Oriental style dish. Eastern cuisine

The term “oriental cuisine” refers to traditional dishes of the peoples of the East, India, Asia and the Caucasus, as well as the Balkan Peninsula. This also includes dishes popular in China, Japan and Islamic countries.

The characteristic features of oriental cuisine include the fact that many dishes are based on lamb and rice. Pork is unpopular in the east, since most people profess Islam. Fish, eggs and cheeses are also not in great demand here.

In addition to lamb, in the East they eat beef, chicken and turkey. But this does not apply to all nations. For example, in India, where the cow is considered a sacred animal, the indigenous people of the country do not eat its meat.

In addition, soups prepared in the traditions of the East have significant differences from similar European dishes. They are thick and rich, and the broth is more like gravy.

Another feature of oriental cuisine is the use of a large number of seasonings in the cooking process. Most dishes have bright spicy aromas and pronounced taste.

Desserts in the East are aromatic, sickly sweet and very filling. Various spices, nuts, honey and molasses are added to them. The taste of these sweets is simply amazing, and their calorie content and nutritional value are very high.

The most popular dishes of the East

Many oriental dishes have gained immense popularity among European gourmets. Moreover, in their historical homeland, these dishes are not so in demand.

Most often, restaurants and cafes of oriental cuisine offer visitors the following dishes:

• Lagman (spicy noodles). This is the first dish containing a large amount of hot spices. It is based on lagman noodles, which are prepared by hand by stretching the dough.
• Shurpa. This is a soup made from lamb or veal. The main ingredient is supplemented with vegetables, tomatoes and herbs.
• Pilaf. In the classic version, this dish is made with lamb and long-grain rice. It is cooked in large cauldrons over a fire.
• Dolma (tolma or sarma). This second dish is a mixture of minced meat and rice wrapped in grape leaves. A “relative” of this dish is Kuban cabbage rolls, only the filling is wrapped in cabbage.
• Shawarma or shawarma. This dish is a roll of flat unleavened flatbread or pita bread, stuffed with meat, herbs and vegetables seasoned with hot sauce.

The most popular oriental dishes served for dessert are baklava, halva, sherbet and Turkish delight. They are eaten in small portions, washed down with strong black coffee.

Let's take a closer look at the composition and methods of preparing foods that are the “calling card” of oriental cuisine.

Characteristics and recipes of first courses

As mentioned above, soups of oriental cuisine are very thick and contain very little liquid. Below are recipes for the most famous first dishes of the East - lagman and shurpa.

Lagman

The basis of this first dish is noodles, which are easy to prepare yourself. And for the broth you can use lamb or beef pulp.

To prepare you will need:

• 450 g meat;
• bulb;
• 5 – 7 garlic cloves;
• 1 radish;
• 2 – 3 tomatoes;
• a little vegetable oil;
• any greens;
• hot ground pepper;
• 450 g flour;
• 250 ml water;
• salt.

Operating procedure:

1. Mix flour and water into a stiff noodle dough, not forgetting to add salt. Then leave it for a couple of hours, covered with a towel.
2. Roll out the workpiece to a thickness of no more than 5 mm and cut into wide strips, then grease them with oil and leave for a quarter of an hour.
3. Roll the strips into “sausages”, stretch them, fold them in half and repeat the procedure until you get thin noodles.
4. Boil the products in salted water, then discard in a colander, rinse and add vegetable oil.
5. Cut the meat pulp into small pieces and place in a pan with thick walls, after pouring vegetable oil into it. Fry the meat until a crust forms.
6. Add chopped onion and chopped radish and continue cooking.
7. Add tomatoes, salt and fry for another quarter of an hour.
8. Pour water over the meat and vegetables and simmer under the lid for about an hour, then add herbs, garlic and mix thoroughly.

Lagman noodles are served warmed and topped with meat and vegetable sauce.

Just a note. If you don’t want to waste time making noodles, you can purchase a ready-made version marked “for lagman” on the package.

Shurpa

Shurpa is a traditional dish of Uzbek cuisine, which is prepared from lamb and vegetables.

To work you will need:

• 350 – 400 g lamb;
• several potato tubers;
• 2 carrots;
• 2 – 3 onions;
• several juicy tomatoes;
• hot pepper;
• spices;
• salt;
• parsley.

