Buying Spices in Istanbul's Egyptian Bazaar

I love spices and the prospect of visiting a huge, ancient market dedicated only to spices and located right where Europe meets Asia got me all worked up.

People have been trading spices on Istanbul's waterfront for centuries but the actual L-shaped spice market building (aerial picture) now housing the 'Egyptian Bazaar' or 'Spice Bazaar' or 'Gypsy Bazaar', was built in the 1940's.

The entrance is on a big square facing the ferry dock on the Golden Horn, with a huge pigeon-covered mosque on the left. The bazaar is like a huge cavernous arcade with train-station-high ceilings and lines of shops on either end. The spice merchants are relatively unobtrusive compared to those in the Grand Bazaar, the city's premier tourist trap. Not to say that the Egyptian Bazaar lacks tourists, far from it, but about half the patrons are locals, and the goods sold are authentic.

Apart from the odd döner kebab stand, shops in the Egyptian Bazaar all sell spices, sweets or nuts.

1. THE SPICES

Many shops sell an assortment of spice mixes. But friends don't let friends buy ground spices and certainly not ground spice mixes. The spices' flavor is lost very soon in those open stalls and mixing your own spices takes only a minute with a mortar or mixer. I saw two Swiss ladies buying vanilla and saffron - not a good idea. The vanilla were dry Bourbon beans imported from Madagascar, a poor member of the most humble relation of the vanilla family. As for Turkish Saffron, it's no saffron at all but dried safflower. I sort of felt bad to see those fellow Swiss travelers make such poor choices, but what could I do?

For vanilla I bought me a bag of vanillin crystals, shamelessly imported from China, but much better vanilla value than overprices shriveled vanilla beans. I also bought sahlep, the grated root of a wild orchid used in confectionery and as a popular beverage. Both are suspicious-looking white powders which require some guts to bring it back through Turkish customs.

Here is what I bought:

Cinnamon bark - all cinnamon is bark but this one really looks likes regular bark. Very fragrant, but not necessarily better than the premium cinnamon sold in the West.

Dried rose buds - I love flower-based confectionery and rose is a favorite. I couldn't find rose petals anywhere in the bazaar but several shops had whole buds. Extremely fragrant, but who knows what they've been sprinkled with. An unholy cocktail of pesticides and rose perfume probably.

Gum arabic. Sounds like a very authentic thing to bring back from Istanbul, and yet the second shop I visited showed me the Greek carton boxes. This is the crystallized sap (photo) from an oriental acacia and serves to make turkish delights chewy or give texture to oriental ice creams.

Red peppercorns to serve with fresh goat cheese.

2. SWEETS
Half the shops in the Egyptian Bazaar sell Turkish sweets - baklavas, turkish delight, you name it. A friend of mine says that all oriental pastry can be summed up in the question 'Fat or sweet?'.

Turkish delight is not hard to find, and you get a rather large choice of flavor. Now this is never gourmet confectionery, just flavored jelly coated in cornstarch, but buy some for fun.

A favorite Turkish sweet brings together two national favorites - nuts and sugar. These are big loaves of pistachios or hazelnuts glued together by a sweet flavored gel. My favorite is the red one - hazelnut and pomegranate.

3. THE NUTS
The shops who don't sell spices or sweets sell nuts.

Nuts of all kinds are a good buy in Turkey and here at the Egyptian Bazaar you certainly have a choice. Almonds, pine nuts, hazelnuts and mounds of pistachios.

I bought some of these shelled unsalted raw pistachios to prepare my own pistachio paste at home.

In those narrow streets, you will find what regular Turks buy - simple cheese (that doesn't look gourmet grade), stuffed wine leaves and several shops selling rustic Turkish cookware. The real thing. Some even have fixed prices, which allowed me to buy huge hand-made shish (skwers the size of sword) for 1€ each.

If you like olives you're unlikely to find as much choice anywhere else than Turkey.

Ada çay is wild sage used as herbal tea, a popular drink in Turkey. I bought some although the leaves never look that good.

What I didn't buy

Every single merchant in the Egyptian bazaar will press you to buy Turkish Viagra, a herbal mix that will enable you to 'make love 5 times in the night'. I managed to escape by saying I wouldn't settle for less than 10 times in the night until one merchant answered 'You'll need to buy two jars for that'.