The Levant and Anatolia · Volume 01, The Oil Coast, the Anchovy Coast and the Court Between Them
Hamsi Tava
The Black Sea coast
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- 20 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Pan-fried anchovy, cornmeal-crusted, and the coast's single most iconic dish.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- 500 g fresh hamsi (or the honest substitute, see Sourcing), cleaned and beheaded
- 100g, for coating fine cornmeal
- 5g, or to taste salt
- 100g, for frying oil for frying
Method
- Soak the cleaned hamsi briefly, around 15 minutes, in water, then rinse thoroughly.
- Toss with salt and coat thoroughly in cornmeal.
- Arrange the fish in the pan tails-to-centre, in a radiating, star-like pattern. This is a genuine technique, not a plating flourish: it lets the whole panful be flipped as a single disc using a flat plate or the pan's own lid.
- Cook in a small amount of oil over low heat until golden, flip as one disc, finish the second side.
- Serve immediately with rocket.
What a modern chef changes
The cornmeal toast and the flip discipline, made deliberate.
Rung 5's discipline of reading doneness by feel, applied here to the coating rather than the cornmeal porridge itself
Method
- Toast the cornmeal lightly and dry in a pan before coating the fish, the same colour-change discipline as Rung 5, for a nuttier crust than raw cornmeal gives.
- Do not overcrowd the pan. The star pattern only works, and only flips cleanly as one disc, if the fish are arranged with genuine care rather than tipped in.
- Serve within minutes, direct from the pan. Like balık ekmek, this is a dish built around immediacy, not one this chapter's resting discipline applies to.