Operating procedure:

1. Wash the lamb, separate the meat from the bones and cut into medium-sized pieces.
2. Place the bone, chopped meat and a whole peeled onion in a pan, add water and salt, and boil for 2 hours.
3. Peel the carrots, chop them coarsely and add to the pan. Send shredded potatoes there.
4. Chop the onion and hot pepper, and when the potatoes are half-cooked, add them to the shurpa.
5. Season the soup with seasonings, herbs, finely chopped tomato pulp and simmer on the fire for some more time.

Attention! After the container is removed from the heat, the dish will need to sit for at least an hour before serving.

Salads with oriental flavor

Salads prepared according to oriental cuisine recipes will be an excellent addition to stewed meat, barbecue or fish. Let's look at two simple and original recipes.

Pomegranate salad with onions and herbs

Despite the strange combination, this salad will perfectly complement the main dish and give it a special piquancy.

For cooking you will need:

• pomegranate fruit;
• red onion;
• dill and parsley in equal proportions;
• hot pepper to taste;
• salt.

Operating procedure:

1. Separate the pomegranate fruit into seeds, remove the peel and membranes.
2. Cut the onion and hot pepper into half rings, then add the vegetables to the pomegranate and mix, slightly pressing the seeds.
3. Add salt and chopped herbs to the dish and serve.

The advantage of this salad is that it does not require dressing. Pomegranate juice serves as the sauce.

Warm salad with chickpeas

Chickpeas are a legume that is very popular in Asian countries. It is added not only to salads, but also to first and second courses.

For cooking you will need:

• 250 g canned chickpeas;
• 1 onion;
• 1 carrot;
• a bunch of cilantro;
• salad oil (preferably olive);
• salt.

Operating procedure:

1. Finely chop the onion, grate the carrots on a coarse grater.
2. Fry the ingredients in vegetable oil until soft, then add chickpeas, salt, stir and cover.
3. After 5 - 7 minutes, place the contents of the frying pan into a salad bowl and sprinkle with herbs.

Just a note. If you can’t buy chickpeas, you can replace them with fresh or canned green peas.

Traditional meat dishes

Lamb is most often used to prepare meat dishes in the East, but in Europe such dishes are often prepared with pork, beef and poultry. Let's look at the most common meat dishes - dolma and shawarma.

Dolma

To prepare this dish you will need tender grape leaves according to the number of servings.

Dolma is made from the following products:

• meat;
• grape leaves;
• green;
• tomatoes;
• tomato paste;
• butter;
• seasonings;
• salt.

Sequence of work:

1. Grind meat, onions and tomatoes in a meat grinder.
2. Add boiled cooled rice, chopped herbs, butter, salt, seasonings to the minced meat and mix thoroughly.
3. Pour boiling water over grape leaves and leave for 5 minutes.
4. Place the filling in the center of each sheet and wrap. Then place the preparations in a saucepan, add cold water, add tomato paste and simmer under the lid.

Serve the dish with sour cream, mayonnaise or natural unsweetened yogurt.

Shawarma

Today you can buy a lavash roll with meat and herbs at almost every fast food outlet, but it is better to make this dish at home.

For cooking you will need:

• thin Armenian lavash;
• fried meat;
• cucumbers;
• tomatoes;
• lettuce leaves;
• onions;
• mayonnaise sauce.

Operating procedure:

1. Fry the meat with salt and spices, then cool.
2. Tear the lettuce leaves with your hands, chop the greens and onions, chop the tomato and cucumber into thin slices.
3. Lay out the pita bread, grease a third of it with a thin layer of mayonnaise.
4. Start laying out the components. First comes the meat, then the onion, cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes.
5. Sprinkle the workpiece with herbs, pour over the sauce and wrap, folding the edges.
6. Fry the finished shawarma in a frying pan or heat it in the microwave.

Just a note. This dish should be eaten immediately, since as a result of storage, the pita bread will be saturated with sauce and soften.

Oriental baked goods and oriental sweets

In the East, sweets that do not need to be baked are very popular, due to the hot climate. But there are also a lot of baked recipes in oriental cuisine. Let's consider the most famous oriental sweets - sherbet and baklava.

Sherbet

This sugary-sweet delicacy, containing a large amount of nuts, is popular not only in the east, but also in Europe.

For cooking you will need:

• 100 g each of walnuts, pistachios and hazelnuts;
• a stick of butter;
• 500 g sugar;
• 2 cans of condensed milk.

