Qêsî: The Kurdish Dried Apricot and the Stew of Special Occasions

Sherko Sabir
May 30
6 min read

Qêsî: The Kurdish Dried Apricot and the Stew of Special Occasions

Qêsî is the Kurdish word for the dried apricot — the tart, amber-coloured half-fruit that hangs on the summer wall until it is wrinkled and sweet, then goes into the winter pantry to flavour lamb stews, sweeten rice, and enrich sauces through the cold months. Fresh, the apricot is one of the great glories of the Kurdish summer orchard: eaten ripe and warm from the tree, made into jam, or dried in the mountain sun on flat rooftops and stone walls until it concentrates into the golden-brown preserved thing the kitchen relies on for the rest of the year. The most celebrated use of qêsî in Kurdish cooking is a stew so good it is reserved for special occasions: lamb or chicken simmered slowly with dried apricots and raisins until the fruit collapses into the sauce, giving the broth a deep, bittersweet, aromatic sweetness that is unlike anything a fresh ingredient could produce. This is qayse w kishmish — apricot and raisin stew — a classic Kurdish festive dish, made for Eid and for Newroz and for the arrival of guests who deserve the full hospitality of the Kurdish kitchen. It is sweet, and savoury, and gently sour, and it speaks directly to the Kurdish love of fruit in meat cooking that this series has glimpsed before in the dried-apricot sauce of the Akre meat confit. This is the one-hundred-and-twenty-second article in the series. The apricot, like the walnut and the pomegranate, is a fruit whose wild ancestors grow in the Zagros mountains that are the Kurdish heartland. It is a fruit of the region as much as of the Kurdish table, and this series does not claim the apricot for Kurds alone. But qêsî, by its Kurdish name, in its Kurdish orchards, in its Kurdish stews, is part of the orchard this series has been building.

Key Takeaways

• Qêsî is the Kurdish dried apricot — sun-dried in summer and stored through winter

• Qayse w kishmish (apricot and raisin stew) is a classic Kurdish dish for Eid and special occasions

• Used in the dried-apricot sauce of meat confit (qeli) and in reçel and rice dishes

• The Zagros mountains are a wild ancestral homeland of the apricot, as of the walnut and pomegranate

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Qêsî / qayse (dried apricot; fresh apricot zêrdik or qayse; Turkish kayısı, Arabic mishmish)

Origin: Wild apricot ancestors grow in the Zagros mountains; grown in Bitlis, Hawraman, and across Kurdistan

Uses: In lamb stew with raisins (qayse w kishmish); in qeli sauce; in reçel; in rice; dried and eaten as snack

Occasion: The apricot-and-raisin stew is a special-occasion and festive dish; dried qêsî is used year-round

From Orchard to Winter Pantry

The apricot comes in a rush in late spring and early summer, ripening quickly and in such abundance that it must be dealt with fast. Some are eaten fresh — sweet, sun-warm, the flesh giving against the thumb — and some are stewed or made into jam. The rest are split and laid out in the mountain sun to dry, arrayed on stone walls and flat rooftops across Kurdish villages from Bitlis to Hawraman to the Soran region, until the water is gone and what remains is a concentrated, intensely flavoured, leathery half-fruit that is shelf-stable for months. This is qêsî, the dried apricot, and it is the form in which the fruit does most of its work in the Kurdish kitchen. The most celebrated of its uses is qayse w kishmish: lamb or chicken browned and then simmered slowly with a generous handful of dried apricots and raisins, the fruit softening into the broth and releasing a deep bittersweet fragrance, the sauce thickening and turning golden-amber and complex. It is served with rice on feast days, at Eid, at Newroz, at the gatherings that call for the full expression of Kurdish hospitality. A simpler, everyday version appears in qeli — the meat confit of Akre — where dried apricots are made into a sauce served alongside the slow-confit lamb and rice, giving the dish its characteristic sweet-sour brightness. Beyond the stew, qêsî is stirred into rice to sweeten it, eaten as a snack on its own — chewy, tart, and satisfying — and made into reçel, the whole dried apricot preserved in syrup as part of the autumn pantry. Kernel and all, the fruit is used: the apricot kernel inside the stone is sometimes cracked and eaten, or used as a substitute for almonds in sweets.

The Kurdish Orchard and the Mountain Origin

This series has been assembling the Kurdish orchard over three recent articles. The pomegranate of Halabja and Horaman. The walnut whose wild ancestor grows in the Zagros forests. Now the apricot, which is the third member of the Kurdish mountain orchard whose wild lineage belongs in part to these same hills. The Zagros range — the spine of Kurdistan — is among the origin regions of the apricot as a cultivated fruit, part of the larger Fertile Crescent where the agricultural revolution unfolded and where the wild relatives of the world’s most important food plants still grow. The apricot that now grows in orchards from California to Japan traces some of its wild ancestry to the same mountains where Kurds have been drying it on their rooftops for as long as anyone can remember. That does not make the apricot Kurdish. It makes the Kurdish mountains the apricot’s oldest orchard. The Bitlis region — whose keledoş and büryan this series has already named — is also one of the great apricot zones of the Kurdish southeast: the fruit grows well in its mountain climate, and the dried apricot of Bitlis is part of its food identity alongside its aged cheese and its pit-roasted meat. To find qêsî in the stew and the pantry and the celebration meal of the Kurdish kitchen is to find a thread that runs from the wild tree on the Zagros slope all the way to the feast plate of Eid. Shared with the whole region, as the pomegranate and the walnut are shared: but native to these mountains in the deepest possible sense.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is qêsî?

Qêsî is the Kurdish word for the dried apricot. Fresh apricots are grown across Kurdistan and dried in the mountain sun each summer, producing a tart, concentrated, amber-coloured preserved fruit used through winter in stews, rice dishes, jams, and as a snack. The word is also written qayse.

What is qayse w kishmish?

Qayse w kishmish is a classic Kurdish festive stew of lamb or chicken slow-cooked with dried apricots (qayse) and raisins (kishmish) until the fruit dissolves into the broth, creating a bittersweet, aromatic sauce served over rice. It is associated with Eid, Newroz, and other special occasions and is considered one of the signature dishes of Kurdish celebration cooking.

Is the apricot a Kurdish fruit?

The apricot is grown and used across the Middle East and beyond, and is not uniquely Kurdish. But the Zagros mountains, the heart of Kurdistan, are among the regions where wild ancestors of the apricot grow — part of the same Fertile Crescent origin zone that is the ancestral home of many of the world’s major food crops. Kurdish orchards in Bitlis, Hawraman, and the Soran region have grown apricots for centuries. Qêsî, in the Kurdish kitchen, is native in the deepest sense.

Conclusion

Qêsî is the one-hundred-and-twenty-second article in this series, and the third fruit of the Kurdish mountain orchard, after the pomegranate and the walnut. It is the dried apricot: summer caught and concentrated and stored, the warm fruit of the mountain orchard turned into the winter pantry’s most versatile ingredient. It goes into the stew for Eid, into the sauce for the meat confit of Akre, into the jam jar and the rice and the snack bowl. And it grows in Zagros country, on wild slopes that are among the places the apricot first grew. One hundred and twenty-two articles in, qêsî stands for the Kurdish orchard in its fullest expression: a fruit that came from these mountains, that is dried on their rooftops, and that reaches its finest form in the bittersweet stew that a Kurdish household makes when someone it loves comes home.