September’s essential ingredient: Red meaty peppers

When September comes, the kitchens cannot be without mounds of meaty red pepper. Big and plump, thick and fleshy, bursting with juicy crispiness, and with their deep red nail-polish shine, they have a magnetic appeal. Those are the sweet ones, pretty much like thick-fleshed bell peppers, but they are long with pointy ends. When we talk about red peppers, one thinks of hot spicy varieties, but these on the contrary bear a distinct sweetness, though there are occasional hot ones that one must be cautious about. When they flood the market in September, people buy in bulk for winter provision preparations, price tags list quantities of 3 to 5 kilograms at a minimum; in the countryside, buying peppers in bulk in sacks is not an uncommon scene. When the first hints of fall are felt and when flocks of jars appear in stores, we all know that the clock is ticking to make endless jars of sauces or thick pepper paste to preserve the unmatched flavor of red peppers.

Red peppers are indispensable especially for savory spreads; a weirdly popular breakfast treat much-favored in the Balkans and Türkiye. We love to smear our bread with a generous helping of such spreads and pastes, not only made with red peppers but also sometimes mixed with tomatoes and roasted eggplants and spiked with onions and garlic. This means lots of labor in the kitchen. There are usually two ways to start coping with the pepper. They are either passed from a mincemeat machine to turn into a pulp, then simmered in large pots to reduce to a thick paste. Another way includes painstakingly roasting the peppers, peeling the cellophane-like thin skin, and then proceeding with the next steps. This latter means lots of labor, but there are always tricks for easier handling. If roasted peppers are put in a plastic bag, or covered with something to sweat to keep the moisture while slowly cooling, that thin skin peels away like magic.

Balkan Mix

So, what is the result of all this labor that ends in jars and what are the variations? The sauces and spreads prepared for winter are very diverse not only in Türkiye but more so in the Balkan countries. So much so that, some of them have almost acquired a national identity and have become a must-have on the table. The common ingredient in their mixtures is red pepper, while other ingredients are usually incorporated in the mix can be roasted or chargrilled eggplants, tomatoes, onions, garlic and various herbs. Among the most popular are Lutenitsa (Ljutenica), Ayvar (Ajvar), Pincur (Pindjur), Apetitka, Malidzano, Köpoğlu (Kyopolou) and Zakuska (Zacuscă). The most popular trio must be Lutenitsa, Ayvar and Pincur, which are similar with slight variations. Lutenitsa is especially popular in Bulgaria, and besides peppers and eggplants, it contains a lot of tomatoes, sometimes carrots, garlic, onion, oil, salt and sugar. One of the most prominent Balkan sauces is undoubtedly Ayvar (Ajvar). Its main ingredients are roasted eggplant and red peppers, sometimes with the addition of tomatoes. In Macedonia, Leskofça Ajvar is listed as an International Geographical Indication. Pincur, on the other hand, is dominant in Bosnia and is made like tomato paste with only tomatoes and peppers and no eggplants. It is pretty much like our "domates-biber salçası," a mixed paste of tomatoes and peppers. Another similar sauce is Apetitka, which is a kind of pepper paste.

Peppered with Name Games

It is interesting that all those very similar sauces and spreads bear quite different names, and sometimes the origin of the name can be something quite different from peppers, as in the case of ayvar, which is twisted from caviar. The word Ayvar sounds foreign to us, but it is actually derived from the Turkish word caviar. The etymology of caviar is an interesting one, it is thought that it stems from an old Turkic word that means egg-bearing, hence the name for fish eggs. Once, sturgeon caviar was very popular in Belgrade, originally coming from the Black Sea, and going to all the way up in the Danube River. When caviar became expensive and scarce, this red pepper and eggplant appetizer, which was initially called red caviar or Serbian caviar started to appear on the tables as an ersatz taste. This is how the word ajvar came into being. In France, similarly, roasted eggplant puree is called eggplant caviar. If eggplant is predominant in the sauces, they can also have names like "Malidzano," which takes its name from the Italian word "Melanzane," which simply means eggplant.

The fun goes on with the names and shapes of peppers. Romania's Zacuscă paste is made with the local Gogoşari pepper, which exactly looks like a tomato, which is exactly the same as the recently rediscovered Kamber pepper. It is now Ottoman heirloom variety, which is being revived in Söğüt, Bilecik. This also puts a shadow on previous interpretations of tomatoes being used initially only in green form. Those green tomatoes could have been those tomato-shaped peppers in their green form. It is not only the shape but sometimes the name that takes unexpected turns in peppers. In recent years, we have renamed the meaty fleshed red pepper with a rather unusual name: Kapya! Until recently, I was thinking that the name might have stemmed from a foreign hybrid variety that is developed by agriculturalists, or coming from a variety in Mexico or South America. But it was much closer than I thought, actually having origins in Turkish. This fleshy red pepper variety is called “Kapija” in Bulgaria and there is even a famed “Kurtovska Kapija” in reference to the town of Kurtovo near Plovdiv (Ottoman Filibe), the region where it is mostly grown, and that is where we got it from. The same pepper is also known as Ajvarka because it is mostly used for making ayvar. So, what does 'Kapija' mean? It comes from "kapı," which means "door" in Turkish. But it is no ordinary "kapı," or door to a room or a house. The word is generally used for the gates of sheltered areas such as vineyards, gardens, orchards, or a "bostan" or "bustan," which is a vegetable garden where all those peppers grow, hence the name!