Welcome to Azerbaijan, Where I attempt to make Qutab

A couple of weeks ago I finished up our journey through the A countries by making Qutab from Azerbaijan.  As I researched, I discovered that qutab is a stuffed pancake, and from the pictures I saw of it, it looked absolutely fantastic.  You can make it either savory (with ground beef and onions) or sweet (with pumpkin, pomegranate seeds, and cinnamon).  I opted to make the savory version since pumpkin isn't currently in season where I am, and the only pumpkin I found available was canned pumpkin puree.  The canned pumpkin puree probably would have worked, but it might have made for a soggy qutab.

After seeing the pictures of qutab, I was all excited to make it until I read the directions for making it.  If you've read any of our other blogs, you can probably guess why my enthusiasm for this recipe waned upon reading the directions.  If you guessed that it's because it requires the pancake being rolled out, then you are right.  It's another roll out type of pancake.  I decided to begin my culinary exploration of qutab with a positive outlook, and totally disregarded all of the results from my previous attempts at roll out pancakes.  With my positive glasses firmly in place, here goes the recipe for qutab.  You will need:

400 grams of flour (I used our kitchen scale, but it's about 4 1/2 cups of flour)
1 egg, beaten
250 milliliters of water
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
650 grams ground meat (I used fake meat soy crumbles, but you can use whatever you'd like)
1 onion
salt
paprika

Measure out the flour into a large bowl, and make a well in the middle.  Pour the beaten egg and water into the well in the middle of the bowl.

After pouring in the egg and water, begin kneading the dough with your hand until it has a soft, elastic consistency.  After the dough started to come together, I took it out of the bowl and kneaded it on a cutting board for ease of kneading.

So, the red mark on the cutting board is a stain from some strawberries that I can't get off.  Anyone know how to get the strawberry stain off?  While I was kneading the dough, Sam decided to take a picture of my dog, Mac.  Mac was looking guilty about something, but I'm not sure what.

Anyway, back to the pancake recipe.  If you take the dough out to knead it, put it back in the bowl and splash the two tablespoons of oil over it.  Let dough rest for 20 minutes.  While the dough is resting, begin making your filling.  Dice the onions and cook them with the meat filling.  Since we used soy crumbles (which have no fat in them) I added a little bit of olive oil to help soften the onions.  You don't need to do this if you are using meat, as the fat from the meat should be enough.

After adding your protein, sprinkle filling with a little bit of salt and paprika, and heat until cooked all the way through.

By the way, this is the paprika I used. .

I have no clue why this is showing up the wrong way in the blog, when I upload it it shows the image right side up.  Anyway, I don't have time to figure it out right now, so you'll just have to turn your head to see it the right way.  :)

Once the filling is cooked, the 20 minutes should be up and your dough should be ready for rolling.  Pinch off a piece of dough the size of a tennis ball.

Now, using a rolling pin, roll the ball into a thin, flat disc.

Now it's time to add the filling.  Spoon the filling on half of the rolled out dough, and then fold over the other half of the dough on top.

 Remember, I'm circularly challenged, so hopefully if you make this it will be more round.  If it isn't, here is  a picture of what I did to make mine into a semi circle.

After you've done this, you are now ready to heat up the qutab in a frying pan.  In Azerbaijan, they cook the qutab on what looks like an inverted wok, but I chose to heat it on my crepe pan.  Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures at this point for some reason, so I don't have any pictures of the finished product.  You can go here to see what the finished product should look like.  This is where I also got the recipe from to make the qutab, thanks Dilara!  For those of you with a discerning eye, I did type should look like a couple of sentences ago.  Of course, mine didn't look like this.  However, this time they were at least edible.  Yay!  Mine looked more like a thick quesadilla as opposed to the thin, delicate dough on Dilara's website.  Oh well, at least I was able to eat them this time.  That's one step in the right direction when it comes to roll out recipes.  Also, not only were they edible, but they were tasty as well.  Yippee!

My journey through the As has now come to its end.  Join me in my next post as I begin my travels through the Bs.