Behold the pictures,all over the internet, of street vendors stretching Turkish ice cream just like it's boardwalk taffy. That'smaraş dondurma, a confection made not just with milk and sugar but with mastic, a tree resin, andsalep, the roots of wild mountain orchids, which imparts elasticity. The best and frankly only way to describe this is as stretchy, chewy ice cream.Word on the streetis that people have been photographed jumping rope with it; others have cut it with knives and chainsaws. On the street, too—or in the markets, rather, where you get this ice cream in Istanbul—its unique stretchiness enables vendors to play all manner of practical jokes with would-be ice cream eaters, as in the video below.
The metal rod you see there is part of the traditional production process: the ice cream is beaten—kneaded, more or less—so that it sticks to itself. What results is afrozen confectionyou can do some tricks with; it's also quite a bit slower to melt thannon-elastic ice cream, a boon in the Turkish summers.
Something likedondurmais now available in the U.S., but in grocery aisles rather than bazaars.Lezzetli Mediterranean Ice Cream, which has been selling in the New York area for a while, announced today that it's expanding its distribution throughout the northeastern United States, with four flagship flavors: Chios vanilla, made with a Greek tree sap; chocolate–orange blossom; spiced date, and tart cherry. Lezzetli bills its ice creams as inspired by similar desserts of Turkey and the Levant—versions of dondurma also exist in places like Syria and Greece—and they aren't thickened with orchids,which are endangered, but with other natural gums. (In Turkey, for this same reason,salephas given way to other thickeners, like guar gum.) Not in your local place yet? Request it! Your grocer might be pliable.