Operating procedure:

1. Peel the nuts, fry in a dry frying pan and cool.
2. Place half the sugar, butter, condensed milk in a thick-bottomed saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.
3. When the mass becomes homogeneous, pour in the remaining sugar, turn up the heat and as soon as the sand dissolves, remove the pan from the stove.
4. Without waiting for the sweet mixture to cool, add nuts and mix thoroughly.
5. Form into portions, cover with film and refrigerate for 6 to 8 hours.

The sherbet will be ready for use when it has completely hardened.

Baklava

This pastry is popular not only in the East, but also among many peoples of the Caucasus.

For cooking you will need:

• 350 g nuts;
• 350 g granulated sugar;
• 3 eggs;
• 600 g flour;
• 450 g butter;
• 10 g dry yeast;
• a teaspoon of milk;
• a pinch of saffron;
• 300 ml sugar syrup.

Operating procedure:

1. Moisten the dry yeast with milk and leave for a while.
2. Add 100 g of butter, 2 eggs and saffron to the sifted flour. Mix thoroughly, then add the yeast.
3. Knead the dough, cover with a towel and put in a warm place for 3 hours.
4. Mix nuts with sugar, add cardamom if desired.
5. Divide the dough into 10 parts so that two of them are larger than the others; they will form the top and bottom layers.
6. Grease a baking sheet with vegetable oil and place the layer rolled out to a thickness of 5 mm on it, then sprinkle it with nut filling. Repeat these manipulations with other parts. The last layer of the dessert should consist of dough.
7. Brush the tops of the baklava with egg yolk and place in a preheated oven for 10 minutes, then remove and cut into diamonds.
8. Garnish each portion with a walnut, generously drizzle with melted butter and bake for an hour.
9. Season the finished baklava with syrup and leave for soaking. The treat will be ready for consumption in 2 – 3 hours.

You should not get carried away with oriental sweets; you should consume them in very small quantities, since they are very nutritious and high in calories. And if women of the East can enjoy baklava, kurabye or sherbet as much as they want, because in many countries curvaceous ladies are considered beautiful, then Europeans have a slightly different point of view on female beauty.

To paraphrase the words of the hero of one famous film, we can say about oriental cuisine that this is a delicate matter. It is strikingly different from what we are used to. Sometimes the dishes contain very exotic ingredients, such as cobra fillet, antelope meat or grasshoppers. What oriental cuisine is and some of its characteristic features will be discussed in this article.

Eastern cuisine

Oriental cuisine is the general name for gastronomic traditions, which includes the cuisines of the peoples of Muslim, Asian, Arab countries, the states of the Balkan Peninsula and the Caucasus. This term is relative, since in addition to general trends there are also differences, sometimes very significant.
For example, in most countries in the region, preference is given to lamb, while in China and Japan the emphasis is on seafood and fish. Eastern cuisine has its own characteristics, the main ones of which are the following:

• As for meat, preference is given to lamb;
• their cereals are rice;
• there are no soups as Europeans understand them;
• mandatory presence of hot seasonings;
• among drinks, the most common are fermented milk products, oriental coffee, tea;
• the presence of a dessert based on nuts and dried fruits (baklava, sherbet, Turkish delight) and unleavened lavash bread.

The following products are uncharacteristic for this type of cuisine (with some exceptions):

• pork and beef,
• cheese and eggs,
• fish and wine.

Oriental dishes

Dishes made from meat, cereals, and milk are very common in oriental cuisine. A special place is given to flour products and baked goods with savory filling. These include:

• belyashi and samsa;
• echpochmaks and peremyachis,
• backkens and kystybys.

The filling for them is meat, rice, vegetables. Shurpa is most often found as first courses in oriental cuisine menus. Meat cereal soups and noodles are also popular. In total there are up to eighty types of soups. One cannot help but recall our favorite pilaf (about a hundred varieties), shish kebab (about thirty) and lula kebab.
The dishes get a special aroma and unique taste thanks to the abundance of seasonings and vegetables in them. There are dishes in oriental cuisine, the preparation of which is typical at certain times of the year. For example, in the spring the menu includes:

• radish salad dressed with sour cream;
• samsa and sumalak with greens;
• Soup with mint masha.

In the summer, you can treat yourself to shish kebab with tomatoes, dressed with suzma salad, or sour milk soup generously sprinkled with herbs. In winter, hearty pilafs, post-dumba, and fried soup are popular.

