Pirpirim is the name Amasya gives to purslane. Growing of its own accord through the summer at the edges of gardens, in melon and vegetable plots and between cultivated fields, this fleshy-leaved herb becomes, when cooked with minced meat and rice or with bulgur, a light, filling and inexpensive vegetable dish. It appears among the local dishes in the vegetable section of the Amasya Cuisine book published by the Governorship of Amasya, and the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism also counts it among the meat-based dishes in its list of local cuisine. The form of the dish most often found in recipe collections today is close to the recipe in that official source. Yet the story of pirpirim is not confined to a single recipe: the plant itself, the origin of its name, its relatives elsewhere in Anatolia and its place at the Amasya table together make the dish easier to understand.

The Plant and Its Name

Purslane, Portulaca oleracea, is an annual plant of the purslane family (Portulacaceae). Its origin is generally taken to be the Middle East and India, but it has spread across much of the world today. Its leaves are thick and juicy, with a faintly sour and slightly salty taste; for this reason it is eaten raw in salads, mixed into yogurt, or cooked like spinach in meat dishes and pastries. In Şanlıurfa, pirpirim is used raw in the salad called bostana, made with tomato, green pepper, isot pepper, spring onion, parsley, mint and pomegranate molasses. Eaten with pleasure in Asia and Europe, the plant is regarded in some countries, the United States among them, as a fast-spreading weed and is not cooked. That the same plant can be a pest to be weeded out in one place and a prized vegetable in another shows how relative the line between weed and vegetable is.

This relativity holds for Turkish wild-herb cooking in general. According to a study of herbs in regional cuisines, "ot" is the word for plants that are not cultivated by people but grow of their own accord in the wild; herbs used in cooking are in a sense the self-sown relatives of vegetables, and some are thought to have once been cultivated crops that gradually reverted to the wild. The same study notes that an herb that seems peculiar to one region is known elsewhere under other names: madımak is called "madımalak" in one place and "gıvışkan" or "yemlik" in another, while wild purslane is known as "töhmeken", "soğukluk" or "pirpirim".

The two Turkish names are themselves of interest. "Semiz" is a word found in the Orkhon Inscriptions, counted among the oldest known Turkic texts, and means "fat, fleshy, plump"; the fullness of the plant's leaves explains the name directly. The form "semizotu" first appears in writing in the texts of Yadigâr-ı İbnî Şerif, dated to about 1421. The origin of "pirpirim" is less clear. Nişanyan Sözlük states that the ultimate source of the word, and the language it was borrowed from, are unclear, and lists three possibilities: Armenian prprem, Kurdish pirpir or pirpar, and Persian parparan or parparī, all words for the same plant. Although no definite origin can be given, all three candidates point to Anatolia's multilingual past.

The name pirpirim is also current in the cuisines of Gaziantep, Malatya and Diyarbakır, where a different, sour and legume-based dish goes by it. So when "pirpirim yemeği" is mentioned, the same plate does not come to mind everywhere. Amasya's own recipe and the interpretations that stand beside it should therefore be treated separately.

Its Place in Amasya Cuisine

Amasya's cuisine is usually explained by the city's long history and its ecology. Local sources write that in the Ottoman period the city worked as a kind of school for imperial heirs and was known as the City of Princes, and that this tradition carried over to the table. Bakla dolması, made from dried broad beans and meat, is said to have been born there, along with vişneli ekmek from a fresh cake eaten in the princes' palace and unutma beni from stale bread; these are local accounts and cannot be treated as documented historical facts. Pirpirim lies outside these stories. It is a dish of the garden and the home kitchen rather than the palace table, and its worth comes from being cooked quickly from a cheap, plentiful ingredient that is fresh in its season.

The Amasya Cuisine book, published by the Governorship of Amasya in 2006 and issued in a second edition in 2010, was prepared to record the local dishes. Edited by H. Harun Yörgüç, its recipes were compiled with the contribution of teachers at the Amasya Anatolian Girls' Vocational High School, master instructors, cooks and housewives. The dishes are divided into soups, meat dishes, vegetable dishes, pastries, rice dishes, desserts and specialties. The vegetable section contains bakla dolması, patlıcan pehli, patlıcan silkme, patlıcan oturtma, dried-aubergine dish, mücver, etli bamya, fried green beans, dried sliced green bean dish, pirpirim, madımak, onion mıhlama, fried courgette peel, beet greens and kabak çırpma. Pirpirim stands beside madımak in this list; both belong to the herb group, and both are plain dishes resting on onion fried in fat, tomato paste and a grain.

