EatingAsia

On the Turkey's Black Sea Coast, Autumn's Bounty

No doubt about it, we are very, very behind. Behind in posting from our autumnal travels in Turkey and from our rainy season time in Chiang Mai. And in posting from Hanoi, and Kelantan before that, and from Taiwan before that.

Where have the last five and a half months gone?

It's almost Thanksgiving (we'll be spending it in Chiang Mai, where we find ourselves once again). To make up for our absence, we're offering a great recipe for Turkey Day leftovers, and a story and slideshow to go along with it. Autumn's abundance on show in markets on Turkey's eastern Black Sea coast, and comfort food from Sinop: islama, an over-the-top dish of butter and broth-soaked lavash (or yufka) topped with turkey (or chicken) and crushed walnuts.

Jump to the story and slideshow, our latest for food and wine website Zester Daily, here.

(And it's still a great dish, even if Thanksgiving isn't in your near future.)

Well Hello, Hamsi!

We love hamsi. If you've been a visitor here since last January you know this. You know that we journeyed to Turkey's Black Sea coast in the middle of winter just to eat hamsi -- anchovies -- at the source.

We're back in the region but still inland, in Kastamonu. Yet we've already had our first taste of the Black Sea's beloved cold season bounty, thanks to a few generous balıkçı (fish sellers).

What is it with Turkish guys who sell fish? They see you snap a photo or two of their product and they want to feed you.

When this bunch at the Sunday market in Kuzeykent, just outside Kastamonu city, saw Dave photographing the basket of beautiful hamsi perched over the grey coal ash in their grill one of them grabbed a thick piece of bread, loaded it up with cooked specimens from the pile on their dining table (opening shot), squeezed over some lemon juice and handed the lot over.

The fish were delicious, perhaps better even than those we ate at our fish seller friend Mert's shop in Sinop nine months ago. It's early in the season and hamsi are still small; these specimens were no longer than our little fingers. Their bones are still tender -- entirely, easily edible. We popped the fish into our mouths whole, though our new balıkçı friends carefully stripped the backbones from theirs.

After we finished our first shared slice of hamsi bread (köy ekmeği or village bread, from a dense, chewy wheat flour -based loaf baked in a wood-fired oven) the cooks threw strips of roasted red peppers onto a second open-faced hamsi sandwich. When a third was offered we had to beg for mercy.

This man, a regular at the market who -- like us -- was drawn from a far corner to this fish stall by the scent of hamsi cooking over an open fire, was happy to take up the slack.  

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.

 

 

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.