Salads

A special place in the menu of oriental cuisine is given to various types of salads. They always add herbs and spices characteristic of a particular area. They are usually seasoned with lemon juice and olive oil. In some areas, fermented milk products are added to them.
An interesting variety of food is warm oriental dishes, i.e. those salads that are served warm. They can easily replace a side dish. Tabbouleh salad is very popular in Arab countries. It can be easily prepared in our conditions. To do this you will need:

• bulgur or couscous (in extreme cases, they can be replaced with millet);
• tomatoes;
• parsley, green onions and fresh mint;
• freshly squeezed lemon juice;
• salt, ground pepper;
• olive oil.

You can find step-by-step instructions for preparing it on any culinary electronic resource. Serve it with barbecue or as an independent dish.

Meat dishes

As mentioned above, one of the main features of the cuisine of the Eastern countries is the use of a large number of hot herbs and spices in cooking. To this list should also be added meat dishes, the preparation of which is carried out using an open fire. The peculiarities of the geographical location of countries belonging to the Eastern and Asian regions determine the virtual absence of seafood on their table.
The most common oriental dishes prepared from meat include:

• shashlik,
• shawarma,
• lula kebab,
• dolma,
• manta rays

Lamb is most often used to prepare oriental meat dishes, giving them a special characteristic taste. Along with them, a lot of greens and a variety of vegetables are served, as well as corn (wheat) cakes or pita bread.

The main type of meat for eastern countries remains lamb, which is consumed both as a whole product and as minced meat. Everyone knows that this type of meat is quite fatty and requires compliance with some subtleties of culinary processing. However, despite the secrets of oriental culinary experts, this cuisine is considered quite high in calories and rich in fatty ingredients.

Pilaf, shurpa, shawarma, dolma and manti - all these dishes, according to traditional recipes, use lamb in combination with other popular ingredients.

Studying oriental recipes with photos, many housewives notice that the cuisine of the countries of the East practically does not involve classic soups, which are replaced with thick, sauce-like and mushy dishes - babcherbe, khash, shurpa, etc. Quite often, both first and second courses are supplemented with dried vegetables and fruits, as well as nuts.

A classic of oriental cooking, of course, is the use of thin corn or wheat lavash, as well as flatbreads, instead of bread. It is impossible not to mention the world-famous oriental sweets.

On the KitchenMag website you can find a huge variety of culinary information: recipes of oriental cuisine + photos and video reviews of cooking, subtleties of culinary techniques and food processing, as well as features of traditional oriental desserts. Treat yourself and your family to an exotic lunch with KitchenMag.

Our article will introduce you closer to Asian cuisine, and also teach you how to cook simple and tasty oriental dishes.

• Recently, Asian and Oriental dishes have become increasingly popular. Chefs love them for their quick and easy preparation. Ordinary people like their original taste and memorable aroma
• Each person finds something different in these exotic dishes. Plant-based food lovers can prepare dishes with lots of lightly poached vegetables; people watching their figure can eat rice with turkey or glass noodles with seafood
• The main thing is, don’t be afraid to try something new and believe me, Asian cuisine will definitely surprise you. If you have not yet become acquainted with this exotic cuisine, then we offer you a few simple recipes that will help you surprise your family and friends.

Asian and oriental products

• Probably every person knows that it is almost impossible to prepare an Asian dish from familiar products. And it's not all about the spices.
• After all, for example, we have nothing to replace such a component as soy sauce. Therefore, if we do not put it in a marinade or in a spicy dressing, then our food will not taste at all the same.
• For this reason, it is better not to look for a replacement for oriental products, but to use them for cooking. Moreover, you can now buy them without even leaving your home. You will only need to place the desired order in the online store and wait for delivery

Most popular products:
Rice for sushi
seaweed
Sesame oil
Shiitake mushrooms
Tufu cheese
Rice vinegar and paper
Pickled ginger
Coconut oil
Tempura flour
Japanese noodles
Wasabi

Asian and oriental cuisine - recipe

Eastern cuisine is very different from ours. The food there is prepared very quickly and most often it is fried. Minimal heat treatment makes it possible to preserve almost all useful vitamins and give the finished dish a more piquant and fresh taste.

Therefore, if you want to prepare a completely identical dish, then strictly adhere to all cooking rules.

