Good morning dear friends. My name is Stalik Khankishiev.
This is a program about tasty and healthy food.
In the very south of Azerbaijan there is an amazingly tasty land,
this land is called, the Lankaran region.
Lankaran is a subtropics.
There stick a stick in the ground, it will bloom with flowers and berries.
In Lankaran, everything is so tasty also because
in Lankaran they love and know how to cook well in tandoors.
One of the most popular Lankaran dishes is Lavangi chicken.
However, lyavangi chickens have spread throughout Azerbaijan long ago.
All Azerbaijan loves these chickens and cook them very often, they
cook them everywhere, and in the north of Azerbaijan, and in the west, and in the south,
and in Baku itself, they are also cooked.
I also decided to cook lavangi chickens.
But first, I would like to remember those people from whom I learned this dish.
Several years ago I went on a culinary expedition to Lankaran,
to a master named Gubat-muallim.
Gubat-muallim is a specialist, his sister is a specialist, his sons are specialists.
In a word, the whole family is specialists, cooks.
They cook for weddings, cook in a restaurant,
cook at the same time sometimes in 30 tandoors.
You can imagine?
So, I went to Lankaran, armed with the knowledge of how
they bake and prepare a wide variety of products in other countries.
From the chefs' handbooks, I knew
that the best temperature for baking chicken and chicken, in particular, is 185C.
From the same handbooks, I knew that the best degree of chicken
doneness is when the temperature in its breast reaches 83-84C.
And so, in the house of Gubat-muallim, a mountain feast is being prepared, everyone is working, everyone is busy.
And even the daughter-in-law, who actually worked not as a cook,
but as a teacher, somehow helps.
For example, she comes up to the tandoor, where the chickens will be baked now,
looked at it like this, takes 2 logs and throws them into the tandoor.
I measure the temperature inside the tandoor, and it is exactly 185C, as I have now.
And at that moment, the sister of Gubat-muallim begins to lower the chickens into this tandoor,
just like I do now.
Do you think they used my thermometers, my measurements?
Nothing of the kind, these people feel, these people almost intuitively
know, feel, understand the temperature inside the tandoor.
In order to learn this, one must be born in those lands
where they cook in tandoors or in the oven, one
must spin under the feet of adults from childhood in
order to remember the temperature at which one or the other dish is cooked
with your face, hands, and your whole body .
Yes, it seems that everything is very simple, tandoor is tandoor.
What's here? Here is the clay masonry, the brickwork.
They made a fire, put it in, and everything turns out very well.
No, comrades, we must not confuse edible and tasty.
To make it tasty, each dish has its own temperature regimes.
I repeat once again that the masters of cooking in tandoors
do not measure this temperature, they remembered it.
But you and I will need measuring instruments in order to learn from their experience.
Well, now everything is fine, 185C, and we close the tandoor lid.
I put a clean, damp cloth to give the
lid some airtightness.
But this is not enough, the lid must also keep the heat inside the tandoor.
And for this I have something.
I have my old favorite Uzbek chapan,
I have an old, but very warm, reliable blanket.
We cover the lid first with a blanket, and then with a chapan.
For how long, for how many minutes?
I don’t know, I’ll be guided by the thermometer.
As soon as the thermometer beeps,
I will continue my story about cooking lyavangi chickens in Lankaran.
In the meantime, let me show you how we stuffed these chickens,
because lyavangi chickens are chickens stuffed with special mince.
Come on, I'll show you everything.
Surely in the markets you have come across a product
called "lavashana" in Azerbaijani.
See what it looks like.
In Russian this product is called "levashiki".
The root is clearly one and comes, perhaps, from the word "lavash".
Only in this case it is pita bread made from fruits and berries.
Roughly the same as this fruit marshmallow.
You can use both marshmallow and lavashan.
They need to be crushed, filled with hot water,
and you get something like jam only without sugar.
And besides, it was never cooked, never heated, unlike onions,
which were simmered in ghee for a very long time at a low temperature.
And the onions looked like golden-colored jam.
And these are walnuts.
In a word, this minced meat contains all the best
that the nature of Azerbaijan gives,
but which, fortunately, can be found in any Russian market.
The proportions of ingredients largely depend on the taste of lavashan.
But I see that this lavashan is quite sour,
so you can add a lot of nuts.
And you need to salt, because this is minced meat for chickens,
because this is not a dessert, this is food.
You know, with such minced meat I cooked kutabs, something like pasties,
which are baked in a dry frying pan
and then greased with butter or ghee.
I cooked dolma with such minced meat, only I seasoned it in the same way
as minced lamb is seasoned.
He added cumin, added coriander, black pepper.
And many people could not distinguish it from meat.
One vegetarian wrinkled her lips in displeasure and said:
"You slipped me a mutton."
Eh, honey, but what kind of mutton? This is much better.
This is minced meat for lavangi chickens.
You can stuff fish with
this minced meat, you can stuff a turkey or any other bird with this mince.
It goes well with just about anything stuffed.
The word "lyavangi" itself goes back to the word "belly, belly",
and from the point of view of culinary experts, a place where you can put something else tasty.
Well-fed chickens do not need anything but a pinch of salt for taste.
Salt the carcass from the inside, salt the outside, salt
all the folds well, because unsalted poultry, no matter
how you bake it, no matter how fry it, no matter how boil it, cannot be tasty.
