Salam! That is hello in Azerbaijani!
This week the random number generator gave us number 11 which is Azerbaijan! This was a completely different experience then we had last week. Lesotho was all about the spices and Azerbaijan was more about the effort put into the food!
Azerbaijan is located in the Middle East. It shares borders with the Caspian Sea, Georgia, Russia, Armenia, and Iran. Azerbaijan also has an exclave, meaning a part of the country separated by other countries. It is almost like an island. This exclave is called Nakhchivan, which is bounded by Armenia, Iran, and Turkey! The national language is Azerbaijani which is very similar to modern Turkish, but different enough that it could be hard to understand each other. The capital of Azerbaijan is Baku.
This is the flag of Azerbaijan. The blue represents their Turkic heritage. The red represents progress. The green symbolizes Islam, which is the religion of the majority of Azerbaijanis. More than 89% of the citizens are Shia Muslim. This flag was flown from 1918 to 1920 when Azerbaijan was independent. It became part of the SSR and thus didn't use this flag for a very long time. In 1991, it became the flag for Azerbaijan once again after they received independence.
In terms of the ecosystem, Azerbaijan has a unique climate in which the flora is much richer than the flora of the other republics of the South Caucasus region. About 67% of the species growing in the whole region can be found here! The national animal of Azerbaijan is the Karabakh horse. It is one of the oldest breeds, with ancestry dating to the ancient world. Unfortunately this horse is an endangered species today.
And now on to the cuisine!
Azerbaijan is famous for consuming vegetables and greens! They use many fresh herbs, including mint, cilantro, dill, basil, and many more. Depending on where you are living, your diet may be different. Along the Caspian Sea, fish is eaten more frequently. Local meat (mainly mutton and beef) as well as vegetables are eaten inland. Black tea is the national beverage and Azerbaijan is know to have a very strong tea culture. There are many popular dishes such as bozbash (a lamb soup with vegetables), qutab (a fried turnover with a filling of greens or minced meat), and dushbara (dumplings filled with ground meat). We chose to go with dushbara this week! I should have made rice with it as well, but hey, we are learning! Also, as a word of warning, our refrigerator went out this week, so we ended up not having all the ingredients for the dushbara. We did our best with what we had, but I definitely think it would taste better if we had had all the ingredients.
The recipe I got this week was actually from another blog where she is doing meals from all over the world as well.
https://www.internationalcuisine.com/dushbara/
Ingredients:
For the broth (from the blog post):
1 lb. lamb or beef
1 small onion
1/2 teaspoon saffron
Salt to taste
I ended up having to change this a bit. Due to a tight budget with the fridge going out, we ended up just using beef broth from the box. I added salt and a small onion cut into chunks.
For the dough: (I did two batches of dough)
2-3 cups of flour
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup water
For the filling:
1/2 lb. ground lamb or beef not to exceed 15% fat content (I changed this to 1 lb. of beef)
1 small onion
Salt
Pepper
For Garnish:
Fresh chopped mint leaves (we ended up not having this due to the fridge debacle)
Vinegar
2 Garlic cloves, minced
Instructions:
For the broth:
I added the beef broth, some water, salt, and the chopped onion to the pot. I let it boil while I made the dumpling dough. I continued to let it simmer until the dumplings were made and then I strained the onions out of it.
For the dough:
1. Sift 2 cups of flour into a bowl, add in the egg, salt and water. (I really wish I had a sifter, because it would have made this a lot better!)
2. Start to knead the dough until it is soft and elastic. Add flour as needed. ( I did 2 batches and I needed to add a little bit more water both times.)
3. Shape the dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 20 minutes before rolling.
For the filling:
In a bowl, mix together the ground beef and finely minced or grated onion, season with salt and pepper. Mix well.
To make the dushbara:
1. Dust work surface with flour, roll out the dough very thin. (I don't think I rolled the dough thin enough for either batch I did, so that is something that I need to work on if I make this again)
2. Cut dough into very small squares, about 1 inch each. (I did much better working with large squares and then working into smaller squares. They are supposed to be tiny, but it was hard!)
3. Place the filling into the middle of each square. Depending on how big your squares are will determine how much filling you need to use.
4. Fold the square edges corner to corner to form a triangle and seal them, then seal the far ends together to form the shape.
5. Put the dushbara in the boiling broth and gently mix with a wooden spoon, so they don't stick together.
6. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook for ten minutes until the dough is tender.
7. Serve hot with a side of vinegar and chopped garlic to taste. (Our garlic was lost in the fridge debacle so we just had the vinegar to dip in. It was still delicious!)
8. Garnish with chopped fresh mint. (This would have helped too!)
So, overall, we really liked this dish! I wish we could have made it exactly like the recipe called for. It just didn't work out this week! So we may have to revisit this recipe in the future! I need to work with dough more so I understand exactly what it is supposed to feel like. The dough definitely needed to be thinner which would have made this better. There wasn't as much flavor as I think we are used to, but that could be due to the lack of garlic and mint. Dipping the dushbara in vinegar was a weird thing for me, but it was absolutely necessary! It was super delicious with the vinegar.
This was a country and cuisine I didn't know much about so I am really grateful for the opportunity we had to try food from Azerbaijan! We enjoyed it so much that it may become a recipe we do more frequently! I definitely recommend eating some rice with it and maybe some veggies.
