The cuisine of the peoples of Dagestan is fraught with an amazing feature - with a minimal set of ingredients and a fairly simple recipe, it allows you to prepare a large number of dishes, each of which will have a unique taste that is different from the others. Dagestan dishes are a colorful gastronomic mosaic with many unusual details.
The harsh conditions of mountain life and the need for long and difficult work in the fresh air could not but influence the recipe for cooking. very nutritious, easy to prepare, but healthy at the same time.
A striking example of the variety of variations collected in one dish is the Dagestan dish “Chudu”. This is a fragrant, thin closed pie that can be prepared with a wide variety of fillings. True, the Avars call this dish “chudu”; other Dagestan peoples have their own names, for example, the Laks call it “kachi”.
The uniqueness and versatility of these pies is that they can be prepared all year round, using the so-called seasonal fillings:
- In the spring, Dagestanis prepare them with an incredible amount of young greens of different types. This can be a miracle with nettles, green onions, halta (halta is one of the types of young grass) or beet tops.
- In summer, the filling is supplemented with fresh vegetables, new potatoes, soft cheese or cottage cheese;
- In the fall, the pumpkin miracle comes into its own. It is worth noting that this species is the pearl of Dagestan cuisine. The Dagestanis themselves love it and everyone who has had the chance to try it at least once.
- In winter, when food should be as dense and warming as possible, miracles are most often prepared with meat. It can be fresh or dried lamb or beef.
Miracle with chicken is prepared extremely rarely. Although, Lezgins have an amazing variety of holiday pie, which is filled with millet porridge with chicken.
There are also varieties of miracle stuffed with chicken and nuts, chicken and beans. These variations are very similar to Georgian cuisine, where chicken, beans and nuts are found in many dishes. And since miracle is also prepared in Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Kabardino-Balkaria, it can safely be called the Caucasian dish miracle.
In general, many types of miracles have a certain “national identity”. For example, “Dargin miracle”. Judging by the name, the idea for the recipe probably came to the Dargins. “Darginsky miracle” is a very popular, favorite dish in Dagestan. It differs from ordinary miracles in that it is not made into a thin, but a full-fledged, tall, closed pie, and is baked in the oven, and not fried in a frying pan, like the others. Dargins love to add walnuts to any miracle filling.
But at festive events it is customary to serve the Avar miracle - Botishchal. These are thin flatbreads stuffed with potatoes and cheese. The unusual thing about the boot is that the cheese added to the filling must stretch well when melted. The result is the most delicate, thin cakes that simply melt in your mouth.
The most delicious are miracles cooked in ancient wood-burning ovens. Unfortunately, you can no longer find them in the city. And in villages these stoves have been preserved and are successfully used by many housewives.
The dough used for preparation is unleavened, yeast-free, with the exception of the Dargin miracle, for which the dough must be either kefir or yeast. Fry the miracle in a dry frying pan without adding oil. In order for the finished miracle to become soft, immediately after baking it is coated with melted butter. You can, of course, use butter or sour cream for this purpose, but the taste will be slightly different.
For any miracle dish, the dough recipe will, in principle, look the same, but the filling recipes will differ. The exception, as already mentioned, will only apply to the dough recipe for the Darginsky miracle.
Dargin miracles
To prepare the kefir dough you will need:
- kefir –0.5 liters;
- soda – 1 teaspoon;
- salt 1.5 teaspoons;
- flour – 1 kg (this is approximately 5 glasses of 200 g each).
All ingredients are mixed, the dough is left to rest for 10 minutes, and you can start baking.
Yeast dough for Dargin miracles
- flour - 1 kg (a little more flour will be needed when rolling);
- warm milk – 0.5 liters;
- butter – 200-205g;
- a packet of yeast (25 g);
- sugar – 1 teaspoon;
- salt – 0.5 tsp. spoons;
- soda – 1/3 tsp. spoons.
The dough is kneaded, covered with a napkin and placed in a cool place (or in the refrigerator) for half an hour. Then you can start rolling out. You shouldn’t get too carried away with adding flour, as the dough should be soft.
The filling for the Dargin miracle is prepared from potatoes, cut into thin slices and thinly sliced pieces of lamb or beef (not minced meat). Quite often, Dargin pies are prepared with dried meat, but this option is not for everyone. To make the miracle juicy, it’s a good idea to add a little fat to the meat. In Dagestan, fat tail fat is often added.
