As
much as I like cooking by myself, cooking with friends is much more fun!
Recently,
I met up with a couple friends at our Turkish friend’s house to learn how to
make three types of Turkish hamsi (anchovy)
dishes. I like eating hamsi at the meyhane, so I figured I finally should
learn how to cook it too.
My
Turkish friend, Ayşe, and I met through a mutual friend a few months after I
moved to Istanbul
in 2010. I was new, and my American friend, Sharon, was good at connecting
people together. She was like, “You bake, and Ayşe cooks, so you two should
meet.”
We’ve
both learned a few tricks in the kitchen from each other since we met.
Ayşe,
who lived in the U.S. for 20+ years, is an amazing Turkish home cook. Every
day, she sends her husband off with a home-cooked lunch for his staff and
himself. You can find her teaching cooking lessons through the International
Women of Istanbul as well.
I
recently hoped she was going to help us demystify the Turkish hamsi, which comes from the Black Sea
region of Turkey. As I said, I enjoy eating hamsi,
but I can never quite bring myself to buy these little suckers to cook at home
myself. These delectable fish are small, and they scare me. (Remember I grew up
in Nebraska
– the land of cows.)
Ayşe’s
menu for that day included the popular hamsi
tava (or fried anchovies that arrives at the table like a crispy plate of
little fish), hamsi baked in the oven
with tomatoes and onions, and hamsi stuffed
with Turkish cheddar cheese and parsley and then fried. Anything fried always
tastes better, right?
We
all took turns trying to clean these little suckers. Ayşe’s helper, Elif, made
it look so simple. Break the bone by the head and then pull down, basically
deboning and degutting the fish all in one easy stroke.
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Cleaning Turkish hamsi is a messy job, but someone has to do it. |
I
badly cleaned about seven hamsi and
then gave up. If I had kept cleaning them, we would have been eating a hamsi soup instead of hamsi tava!
Spending
the day with international friends and cooking together was fun! My favorite
dish of the day was and still is the hamsi
tava.
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Left, hamsi baked with tomatoes and onions, and hamsi tava on the right. All served with traditional cornbread. |
Even
though Ayşe was a patient and generous teacher, I can honestly say I will never
be buying hamsi to cook at home. The deboning, degutting and deheading process was a little too much for
me.
But
if you want, you can pay the fish guy a few extra lira to do that disgusting
work for you.
And
if you don’t want to cook hamsi, go
to your favorite meyhane now and
order them before the season ends. This is what I’ll be doing.
Afiyet olsun!
Rough directions for Hamsi
Tava or Fried Anchovies
1 kilo fresh hamsi (anchovies)
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
As needed salt
As needed cornflour
Wash the fish, break off the heads and degut the fish.
Briefly rinse and drain on
paper towels.
Add the oil to a large
non-stick pan. (In Turkey, you can even buy special hamsi tava frying pans.)
Season the cornflour with
salt. Lightly dredge the fish through the cornflour.
Carefully, lay out the hamsi in a circle, filling the pan, in
one single layer.
Over medium-high heat, fry
the fish on one side till golden brown (about 3-4 minutes).
Then, carefully flip over
the fish (as demonstrated in the photo above) and continue frying the other side
until golden brown.
Serve with lemon wedges, a
salad and cornbread.
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Stuffing the hamsi with Turkish cheddar cheese and parsley. |
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I'm very thankful for meeting friends like Ayşe here in Istanbul. |