesome snack. Many years in the past, conventional cooks in south-eastern Turkey used menengiç as a spice; blended it into breads and pastries; cooked it with pilaf; crushed it for oil; or blended it with grape molasses and wheat flour to make a thick, sticky candy. Such dishes are “about to be forgotten”, wrote Abdullah Badem, a researcher at Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey College, in a 2021 paper on menengiç’s conventional makes use of.