Asian cabbage soup recipe:
First, cook broth from meat or fish
While the meat is cooking, fry bell peppers, onions and oyster mushrooms in sesame oil
Cut Chinese cabbage into long strips and add it to the broth
Leave everything to boil for literally 2-3 minutes
Then add fried vegetables and hot peppers to the soup
Boil everything for another 2 minutes and you can start eating

Peanut Butter Chicken Recipe:
Boil rice noodles
Pour oil into a frying pan and literally add hot peppers, wheat sprouts and green onions for just one minute.
Next, we move on to frying the pieces of meat.
Then mix soy and hot sauce, peanut butter and finely chopped ginger in a saucepan.
Add noodles, meat and vegetables to the resulting mixture
Mix everything thoroughly and place on plates.

Asian soup recipes

Asian style soups have quite an interesting and special taste. Due to the fact that quite a lot of ingredients are used to prepare them, they always emit a wonderful aroma.

Most often, they add meat (can be replaced with fish and seafood), rice or noodles, aromatic spices, hot peppers, fresh vegetables, and, of course, wheat germ. As a result, the dish turns out not only tasty, but also very colorful.

Thai Tom Kha soup recipe:
Heat a wok and pour sesame oil into it
At the next stage, add pre-chopped chili pepper and lemongrass to the oil.
When the oil is saturated with the aromas of spices, pour coconut milk into it and add lime leaves to the resulting mixture
Let the soup boil a little and drop small pieces of meat into the broth
When the meat is cooked, add salt, pepper and fish sauce to the soup and pour everything into plates

Recipe for Asian fish soup with coconut milk:
First, wash, fillet and cut the fish into pieces.
Heat coconut milk in a saucepan and season with hot spices
When the milk boils, start dipping the fish and chopped ginger into it.
While the soup is ready, boil the rice noodles in a separate pan.
After all the components of the soup are ready, you can proceed to the presentation of the dish.
Start by adding a small portion of noodles to the bowl.
Then pour fish soup over everything and drizzle with peanut butter.

Asian salads

This salad can be either a hearty appetizer or an excellent addition to steamed rice or vegetables in sweet and sour sauce.

If you wish, you can use it for a light snack at work. A small portion of salad will help you quickly fill up and forget about the feeling of hunger for a long time.

Recipe for oriental chicken salad:
Boil the chicken fillet, cool it a little and cut it into small cubes
Peel half a grapefruit from the membranes and cut it in the same way as meat
Grind hot pepper, mint leaves and ginger root
Squeeze the lime and grapefruit juice into a separate bowl.
Salt it, pepper it, sprinkle with sesame oil
Place meat, mint leaves, ginger, grapefruit, hot pepper in the center of the plate and pour a light dressing over everything

Asian sauces

Some people think that Asian cuisine only uses two sauces, soy and fish. Of course, in most cases they are used for marinating meat, fish and for preparing various dressings.

But if you start getting to know oriental cuisine a little closer, you can learn about the existence of other, no less tasty and original sauces. We will now introduce you to the recipe for one of them.

The sweet and sour sauce recipe is yin and yang.
Pour the rice bite into the saucepan and heat it up a little
Then add soy sauce and ground chili pepper to it.
When the mixture boils a little, add a couple of spoons of any fruit jam to it
Simmer the sauce for another 5 minutes and let it brew

Asian cuisine menu

Asian dishes differ from those more familiar to us not in the exotic combination of ingredients, but in the abundance of seasonings and soy products. Another difference is that they almost never use potatoes, so familiar to us, to prepare their dishes.

For example, they most often add rice noodles, meat and a variety of vegetables to soups. As a result, they end up with a rather thick soup, which can be both the first and second course.

List of the most popular Asian dishes:
Ramen
Pork in sweet and sour sauce
Spicy pickled Chinese cabbage
Pork stew with star anise
Rice noodles with beef
Spring rolls with shrimp and pork
Chinese puff pancakes

Oriental cuisine menu

Oriental cuisine is practically no different from Asian cuisine. Spices, hot sauce, wheat germ and lightly poached vegetables are also popular here. Its only difference is the complete absence of liquid dishes, that is, the soups and borscht we are accustomed to.

But this does not mean that people eat only second courses, they just prepare soups a little differently than we do. Their broth is more like a thick and rich gravy that lightly coats the vegetables and meat. This is due to the fact that Eastern housewives love to thicken it with starch.

The most popular oriental dishes:
Bulgogi
Radish khichmi
Kalbi
Teokbokki
Kuksi soup
Heh from zucchini
Panchani

Eastern cuisine: meat dishes

Eastern cuisine involves the use of lamb, beef, chicken and very rarely pork. But unlike us, people living in the east do not like to grind meat into minced meat. They believe that in this way all the taste of the product is killed. Therefore, they try to bake it whole or cut it into small pieces.

