Do I like to cook? It seems that I don’t really like it. But when my friends and I are going to chat, it is usually in the middle of the conversation, when everyone was already reinforced with snacks and hot dishes, one of the girls raises a glass and pronounces a toast that has already become traditional – about fresh news from Mary: delicious recipes from a maniac on Kitchen.
Girlfriends call me Manya. Since among them I have long been considered a master of manufacturing all kinds of goodies, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and when everyone sits down at the table in my living room resembling French, they forget that there is still a pleasantly pleasantly chatting at the table, besides the possibility of tasty, then there is a pleasant one. My name was strongly changed. They decided to call me a maniac: both in the French manner – almost cognac, and they captured my passion for experiments in the kitchen in the “name of my name”. After such a toast, I usually talk in detail about how to prepare a yummy that they have just forged for both cheeks. The last time I decided to make the table Azerbaijani. I really liked everything that we ordered in a cafe, where we recently looked with my husband, and where there was Azerbaijani cuisine, and I decided to pamper my friends.
We started our feast with hot tea. Tea was brewed black, with the addition of thyme. The aroma is unusual! We brewed tea in a clay kettle, but drank not from cups, but from armudes. These are such glass glasses, pear -shaped. Tea does not cool down in them for a long time. Usually sugar is offered for tea, necessarily a lump, and in no case, not refined. But I decided to refuse the sweets at the beginning of dinner, and we just drank tea. Dressers on the Azerbaijani table are usually vegetables. Tomatoes, cucumbers and pepper, cut into large pieces. In the same place, on a vegetable plate, I put fresh herbs: dill, parsley and basil. The crown dish of the table was a dolma, an adzab-offal acted as support.
I made Ajabsandal completely vegetable, although I know that you can still add meat to it.
We had enough meat in Dolm. I cooked Dolma like this: I soaked the salted grape leaves bought on the market in the water and put the filling in them: minced meat. The filling needed to be wrapped in a sheet, as in an envelope. The filling is simple: the stuffing of beef, to which I added fine onions, greens and a little – a little rice, welded to half -cooked. So far, laid in a saucepan like cabbage rolls, the dolma stewed for almost an hour, I made a sauce to it: I added finely cut garlic, greens, slightly salt and black pepper to Kefir, mixed, insisted – about an hour. Ajabsandal was also easily prepared: the eggplant was chopped largely, lowered it for half an hour into salted water, then squeezed out, fried in vegetable oil. In a neighboring pan, she fried onions, added a little Bulgarian pepper, at the end – tomatoes, also cut large, and necessarily without a peel. I put it out, poured everything in one stewpan and stewed for another 10 minutes. Then, already in a dish, sprinkled on top with garlic and fresh herbs.
The most remarkable turned out to be that I bought a real lavash from the tandoor on the market. He was still hot, with a crispy crust, when I brought him home. How he turned out to be by the way, to Dolma with a kefir sauce, and to Ajabsandal. And we completed our “Caucasian meal” tea. And there was a dessert of berries, those that grow in Azerbaijan. White cherry jam, still from quince and the most delicious – from kizil and pink leaves. Just lick your fingers, how tasty.