Qurutob

Ingredients

• Qurut — or 500 g thick yoghurt200 g
• Fatir flatbread400 g
• Onions3
• Vegetable oil100 ml
• Tomatoes2
• Cucumbers2
• Coriander40 g
• Purple basil20 g
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cover the qurut with hot water for twenty minutes and rub it by hand into an even liquid.

   22 min

2. 2

   Pass it through a sieve to remove any grains. The liquid should be like thin soured cream.

   6 min

3. 3

   Slice the onion into rings and fry it in oil until golden, ten minutes.

   12 min

4. 4

   Tear the fatir into large pieces into a wide dish.

   5 min

5. 5

   Pour the qurut over the bread and leave it five minutes to soak.

   6 min

6. 6

   Top with the fried onion and its oil, then the tomato, cucumber and herbs.

   5 min

About the dish

Qurut — balls of salted soured milk dried to stone — are soaked in hot water and rubbed through into a liquid. Yoghurt can stand in, but the acidity is gentler and the salt falls short.

Fatir, a layered bread made with fat, is torn by hand straight into the dish. Its layers are what let it take up the liquid without collapsing; ordinary bread just goes to pulp.

It is eaten by hand from one wide shared dish, without spoons. Qurutob is communal by design, and serving it in individual portions is not done in Tajikistan.

Worth knowing

• — The bread must not float. Pour in only enough qurut to soak it; too much turns the dish into soup.
• — Without fatir, use any layered flatbread or lavash folded several times. Soft loaf bread will not do at all.
• — The meat version, with mutton fried alongside the onion, is called qurutob with meat and appears at celebrations.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

18 g

Fat

28 g

Carbs

50 g

More from Tajikistan

• Tajik oshi palav — Pilaf with mutton, yellow carrot and a whole head of garlic, recognised by UNESCO as heritage.