Sardine Birds

This is very much a hands-on recipe, requiring you to squeeze three egg-coated fish fillets into the shape of a bird (or what must have looked like a bird to the Black Sea chef who named this dish centuries ago). There’s a song about this dish, by local folk singer Volkan Konak, which goes: ‘I wish I was a hamsi bird, so I could fly up into the branches, and the mothers-in-law wouldn’t eat me.’

The strong-flavoured fish called hamsi (similar to a European anc