When you start stuffing chickens, keep in mind
that the minced meat tends to expand during heating,
and the bird itself, on the contrary, will shrink and become somewhat more compact.
Don't add too much stuffing, leave some space.
Cut the pockets into the skin of the breast.
In them, the wings can be hidden so that they do not dry out,
so that they do not burn during baking.
The wings are thin, they will burn very easily.
There is one secret here.
In the winglet, where people have elbows, there is a membrane.
Cut it, and then the wing will fit almost completely in the pocket.
What to do with the legs so that they do not dangle and burn?
How to press them to the body of the bird?
You can, of course, use a string,
or you can pierce small holes in the abdomen.
Take the abdomen on the left side and pull it over the joint of the right leg.
And then take the left leg
and in the same way push it through the hole in the right side of the abdomen.
That's all, no strings required.
The chickens have turned into compact balls.
And now they will be baked evenly on all sides.
But I usually let the stuffed chicken lie.
Firstly, the salt on the surface of the chickens should melt slightly and soak the carcass,
and secondly, the sour fruit mince marinates the inside of the chicken.
So, time passes, 40-50 minutes, I don't remember exactly,
but I look at my thermometer with impatience and see
that the arrow of the thermometer is getting close to 82-83C.
And this kind woman approaches the tandoor and begins to expose him.
She removes one blanket from him, then the second blanket.
Then she takes the grip, opens the lid, and the thermometer reads exactly 83C.
Take a look, look, admire.
One chicken could not stand it and fell.
It's good that my tandoor is of a special design. At the bottom it has a grate.
Enough, ay, that's enough, thanks, 83.6C.
It should be borne in mind that the food, even while on the table,
still continues to cook inside.
How does this happen? They are well heated on the outside,
but inside the food the heat passes very, very gradually, very, very slowly.
Here it is. Everything is fine with this chick.
Let's put it on a separate dish.
So, the food continues to heat up from the heat
accumulated in the outer layers.
And this is happening right now.
And it's okay, let it stand still a minute, let it rest.
And during this time we will have time to talk with you about very important things.
Very often commentators on YouTube and other social networks ask me:
"How many grams do you need to put one or the other.
Tell me exactly how many grams?"
Listen, my dear ones, what difference does it make if these chickens weighed 450 g or 600 g.
Because of this difference in weight, they would cease to be lywangi chickens?
And if you put 50 g more walnuts inside,
and what, the filling has ceased to be a filling for lyavangi?
No, it’s not like that at all.
All these are by no means the most important parameters.
But if you are a stove, the tandoor was originally heated not at 185C,
as we have today, and as it was in Lenkoran, but, say, up to 250C,
what would happen to these chickens?
Do you think they would have turned out like this golden?
Nothing of the kind. They would turn red on the outside,
and maybe even blacken,
but inside, most likely, they would still remain damp,
because the heat inside any meat, any bird passes very, very slowly.
And 185C is a verified temperature, found empirically, empirically.
So what comes out, put it in an ordinary oven at a temperature of 185C,
and you will get exactly the same chickens?
Not really. The fact is that the tandoor, like any other oven, gradually cools down.
And in those 45 or 50 minutes that the chickens spent in the oven, the
tandoor cooled down to 150C.
It was the same in Lankaran,
because we have tandoors of approximately equal size and approximately equal weight.
My tandoor weighs about 500 kg, and the tandoor in Lankaran weighed about the same.
If you take a lighter tandoor, say, 40-50 kg.
Well, they sell such nice, light, household ones.
I took it, carried it, put it in the trunk of the car.
But when 4 kg of cold food is dipped into this forty-kilogram tandoor, the
temperature inside this tandoor will drop very sharply.
If you heat the tandoor, put a coal underneath,
and let it burn and maintain the same temperature.
Firstly, it is not clear what this temperature will be,
and secondly, which is very important, an air flow, a draft is formed in the tandoor.
And this draft will dry out the food.
There will not be a single gram of juice left, but now the juice flows directly from the chicken.
Look at what's going on. The bones also fall out.
So what, the rules and laws of physics
that govern the cooking of chickens in a tandoor in Azerbaijan,
that for Azerbaijan they are one, for Russia they are different?
No, the rules and laws of physics, rules and laws of cooking are the same,
even for Azerbaijan, even for America,
even for Russia, even for China.
And everywhere the optimal baking temperature will be the same, 185C.
Don't be afraid to cook the lawangi chickens in a regular oven,
just don't overload the oven.
Keep in mind that a 500kg tandoor has tremendous thermal inertness.
They put 4 cold chickens in it, it could have put 24,
and he practically did not notice this load.
And if you put 4 chickens in your oven,
then everything will depend on its power.
It is possible that it will have to reach the operating temperature of 185C again for quite a long time.
During this time, the bird may dry out.
But if you put in one chicken or two, do you really think that
it will turn out much worse than mine today?
Well, unless there will be such a smell, there will be no such haze.
That's what baking, that's what the tandoor is, that's what the hobby for cooking is for.
You understand, because in order to just eat,
in fact, you can boil it, you can buy it ready to go in a tent,
but when we cook ourselves in the oven, in the tandoor, we enjoy it.
And besides this, we acquire knowledge, knowledge about the world around us,
knowledge about the laws of cooking, about the laws of physics,
which are the same all over the world,
everywhere and everywhere where people prepare food in order
to say to each other "Bon appetit!"