If fatty meat is contraindicated for some reason, then about half a glass of any broth is poured into the small hole in the upper part. During the baking process, the potatoes absorb the broth and become soft and juicy.
The dough is rolled out into two circles. The filling is laid out on the first one, then it is covered with the second circle, and the edges are pinched into a neat braid. The pie is baked in the oven for about an hour. To get a beautiful and golden brown crust, the top of the pie can be brushed with egg.
Classic thin miracle
Preparation of the dough for thin miracles is as follows:
- 500 gr. flour mixed with a glass of water, added to taste;
- a dense soft dough is kneaded;
- The dough is covered with a towel and left to rest for 15 minutes.
Next, the dough is divided into small pieces, each of which is rolled out into a very thin circle. The filling is laid out on one half of the circle, the filling is closed with the other half and neatly but tightly sealed. The pinching process can be simplified if you cut off the edge of the miracle with a figured roller knife. It will hold the edges together and give the product a beautiful shape.
The miracle is fried in a dry frying pan, alternately on each side, until golden brown. The finished product is lubricated with oil.
Fillings for thin miracle
- Meat. Minced lamb or beef is mixed with onions minced through a meat grinder. Salt, pepper or other spices are added to taste.
- Green stuffing. Finely chopped greens are mixed with cottage cheese or soft cheese. If desired, you can add a little sour cream or kefir, so the filling will be more juicy. Add salt and, if desired, pepper.
- Potato and cheese filling for Botischal. The potatoes are boiled and mashed into a nice, homogeneous puree. Grated cheese is added to it. It can be young cheese or Ossetian cheese. If the cheese is salty, then there is no need to add salt to the filling. The ratio of cheese and potatoes is selected individually, according to your preferences. The secret of this filling is that you must add a small amount of quicklime soda, literally at the tip of a teaspoon. It is this trick that will make the cheese more viscous.
- Pumpkin filling. The pumpkin is grated on a fine grater, mixed with finely chopped walnuts, as well as lightly fried onions. Salt, pepper, and spices are added to taste, but nutmeg is especially good here.
Miracle is a dish with a centuries-old history. Those who have tried it once will definitely want to continue to discover all its variations.
1. Add soda to kefir at room temperature, stir and leave for 5 minutes.
2. In a deep bowl, mix 1 cup of flour, salt and kefir. Gradually adding the remaining flour, knead into an elastic, lump-free dough that does not stick to your hands. Cover the finished dough with a napkin and leave it alone until you prepare the filling.
3. Boil the potatoes in their jackets until tender, then cool slightly (the tuber can be picked up), peel and crush into dry puree (do not add oil or fat).
4. Grate the cheese on the finest grater.
5. Combine cheese and potatoes, add sour cream and chopped herbs (optional), lightly salt. Stir until smooth.
6. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, from which roll into balls.
7. Roll the balls into thin flat cakes, put the potato and cheese filling inside in the center of the flat cakes, pinch the top to form balls again.
8. Carefully, trying not to squeeze out the filling, roll out the balls into flat cakes.
Flatbread before frying 9. Heat a dry frying pan with a thick bottom. Fry each flatbread one by one on both sides (without oil).
10. Place the finished miracle with potatoes on a plate, lightly grease with butter. Cover to keep the tortillas warm and soft for a long time. Serve with sour cream.
Recipe for Chudu - Dagestan flatbreads
Recipe Dagestan flatbread Chudu - Dagestan flatbreads. I haven't tried this yet. Let's prepare something as delicious as these wonderful oriental delicacies together!
Chudu - Dagestan flatbreads. We will need products:
- Potatoes - 6 pcs.;
- Adyghe cheese - 300 g;
- Flour - 2.5 tbsp;
- Kefir - 200 ml;
- Soda - 1 tsp;
- Salt - 0.5 tsp;
- Butter for greasing flatbread.
Chudu flatbreads. Preparation:
Step 1. Mix the dough for the miracle: pour kefir into a deep bowl, add salt and soda, mix with a whisk or fork, add flour and knead the dough with your hands. The dough should be soft and not stick to your hands.
DOUGH:
flour - 2.5 cups.
kefir - 200g.
1 tsp. - soda without a slide.
FILLING:
Potatoes - 6 pieces
300 gr. - Adyghe cheese (you can use feta cheese).
Butter.
Potatoes can be boiled “in their jackets” or peeled, as for mashed potatoes. But the puree should not be liquid. Grate the cheese onto a coarse grater. Combine potatoes with cheese and mix thoroughly.
