I was really excited about making food for Azerbaijan due to its similarities with that of Iran. I loved the dish I made for Iran so much that I've made it several times since! This one, however, is a little more time consuming and labor intensive so I don't know if I'll be putting this on the regular rotation, but I might break the recipe out for a special meal once in a while.
The dish I chose for Azerbaijan is called qutab, and it's kind of like a stuffed crepe. There are tons of variations in fillings for this dish, but I went for a cheese and walnut mixture.
It starts with a simple dough made from flour, milk, and salt. After kneading, the texture is thick like a less stretchy pizza dough.
While the dough rested, I de-seeded my pomegranate. Honestly the payoff for a pomegranate is not really worth it; I mostly just wanted it for a bright pop of color in my pictures.
I then mashed up some fresh feta with fresh mozzarella and a little bit of grated hard cheese. The recipe I used called for "kashkaval" which is similar to a hard cheddar. I used gruyere simply because I had some left over in my fridge and I needed to use it up. It didn't really matter since it was only 2 ounces mixed in with the other cheeses.
The cheese mixture is then sprinkled with a heavy pinch of black pepper and then mixed with some ground walnuts. I had some walnuts that had been mixed with some butter in a failed attempt at a walnut pie crust I tried to make for Thanksgiving. So I just used some of that instead of buying plain walnuts to grind again.
Once the dough had rested, I started rolling it out. I used my pasta roller attachment for my stand mixer, so I ended up with squares rather than the traditional circles, but they ended up basically the shape anyway once I trimmed the excess dough.
Once the squares were rolled out, I spread a bit of the filling in the center of each one. Then, I brushed some water along the edges and folded them, sealing them kind of like making wontons.
In a buttered skillet, each of the qutabs fry for a couple minutes on each side, until just browned. They puff up pretty huge when cooking because of all the steam, but once you take them out of the pan they end up flat like a tortilla.
To serve, I mixed some pomegranate molasses with butter so I could drizzle it on top, along with my pomegranate seeds and fresh parsley. Traditionally, qutab are also served with butter, yogurt, and/or sumac.
I still have lots of the dough left (I didn't want to be frying these things up for hours) so I'll probably be experimenting with some of the other traditional flavor combinations, like winter squash and mint, fresh herbs, and plain cheese with sumac. I can't wait to try more!
Recipes Used: Qutab
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