Thank you all for reading our blog this week! This was a fun and challenging meal to make! Next week we will be making food from Grenada which is an island in the Caribbean. There are so many delicious meals to choose from so it will be fun to see what we decide on!
Have a great week!
Aerika, Nick, and Lily
This week the random number generator gave us number 11 which is Azerbaijan! This was a completely different experience then we had last week. Lesotho was all about the spices and Azerbaijan was more about the effort put into the food!
Azerbaijan is located in the Middle East. It shares borders with the Caspian Sea, Georgia, Russia, Armenia, and Iran. Azerbaijan also has an exclave, meaning a part of the country separated by other countries. It is almost like an island. This exclave is called Nakhchivan, which is bounded by Armenia, Iran, and Turkey! The national language is Azerbaijani which is very similar to modern Turkish, but different enough that it could be hard to understand each other. The capital of Azerbaijan is Baku.
In terms of the ecosystem, Azerbaijan has a unique climate in which the flora is much richer than the flora of the other republics of the South Caucasus region. About 67% of the species growing in the whole region can be found here! The national animal of Azerbaijan is the Karabakh horse. It is one of the oldest breeds, with ancestry dating to the ancient world. Unfortunately this horse is an endangered species today.
Azerbaijan is famous for consuming vegetables and greens! They use many fresh herbs, including mint, cilantro, dill, basil, and many more. Depending on where you are living, your diet may be different. Along the Caspian Sea, fish is eaten more frequently. Local meat (mainly mutton and beef) as well as vegetables are eaten inland. Black tea is the national beverage and Azerbaijan is know to have a very strong tea culture. There are many popular dishes such as bozbash (a lamb soup with vegetables), qutab (a fried turnover with a filling of greens or minced meat), and dushbara (dumplings filled with ground meat). We chose to go with dushbara this week! I should have made rice with it as well, but hey, we are learning! Also, as a word of warning, our refrigerator went out this week, so we ended up not having all the ingredients for the dushbara. We did our best with what we had, but I definitely think it would taste better if we had had all the ingredients.
The recipe I got this week was actually from another blog where she is doing meals from all over the world as well.
https://www.internationalcuisine.com/dushbara/
Ingredients:
For the broth (from the blog post):
1 lb. lamb or beef
1 small onion
1/2 teaspoon saffron
Salt to taste
I ended up having to change this a bit. Due to a tight budget with the fridge going out, we ended up just using beef broth from the box. I added salt and a small onion cut into chunks.
For the dough: (I did two batches of dough)
2-3 cups of flour
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup water
For the filling:
1/2 lb. ground lamb or beef not to exceed 15% fat content (I changed this to 1 lb. of beef)
1 small onion
Salt
Pepper
For Garnish:
Fresh chopped mint leaves (we ended up not having this due to the fridge debacle)
Vinegar
2 Garlic cloves, minced
Instructions:
For the broth:
I added the beef broth, some water, salt, and the chopped onion to the pot. I let it boil while I made the dumpling dough. I continued to let it simmer until the dumplings were made and then I strained the onions out of it.
For the dough:
1. Sift 2 cups of flour into a bowl, add in the egg, salt and water. (I really wish I had a sifter, because it would have made this a lot better!)
2. Start to knead the dough until it is soft and elastic. Add flour as needed. ( I did 2 batches and I needed to add a little bit more water both times.)
3. Shape the dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 20 minutes before rolling.
For the filling:
In a bowl, mix together the ground beef and finely minced or grated onion, season with salt and pepper. Mix well.
To make the dushbara:
1. Dust work surface with flour, roll out the dough very thin. (I don't think I rolled the dough thin enough for either batch I did, so that is something that I need to work on if I make this again)
2. Cut dough into very small squares, about 1 inch each. (I did much better working with large squares and then working into smaller squares. They are supposed to be tiny, but it was hard!)
3. Place the filling into the middle of each square. Depending on how big your squares are will determine how much filling you need to use.
4. Fold the square edges corner to corner to form a triangle and seal them, then seal the far ends together to form the shape.
5. Put the dushbara in the boiling broth and gently mix with a wooden spoon, so they don't stick together.
6. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook for ten minutes until the dough is tender.
7. Serve hot with a side of vinegar and chopped garlic to taste. (Our garlic was lost in the fridge debacle so we just had the vinegar to dip in. It was still delicious!)
8. Garnish with chopped fresh mint. (This would have helped too!)
So, overall, we really liked this dish! I wish we could have made it exactly like the recipe called for. It just didn't work out this week! So we may have to revisit this recipe in the future! I need to work with dough more so I understand exactly what it is supposed to feel like. The dough definitely needed to be thinner which would have made this better. There wasn't as much flavor as I think we are used to, but that could be due to the lack of garlic and mint. Dipping the dushbara in vinegar was a weird thing for me, but it was absolutely necessary! It was super delicious with the vinegar.
This was a country and cuisine I didn't know much about so I am really grateful for the opportunity we had to try food from Azerbaijan! We enjoyed it so much that it may become a recipe we do more frequently! I definitely recommend eating some rice with it and maybe some veggies.
Thank you all for reading our blog this week! This was a fun and challenging meal to make! Next week we will be making food from Grenada which is an island in the Caribbean. There are so many delicious meals to choose from so it will be fun to see what we decide on!
Have a great week!
Aerika, Nick, and Lily
It looks good. Since you have the dough with meat inside, I suggest serving with vegetables.
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