"According to Turkish legend, if you really want to impress your guests, your mantı should be small enough so that 40 of them can fit in one spoon. (I have to think they're talking about a very big spoon)" Lisa/Panning the Globe
Alternatively to having nothing to do, have a party - a cook up with your foodie friends or grandchildren to make mantı - a kind of Turkish ravioli. And then eat them of course.
This sort of began with Ottolenghi who referred to them in his Guardian Feast Newsletter, but there was no recipe, so I think it's OK to mention him. He has no recipe online, but this is a picture of a version that is made in one of his London restaurants - Ottolenghi Spitalfields. So that's Ottolenghi out of the way. Although it is a mention - like Nigel the other day - so maybe I should punish myself for another week by trying not to mention them at all. I'll see how I feel on Monday.
Anyway I was a bit intrigued, by what they were - as I said, it was a throwaway line - so I looked them up. And it seems that fundamentally they are a kind of tiny dumpling, so tiny that they are very time-consuming and fiddly to make. Perfect, for friends and family to get together to make whilst they socialise and gossip. You know -those nostalgic stories of nonnas and village mothers getting together over some arduous foodie task, whilst tearing their neighbours to bits as they gossip. Do they really happen? Well you will find lots of food writers out there who claim that this sort of thing was a feature of their childhoods.
"It is a wonderful dish to make with friends and family. I have many fond memories of gathering around the table with my grandparents, mom and dad to enjoy the mantı-making ritual. Some would make the dough, some would prepare the filling and help fill the mantı dumplings, all with the constant flow of tea, coffee, and daily gossip. Happy memories!" Suzy/The Mediterranean Dish
I began my 'research' by just feeding in mantı which came up with a whole lot of website versions, mostly from the lesser known amongst the food blogging community. This is Lisa from a website called Panning the Globe in which she presents recipes from the 196 countries in the world, although it's not a methodical journey like the authors of Good Food on Bad Plates. But a mini introduction to her website - She's American, a former TV presenter, mother of three sons, and now full-time website creator - recipes, photography - the lot.
And this is her version - simply called Turkish Mantı, of which she says:
"And the tinier they are, the better because it has lots of qualities that exemplify Turkish cuisine: wholesome fresh ingredients; lots of care in the preparation; it features yogurt and the spices - Aleppo pepper, sumac, and spearmint - very traditional in Turkish cuisine. ... If you're served extremely small manti, your host thinks very highly of you - apparently the smaller the manti, the more special you are" Lisa/Panning the Globe
Before looking at all the other versions that I found online, I decided that I should really check out Wikipedia's version of how they came to be, and found a rather long and detailed article, explaining the relationships, between the different forms of this kind of thing along the Silk Road. Generally speaking I think that people think they may have originated in China - land of dumplings of many, many different kinds, but they also seem to believe that they came into Turkey and Armenia - to which I shall come shortly - via the Mongol and Turkic hordes, who carried frozen or dried versions of them in their saddle bags as they swept across the steppes in the Middle Ages. Somebody said 11th century, somebody the 14th. And somebody even suggested that they actually travelled the other way. Ancient anyway, and yet another specific example of some kind of dough surrounding some kind of meat.
For traditionally they are made with either lamb or beef just simply mixed with onion and parsley. Of course these days there are vegetarian and vegan versions and the stuffings may be much more complicated. And simultaneously there are the cheating versions which use gyoza and wonton wrappers, even ready prepared ravioli. And if you live near a Middle-Eastern supermarket then you can buy them ready made and frozen. Such is progress.
Armenian dumplings have the same name, but they look different - which is when I discovered that the cover of one of my very old cookbooks shown here, is of that very dish - before it is cooked. For the Armenian manti's are open topped and boat shaped, and the filling is spicier I think. They can be eaten just as they are when they come out of the oven, but they are also often served in a yoghurt broth with mint. I found a couple of recipes online, and an impressive photograph from Wikipedia - the first one below. The two recipes are both from America - and probably the Armenian diaspora there - Manti - Armenian dumplings - John Mitzewich/All Recipes and Sini Manti (Armenian baked lamb manti) - Andrew Janjigian/Serious Eats. As you can see - the amount of liquid is variable.