Step 2. Divide the kneaded dough into 8 - 10 parts and roll into balls.
Step 3. Roll out the ball into a thin round flat cake and put the filling on one of the halves of the flat cake (more filling is possible).
Step 4. Assembling - Place the prepared filling in the middle of the flatbread
…….. and cover it up like manta rays. 
We collect it in a “bag”.
Step 5. Collected in a “little bag” flatbread, roll out carefully and very thinly.
Step 6. Take a frying pan with a thick bottom and heat it up, then put in the flatbread and fry on both sides without oil.
Secrets of Dagestan cuisine from the chef of a national restaurant especially for readers of MTRK "Mir"Lamb, beef, aromatic thin pies with various fillings and a lot of homemade wine - this is how guests are greeted in Dagestan. This mountainous region is home to 14 nationalities and another 14 ethnic groups, so the concept of “Dagestan cuisine” is like a colored mosaic with hundreds of smallest details.
There are many dishes, and in each place they are prepared a little differently, coloring them with local secrets, ingredients and serving methods. Each region of Dagestan adds its own special flavor to the preparation of any national dish. The most common dishes of Dagestan cuisine are miracle, khinkal and kurze.
Miracle
To learn how to make Dagestani thin pies, miracle (emphasis on the last letter), the MTRK Mir correspondent went to the Zhi Is restaurant. This restaurant was recommended by the representative office of the Republic of Dagestan under the President of the Russian Federation in Moscow as a place where authentic Dagestan dishes are prepared.
“A lot of meat and a lot of baked goods,” is how the chef of this restaurant, a hereditary Lezgin, Zarema Ramazanova, described Dagestani cuisine in a nutshell. And she added: “It’s easy for a miracle. You will learn quickly."
Here is her recipe for a miracle especially for readers of MTRK Mir:
For unleavened dough, take 500 g of flour, sift through a sieve, add salt and gradually pour in 1 glass of water, kneading a dense, soft dough. Knead it a little and leave it to “rest” for 20 minutes. For the filling, prepare minced beef and lamb in a ratio of 2 to 1. For 500 gr. minced meat, take 1 onion, chop finely, combine with meat, salt and pepper, add 1 raw egg. Mix everything.
Then we form the dough into a thick sausage, cut it into pieces 2 cm thick and roll each into a very thin oval pancake (folded in half, it should fit on your frying pan). Spread the filling on one half of the pancake in a thin layer, otherwise the miracle may not be fried inside. Leave the edges free. Cover the minced meat with the second half of the cake and connect the edges. Excess dough needs to be cut off. I use a curved roller knife, it produces beautiful “teeth.”
Fry the miracle in a dry frying pan, without oil. The frying pan must be warmed up well and the miracle should be transferred to it. Fry on both sides, remove to a wooden board and brush with melted butter.
Now cut into several pieces and serve immediately. The miracle must be eaten hot.
Meat filling is just one of many possibilities. Here are a few more:
Green stuffing
Wash nettle leaves, spinach, quinoa, cilantro thoroughly and chop finely. Add finely chopped onions and sauteed in oil (2 tablespoons per 300 grams of greens), salt, pepper, mix well. You can put more of this filling than meat, the miracle will turn out juicier.
From cottage cheese and cheese
We take 200 gr. cottage cheese and grated Dagestan cheese, mix, add an egg, finely chopped onion (1 onion) fried in melted butter, add a little salt and mix well. If you change the proportion a little and add more cheese than cottage cheese, then the filling will “stretch” pleasantly, and it will also turn out interesting.
From pumpkin
Peel 500 g of pumpkin, grate it, add finely chopped onions (2 tbsp.), salt to taste, add 1 tbsp. l. sugar, mix.
Dargin miracle
The Dargin miracle is prepared in a completely different way. For it, yeast dough is prepared from flour, salt, warm water and yeast. The dough should not be very dense, but still such that it can be rolled out with a rolling pin. You have to let him come up, hug him, let him come up again.
For the filling, take lamb or beef pulp and raw peeled potatoes in equal parts. Cut the meat into small pieces, add finely chopped interior fat, thinly sliced onions, salt, add black pepper and a little finely chopped basil. Lastly, add the potatoes, cut into very thin slices.
