Pişmaniye, what is it exactly? More or less how can I describe it? In general it's cottony candy, but not the same cotton candy that one can find at the fair/carnival that comes in either pink or blue. Pişmaniye (if one of the characters has trouble showing up, pishmaniye) is white (so far I've only seen white) and topped with pistachio nuts. Unlike sugary sweet candy floss pişmaniye in my opinion has more of a floury texture to it. For anyone who has tried Persian or Chinese sweets, they're close to pashmak and dragon's beard respectively (so says wikipedia).
So how did I come across this? It all started on a trip to the east end of Ottawa in Orleans where one of the shopping trips was to this new specialty store called Asian Supercentre* which sold mostly Oriental snacks and grocery items but also sold halal meat, middle eastern stuff (called West or Western Asian, I forget which), and some South Asian stuff. At this specialty store there were some Turkish products which mostly came in the form of snacks like Ülker products.
I eventually told my Turkish penpal/skype buddy about these product and of a Turkish grocery store here in Ottawa (Istanbul Market/Istanbul Gourmet food, whatever the store is called). Since the store was not too far from where my lola (that's tagalog for grandma) lives I decided to ask him to recommend me something to try and he said pişmaniye. I recall seeing it in the Asian Supercenter but I wasn't sure what it was at the time, thinking it was just regular cotton candy. Anyway so after dropping off my lola it's off to the Turkish grocery store. What was odd about the people who run the store was they had no clue what pişmaniye was (they had the ülker products and loukum though).
Fast forward to today and lo and behold Middle Eastern food store called Sultan Supermarket carried the product. I already had had 2 pieces of pişmaniye and I like it. I just got to control myself around it as it's not cheap ($4.25 CAD) and I think only 12 pieces come in a pack. I recommend you try this out if you come across it.
*edit July 15, 2012: I was looking for news on this supermarket as a couple days ago went to the store to see it closed for renovations. It turns out that they're changing their name according to an ad for a job fair on kijiji
*edit July 15, 2012: I was looking for news on this supermarket as a couple days ago went to the store to see it closed for renovations. It turns out that they're changing their name according to an ad for a job fair on kijiji
