An Azeri Meal

Rafig, my country manager here in Baku, had promised me a proper Azeri meal and so on the Sunday evening he took me from my hotel to a restaurant in his locality. To call it modest was to do it a favour: a fairly dingy place with a scruffy back yard was the place for our meal. But Rafig knew the form.

We were joined by Farda, an old friend of mine; I first met him almost exactly seven years ago on the day I arrived for the first time in Azerbaijan. He was the country manager on my first job and is a good friend of Inessa, the Georgian I wrote about earlier. Both Rafig and Farda are academics at Baku University who make a good living attaching themselves to projects such as mine. Our last guest was an Iranian who was described as Farda’s post-graduate student. As he was the oldest person at the table this took some explaining. It turned out that he is an ethnic Azeri Iranian and I learned that there are more Azeris in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan.

All of them had at least a bit of English so communication was OK and when it got into difficulties Rafig was there as a translator.

We started with the Azeri staples of fresh herbs; spring onion, basil, dill, coriander and tarragon, eaten like salad leaves. On the table with it was soft sheep’s cheese and rock hard, pungent goat’s cheese-ifyou have ever been this way you will know what I am talking about. Then pickles; gherkins, pickled plums, olives and tomatoes. But this was really the hors d’oeuvres.

Next we had grilled lamb chops garnished with whole small grilled aubergines and tomatoes. Then the bits of chicken we would never ever eat, stewed with tomatoes and onions. By this time I was wilting a bit, but Rafig said “one more dish”. As it came, he presented it as lamb’s lungs. Ah well, I thought, when in Rome…… He chose the best bits for me and I bit into it, and found that there had been a bit of a translation problem; it was actually lambs liver, wrapped in caul fat, and very nice it was too.

All of this was washed down with three bottles of very pleasant half-sweet Azeri red wine between the four of us. That wasn’t at all bad, especially when I think I had the thin bit of those three bottles! Delicious and memorable.