Qurutob

Tajikistan's national dish: flaky fatir bread torn into a wooden platter, soaked in a sauce of dissolved dried yoghurt and buried under onion, tomato and herbs

Origin: Dushanbe & Tajikistan

From the journey of Wheat.

The name is the recipe: qurut is the hard dried yoghurt of the Central Asian pastures and ob is water, so qurutob is qurut wetted. Hard white balls of it are broken up, steeped in hot water, and worked through a sieve into a thin salty sauce; flaky fatir bread is torn into a wide wooden platter and drenched in it; and then onion softened in oil, tomato, cucumber, and a great deal of herb go over the top, with hot oil poured across at the end. Qurut is the thing to understand. Surplus milk on the summer pastures was soured, strained, salted hard, rolled into balls, and dried on rooftops until it kept indefinitely without refrigeration, which is what a transhumant economy needs. It travels, it stores for years, and it reconstitutes into something between a sauce and a soft cheese. Tajiks abroad ask for it to be sent, and it is sharp, salty, and faintly barnyard in a way nothing in a European dairy quite matches. The bread is the other half and it is not ordinary bread. Fatir is layered with fat and folded so it bakes into flaky sheets rather than a crumb, and it is made specifically to survive being soaked: an ordinary loaf turns to sludge in the platter, whereas fatir softens and holds. This is the same logic that produces Iraqi tashreeb and Algerian chakhchoukha, arrived at separately. It is eaten with the hands, from the communal tabak, without utensils, and it is the dish Tajiks name first when asked what their country eats. There is a vegetarian summer version and a version with lamb, but the plain one is the standard, and it is a dish built entirely out of things a household could keep through a winter.

Ingredients

Bread

  • 4 fatir flatbreads, or any flaky layered flatbread such as paratha

Sauce

  • 200 g qurut balls, or 400g thick strained yoghurt plus 1 tsp salt
  • 500 ml hot water
  • 0.5 tsp salt, or to taste

Topping

  • 3 onions, sliced
  • 4 tbsp oil or rendered lamb fat
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 cucumber, diced
  • 1 large bunch coriander, dill and spring onion, chopped
  • 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Break the qurut balls up as far as you can with your hands or a rolling pin, then cover them with the hot water and leave for fifteen minutes to soften.
  2. Work the softened qurut through a sieve with the back of a spoon, pushing the solids through and discarding any grit. You want a thin, pourable, salty liquid about the consistency of single cream.
  3. If using yoghurt instead, thin it with hot water to the same consistency and season it hard with salt; qurut is much saltier than yoghurt and the dish depends on it.
  4. Soften the sliced onions in the oil over a medium heat for twelve to fifteen minutes until sweet and lightly golden, then take the pan off the heat but keep it warm.
  5. Warm the fatir breads through so they are pliable rather than crisp.
  6. Tear the bread into rough pieces with your hands directly into a wide shallow bowl or wooden platter. Do not cut it; torn edges take up the sauce and cut ones do not.
  7. Pour the qurut sauce over the bread and press it down gently. Leave it for two or three minutes to drink.
  8. Do not drown it. The bread should be thoroughly wet and heavy but not floating, so add the sauce in stages and stop when it stops absorbing.
  9. Spread the warm onions and their oil over the surface, then the tomato, cucumber, and herbs in that order.
  10. Grind black pepper over, and pour any remaining hot oil from the onion pan across the top so it sizzles into the herbs.
  11. Serve at once, in the middle of the table, and eat it with the fingers of the right hand from the platter.

Notes

Qurut is sold by Central Asian and Afghan grocers as hard white or grey balls, sometimes labelled kurt or qurt, and it is worth buying, since the salty fermented sharpness is the whole flavour of the dish. Thick strained yoghurt salted hard is the substitute and gives a milder, rounder result. Fatir is the correct bread and any flaky layered flatbread will stand in; a plain leavened loaf will not, because it collapses. Tear the bread rather than cutting it, and assemble at the last moment: qurutob is eaten within minutes of being made and does not sit.

The Gastrographer

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