Masiyê tenûrê — Van-style Oven-baked Fish

Name: Masiyê tenûrê — Van-style Oven-baked Fish
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 4 piece small trout (about 250 g each, cleaned and ready to cook); 2 piece lemons; 2 tsp salt; 0.5 tsp black pepper (ground); 3 piece onions; 4 piece tomatoes; 2 piece green pointed peppers; 1 piece red bell pepper; 5 tbsp olive oil; 1 tsp red pepper flakes (Pul Biber); 0.5 bunch flat-leaf parsley

A Kurdish classic from Van and Hakkari in eastern Turkey: in Van, the small fish of Lake Van are cooked in the Tenûr, the clay oven, until the skin is crisp and the flesh stays juicy. In Turkish the dish is called Tandırda inci kefali. Lake Van fish itself is not available in Germany, so here small trout go on the tray and cook in a hot oven on onions, tomatoes and peppers with lemon.

⏱

Cook time

55 min

🍽️

Servings

🧂

Ingredients

View Original ↗

Nutrition

per serving

379 kcal

Calories

32 g

Protein

21 g

Fat

15 g

Carbs

Ingredients

For 4 servings

Estimated cost~€3.55 · ~€0.90/serving

Instructions

1
Rinse the trout inside and out under cold water and pat thoroughly dry. Make three diagonal cuts on each side almost down to the backbone.
2
Cut one lemon into thin slices. Rub the fish inside and out with 1.5 tsp salt and the pepper, place two lemon slices in each belly cavity and leave the fish to marinate, covered, in the fridge.
3
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220 °C top and bottom heat. Peel the onions and cut them into rings, cut the tomatoes into wedges, and deseed the pointed peppers and bell pepper and cut them into strips.
4
Toss the vegetables on a baking tray with 3 tbsp olive oil, the remaining salt and the red pepper flakes and spread them out evenly.
5
Pre-cook the vegetables on the middle shelf so that they will be tender at the same time as the fish later on.
6
Lay the trout side by side on the vegetables, brush them with the remaining olive oil and tuck the rest of the lemon slices in between. Cook on the middle shelf until the skin blisters and turns golden brown.
7
Test for doneness in a cut at the thickest part of the back: the flesh is no longer translucent and comes away from the bone, and the core temperature is 62 to 65 °C. Otherwise, cook for a few more minutes; for extra-crisp skin, switch on the oven grill for the last 2 to 3 minutes.
8
Wash and chop the parsley and cut the second lemon into wedges. Put the trout on plates with the vegetables and the cooking juices, sprinkle with parsley and add the lemon wedges.
9
To eat, lift the flesh off from the top along the backbone and then pull out the whole skeleton by the tail. Watch out for fine bones and give children the fish with all bones removed.
10
Tip: In Van, it is eaten in winter with Tirşî — mixed pickles with cauliflower, carrot, cucumber and pepper, and in summer with fresh herbs and Dew — yogurt drink with mint. The bread to go with it is Nanê tenûrê — flatbread from the clay oven, baked on a stone in a home oven. Char of the same size can be used instead of trout.