What comes out of this kitchen
Four things by name and a longer list behind them. Everything is cooked for a date rather than made in advance, so what you are reading is a list of what to ask for, not a list of what is in stock.
Dolma
Dolma is the dish an Azerbaijani cook gets judged on, and the judging is mostly about size: rolled small enough that the leaf holds together, loose enough that the rice has somewhere to go. There is no machine for it. It is an afternoon with a bowl on your knees and a pile of leaves beside you, and you can taste the difference between an afternoon and a hurry.
In 2017 UNESCO added dolma to its list of intangible cultural heritage — not a recipe, which changes from house to house, but the making of it and the sharing of it. That is about right. We cook it by the pot, for however many are sitting down.
- Ordered by
- The pot
- Made
- To order, by hand
- Ask us about
- Numbers, and the date
LavashLavaş
Lavaş is rolled until it is barely there — thin enough to fold around whatever is on the table, thin enough to dry out and keep, and soft again with a hand of water over it. Everything else on an Azerbaijani table is eaten with it.
It went onto the same UNESCO list a year before dolma, in 2016, and it went on shared between Azerbaijan and four of its neighbours, because nobody could sensibly claim thin bread on their own. We make it fresh, in the quantity you ask for.
- Ordered by
- The stack
- Made
- Fresh, to order
- Keeps
- Dries and comes back
Chudu
Worked thin, filled, folded and baked until the layers separate and the top goes the colour it goes. It is the plate that empties first, and it is the one thing here that genuinely travels — which makes it the easy answer when you are feeding people somewhere that is not your own kitchen.
Made in whatever number you need. If you are feeding a room and you are not sure what to ask for, say how many people and let us do the arithmetic.
- Ordered by
- The plate or the box
- Travels
- Better than anything else here
- Made
- To order
Cakes
Cakes are the other half of this kitchen. Meringue and cream, layers, fruit sitting on the top rather than buried under fondant — made for a particular day, at the size that day needs, and finished the way you ask rather than the way a catalogue says.
Tell us the date, roughly how many people, and anything the room cannot eat. We will come back with what is possible and what it costs before anything is agreed.
- Ordered by
- The occasion
- Tell us
- The date and the number
- Also tell us
- What the room cannot eat
If it is on an Azerbaijani table, ask
This is what leaves the kitchen most weeks. It is not the whole of what an Azerbaijani table has on it, and if there is something from home you want cooked for a date, ask — it has probably been made here before.