EatingAsia

Our Istanbul Fruit Guy

As we walked uphill to our rental apartment on our first evening in Istanbul last May, the display at a tiny fruit store beckoned. We stopped and bought peaches, melons, cherries. The white-haired proprietor was so friendly, the fruit he chose for us so delicious, that we shopped nowhere else.

Last month we returned to Istanbul for two weeks, staying in the same area. "Merhaba!" our fruit guy -- as we called him --  cried, as if we were long-lost friends. We vigorously shook hands, chatting as much as my Turkish would allow.

We stopped in daily, whether we were short of fruit or not. We learned that our fruit guy has many children. That he opens unusally late in the day to catch the evening commuter foot traffic. That he cooks his own dinner on his desk, over a single burner. After tasting his rice soup -- wickedly spicy -- we knew that, like us, he loves chilies.

"If you were having a bad day, all you'd have to do is go to the fruit shop and you'd feel better. He's that kind of guy," mused Dave.

On our last evening in town we learned our fruit guy's name: Mehmet Ali. How ludicrous that we hadn't asked before. We told him ours, took his address, and promised to send a photo. He and Dave shook hands, and Mehment Ali kissed mine. He gifted us Izmir pears and Antalya oranges.

We said "Gorusuruz," (We'll meet again.), hoping that we will.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

 

 

Sinop: It's Not Just About the Hamsi

"Sinop is paradise, it's the best city in all of Turkey. But not now! You must come back in the summer!"

This we heard over and over from residents of Sinop, where we enjoyed the best hamsi (anchovy) of our most recent trip to Turkey.

Frankly, we can't imagine wanting to return to Sinop in the summer. According to these boosterish locals the city's population of 30,000 bloats to 200,000 in July and August, when tourists descend on its campgrounds and fill its hotels. They come for beaches and sun, boating out of the city's idyllic harbor and, of course, fish.

No way. Not for us. Give us Sinop -- or any of Turkey's ocean or lakeside vacation spots, for that matter -- off season, when hotels are empty, restaurants don't require reservations, empty tables at tea gardens beckon, and the eye isn't assaulted by meters of flesh that shouldn't be seeing the light of day in the first place. For us, crowds are something to be avoided, not sought out.

We were in Sinop for only two days but would gladly have lingered a few more if we'd had the time. To be honest there's not much to do in Turkey's northernost city, but then tourist sites are not what floats our boat anyway. We did visit the city's 7th-century (BC) kale or fortress and, after inquiring for the key at the model boat shop across the street from its entrance, we had the ramparts to ourselves.

We stopped in at Sinop's Seljuk-era mosque and admired its fountain, took a spin through the city's medrese (and wished that we'd known earlier about the small cafe there serving local specialties), walked the U-shaped promenade around its picturesque harbor.

We drank glasses and glasses of tea, dividing our time between the various cay evi (tea houses) and tea gardens that face onto fishing boats awaiting their next trip out: one for grizzled fishermen, another that inexplicably morphed, around mid-afternoon, from old-timers' idling spot to young hipster hangout, and still another that offered free wifi (we didn't take advantage).

We chatted with Sinop's friendly, laid-back residents (another bonus of off-season travel: the unharried locals have time, and the inclination, to talk). We shopped for culinary souvenirs. (found, and carried back to Malaysia: strips tangy peach pestil -- fruit leather -- rolled around chopped fresh walnuts and doused with honey. And, of course, we ate.

Hamsi, mostly. And barbunya, forefinger-long red mullet dusted with flour and deep-fried. After our massive lunch at Mert's we hardly had inclination for dinner. But we did manage to sample two other Sinop specialties: nokul and cevizli mantisi.

Nokul are spiral pastries some 8 inches/20 centimeters across, made with several fillings. Üzmlü ve cevizli nokul hide dried grapes (raisins, obviously, but the raisins in Turkey taste so much more like actual grapes than the raisins in the USA do), chopped walnuts, sugar, and are well lubricated with butter. There's minced lamb in there too, just a wee bit, enough to render this pastry taste-androgynous. Is it sweet or is it savory? Both equally, and intriguingly.

According to this nokul recipe there yogurt and olive oil go into the dough, which is 'wet', soft, elastic, and chewy rather than crisp and flaky. Nokul are not snack-y bites -- they're huge and heavy, and one is easily enough feed 3 or 4 eaters (or 2 gluttons) for breakfast. Other fillings include cheese (peynirli) and plain minced lamb (kıymalı).