In Turkey another reason for the lengthy preparation of these tiny delights, is that they are cooked twice - boiled and baked, and then covered with three different sauces - a sort of caramelised tomato paste sauce, a yoghurt sauce, and also a burnt butter sauce. Various different spices and herbs are scattered on top of all of that - the usual suspects I guess - sumac, mint, parsley ... And even the cheats - those who used pre-made wrappers instead of making the pastry themselves - took care with presentation. So let's start with the cheats: Turkish mantı with yoghurt sauce - Alison Adams/SBS - this is a complete cheat in that the actual dumplings are just bought ravioli and the only sauce is yoghurt - probably the lowest on the line of cheats. In fact I guess it's raises the question of at what point you really can't call them mantı. Matt Preston on the delicious. website uses wonton wrappers and then puts them in a yoghurt soup which is really the main focus here, for his Turkish yoghurt soup with mantı. Again, can you really call these mantı? House & Garden presents a recipe from the book Black Sea by Caroline Eden which uses gyoza wrappers and calls them Half and half Turkish mantı. The introduction references a recipe from Greg Malouf, which is not online, and which I do not have, which also uses gyoza wrappers, which is taken as an endorsement.
Interestingly all three of these, feature the yoghurt over the other two sauces, that are often mentioned.
I did try to find a Claudia Roden recipe and I think there is one but it is not online and I do not have a copy of the book in which it is featured, but of the recipes featured below it is noticeable that several of them are from well-known names. Perhaps the two most well-known are Shane Delia and George Calombaris. Shane Delia even has a takeaway version - shown first below; a fairly traditional version - Mantı (Turkish beef dumplings with sujuk butter); and also a flashy modern version with wagyu beef - Wagyu beef mantı, both of which are on the SBS website. George Calombaris is not Turkish - he is Greek but Greece is, after all, next door, and his Greek touch - on the delicious. website - is to feature lemon - Lamb mantı with lemon and burnt butter
My remaining recipes range from a little-known website Give Recipes - Turkish mantı dumplings (Turkish ravioli); one from a well-known website The Mediterranean Dish - Mantı Turkish dumplings with garlicky yoghurt and spiced oil; two from professional Australian recipe developers Phoebe Wood on delicious. Turkish mantı with harissa and lamb and Lamb and parsley mantı - Sarah Hobbs/Taste, with the last one coming from America's Scott Conant on the Food and Wine website - Mantı with tomato butter and yoghurt - lots of sauce in this one.
As my heading for this post suggests this is not a dish for everyday - well if you want to be true to its origins anyway - but I can see two occasions when you might give it a go. One when it's just you and you fancy an afternoon in the kitchen doing intricate things you've never done before, and the other when you want to do a group cook with people you enjoy being with. I confess that I'm not very good at this type of exercise, mostly I think because the people I might involve - my grandchildren mostly - might not be willing participants. And that's no fun.
Of course you can cheat - the modern world has lots of ways of cheating, including a TikTok one of just layering pasta, with a meat sauce, yoghurt and a spicy tomato sauce. Not really the same thing is it? It might taste good though. And very possibly it won't ultimately taste all that different from the real thing. After all it's the same ingredients really - yes pasta is just flour, egg and water like the dough for the real thing.
So why did those long, long ago housewives or cooks, decide to go to the bother of making, tiny little packages, to fill with meat and then cover with not one, but three different sauces? Maybe it was to impress somebody powerful. Maybe it was just to combat boredom. Maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time, everyone loved it and so you are doomed to repeat over and over again. Like me and spaghetti and meatballs in vast quantities for my family. I understand why chefs and recipe developers play with old traditional recipes, but why did those traditional recipes get invented in the first place? Surely the everyday cooks didn't have time to invent virtually impossible stuff like this. And who did it anyway? And how did the idea spread? All to do with travel I guess, and geography - a much maligned school subject.
Your thoughts?
YEARS GONE BY
December 13 - indeed Friday 13th. It's been a good day here so far, which puts paid to that superstition I think. And welcome to Australia sister dear.
2023 - Nothing
2022 - Nothing
2021 - Nothing - December is obviously a down month both for the writing and the reading of this blog. Too much else to do I guess.
2020 - A day out
2016 - What to do with raspberry - and other fruit - vinegars? - I'm ashamed to say that I still have some lurking in the back of my pantry.
Manti... never heard the word. A Cooks speciality, I assume?