Stuffed Mussels and Street Vendors
“Geography is destiny,” declared the 14th century philosopher Ibn Khaldun. Whether this statement by one of the Middle Ages’ most prominent thinkers carries any existential or sociological weight is dubious. However, when it comes to culinary cultures, it certainly provides some food for thought.
Take Istanbul. Being an imperial port city meant meyhanes and accordingly mezzes came to occupy a central place in the city’s millennia-old culinary culture. Likewise, sitting on the Bosporus, where the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara converge meant seafood constituted some of the most delicious examples of these mezzes: lakerda (preserved Atlantic bonito), likorinos (smoked mullets), çiroz (dried mackerel), taramasalata, and stuffed mackerel to name a few. And of course, Istanbulites’ experimentation with seafood went beyond fish and included all sorts of delicacies made with crustaceans and molluscs such as pavurya (crabs) and, of course, the timeless stuffed mussels.
“A quasi-sacred dish”
Stuffed mussels’ origins go all the way back to Byzantion. According to the Byzantine Annals edited by T.H. Maggakis in 1888, Armenians living in the city stuffed large mussels with rice cooked in sheep lard. Although texts dating back to the 19th century refers to Muslim women, Rum meyhane owners and various other figures making stuffed mussels, there is a general consensus that Armenians remained the true masters of this exquisite mezze for centuries.
In fact, in his memoirs of the city, none other than the Minister of Fisheries, Ali Rıza Bey refers to one brickworks owner Şahbaz Efendi, whose Armenian cook was renowned all over the city for his luscious stuffed mussels. And even as late as the beginning of the 20th century, notes author and gourmet Artun Ünsal, Grand Bazaar’s well-to-do merchants with a penchant for culinary delights would visit Mıgırdiç Tokatlıyan’s Armenian restaurant to indulge themselves in his famous stuffed mussels.
According to Maggakis, preparation of the stuffed mussels amounted to an “artistic exercise” that required immense craftsmanship and culinary flair. And it was the artistic nature of this endeavour – and preparing stuffed mussels is nothing if not an endeavour – that led the author/culinary expert Levon Bağış to call stuffed mussels “a quasi-sacred dish”. So, let us see how this highlight of Armenian cuisine and an indispensable component of Istanbul’s mezze tables is prepared.
One of the most interesting types of street vendors were the mobile meyhanes, called “infantrymen” by the famous Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi. These were run by Armenians and the owner was literally the meyhane itself: he was the counter, the waiter, the master… Wrapped around his waist was sheep intestines filled with rakı. He would keep glasses in his gown’s pockets and would carefully place a hand towel on his shoulder indicating that he was running a mobile meyhane. Once he saw a regular approaching, he would make his way inside a grocery store nearby and fill one of his glasses with the rakı that his body heat would have turned into yellow. The customer would pick up a bite of anything he found in the store – a leaf of cabbage, a piece of grape, a slice of radish, or as often happened, they wouldn’t have anything to eat with it at all. According to Evliya Çelebi, there were around 800 mobile infantrymen operating in Istanbul.
It’s all about the rice
Preparation of stuffed mussels involves three steps: Cleaning and preparing the mussels; cooking the filling; cooking the stuffed mussels. Directions for the first and third steps are almost identical in every recipe, which means it is the rice that makes or breaks the stuffed mussel dish. The recipe we picked comes from The Perfect Cookbook, a 1926 compilation of 637 recipes by an anonymous Armenian chef edited by Vağinag Püryad.
First, rub off any debris remaining on the shells and rinse them under cold water. Then, open the mussels by gently forcing a knife into their pointy end. After debearding them, ensure you remove its nerves as otherwise the mussel will open during cooking. Gently check with your finger to see if there are any shell pieces or pearls. Finally, once again rinse them under cold water.
For the filling, start by frying grated onions in olive oil until they are darkish pink. Add pine nuts and currants. After stirring, add rinsed rice, salt and ground black pepper and fry until the onions are crimson red. Add two scoops of meat broth and stir. Once the rice absorbs the broth, add some more water and stir until rice is tender. Add granulated sugar, dill, mint, and cinnamon to the mixture and stir well.
Loosely stuff the mussels with the rice mixture and place them on a wide pan. Cover them with a plate and place a stone on top of it to prevent them from opening too wide. Pour one scoop of hot water on the plate, close the lid and cook in medium heat until they open.
