Azerbaijan

Caucasian cooking at the crossroads of Persian, Turkish and Russian influence. Plov (long-grain rice steamed in a cloth-wrapped pot with saffron, dried fruit and lamb) is the centrepiece - over forty regional variations exist. Dolma (stuffed vine leaves and vegetables), dovga (a yogurt-and-herb soup eaten hot or cold), and tikya kabab (skewered lamb) define everyday eating. Pomegranate, walnut, sour plum (alycha), sumac and saffron are the signature flavours. The meal closes with black tea poured from a samovar into pear-shaped armudu glasses, served with paklava, shekerbura and small dishes of preserved fruit.

12 recipes

Browse by section

Desserts 3 recipes

Side Dishes 3 recipes

Snacks 3 recipes

Recipes

Dolma (Azerbaijani Stuffed Vine Leaves)

Azerbaijan's stuffed vine leaves, claimed as the national dish in 2017 and added to UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. You start by soaking brined vine leaves in warm water for twenty minutes to leach out the salt, then build a filling of raw lamb mince with rinsed short-grain rice, finely chopped onion, fresh mint and dill, butter, salt and pepper. Each leaf gets a teaspoon of filling and rolls into a tight cigar. The rolls pack in a single layer in a heavy pot, then a second and third layer perpendicular to the first, like a brickwork pattern that holds them together as they cook. Stock and a splash of sumac water pour in to barely cover, an inverted plate weighs everything down so the dolma keep their shape, and the lot simmers slowly for fifty minutes. Plated on a platter with thick garlic yogurt alongside for dipping.

2 hours Serves6

Lyulya-Kebab

The Azeri grill at its purest, and one of the most technically demanding kebabs in the Caucasus: a minced lamb sausage moulded onto a flat skewer and grilled over charcoal until the outside is charred and the inside still juicy. You mince fatty lamb shoulder twice or pulse it smooth in a processor, and grate a large onion fine with the juice squeezed out (excess water makes the meat slip off the skewer). Then you knead the onion and lamb together with salt, pepper and ground sumac for a full five minutes until the mixture goes from loose to tacky. This is the equivalent of bread's windowpane stage for meat, and it's the trick to skewer adhesion. The mix chills for two hours, then pats onto flat skewers in fifteen-centimetre sausages, grills over charcoal five or six minutes per side, rests two minutes, comes to the table on the skewer with lavash, grilled tomatoes and onions, and a wedge of lemon.

2 hours 42 minutes Serves4

Plov

Azerbaijan's wedding rice, the centrepiece of any celebration worth the name, and a dish that takes most of a day to do properly. You soak basmati for an hour in salted water, drain it, par-boil for five minutes in heavily salted water, drain again. A wide heavy pot is buttered, and a sheet of lavash (or a saffron-soaked rice base) lines the bottom to form the qazmaq crust that's the prize at the end of the meal. The par-boiled rice piles on top, butter melts down through it, the pot covers and steams for forty minutes to an hour on low heat. Meanwhile you cook the qara separately: lamb shoulder cubes browned, onions softened slowly, dried apricots and chestnuts added with a splash of water, the whole stew simmering for ninety minutes until the lamb is meltingly tender. The plov comes to the table with the rice mounded on a platter, the qazmaq crust broken and shared at the table, and the qara spooned alongside. A meal that announces itself.

3 hours 45 minutes Serves6