The entry on the Kültür Portalı rests on the same book and places pirpirim in the category of "meat-based vegetable dishes". This classification suggests that the version cooked with minced meat is taken as the standard one in Amasya. In the Directorate's list, pirpirim is counted under meat dishes together with bakla dolması, etli bamya, keşkek, madımak and mıhlama. Alongside the variety of soups, pastries and desserts in the city's cuisine, the vegetable and herb dishes on this list represent the everyday household table.

The Amasya Way of Preparing It

The quantities in the book's recipe are as follows: one kilogram of pirpirim, two hundred grams of minced meat, one dry onion, one tea glass of rice, one tablespoon of tomato paste, oil and salt. The onion and minced meat are first fried together in oil. The washed, picked over and chopped pirpirim is added. Once the pirpirim has wilted in the heat and shrunk in volume, the washed rice, tomato paste and salt are added. One water glass of water is poured in, the lid is closed and the dish is cooked over low heat. The small amount of water is striking: because purslane releases its own liquid as it cooks, the added water is enough only to cook the rice, and the dish ends up with a consistency somewhere between a pilaf and a cooked vegetable rather than a watery stew.

The book's note on the same page points to a second form of the dish: if fine bulgur fried in butter is used in place of the rice, the result can be served as a separate dish called "pirpirim kavurması". In other words, Amasya cuisine separates the rice-and-mince pot dish from the bulgur and butter fry-up. The use of bulgur in many of the recipes circulating today under the name pirpirim yemeği may have come by this second route, but no source confirms this.

Practice in homes varies from recipe to recipe. In some recipes, instead of mince, only bulgur or previously boiled chickpeas are added to the herb fried with onion and paste. Garlic yogurt may accompany the dish at serving; the mild sourness of purslane goes well with yogurt, and this pairing is also known in other, non-sour pirpirim recipes. The dish can be eaten hot or lukewarm, and fresh village bread or yufka is preferred alongside. None of these variants appears in the Amasya Cuisine book and they should be thought of as home practice.

Alongside Madımak

To understand pirpirim's place in the local cuisine it helps to look at the recipes next to it in the same book. The madımak recipe calls for five hundred grams of washed and picked madımak, one tablespoon of tomato paste, one tea glass of oil, one medium onion, two hundred grams of pastırma and one water glass of cracked wheat (yarma). The onion is fried in oil, pastırma and paste are added, the washed and chopped madımak goes in, hot water and yarma are added and left to cook, and the dish is served hot. The skeleton of the two recipes is the same: onion in oil, a meat ingredient, paste, chopped greens and a filling grain. The difference is that madımak uses pastırma instead of mince, yarma instead of rice, and more water.

The beet-greens recipe further along the section is closer still to pirpirim. It is made with one kilogram of beet greens (also called kuşekmeği), two hundred grams of minced meat, one dry onion, one tablespoon of tomato paste, one tea glass of pilaf bulgur, three eggs and a bunch of parsley. Onion and mince are fried in oil, the picked and chopped beet greens are added and wilted, then bulgur, cumin paste (çemen) and tomato paste are added, two water glasses of hot water are poured in, the lid is closed and the dish is cooked over low heat. Whoever wishes pours garlic yogurt over it when serving. The fried courgette peel dish follows the same method: tomato is added to courgette peel fried with onion and mince, a hollow is opened in the middle for the rice, and it is cooked with one to one and a half glasses of hot water.

Adding greens, and then rice or bulgur, to a fry of mince, onion and paste is a recurring pattern among the vegetable dishes in the book. That pirpirim is made with rice and the beet greens with bulgur and garlic yogurt shows that the pattern can be built with two different grains. Since no source explains the reason for this repetition, it should be read as an interpretation; even so, it can be said that the bulgur and yogurt practices reported later for pirpirim do not run against the region's own culinary logic.