Separate a portion of the dough and roll it into a thin layer of 3-4 mm. Place in the pan so that the edges hang slightly over. Place the filling in a layer approximately 1.5 cm thick, cover the top with a second layer of thinly rolled dough, smaller in diameter. We connect the edges and pinch tightly with a pigtail. Spread sour cream on top and bake in a preheated oven at 230-250 degrees on both sides (about 20-25 minutes). Then take it out onto a board or plate, grease it with butter, and cover with a towel. After 15 minutes, serve.
Khinkal
Khinkal is the pride of the mountain people; it is prepared absolutely everywhere in Dagestan. Do not confuse with Georgian khinkali! This is a completely different, complex dish. Khinkal is served as a first and second course at the same time, prepared at any time of the day for family and guests, for all occasions.
Khinkal is not even a dish, but a whole complex of dishes consumed simultaneously. These are pieces of dough boiled in broth, slightly different in recipe and shape in each place, which are eaten, dipped in sauce, with lamb or beef (sometimes with chicken) and washed down with a strong meat broth with spices. Sauces always go with khinkal. Most often it is sour cream or kefir with garlic and herbs. We also like spicy tomato sauce for khinkal.
Avar khinkal is a lush, thick flatbread. The dough is kneaded with yogurt or whey, salt and soda are added, which makes it fluffy, delicate in taste, and unusually satisfying.
Kumyks prepare khinkal from unleavened dough, like dumplings. It is rolled out into a thin layer, cut into squares, diamonds or strips, and then boiled in broth.
Laki khinkal. The dough is rolled into sausages, which are cut into cubes the size of a walnut. Each piece is placed on the left palm, making a depression in the middle with the thumb of the right hand (giving the dough an “ear” shape).
For Dargin khinkal, unleavened dough is rolled out in a thin layer, sprinkled with chopped walnuts, rolled into a roll and cut into small pieces. For Lezgin khinkal, the dough is rolled out thinly and cut into small squares. Derbent city khinkal is prepared like Lezgin, but the meat is minced and spices are added. and fried. The sauce is crushed garlic with the addition of vinegar. For shepherd's dough, the dough is rolled out into a thin sausage shape and pieces are torn off that fit in a fist. Before lowering into the water, the pieces of dough are squeezed in a fist.
Kurze
Kurze is a Dagestan type of dumplings (or dumplings, since the fillings are made in a variety of different ways). They differ in the way they are pinched and the fillings. The fillings are made from meat, like dumplings, but with tomato sauce and spices, or from herbs (nettle, spinach, halta, quinoa, wild garlic, cilantro in any combination). They also make kurze with cottage cheese, both sweet and salty, then add greens). For kurze with eggs, the filling is prepared from raw eggs with fried onions and butter. In just one village they can tell you about dozens of options for preparing kurze. And so in every new place. The greens are stewed or put raw, an egg is added somewhere raw, chopped boiled, and stewed together with the filling. A variety of spices are used; fried onions, green onions, salt, sugar, and cinnamon are added to the cottage cheese. What can you try in Dagestan!
Baking, meat, drinks
In Dagestan they bake a lot. From unleavened, yeast, shortbread and puff pastry. Sweet buns, cookies and pies.
Moreover, with all kinds of sweet and savory fillings. For example, boats made from butter dough filled with cottage cheese or cottage cheese and cheese, half and half, are very popular. They are not pinched all the way so that the filling peeks out appetizingly in the middle.
And, of course, in Dagestan they cook a lot of meat: kebabs, homemade lamb sausages with cumin and other spices, suktu (sausages with liver and rice), saris (sausages with liver, garlic and corn flour), stew with tomato and dry wine , roast.
Recipes of Dagestan cuisine are based on what the mountains give people. These are lamb and beef, poultry, fermented milk products, rice, flour. And also onions, tomatoes, a lot of herbs (dill, parsley, green onions, cilantro). Our favorite drinks are fermented milk ones, especially tsuru nek. This is the Dagestan analogue of tan. When the butter is churned, the whole fresh milk is poured into clay jugs and the jug is pumped for a long, long time. As a result, homemade butter gets churned. And the serum that remains is tsuru nek. Chilled, it perfectly quenches thirst.
Every rural family makes homemade wine, because vineyards thrive on the mountain slopes. Until now, each owner has his own secrets for preparing this drink. Sweet, semi-sweet and dry grape and fruit wines accompany any festive feast.
But still, the main drink of the Dagestan people is tea. They drink it all the time: at breakfast, lunch and dinner, in between, when guests come and just in between. And all the time there are sweet pastries and candies on the table.
Tatiana Rubleva
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