Rakı şişesinde balık olsam.

“In a bottle of Rakı, o that I were a fish.”

-Orhan Veli, great Turkish poet, storyteller, and drinker

Rakı is the traditional distilled spirit of Turkey.  In fact, it is an Aegean drink and you may know it from a jaunt to Greece as Uzo.  But really, from now on you have to call it Rakı.  I insist.  You pronounce this fine beverage as RAH-kuh, and the “-kuh” is abrupt, kind of like a grunt.

Rakı is produced from grapes, and the best Turkish hooch is from black grapes, but varieties abound. Probably not a surprise, as the Aegeans invented wine.  It is meant to be drunk cold and with food.  Tradition offers one reason.  Rakı is a dinner drink, and is best consumed slowly with ample bread and company.  Thus, a party of four can drink two large bottles over the course of two or three hours, talking constantly the entire time.  You will be drunk, but feeling like a champion.  The other reason is that Rakı is extremely strong, 100 proof or so, and has mysterious, mystical qualities.  Without food and pacing, the results can be somewhat varied, from feeling terrible, to loud obnoxious singing and standing on tables, to running half-naked around the streets of Istanbul.

In addition to these stipulations, there is a specific method to the preparation and drinking of raki.  First, there are always two glasses per person: the Rakı-drink, and water.  Regarding the Rakı, pour 1/2-1 inch into the thin glass, or 1-2 inch for a “duble”.  Then poor chilled water up to the glass’s top.  The liquid will turn milky.  Most people add ice at this point, but I have heard from authoritative sources that ice can dull the subtler flavors.  In comes the metal glass holders:  put ice around the outer ring, the glass in the raised receptacle in the middle, and you may keep a Rakı cold but ice-less on a hot Aegean day.  (but really, just use ice, because warm Rakı is an “acquired taste” for your neighborhood akşamcı).  Take a sip of Rakı, then a sip of water, repeat until the night seems it could last weeks.

There are several very traditional ways to drink Rakı with food.  The primary is as accompanied by melon and cheese on a plate.  The melon variety is usually either Casaba, Crenshaw, or Juan Canary, but basically must be very sweet.  The cheese called is “White cheese” in Turkish (Turks: not known for highly specific food names), and can best be described as a wet, soft Feta with a harder taste.  To the melon-cheese plate, I recommend adding toasted pieces of white bread.  Better yet, offering bruschetta on toast.   Better yet, coming to Turkey and drinking Raki with me at the neighborhood mayhane.  Most importantly, Rakı is a drink that should be consumed with people, food, and a long evening ahead.  Afiyet Olsun.

Food Junta’s Turkish correspondent is back with a fourth installment of a la Turk.

I noticed my previous Turkish posts (Karnıyarık, Tava hamsi, and Çerkes Tavuğu) were misleading:  a Turkish meal is never a one-pot deal. Kısır is a common (and delicious) starchy Turkish side dish that can go with anything from fish to stuffed eggplant to kebabs.  It might take a few rounds to get right, mostly because I just can’t give too many exact measures here.  It doesn’t matter.  Just get the ingredients in there in approximately the right order, and enjoy.  FYI it’s also vegetarian.

Ingredients
2 cups fine-grain bulgar
hot water
salçası (spicy roasted red paper paste) OR
tomato paste (prepared, see below)
olive oil
1-3 cloves garlic, diced
hot pepper flakes
salt
1 big red onion, diced
few green onions, chopped
1 bunch parsely, finely chopped
3-5 tomatoes, flavorful and chopped
½ – 1 cup crushed walnuts
nar ekşisi (pomogranate syrup) OR
some kind of sweet, sour, tart syrup

Prepare
Put bulgar in large bowl or plastic Tupperware thing.  (You will be mixing by hand later…).  Add 2 cups hot water and cover.  Continue to add hot water intermittently until it’s “al dente.”  Dice onions and chop tomatoes and parsley.

IF you don’t have salçası
Heat 4 Tablespoons olive oil in pan.  Add red paper flakes and garlic, and cook on low 1 minute.  Add 2-3 heaping spoonfuls of tomato paste and stir, cooling on low 3-10 minutes (longer the better).  If it’s too dry, add more olive oil.  Let cool somewhat.

Mixing
Add salçası or tomato paste mixture to bulgar.  Knead and mix by hand.  Channel the Turkish grandmother and get into it.  The exact amount of tomato-ness is up to you.  You can add more raw tomato paste if necessary.  In this order, add diced red onions, green onions, any extra garlic, walnuts, parsley.  Mix more.  Add olive oil if it’s too dry.  Lastly, add nar ekşisi or syrup to taste.  There should be a good olive-oil-to-syrup balance.  Sprinkle parsely leaves on top.

Serve, or cool and serve for summer.

