This popular Azerbaijani street food packs a delicious filling inside crispy folded pastry that resembles a half-moon. Of all the main variations of fillings, gutabs with herbs vary the most between regions. They are cooked on a cast-iron disk called a saj. Typically, they are served with melted butter, sprinkled with dried barberries, with a side of yoghurt and pomegranate seeds. Ayran, a cold yoghurt drink mixed with salt, makes for a great accompaniment to fresh, succulent gutabs.
Ingredients
- Dough (make as shown at the beginning of this section)
- Fresh herbs: cilantro, dill, mint, spinach, greens
- 1 beam each of onion and parsley
- 120 g onions
- 40 g lavashana (cherry-plum paste)
- 100 g butter
- Gatig (plain yogurt)
- Salt and pepper – to taste
For the dough:
- water
- flour
- salt
Instructions
Knead the dough and cover with a towel for a while. For the filling: wash all the herbs, chop them and saute with finely chopped onions. Then, add chopped lavashana, salt and pepper to taste and mix everything well. Divide the dough into balls with the diameter of a fist. Then, roll them out thinly and cut out circles the size of a dessert plate. Put a thin layer of the stuffing from greens on one half of the circle (a hemisphere). Fold over the half (hemisphere) without the stuffing and firmly close the sides. You can fry the gutab on both sides with or without butter, on an extremely hot pan or inverted saj. When serving, sprinkle with oil and separately serve the gatig (plain yogurt).
Allergens: cereals containing gluten, milk, and yoghurt.
