Stephen and Toni joined me in Baku yesterday morning, flying in from Delhi. We spent the morning wandering around Baku, catching up and sight seeing.
There had been some pretty severe weather the previous night, and this followed us into the Old City yesterday. Breaking out the wet weather gear, we wandered the narrow walk ways of the old city, discovering many cats around every corner!
The rain seemed to push most people out of the Old City, or into restaurants, whereas, we kept wandering. It was nice to have the city to ourselves.
Our Soviet wine tour was cancelled, presumably because of the weather. So towards the end of the day, we headed back into the Old City to a local wine bar that we’d found in the middle of the winding narrow walk ways (thank goodness for being able to drop pins into google maps!!). Dinner was a mezzo of local dips and a massive cheese board, as well as a bottle of a local white and red….. we are on a mission to try them all!
This morning we were booked into a local cooking school, which was a pleasant 30 minute walk away from our accom. Just around the corner of our hotel is a little coffee shop that does a portrait of you on a coffee cup, while you enjoy your morning coffee. We aren’t so sure they captured our likeness that well, Stephen (who is 70+) looked to be about 37 in his portrait! But the are a fun little novelty!
From coffee we headed off to cooking school. On the traditional menu was:
- Saffron Plov
- Tenek Dolmasi (tiny stuffed vine leaves)
- Dovaga Soup (a yoghurt based soup)
- Qutab (fine flat bread, stuffed with herbs)
- Choban Salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum & herbs)
There were a lot of laughs and a lot of mess, as our dough rolling skills could do with some improvement!!
Needless to say, we are now overstuffed with food and are certainly not going to need much for dinner tonight…. Or maybe we should just have wine??!
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