A Turkish meal is usually cooked by a weathered and wise old grandma deep in the Anatolian heartland who couldn’t write down the recipe for Jacques Pepin himself.  She knows what she’s doing and would fight to the death over one pinch of salt or two.  For the culinary tourist such as yours truly, I’ll have to relate these recipes as best I observed it cooked in front of me.  Like much in Turkey, they’re fairly straightforward, just not very exact.

Çerkes Tavuğu, or chicken Circassia, was the delight and envy of first the Russian and then Ottoman empires.  During their respective reigns, this delicacy was taken from its heartland on the southern Black Sea coast, forced into palace kitchens throughout the land, and there rose to great renown.  Even today,  mention Çerkes Tavuğu to a Turk, especially a man, and a look of awe and longing may steal across his face.  The legend lives.

Now, the recipe exists in a diaspora held together by the wisdom of its matriarchal root culture.  Wait, wait.  That’s actually Circassian women that were taken to the harems, not chicken to the kitchens.  (See interesting Wikipedia article about the Ottoman-era high class sex-slave trade.)  Circassian chicken was just along for the ride.  It’s not necessarily high-class, just damn good Circassian home-cooking.  But the parallels are evident.  A bona fide Circassian woman recent told me, “We Circassian women know how to make our men happy.  Everyone knows this.”  Keeping my observations limited to the chicken, more or less my area of expertise here, I can happily say this is true.

Ingredients

1 lb mixed small chicken pieces (wings, legs, thighs, etc)
water
salt
½ loaf stale bread OR 3-4 cups bread crumbs
2-3 cups crushed walnuts
8 T butter or olive oil
hot pepper flakes (or the like)
large saucepan / stew pot
flat platter

Chicken

Put raw chicken pieces in saucepan or stew-pot.  Cover with water plus 1 inch but no more.  Add salt, pepper, and any desired spices.  Boil on medium until chicken is cooked, about 15-20 minutes.  When chicken is done, remove from pot and let cool.  SAVE THE WATER.  When cool, shred the chicken.

Sauce

While chicken is cooling, make breadcrumbs (if necessary).  Add breadcrumbs to hot water, still on medium heat.  Cook, stirring intermittently, until sauce is thick and creamy.  Optional spices could be cumin, thyme, and/or hot pepper.  Or whatever.  What does your Turkish grandmother add?  When sauce is done, pour liberally into shredded chicken.

Butter

Clean saucepan and melt butter.  Add salt and hot pepper flakes.  Cook until butter turns reddish.  Optional addition could be finely chopped parsley or sage.

Finish

Place shredded chicken and walnuts onto platter in layers.  Pour sauce liberally onto the chicken.  Pour butter/oil on top so it drivels down in delicious fatty rivulets.

Serve!

Hey!  Food Junta’s Turkish correspondent returns with another soul-fulfilling, horizon-expanding (and edible) recipe from the east/west.   This is Karnıyarık (Kar-nuh-YAR-uhk).

In Turkish, Karnıyarık means “split stomach.” Do you hear the violence inherent this Turkish speciality? Are you prepared to cross all sorts of personal and culinary boundaries in pursuit of this Turkish delicacy? Because things will get intimate between you and eggplants. You’ll skin, fry, eviscerate, and roast this vegetable, but in the end, you’ll both emerge more than penpals searching for that stamp you had somewhere.  You might even become fast friends.  And it tastes good.

Before I came to this Turkish dish, my knowledge of eggplants remained limited to ogling the  shiny, bulbous objects in the vegetable section, eggplant parmigiana pizza, and the rare ratatouille.  My recipes cubed and sliced the poor eggplants, trying to find where they fit in my pre-karnıyarık lexicon.   Yet from that distance, I could only manage to destroy or appropriate the eggplant.  None of my recipes dealt with eggplant as eggplant. Even in so-called eggplant dishes, it was simply bulk, fodder for the tomato sauce, or buried in “real flavors” in a classic example of epicurean tourism, or worse, orientalism.  (Whoa…)  But what a wealth of authentic Turkish experience and untapped flavor I was missing! It just takes a willingness and patience to feel the common…something between you and the eggplant.

I’m not saying this relationship is without risks. The hot oil may may burn you, so please exercise caution. And, in your initial enthusiasm or tentative steps, you might burn a few good eggplants. This is the price of stripping away your misconceptions.  I certainly went too far with one poor specimen, as you will see.  But I really encourage you to jump in hands first, because you’ll learn something about eggplants. Maybe, in this journey into the Turkish unknown, about yourself, as well…

Let’s get to it.
(A special thanks to Burcu of Almost Turkish Recipes, without whom these eggplants and I may never have found each other)

Ingredients

6 small eggplants, peeled in stripes lengthwise (see pic)
1/2 lb ground meat
3 normal onions, well chopped
3 green bell peppers, well chopped
1/2 bunch parsley, finely choppped
1 tomato, well chopped, for the stuffing
1 tomato, sliced vertically, for the top
long green peppers, as many as there are eggplants (see pic), finely chopped
ground pepper
salt
red pepper flakes
4 Tbps olive oil
frying oil, plenty
1 cup hot water

Supplies

Large pot (2 whole eggplants should lie comfortably inside)
Large frying pan or pot
Oven pan with sides

ingredients!

