Citrus Recipes from Café Esin

Citrus is important to our cooking at Café Esin, perhaps because it is embedded in our backgrounds. Esin and I grew up in different countries—she is from Turkey and I am from Miami—but both of us had fruit trees at our homes as children. I had kumquats, oranges, avocados, mangoes, and bananas trees. Esin had Seville oranges, lemons, and tangerines, along with many other fruits and vegetables. As a young child I would pick the kumquats, eat some of the puckery fruit and then throw some at friends. I didn’t realize their value until later in life. Esin’s mother would make jams with the Seville oranges and her family would utilize the lemons and other citrus in many Mediterranean dishes.