Oriental meat dishes:
Lamb shish kebab with vegetables
Lagman with beef
Chicken skewers in soy sauce
Heh from meat
Korean pork ribs

Oriental soups

If you want to surprise your household, then prepare for them a delicious and aromatic oriental lamb soup. Its preparation requires a minimum set of ingredients and approximately 1 hour of time.

If you want to make this dish more festive, then garnish it with fresh herbs and chili peppers. This soup must be served with freshly baked flatbread.

So:
Make celery and onion broth
Add chopped meat to it
When the meat is cooked until half cooked, add rice to the pan.
Next, beat the egg, yogurt, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Add the mixture into the boiling soup in a thin stream and let it cook until done.

Oriental salad recipe

If unexpected guests decide to come to your place, and you have nothing to treat them with, then try to prepare a simple but original salad of oriental cuisine. It itself consists of products familiar to us, but the usual mayonnaise dressing will have to be replaced with a lighter and healthier one.

Spicy vegetable salad recipe:
Take any salad mixture, tear it into pieces and place it on a beautiful platter
Cut cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and ginger into strips
Place prepared vegetables on salad mix
Prepare a dressing from vegetable oil, salt, pepper, garlic and lemon juice.
Pour the sauce over the salad and serve

Southeast Asian cuisine

The main highlight of southeastern cuisine, of course, is seafood. Local chefs complement them with seaweed, exotic seasonings, juicy vegetables and edible flowers.

Very often, travelers, having seen such a still life, are afraid to try it. And they do this, of course, in vain. After all, usually fresh seafood is used to prepare these dishes, which can saturate the body with useful substances.

Indonesian fish recipe:
Fry onion, lemongrass, banana in vegetable oil and add pre-boiled and washed rice to it
Cut the fish into large pieces and marinate it in pepper, salt and lemon juice
Dip the fish first in cream, then in flour and fry in plenty of oil.
Place rice and banana on a plate and fish on top
Any hot sauce can be served with this dish.

Eastern European cuisine

Eastern European cuisine includes food from Georgian, Armenian, Bulgarian and Moldavian cuisine. Although the dishes of these regions are close and familiar to us, among them there are also some that can surprise us with something new.

As a rule, for cooking, residents of these regions use the same products as we do, with only one difference: in Eastern European countries they do not really like to marinate fish and meat in liquid marinades.

Meat recipe - “Three Shepherds” in Moldavian:
Marinate chicken, pork and beef fillets in dry spices
After 1.5 hours, beat each piece separately and cut them into strips 2 cm wide
Next, alternating each type of meat, we begin to twist it clockwise
We chop the workpiece with bamboo sticks
We bake the meat in the oven, periodically sprinkling it with wine.

Uzbek oriental cuisine

A characteristic feature of Uzbek cuisine are meat dishes. Uzbeks love meat and know how to cook it properly. Moreover, most often they do not eat it, for example, baked. Usually they stew it with vegetables, put it in pies or make the most delicate manti with it.

But the main pride of this region, of course, is. Unlike us, they put a lot of meat, carrots and spicy spices in it, in short, they do everything to make the aroma of the dish amazing.

Uzbek pilaf recipe:
Heat the oil in a cauldron and add chopped onions and carrots into it.
When the vegetables are browned, add pieces of meat to them (ideally it should be lamb)
As soon as you notice that the ends of the carrots are darkening, immediately add half a liter of water, salt, cumin and barberry to the cauldron.
Let everything simmer for 40 minutes
At this time, pour boiling water over the rice and let it swell a little
Then add the rice to the cauldron, put 5-7 cloves of garlic on top of it and cover everything with a lid.
In 15 minutes the pilaf will be ready

Oriental sweets

Almost all sweet tooths like oriental sweets. The main highlight of these delicacies is the variety of spices and herbs. This allows pastry chefs to create culinary masterpieces like no other in the world.

These countries have more than 200 types of different sweets. Moreover, in each region they prepare one specific one. This is usually done by trained people (shackles) and using special equipment.

Honey baklava recipe:
Take flour, eggs, salt and milk and knead a soft dough
Divide it into 5 equal parts and swing them as thin as possible
Grease each layer with oil, roll it up like a snail and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour.
While the dough reaches the desired consistency, chop the nuts
Take the dough out of the refrigerator and roll it out thinly again.
Place the first layer of dough in the pan and sprinkle it with chopped nuts
Repeat the manipulation three more times
Roll out the last piece, place it on the nuts and cut the workpiece into diamonds
Place the baklava in the oven for approximately 30 minutes
While it is baking, prepare aromatic syrup from honey and water.
Pour the finished baklava with syrup and let it soak thoroughly

Video: Asian Lemon Cheesecake

Oriental cuisine always surprises with its unusual note of taste.