We're manti (Turkish 'ravioli') lovers from way back, so when Mert told us about the local version made with walnuts we made straight for his recommended source. Imagine a huge plate of minced lamb-stuffed ravioli (small portions are not found, it seems, in your average Turkish restaurant) tossed in soupspoon fulls of rich freshly churned butter. Add handfuls of crushed walnuts so fresh that they're fairly oozing oil.This meal, our last in Sinop before we hit the road for Kastamonu, nearly put us over the top. But it was well worth the physical discomfort.

Beyond the butter and walnuts (manti are usually sauced with yogurt and melted butter), what's a bit different about Sinop's manti is their shape -- like a boat's sail, as Mert says -- and their skins, which are lighter and thinner (almost like wonton skins) than those of versions we've eaten elsewhere in Turkey.

At Teyzenin Yeri (Your Auntie's Place), the cafe in Sinop known for serving the best cevizli mantisi, the dumplings are made right in the dining room as you eat. Thick yogurt is offered alongside and we accepted. But we left much of it uneaten -- the tanginess of the dairy fought too fiercely with the lovely walnuts and local butter.

So, there's plenty of reason to visit to Sinop, even outside of hamsi season. I know we'll go back.

But not in the summer. No way.

 

 

The Open Arse of the Fruit World

No, EatingAsia has not gone pornographic.

The title's words are not mine, but Shakespeare's, employed in Romeo and Juliet to characterize the rather unattractive medlar fruit:

Now will he sit under a medlar tree,

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.

O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

An open-arse and thou a poperin pear!

I'd never heard of medlar before this last trip to Turkey. We spied this relative of the quince in several Istanbul markets. After a new acquaintance in Istanbul described the fruit's flavor (and clued me into the Shakespeare reference) we picked up a few hundred grams and left them on our kitchen counter to ripen.

And ripen they did. Or, more accurately, they "bletted" -- the word used to describe the rotting state in which the medlar is eaten. (I love the sound of that, by the way: "The fruit is bletted.") Unblettted, the fruit's flesh is hard and vanilla white. Bletted, it's mushy and brown, with the consistency of thick apple sauce.

You know the medlar is ripe when it's become wrinkly and is showing a wee bit of mold at the, er, open arse end. To eat it, spread the 'petals' and pry off the little 'cap' that sits in their center. Then squeeze gently, and the flesh oozes out the top. (You can also open it rather messily by ripping off the top and a few strips along the side and squeezing, as a market vendor did for us in this photo.)

The medlar is full of small hard seeds that you can just swallow or hold in your mouth as you use your tongue to separate them from the flesh. It tastes something like apple butter with a hit of lemon juice and some very ripe Bartlett pear thrown in. It's a comforting, autumn/winter flavor. Jelly is made from medlar, and we met a cocktail master in Istanbul who concocts a mixer with the flesh. But I can see it cleaned of seeds and spread as is, on a piece of toast with butter or between layers of a walnut cake.

Our new friendship with the medlar was an unexpected bonus of this wintertime trip to Turkey. We hope to meet again next year -- same place, same time.

Görüşürüz, Istanbul

Early last summer we returned to Turkey for the first time in just over ten years.

Before we arrived we wondered if Istanbul would inspire the same feelings it did the first time we visited in 1998 -- a curious mixture of displacement and centered-ness, strangeness and belonging, that inspired me to take up Turkish and return to Turkey with Dave the next year, and the next.

It did. And it still does. When a place fits, you know it. Just like that.

Görüşürüz, Istanbul. We'll be back. And we'll be looking for a way to make you a bigger part of our lives in the years ahead.

(In the meantime, stay tuned for some overdue posts from Istanbul, the Black Sea, and northern Anatolia.

Hamsi Quest

Here we are in Turkey, and it's hamsi (anchovy) season.

So we had this idea: eat our fill of the slim, silvery fishes in Istanbul. Then head to the Black Sea coast to sample them at the source. We flew to Ankara, picked up a car, and drove north to what we hoped would be our hamsi heaven.

Why the hamsi fixation? Neither Dave nor I grew up eating much in the way of seafood. Our first brush with strong-flavored oily fresh fish came only in 2003, when I purchased mackerel at a Saigon wet market, took it home, and grilled it Goan-style with a slathering of vinegary tomato and chili paste. Then that winter we vacationed in northern Italy, and I fell in love with acciughe in salsa verde -- Piemontese anchovies in green parsley sauce. We ate cured anchovies with bread and butter and snacked on fruity green olives stuffed with anchovy fillets. We carried a gigantic can of salted anchovies back to Asia in our luggage and never looked back.

But this trip marks our first prolonged exposure to the fresh specimens. And we've been hamsi hunting with gusto.

