Spring hopes eternal

When spring comes, Turkey awakes in its full magnificence. In the cities, café tables are moved out into the streets beneath the unfurling leaves of the planes and the shocking purple blossom of Judas trees. In the countryside, particularly around Bursa and Ankara, fruit blossom blankets whole valleys and hillsides in pink and white. First comes the almond, then the plums, apricots, apples and cherries and finally the delicate petals of the quince. In the mountains, it’s the snowdrops that break winter’s grip, followed by a myriad varieties of primrose and primula, and the bulbous plants, for which Turkey is particularly renowned – cyclamen, hyacinth, narcissus, daffodil, lily and orchid – spread out like kilims for the gods.

It is unsurprising that flowers have always played an integral part in Turkish life, in art, in the kitchen and in the dispensary. How wonderfully decadent to turn to orchid bulbs to make flour for a drink (salep) or to use in ice cream to make it sticky and prevent it from melting. Or to enjoy the sweet nutty flavour of a hyacinth bulb. And of course there is the rose, which in the wild flowers crimson and yellow as well as white, that makes rose water a local culinary ingredient.