We invite you to familiarize yourself with recipes for popular oriental dishes and try to cook them.

Chebureks

Ingredients

Flour- 3.5 cups

Water- 350 milliliters

Egg — 1 piece

Melted butter- 1 tablespoon

Salt- 0.5 teaspoon

Ground meat— 700 grams

Onion— 350 grams

Water or kefir- 0.5 cups

Salt, pepper, spices- to taste

Cooking method

Boil water with salt and oil (oil gives the finished chebureks their characteristic “bubbly” quality).
Immediately brew 1/2 cup of flour in it, try to stir the lumps, and let it cool (brewing some of the flour makes the dough soft and pliable). If a few lumps remain, it’s okay, they will disperse later.
Add the egg and mix. Gradually add the rest of the flour and knead the dough. The dough should not stick to your hands; if it does, add a little more flour. Let it brew for at least 1 hour.
While the dough is infusing, prepare the minced meat.
We add onion, water or kefir to the minced meat, which, in addition to flavoring, has the wonderful property of binding raw minced meat (the minced meat does not spread) and releasing liquid into the finished product. Mix everything well.

We form pasties.
Cut the dough into balls the size of a table tennis ball and roll out into a flat cake 1 millimeter thick. Spread the minced meat over one half of the flatbread, cover with the other half and press down the edges. To make the edge beautiful, we roll it along the edge with a special machine or the edge of a saucer, or a fork.
Let's start preparing the pasties.
Pour 2-3 cm of vegetable oil into the pan. We wait until the oil warms up. Fry on 2 sides over medium heat, uncovered, until golden brown.

Lyulya - kebab

Ingredients

Mutton— 500 grams

Onion— 150-200 grams

Fat tail fat- to taste

Salt- to taste

Dried basil- to taste

Black pepper- to taste

Cooking method

We pass the lamb pulp together with the onion through a meat grinder two or three times. If possible, skip fat tail fat along with the meat. Salt and season with spices. Mix the minced meat with your hands or beat it (lift it and throw it back into the bowl) until it stops cracking and becomes viscous.
Divide the kneaded minced meat into pieces weighing 40-45 grams and with wet hands form sausages about 3 centimeters thick and 15-20 cm long.
Thread the resulting sausages onto flat skewers (for cooking over coals) or onto wooden skewers (for cooking in the oven). 2-3 sausages are strung on long skewers. The strung kebabs can be additionally patted to help them adhere better to the skewers. Fry the kebab over hot coals, turning the skewers periodically. When preparing at home, lula kebab is placed on a baking sheet or on a wire rack (with the baking sheet down to catch the dripping fat). Preheat the oven to 250°C and fry for 15-18 minutes on one side and 5 minutes on the other.
When serving, remove the lula kebab from the skewers and sprinkle with ground sumac (if desired and possible). It can also be wrapped in Armenian lavash cut into strips. Lula kebab is served with a lot of greens (green onions, parsley, cilantro) and fried tomatoes. Narsharab (pomegranate juice boiled to a third of the original volume) can be served as a sauce.

Dolma (stuffed cabbage rolls with grape leaves)

Ingredients

Mutton— 500 grams

Rice- 0.5 cups

Onion- 1 head

grape leaves- 400 grams

Oil- 1 tablespoon

Cooking method

Pass the lamb (pulp) through a meat grinder, add cooked rice, finely chopped onions and herbs, as well as pepper and salt to taste.

Wash the grape leaves, remove the stem (hard) part, lay the leaves on the table (1 - 2 leaves each), put the minced meat on them and wrap it in leaves in the form of ordinary cabbage rolls. Salt them and place them in a low saucepan in dense rows, pour in oil, add a glass of broth made from lamb bones, cover the saucepan with a lid and simmer over low heat for about an hour.

When serving, transfer the dolma to a plate. Separately, serve sour milk with grated garlic and salt, as well as ground cinnamon mixed with powdered sugar.

