Turkish mantı (photo courtesy http://www.istanbulguide.net/istguide/vivre/)
I’m getting ready to try making my favorite food in the world – Turkish mantı – from scratch this weekend. Mantı is pronounced mahn-tih, the “i” like the “i” in “it.” The "i" should not have a dot, but I don't have access to a multi-lingual font in blogger. (Or do you know a secret?) Update: Thank you for the idea, Boots. I had thought of cutting and pasting from a Word doc, and then I forgot to do it! Glad it worked!
You make a simple egg and flour dough, roll it out very thin, cut into 1-inch squares, then fill with a mixture of ground meat (I’ll use half beef, half lamb) and finely chopped parsley and onion, squeezing the dough closed around the filling like a hobo bag. You boil these tortellini-type pasta until nice and soft.
The best part of mantı is what you put on top before eating. On top of the hot pasta stuffed with the meat mixture, you pour a few spoonfuls of plain yogurt mixed with lots of crushed garlic, then atop it all, a good spoonful of melted butter that’s been simmering with crushed tomato and red pepper. Yum!
The first time I ate mantı in Kadıköy, Turkey, when we first moved to Istanbul in 1986, I wasn’t too sure about it. The flavors were unlike anything I’d ever tried. But soon it became my favorite dish ever.
Kadıköy, Turkey (photo courtesy http://www.living-turkey.com/living_in_turkey/photos_from_istanbul_Kadikoy.htm)
Kadıköy at night (photo courtesy www-star.stanford.edu/ ~bbaas/trips/)
When I've made it before, I've used frozen ravioli or imported dried mantı. So this will be my first attempt to make it from scratch since first tasting it!
Wish me luck! Maybe tomorrow I'll have my own pics of mantı.
8 comments:
Sounds so good! I'll be eager to hear how it turns out -- and to see YOUR pictures! Have fun!
Ooooooh-la-la! My mouth is watering. Yes, I want to see YOUR pics of it. Sounds wonderful.
Btw, what I do for the German umlauts, which aren't on my keyboard, is copy and paste them from an Internet site that I have saved to my Favorites. There may be an easier way but, for now, it works for me. I just did a Google search for the Turkish alphabet and this is what I came up with.
Thank you, Ginnie/Boots, for the help. I have some good language fonts in Word, so I was able to insert the dotless "i."
This all makes me homesick for Turkey.
This sounds GREAT!!! Can't wait to see the picture of your results!!
I get to be a food critic this weekend...mmmmm. You know you may not want to try your best, because if you end up really nailing it, I may consider moving back home
Amy, Ginnie and Donica: Maybe I'll have to make this at Hukilau sometime. But after making it once I might never try again. :| There's always the frozen version, I guess. But for you I'd do it!
Peter: OK! That is, I'll do my best so you can move back. Too bad Les isn't wild about manti, or we might induce her too.
it actually sounds quite good right now........maybe it's growing on me!
heehee.....
good luck!
ahhh, thanks Ruth!
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