Two days after arriving we found ourselves in the kitchen of a Turkish food journalist, learning how to make the eastern Black Sea specialty hamsi pilavi (anchovy rice pilaf -- more on that to come). Upon the recommendation of a knowledgable food blogger (and fellow hamsi obsessive), we tried hamsi tava (fresh hamsi dipped in cornmeal and pan-fried) at Klemuri, Laz restaurant near Taksim Square, and followed that (on the same day, I think) with grilled anchovies at friendly Çukur Meyhanesi. On New Year's Day we ate hamsi ekmek (anchovy bread) at another Laz spot -- even leftover from the previous night, it was great. And then we packed up and took off for the Black Sea.

We had only six days, so we narrowed our hamsi quest to two western Black Sea hamsi nodes: Amasra and Sinop. In the former, a friendly town of just under 6,500, we feasted on fabulous hamsi izgara (grilled hamsi). At an old-fashioned white-tablecloth restaurant on the water, we ordered three portions to share. The hamsi arrived, lightly charred and fused into a single thin layer, on a platter twice the size of my laptop. It was a little embarassing really, but we soldiered through every last little fish, eating them whole -- and returned the next night for more. I think the waiters appreciated our obsession.

Then it was on to Sinop. Nine hours on a winding two-lane coastal road characterized by steep drop-offs and a severe lack of guard rails. It drizzled, and then it poured. We were tired, and sore from sitting.

We arrived in the dark and woke up to our first true blue-sky day of the trip. We bundled up, strolled the harbor, drank tea with fishermen, checked out the castle, and then went looking for a meal to match our grilled hamsi in Amasra.

We found it by accident, thanks to a fish seller named Mert.

Mert sells fish in the harborside fish shop opened by his grandfather. He works there with his father, his uncles, and various assorted other colleagues. Born in Sinop, Mert attended university in Istanbul. He earned a degree in chemical engineering and could have stayed on, but he chose to return to his home. "If you have money you can live like a king in Istanbul," he says. "But here in Sinop is a good life. I have a job, I have family, I have everything I need."

Mert loves fish -- that much is apparent the minute he begins talking about how to cook it. "I like to boil fish in just a little water. Nothing else. No onions, no tomatoes, just a little salt. That's the best way -- then you can really taste it."

It was 10 in the morning, and the sun glinted off the silver and black skins of the hamsi mounded in a bin at Mert's shop. When he asked why we were in Sinop in the middle of winter -- "You should come in the summer. Sinop is paradise in July." -- we replied: "Hamsi." Ahhhh .... Mert nodded in understanding. Then he invited us to lunch.

We returned at 1pm to find Mert behind the fish counter, gently tossing beheaded whole hamsi in flour as a skillet filled with a single layer of hamsi arranged in a pretty pinwheel sputtered on top of a single gas canister. The clean, ocean-y smell of the freshest fish frying drifted around the shop and out into the street, luring passers-by and customers in for a peek.

Mert placed a lid over the top of the hamsi and deftly flipped the pan over, then slid the half-browned anchovy'pancake' back into the skillet. After a couple more minutes he slid the fish into a metal bowl sitting on a low table next to the burner. He pulled a loaf of bread out of plastic bag hanging on a hook behind the fish display, opened a styrofoam containter to reveal the most gorgeous "take-out" salad we've ever seen, cut an onion into wedges, and sliced a lemon in half.

"C'mon, eat!"

Friends, we found our hamsi heaven. Steaming hot, their flour coating barely detectable, the anchovies were all crunchy tail and light crispy browned bits clinging to firm and plump, meaty torsos with a sweetness found only in specimens plucked from the sea hours before eating. Mert told us to use our hands and we did, picking the fish up by their tails and dangling them over our mouths before devouring them whole and following with bites of salad and bread.

And the hamsi kept coming, skillet after skillet, Mert's colleagues taking over at the "stove" when he went back to selling fish.

And you know what? These guys who live and breathe fish love hamsi as much as we do.

After we've eaten our fill (an embarassing amount of anchovies) Mert guides us upstairs to show us the addition his family has recently added to their shop: several floors, to house a fish restaurant. Customers will choose their fish from the display downstairs and eat it cooked as they like in one of several dining rooms boasting what must be one of Sinop's most spectacular views.

Mert's relatives will be in the kitchen. And come finer weather the restaurant's rooftop tables will undoubtedly be the hottest in town.

We're back in Istanbul now, still chasing hamsi. But we don't expect to enjoy another anchovy meal of this caliber for a very long time. Until we return to Sinop that is -- when the hamsi are running.

Mert's family's restaurant should be open in a few months. We suspect it will justify the effort of getting to Sinop. Mevsim Balıkçılık, No. 15 Tersane Caddesi. Tel. 368-261-3950.

Good-Bye 2010,

Hello 2011!

Best wishes from Istanbul for a peaceful, happy, prosperous, and delicious New Year.