Samsa

Ingredients

Water- 2 glasses

Salt- 2 teaspoons

Flour- 4-5 glasses

Meat- 200 grams

Kurdyuk— 50 grams

Onion- 1 kilogram

Potato- 200 grams

Black pepper, salt, cumin- to taste

Vegetable oil- 2-3 tbsp. spoons

Cooking method

You can use ready-made puff pastry or make your own.

We knead unleavened dough from flour and warm water with salt.

Preparing the filling for samsa.

Cut the meat, fat tail fat and potatoes into small cubes, about 5 millimeters each.

Finely chop the onion, add spices, salt and pepper, mix everything.

Cut the samsa dough into pieces.

Roll each piece into a circle and put the filling in the middle.

Then we cover the filling with dough, alternately on 3 sides, overlapping to form a triangle.

We pinch the corners of the samsa so that the juice does not leak out.

Place the samsa on a baking sheet greased with oil.

Place in a medium-heated oven to bake for 40-50 minutes until done.

Baklava

Ingredients

Flour— 500 grams

Egg— 2 pieces

Sour cream— 150 grams

Milk— 150 grams

Butter— 50 grams

Yeast— 1/2 pack of dry (5-6 grams) or 15 grams of fresh

Salt- pinch

Sugar- 1 teaspoon

Walnuts— 250 grams

Powdered sugar— 250 grams

Butter— 250 grams

Cardamom- 0.5 teaspoon

Cinnamon- 1 teaspoon

Egg— 1 piece

Walnuts (decoration)- halves

Honey— 150 grams

Hot water- 90-100 milliliters

Cooking method

Let's start preparing the dough for baklava. First, heat the milk so that it is warm, add yeast and sugar, stir and let the yeast “come to life” so that it rises like a cap.
In another bowl, mix flour, butter, eggs, sour cream and salt. Mix lightly.
Then add our “revived” yeast to this mixture and stir well.
Now place this mass on a lightly floured table and knead the soft dough well.
Then put the dough in a cup and put it in a warm place for 1-1.5 hours (cover the dough with a towel).
The dough should fit well.
While the baklava dough is rising, let's make the filling.
The filling will be even tastier and the taste will be richer if you roast the nuts a little in the oven.
We pass the nuts through a meat grinder or roll them with a rolling pin.
Mix the chopped nuts with vanilla and powdered sugar, add cardamom and cinnamon.
Divide the risen dough into 12 parts, one piece of which should be 2 times larger than the others.
Now we take this large piece and roll it out in such an area that it covers the bottom and sides of our form, and hangs down a little more...
The dough is soft, elastic and rolls out very well. And we will need to roll it out very thinly, about 1 millimeter thick or even thinner.
Now we wrap the dough on a rolling pin and line our mold with it.
Next, brush the dough with melted butter.
Now we roll out the next layer of the same thickness, but to the size of the bottom of our mold and cover the bottom.
We did not pour filling onto the first layer, since we should have 2 layers of dough without filling on the bottom and top (this is for strength, otherwise they may crumble after baking).
Grease the second layer of dough with a thin layer of butter and sprinkle with filling (sprinkle enough filling to make 10 layers).
The tenth layer looks like this - greased and sprinkled (that's it, there is no more filling, but about half or a little less oil should remain, we will need it again later).
Cover the tenth layer with the eleventh piece of dough and grease it with oil.
Cut off the overhanging edges of the dough with a knife, leaving about 1-2 centimeters. And brush them with beaten egg.
Now roll out the last twelfth piece of dough and cover the 11th layer with it. Brush the top with the already beaten egg so that the baklava is golden brown and beautiful.
Now let’s cut the baklava into traditional diamond shapes. We do not cut it completely, otherwise everything will flow out to the bottom of the mold and will burn.
Then place half a walnut in the middle of each diamond, pressing lightly.
Now turn on the oven, place the pan with baklava on the stove, cover it with a towel and leave to rise for 15 minutes.
Place the pan in an oven preheated to 180 degrees and bake the baklava for 15 minutes. Then we take it out and pour the remaining butter on top. If the cuts are stuck together, you can trim them with a knife so that the oil gets in.
Almost before it’s ready, pour hot honey syrup over the baklava (honey + hot water). Baklava can be baked to a beautiful reddish color and removed from the oven. Now cover it with a towel and let it cool a little, up to 40-45 degrees C. Then take it out of the mold, cut the diamonds to the end and dip each side in honey syrup for 3 seconds.
Place the finished baklava on a dish and let it stand for another 15-20 minutes (if you can stand it) so that it is saturated with this syrup and completely cools.