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.
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