’Forget-Me-Not’ Mackerel with Barberries

In this dish you are required to reach down the throat of a fish and pull out its insides, including the bones, in order to make it empty enough to satisfy the Turkish compulsion to stuff everything they see.

Uskumru dolmasi is one of the oldest surviving Ottoman seafood recipes, mentioned in seventeenth century palace documents, and nicknamed unutma beni (don’t forget me) because meyhanes in past centuries would send plates of stuffed mackerel to the homes o