The abundance of street vendors in Istanbul hasn’t failed to draw Europeans’ attention. Their depiction often has quite Orientalist undertones though. For instance, leading characters in the film adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot) and Ian Fleming’s From Russia with Love (James Bond) are frequently hassled to no end by desolate-looking, annoyingly persistent street vendors. Mark Twain, who arrived in Istanbul aboard Quarker in 1867 wasn’t impressed with these unique figures as well. In The Innocents Abroad, he wrote: “Peddlers of grapes, hot corn, pumpkin seeds and a hundred other things keep yelling like fiends.”
“Forget me not” stuffings
Such a delicacy was it that they played a symbolic yet constitutive role in the habitué-barba (meyhane owner) relationship that formed the basis of meyhane culture for centuries. In the old days, on the last day of Ramadan, barbas would send habitués’ home (as the latter would have refrained from visiting the meyhane during the holy month) a plate of either stuffed mussels or stuffed mackerels, aptly named “forget me not stuffings” as a reminder of the special relationship between them.
Most of the time though, it wasn’t the meyhanes themselves but street vendors, who went from door to door to provide the tavern goers with the stuffed mussels they so craved for. According to the doyen of the history of Istanbul, Reşad Ekrem Koçu, most of the stuffed mussels vendors were either Rum (Ottoman citizens of Greek descent) or Armenian and would each have their own zones in the city. The best among these used mussels from Kavaklar (northern end of the Bosporus), tasty rice, and clean water; weren’t shy with pine nuts and currants; and would serve meyhanes in the Galata district (the historic neighbourhood located at the northern shore of the Golden Horn famous for its meyhanes and taverns).
As we are talking about the best stuffed mussels, a brief yet crucial cautionary note is in order. One of the outcomes of environmental degradation is an increase in the mercury levels of marine life. Since mussels are prone to containing high levels of mercury, when it comes to stuffed mussels you should pay special attention to where they are supplied from.
Today, the stuffed mussel market is almost entirely in the hands of immigrants from the south-eastern city of Mardin. Displaced from their homes in the 1960s often as a result of draconian manoeuvres by the state, predominantly Kurdish immigrants landed in Izmir and Istanbul, where they were introduced to stuffed mussels for the first time. After learning the trade from Armenian masters, they came to dominate the market. South-eastern cuisine is known for its spiciness, which means the stuffed mussels of today are slightly hotter than the Armenian creators intended.
A street vendors paradise
According to Ünsal, the presence of a legion of street vendors has been a distinguishing feature of Istanbul from time immemorial. Being an imperial port city meant the city’s streets and squares were never empty and for the majority of its inhabitants (predominantly lower classes) and visitors dining on the street was the only viable option. Street vendors were there for the workers, immigrants, single men, the poor, the homeless, the sailors, in short, the urban masses to whom the city’s public spaces belonged.
They sold food – fruits and vegetables, yoghurt, liver, corn on the cob, rice, stuffed mussels, pickles, wafers, milk, toffee apples, cucumbers, chestnuts, lahmacun (flatbread topped with ground beef, onions, vegetables, and spices), simit (circular bread encrusted with sesame seeds), soup, and countless others – and many other items including: mirrors, cloth, firewood, prayer rugs, perfume, underwear, and even leeches. There were street barbers, street photographers, street scribes, and even street blood pressure measurers.
So prominently did they feature on the streets of Istanbul that Koçu called them the “salt and pepper of urban life”. They became part and parcel of urban culture, constituting the most recognizable sights and sounds Istanbul had to offer. Their kaleidoscopic costumes and idiosyncratic enunciation and intonation of goods they offered (often prolonging letters “a”, “e”, “i", and “ü” and starting from a low pitch, reaching extreme heights in the middle of the word and dropping again by the end) turned them into hallmarks of Istanbul. In exchange for their livelihood they (amongst others) played a role in the creation of an absolutely singular facet of life for Istanbul, making it a city truly like no other.
Today, there aren’t too many street vendors roaming the streets of Istanbul day and night. Fruits and vegetables are still on sale. So are simit and corn on the cob. And of course, stuffed mussels. Near Beyoğlu or any other borough where the night is always young, you can come across men in white aprons with a copper tray brimming with stuffed mussels and sliced lemons, right by their side or on their shoulders, waiting for after-hours diners to leave clubs and bars, and enjoy this timeless delicacy before heading home.