After taking a break from cooking to move into a new apartment and job, I am back at it and looking to prepare Turkish, Japanese, Portuguese, Oaxaca, Cretan, and Peruvian meals in the coming weeks. I particularly would like to highlight fresh seafood from some of my local markets now that the mushroom foraging season appears to be very much over. Today, I decided to build a meal around some fermented Turkish pickled string beans I made back in August. According to Robyn Eckhardt’s Istanbul & Beyond, these pickles can be served along with pan-fried sardines, anchovies, or sand dabs to make a classic lunch served on the Black-Sea coast of Turkey. I particularly like how it includes both quick & cold pickles as well as stir-fried fermented pickles; in this way it reminds me of one of my all-time favorite dishes, Cumin-Scented Lamb from the Mission Chinese Cookbook.

Panfried Little Fish (Istanbul & Beyond)
I found these at Courthouse Fish Market, which has a wide variety of whole fish (relative to New Deal Fish Market down the street) and serves the local Portuguese community near Inman Square. I also noted very good deals on salt cod, Portuguese sausages (like linguiça), and frozen fava beans for future use. The fishmonger offered to remove their heads, which saves a lot of time (this also removes the guts and leaves them ready to fry). I used med-high heat and they came out good.

Sautéed Green-Bean Pickles
These Turkish pickles are very sour, but also very shelf-stable as a result. I fermented them for 10 days and left them in the fridge for 3 months and they still tasted great. I used a medley of my friend’s garden-grown string beans. The recipe is simple and benefits from high heat / minimizing liquid.

Hot-Pink Quick Pickled Cabbage, Griddled Corn Breads, Garlicky-Herbed Yogurt
I was unable to form the corn breads into the suggested ring without breaking them. I also wish I had made double the corn bread. Finally, the quick-pickled cabbage benefits from only a very light rinse so as to retain more salt.

The resulting meal was fun and required mixing and matching the 5 different components in every bite. The best involved the sardines, corn bread, and at least one of the acidifying accompaniments.
Joe’s Rating: 5.5
Difficulty: 4 (6 if you include making the pickles from scratch)