Blog

Hamsi in Black Sea Cooking: From Pilaf to Cornbread

A small fish can play more than one role at the table. In Türkiye’s Black Sea cooking, hamsi may be the crisp centerpiece, the outer layer of a rice dish, or an ingredient worked into cornmeal and greens. Looking at those roles reveals a regional kitchen more varied than a single plate of fried anchovies.

Anchovy-covered Hamsili Pilav with a cut wedge beside rustic Hamsikoli cornmeal bread containing greens and small anchovy pieces

A coastal ingredient, not a whole cuisine

GoTürkiye identifies anchovy as an especially familiar fish around Trabzon and Rize, and places anchovy bread and rice dishes alongside simpler preparations. That is a useful starting point for understanding hamsi’s regional importance. It does not make every Black Sea meal a fish meal, nor mean that every household prepares it in the same way.

The distinction matters when reading menus. A regional ingredient can connect several dishes without making them interchangeable. Ask whether the fish is served on its own, enclosed around another ingredient or mixed through a dough. That question tells you more about the eating experience than the word hamsi alone.

Hamsili pilav: the fish becomes the structure

In the Trabzon preparation documented by Türkiye’s Culture Portal, cleaned anchovies line the base and sides of a dish. Rice fills the center, more anchovies close the top, and the assembled dish is baked. Pine nuts, currants, herbs and warm spices appear in this recorded version; they are not a universal formula for every anchovy pilaf.

Here the fish does more than flavor the rice. It forms the outside of the dish, making the contrast between browned surface and grain filling visible when a portion is cut. The linked Hamsili Pilav recipe explores this structure in detail. Treat its measurements and method as one complete preparation rather than combining unrelated regional recipes.

Hamsikoli: anchovy inside the bread

Rize’s documented hamsikoli brings anchovy into a cornmeal dough with chard, spring onion and fresh mint, then bakes the mixture in a tray. The fish is incorporated with the greens rather than arranged as an outer shell. The name therefore leads to a different expectation from either a plain loaf or an anchovy-covered pilaf.

For a newcomer, the useful comparison is structural: in one dish fish surrounds rice; in the other it becomes part of the bread itself. These are ways to understand the recorded preparations, not a claim that every local version has identical proportions. A slice should be considered a composed savory food, not merely a neutral bread accompaniment.

Greens and cornmeal take another form

The Culture Portal also records Rize’s hamsi çığırtası, combining anchovy, chopped chard and onion greens with flour before frying the mixture thinly. Its account allows cornmeal or wheat flour. This related preparation shows how familiar ingredients can move between oven and pan while producing a different finished form.

It also cautions against deciding dietary suitability from a regional name. Cornmeal may be present without excluding wheat, and butter or egg can appear in particular preparations. Check the actual recipe and packaged ingredients. All the fish dishes discussed here contain fish; none should be assumed suitable for someone avoiding that allergen.

Bring one expression to the table

To explore the theme at home, choose Hamsili Pilav or Hamsi Tava as the main dish rather than preparing several anchovy dishes at once. Çoban Salatası offers a fresh contrast. This is a practical menu suggestion, not a prescribed regional sequence, and the linked recipes supply the relevant cooking and storage guidance.

Notice which part of the plate carries the fish flavor and which texture frames it. Is the cornmeal a coating, a bread base or part of a thin pan-cooked mixture? That small change in attention makes regional names more informative and lets each preparation retain its own identity.