GastroAntep Festival Started with Pistachio Harvest and Shire Making

The International Gastronomy Festival (GastroAntep), which was organized for the 4th time this year by Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality under the coordination of Gaziantep Governorship and in cooperation with Gaziantep Development Foundation (GAGEV), started with peanut harvest and cider production.

At the opening of the festival in Batalhöyük, President Fatma Şahin, who went to the pistachio orchard with her local clothes, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy and members of the protocol gathered pistachios from the trees. Later, 'sire', which is the general name given to products such as sausage, amulet, slice, molasses made with grapes, was started.

President Fatma Şahin, who cleaned the seeds of pepper, eggplant and zucchini in the area, left the peanuts and walnuts on the ropes to dry in the sun in the last part of the event.

In his speech in Batalhöyük, President Şahin stated that they held the 4th GastroAntep Festival with the participation of Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, and said:

“Today, there are participants from around 70 countries. 300 famous and Michelin-starred chefs are here. Whatever is spoken in a gastronomy city today, whatever works in its festivals, these are all spoken in Gaziantep. Our minister attended the opening of our festival. I welcome him. Our GastroAntep title this year is 'Sustainable Gastronomy'. The reason why we are running our festival on this theme is that, together with the pandemic, sustainable development is the biggest agenda of the world. Human and environmental development is very important in this type of development. We need to protect our environment and return to the core. To return to the essence, we must look at our local cuisine. We picked our peanuts today. We made our grape juice and syrup. It should not be said that it is sire, it contains walnuts and hazelnuts along with grape juice. There is a great effort. Poetry is also a great healing. We know that this product is good for Alzheimer's disease. We also have dryers. All of these are an economy, an export, a culture, a cyclical system. In this circular system, we increase our irrigable land together with our deputies and governor. We are working on our renewable energy. We continue our work based on the theme of sustainable development.”