Eggplants: meet and greet (and fry)

Find small eggplants, not McMansion-sized.  At least two should lie down in your fry-pot.

First, put at least 2 inches of oil into pot.  The eggplants should be able to bob freely (but don’t try it just yet).  Heat the oil on high.  It should be really hot so the eggplants fry rather than just absorb.

Peel whole eggplants in 1 cm strips, like a prison-suit.  Leave tops and bottoms on.  Soak in salty water 10 minutes.

peeled and soaking

(Note: you can be chopping the other vegetables during any free moments)

Dry eggplants by wrapping them in paper towels and squeezing gently.

The oil should be ready, i.e. hot.  Gently place as many eggplants as will fit in the hot oil.  There will be serious bubbling and crackling.  Let them remain for 6-8 minutes or until lightly brown, turning occasionally so they brown evenly.  Carefully place the now-soft specimens on thick paper towels or newspaper.

frying 6-8 minutes

on the right, a near-tragic 12-minute fry.

Filling:  not to be neglected

(at this point, turn on oven to 400º F)

Heat frying pan on medium-high.   Sauté onions and green peppers 5 minutes, stirring.

Add olive oil, stir, then add meat.  Sauté until done, and juices have left the meat.

Add tomatoes and red pepper flakes, sauté until tomatoes are cooked.  By now, the mixture should be moist.

Add parsley and stir.

filling

Splitting and Filling:  the next big step

For each eggplant, use a spatula to place it gently on a counter or plate.  Leave the top and bottom intact.  Use two forks or spoons to lovingly split the wilted yet proud specimen. This is the “split stomach.”

gently now...

Carefully fill the space with the meat mixture, making a small mound.  Place tomato slices and long green pepper on top.

Using spatula and other utensils, transfer to the oven pan.

Once all there in the pan, slowly drizzle hot water over the top.

pre-flight

Stick in the oven about 15 minutes, until green papper on top is nicely roasted.

Enjoy!  Will last for a day out on your counter, unless you have a cat.

Greetings from Turkey! Looks like I’m Junta’s continent-straddling correspondent, and I’ll be bringing you what Turkish cuisine I can fit intothese posts. For starters, this post is about anchovies (stay with me…). In Turkey, anchovies are called Hamsi (pronounced HAHM-see); veteran Food Junta blogger Wills and I made hamsi in Turkey, and we think you should too, anywhere — you’re in for easy cooking and simple, finger-licking eating.  Sure, most Turkish dishes meld concoctions of stews and spices, and I hope to post abbreviated, Food-Junta-ish versions of these dishes in the coming months. But for now, hamsi, laden onto a plate, thrust onto a crowded table, will bring plenty of crunchy, fishy pleasure.

Our hamsi came from the styrofoam bin of an Istanbul fish market stall — they were caught that day, and still glistened with brackish water from the Marmara Sea. We were also excited that we walked across Istanbul’s Golden Horn at sunset, Süleymaniye Mosque, casting silhouetted dreams against the evening sky, to find the fish market, and that the Turkish fish-selling man charges us about four bucks a kilogram. How great that this went on, in the same place, two, three, five hundred years ago. And, unlike the endless and titillating experimentation of American cuisine, hamsi and most other Turkish food hasn’t changed.

Hamsi is usually eaten in a mayhane (MAY-hah-nay), which means “joy/fun house.” It is the second course of an elaborate scheme by Turkish people to sit at a table, eat, talk, and drink copious amount of rakı for several hours. Turks, especially Ottoman Turks, have been doing this for centuries. The mayhane is a beautiful, indulgent, drunken ritual that will sadly have wait for another post. Carrying on centuries of tradition, Wills and I made hamsi in my Istanbul apartment for New Year’s. We and three baudy Turks bumbled around the kitchen for an hour, then stuffed ourselves. The little fish are between three and five inches long, slender, shiny silver. You know, anchovies.  They can come cleaned or not cleaned, with all the mini fish-guts intact. Let me tell you, cleaning 3 kilograms of hamsi guts is work. I would go with the already-cleaned variety, though if you want to know your hamsi Michael Pollan-style, any bona fide fish monger can show you how (directions also below). Consider hamsi the tip of a Turkish culinary iceberg. Food is taken very seriously here, regardless of how simple or complex. And trust me, if meet a Turkish person and tell them you made hamsi with misir unu (MUH-suhr  OO-noo), they just might kiss you.

(fritters on top right are not hamsi)