Comparison with the Pirpirim of the Southeast

In Turkey the name pirpirim is most often associated with the cuisine of Gaziantep. The dish called "pirpirim aşı" or "pirpirim yemeği" in Gaziantep is a spoon dish in which purslane is cooked together with chickpeas, green lentils and coarse bulgur, soured with sumac syrup, pomegranate molasses or lemon, and seasoned with mint and chili flakes. Details of the recipe differ by source; the legumes are boiled separately and added at the end, the bulgur is the coarse pilaf grade rather than fine, and the dish is rested with the lid closed before serving. This tart sourness, absent from the Amasya recipe, is the main point separating the two dishes. Amasya's pirpirim rests on the soft balance of mince and rice, while Gaziantep's puts forward the density of the legumes and the sharpness of the sour.

Two forms of the dish are recognized in Gaziantep. Alongside fresh pirpirim aşı, made in summer with fresh purslane, there is dried pirpirim aşı, cooked in winter from purslane dried in summer. The second is thicker in consistency and sometimes includes dried peppers and aubergines; it is reported that dried purslane must be blanched in hot water and its bitter water drained before use. Although no meat goes into dried pirpirim aşı, it is considered rich in plant protein thanks to the variety of legumes, and it is said to be known also as "fakir kebabı" (poor man's kebab). All of this belongs to the cuisine of the Southeast; the Amasya Cuisine book has no recipe for dried pirpirim.

That said, the practice of drying is not foreign to Amasya cuisine. The same book's table of contents lists a dried sliced green bean dish and a dried aubergine dish. In the dried bean recipe, green beans are sliced and dried in the shade, softened in hot water in winter, cooked with meat, onion and paste and served with garlic yogurt. Carrying a summer vegetable into winter is thus a known practice in the region; since there is no written record of such a practice for pirpirim, however, it would not be right to present dried pirpirim as an Amasya dish.

Season and Table

Purslane is a plant that loves warm weather, and pirpirim is for that reason a summer dish. In Amasya vegetable dishes carry the weight of the summer table; the ceremonial table the Amasya Cuisine book describes as the "heavy guest meal" (ağır misafir yemeği) illustrates this well. According to the book, the Amasyalı is a very hospitable person who wants to see a guest at the table at every meal; when a visitor arrives from outside, usually one who will stay the night, six dishes are served: toyka soup, whole meat, rice pilaf, sinisu böreği, okra and a dessert. In summer, patlıcan pehlisi takes the place of the whole meat; for dessert one of tırtıl baklava, kuymak or gömlek kadayıfı follows. The book does not mention pirpirim within this meal. Even so, it is clear from this menu that the summer table rests on seasonal vegetables such as okra, aubergine and greens.

The same book also describes Amasya's wedding meal: at village weddings, cauldrons of keşkek, pilaf, meat and helva are boiled, tables are set on rooftops and in courtyards, and the food is eaten together to the sound of drum and zurna. The velime meal prepared for a couple about to enter the bridal chamber consists, on a single tray, of whole meat, pilaf and tırtıl baklava. All of these are feast-weight dishes; pirpirim, by contrast, is an example of the daily meal built from a few ingredients around a herb that grows by itself. The two ends, the feast table and the home dish, together make up the local cuisine.

Nutritional Value

Purslane is cited as one of the plants containing the most omega-3 fatty acid among vegetables. According to the values given by the Turkish Wikipedia, 100 grams contain about 42 kilojoules of energy, 1 gram of carbohydrate, 1 gram of protein and 0.2 gram of fat, as well as 20 milligrams of vitamin C, 1.7 milligrams of carotene, 0.06 milligram of vitamin B1, 0.04 milligram of vitamin B2, 130 milligrams of calcium and 3 milligrams of iron. In a dish with mince and rice this table changes with the added fat, meat and grain; and the protein and iron richness attributed to the legume-based recipes depends on the dish as a whole and should not be read as the share of the herb alone.

Purslane is counted among medicinal plants in some sources and appears as a plant also used in traditional Chinese medicine. Amasya sources, however, do not report a documented folk-medicine use for pirpirim; so only the general nutritional value of the plant can be discussed here.

Chronology

Orkhon Inscriptions period: The word "semiz" appears in the oldest known Turkic written texts.

About 1421: The name "semizotu" is first seen in the writings of Yadigâr-ı İbnî Şerif of this date.

2006: The Governorship of Amasya publishes the first edition of the Amasya Cuisine book; the pirpirim recipe is recorded in it.

2010: The second edition of the book is issued.

Sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources