Pizza Night or Julia Childs Where Are You

Cooking here is another challenge. Microwaves are almost non existent as the use of most ovens.  Yes, they use the burners but the ovens they use for storage, I cannot understand that.  They used these tandeer ovens (see picture) that has basically three settings, hot, hotter and hottest (meaning burn your food). These ovens are not regulated but I was fortunate to inherit one from an PCV with a thermometer from America!

Note it is in my Living Room on top of the Electric Stove



So when the temperature goes above 400, I just turn it off.  I am still trying to get use to cooking in it, but I think I am making headway. But needless to say I do a lot of cooking on the gas burners. Former and current PCV's put together a cookbook (I'm still waiting for the hard copy that was promised several months ago!!) that is very useful. They convert measuring utensils (an Azerbaijan tea glass = 1 measuring cup), substitution (Baking powder = cream of tarter and soda) and most important Azerbaijan names of foods.  This comes in handy unless it is in Russian and up here most the time it is, so what do I do? Guess and hope that I'm right! I improvise a lot, for example, I do not have a toaster, so I butter both sides of slice bread and fry it in my pan, even hard bread comes out tasting great! I bought a large skillet at the bazaar (my daughter-in-law sent me a small one which is awesome, but not large enough), so I bit the bullet and spent 15 manates for one.  I use it for most of my cooking.  Since I eat only chicken, most of what I make is vegetarian.  The recipes in the PCV cookbook are good and I combine some of them together, to add extra zip.  I make everything from scratch as can foods are extremely expensive and frozen foods are non existent.  Vegetables are very cheap right now, so I use a lot of tomatoes, onions and eggplant (eggplant which I have learned to love).  I make chili by soaking the beans all night and then cooking them for hours, adding everything except the kitchen sink and it turns out great, my pasta sauce is by scratch as well.  Julia Childs would be so proud!!  I've learned that you can freeze tomatoes by washing and coring them.  Since they are so cheap right now, that is what I am doing (25 cents a pound now vs $2.00 a pound in winter!!).  I am also freezing beans, but I have an extremely small freezer, so I can't freeze too many things plus the electricity goes off so often, I may have to cook it all!! Yesterday I decided to make pizza, so I went to the market and got flour (un), salt (duz) and yeast (maya) which the yeast was no where in sight. Fortunately, another PCV came in the store and I asked her where the yeast was (I did find soda which in Azeri is soda but that is for another recipe) so we looked around and of course it was in Russian and a package I never seen before, I would have never found it on my own!! So I went back home and followed the cookbook recipe and made the dough, it turned out perfect!!! So then I added all the veggies I had and for the cheese,I put my favorite Gouda (it didn't melt) but oh did it taste good!! Look how beautiful it turned out!!

Perfection

With Cheese



So, for me living in a country where frying potatoes and greasy foods are the staple, you can eat and live healthy, it just takes effort on your part.

Life Challenge:  Never apologize for your cooking...  “Bon A Petiet" Julia Childs