Azerbaijan GP 2021: Kuku, White Beans, Spinach Borani, Nan-e Barbari, and Sabzi Khordan
What a race!!! This is why we watch F1. Baku is such a great street track with tight unforgiving corners, long straights, opportunities for passing, and with a little bit of bad luck, mistakes, and drama thrown in, this year’s race was a nail biter. We loved every minute of it. Paul DiResta even provided a little commentators curse for Max resulting in my favorite winner so far this year: Sergio Perez! I am so happy for him getting the Red Bull seat and making that car work for him. ¡Vamos Checo! Seeing an all out elation across the board podium was icing on the cake. Perez, Vettel, and Gasly — what a great podium and a fun race.
In search of Azeri recipes and learning more about Azerbaijan and its cuisine, I found ‘Persia: A cook’s travels through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan’ by Naomi Duguid at my local library. Reading Naomi Duguid’s beautiful cookbook was a pleasure. She highlights multiple regions, which share many culinary traditions and hones in on recipes for each that are uniquely their own, but overall she maintains the idea that the food of the region has much more in common than it does differences, and even labels it the “Persian Culinary Region”. One statement in particular resonated for me, as she discusses the different cultures and countries including the history of how many of them came to be their own independent countries and regions, she states “Everything I learned while working on this book confirmed the deep interconnectedness of areas within the Persian culinary region.”
That deep interconnectedness and delicious food history of this region results in amazing recipes that work well together, whether they are “Persian”, “Kurdish”, “Azeri”, or “Middle-Eastern”. I gathered a few from different areas and created a feast! We started with Nan-e Barbari served with Spinach Borani , then had Kuku Bademjan with Kurdish White Beans and Persian Rice. Everything was complemented by a traditional herb platter and fresh feta (Sabzi Khordan).
Last but not least for this meal we had a delicious Date and Walnut Pastry.
I hope you enjoyed the race as much as we did, and find some recipes here that you enjoy. Let me know in the comments if you try any of these recipes!