Fast food from Istanbul (for mackerel fans)

[goatpebble]

Near the Galata bridge, there are stalls that sell simple food. The speciality is a sort of sandwich. A mackerel fillet, fresh off the grill, between hunks of fresh bread, with lots of parsely, raw onion, and sumac.

I love mackerel, and my favourite thing is to frazzle them on the grill, with rosemary, and serve them more or less as they come, with lots of lemon to cut the grease. But the combination of serious quantities of flat leaf parsely, the sharpness of raw onion, and the glorious citrusy flavour of sumac...

Oh yes, I'm a convert. It's the parsely/onion/sumac/olive oil thing. Add some cracked pepper, or chilli flakes (the Turkish sort) and you have something that sort of shakes your guts around (in the emotional sense)

You never forget these flavours.

I will have to practice my filleting skills. For me, it is all second hand. The recipe comes from a friend. Her apartment looks over the Bosphorus, and her life is a wonderful collision between east and west.

Turkish cuisine is incredible. I really don't care if tomorrow morning my flat smells of fish. I am well fed, and feeling gloriously transported to another very sunny place.

[Hot Flatus]

That takes me back 22 years. Are there still 1950s American cars cruising around?

[andrewc]

Goatpebble,  have you ever thought about writing about food on a professional basis ?.....because you're damn good at it..

Wipes drool off keyboard..

[Rhys W]

People sometimes ask me, as a vegetarian, do I miss bacon? No. Mackerel, well maybe. Not the stuff found in supermarkets though, the ones my grandmother got when she walked down to the pier and bought straight off the fishermen as they tied their boats up.

[Jakob]

My wife love those. She had 6-7 of those in the 2 and a bit days we spent in Istanbul.

Other than that, we found the food in Istanbul extremely bland, but then also didn't really try to find any 'local' places.
It was better in Capadoccia, but the single best meal, was at the tourist office, were we bought our guided tour from.(Near Capadoccia, forgot the name of the place).
On the way back, we struggled to buy bus tickets, being told that they were all sold out. By chance, the tour guide turned up (It was next to their office) and sorted it out (Turned out the problem was that we could not sit next to eachother).While we waited for the bus, the guide invited us back to their office for lunch.
It was a fairly simple chicken stew that one of the guys had made (they took turns in cooking lunch).
We scooped it up straight from the pot with fresh white bread and it was absolutely amazing.
I wish I could cook simple food that well.

[goatpebble]

Goatpebble,  have you ever thought about writing about food on a professional basis ?.....because you're damn good at it..

Wipes drool off keyboard..

Andrew, I am not very good at accepting compliments (in real life I tend to shudder and avoid eye contact for several hours) but that was a very kind thing to say, and I am still blushing.

I really don't know how to cook, in the traditional technical sense. But I love what food does, and I will dig myself in to an idea, until I really understand just why and how it works.

I am blushing again, because I am sure that I could so easily sound like a prententious twat.

[goatpebble]

Ok, after replying to Andrewc, I have to post a real life recipe (or idea) because I had some fun grilling some more mackerel!

The weather has been wonderful (until today, when it rained) but we can hope for better.

So, considering the thought that we might want to set up a simple barbeque, on the beach, or in the garden, I adapted the recipe in the initial post.

The mackerel were gutted, and then marinated in onion juice, lemon juice, and olive oil. I made a simple sort of sauce, or salad (to avoid using the dreaded 'salsa' word) of chopped onion, flat leaf parsley, sumac, a little salt, and kirmizi biber

The onion juice marinade is one of the best things I have learnt from Turkish cooking. Your neighbours will think a new restaurant has just opened! The aroma of the fish on the grill makes you think of all the times you have strolled along a quayside, on the first evening of a summer holiday!

[goatpebble]

My wife love those. She had 6-7 of those in the 2 and a bit days we spent in Istanbul.

Other than that, we found the food in Istanbul extremely bland, but then also didn't really try to find any 'local' places.
It was better in Capadoccia, but the single best meal, was at the tourist office, were we bought our guided tour from.(Near Capadoccia, forgot the name of the place).
On the way back, we struggled to buy bus tickets, being told that they were all sold out. By chance, the tour guide turned up (It was next to their office) and sorted it out (Turned out the problem was that we could not sit next to eachother).While we waited for the bus, the guide invited us back to their office for lunch.
It was a fairly simple chicken stew that one of the guys had made (they took turns in cooking lunch).
We scooped it up straight from the pot with fresh white bread and it was absolutely amazing.
I wish I could cook simple food that well.

I sometimes cook a rich stew of chicken. It's a family thing from when we lived in Cyprus. It is based on a sauce of onion, garlic, tomato, with spices. Cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, a lavish amount of olive oil, and black pepper. Also flat leaf parsley, near the end. It sits on the hob for hours, slowly reaching perfection, when the chicken reaches a state of absolute transformation, melting to a state when you can eat it with teaspoons!

You need lots of really good bread. The sauce is extraordinary!

Sadly, I now have stopped eating meat!

[her_welshness]

When I was on an archaeological dig in Cyprus (must be going back 10 years ago) we stumbled across a fishing village called Latchi, and went for their fish meze. All I can remember is plate after plate of delicious, fresh fish. Thats probably my most favourite memory of Cyprus.

[vorsprung]

When I was staying with my sisters family in Istanbul the BBQ with a whole box of fish was pretty good

All the food I had there was great.  Except that carrot and turnip juice

[токамак]

Oh yes - so simple, so good, so cheap! I loved the little moored up mackerel grill boats being tossed around in the swell from the huge ferries and tankers that they share the waterway with, and the chefs being able to prepare and cook the food with all that movement! Makes me want to go back...

[PaulR]

Mrs R and I honeymooned in Istanbul and the food was fab - particularly a restaurant in an old underground roman cistern that had until recently been a car repair place, pretty close by the gate into Topkapi.  On our last night we tried to eat our way through our remaining hard currency by ordering lots of their amazing fish but we still had cash left at the end of the evening.  We had grilled mackerel up the Bosphorus - i think it was near the big crusader fort at Rumeli Hisari.

My sons became mackerel fans in about 1997 when we spent a week near Killybegs in Donegal and I perfected the art of hauling mackerel out of the deep deep harbour there.