Firengiz with the lamb kebobs

Pomegranates, Lamb, & Samovar : A Wildly Perfect Meal in Göyçay,

By Mary Kay Seales

OK, pop geography quiz: Where (in the world) is Azerbaijan?

You may have to look it up, as did I before heading there in 2014 to teach with the U.S. State Department. Azerbaijan is a very small country on the Caspian Sea bordered by , , Georgia, Turkey and Armenia.

Just get a map.

I spent three months teaching there in a small private college, Khazar University. That’s another wild story, but the one I wish to tell here is about the sumptuous dinner I had in the tiny city of Göyçay (pronounced Goo-chai), about 60 miles from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. A city which boasts a pomegranate festival each year.

I had been invited to spend the weekend at a professor’s country house, Firengiz’s country cottage, as she called it, in Göyçay. This weekend was to become a series of those “perfect moments” I often describe as Kafkaesque - weird, cool, and exactly what you always dreamed your life would include.

Firengiz decided to treat me, by taking me to Fuad’s, a restaurant in Göyçay, owned by her friend and his sons. Firengiz was a celebrity of sorts in this little town, the one who left and made it big, she had been to America, she was a professor, she spoke English, she had important visitors.

You must understand one thing here, or as Scrooge would say, the whole story won’t make sense, which is that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

Azerbaijan is a former Soviet Republic. It only recently (1991) won independence from Russia. It’s still a very young country with old country values and customs. Village life, outside the modern capital city of Baku, is old school. At the market you will find severed goat’s heads and hooves, brooms made from branches, old women selling potatoes, and proud men with -capped teeth selling roasted .

In the market in Göyçay,

So even though its capital city looks incredibly modern with its stunning Heydar Aliyev Center designed by Zaha Hadid, or the Flame Towers, a set of three towering buildings shaped like flames that light up each night as if on fire, life in the surrounding villages is still very basic.

So back to Fuad’s restaurant: Please try to imagine a country road in the Caususes Mountains. Got it? There is a large building with a small sign, but no other buildings in site. The main room is layed out with at least 50 tables and chairs, white table cloths and chandeliers, the room lit up like a conference room. Not a soul there. Staff waiting. I tried to imagine how it could ever be filled up. A man rides by on a donkey.

It happened to be a quite lovely and unusually warm Fall evening in late October, so we were instead escorted outside to a huge garden area with more tables (in Gazebos). It was, to be honest, a rather scrappy garden with rabbit pens, colorful turkeys in little cages and paths laid out through the scruffy brush. The restaurant and all the surrounding land as far as I could see was covered with a fruit plantation of pomegranate trees.

All this belonged to Fuad, a hard-working Azeri man who, as Firengiz told me, started out selling single cigarettes on the street. He proudly showed off his garden before sitting us down in one of the gazebos and joining us at our table. As I recall, we were the only guests that evening.

Fuad signaled to one of his sons who brought various plates of salads, raw vegetables, cheeses and , a flat tortilla-like bread served at every meal. After several toasts to me, the food, the weather (Azeri people love to toast), with a rather good red wine, came the first course: “Lamb Between the Stones.”

You almost expect angelic voices praising the dish as it is served.

Let me confess. I don’t normally like lamb. Have never acquired a taste for it. I would never buy it, cook it or eat it in the States. But of course, I was the guest of honor and it was lamb that I was going to dine on this evening.

But this lamb! Mon Dieu! Sumptuous falls short of describing it.

Thick slices of the roasted meat, accompanied by potatoes and juicy slices of bread, all cooked between two heavy flat stones over a fire.

As Fuad told us, this is just as the shepherds in the hills had done fit or hundreds of years over a campfire in the surrounding Caucuses Mountains. The juices of the lamb permeated the potatoes and bread.

It was more than delicious! It was sex on a plate.

And the piece de resistance of this dish was a warmed, freshly-made pomegranate sauce - thick, red and sweet. My mouth waters now as I think of it.

Fuad with a batch of sweet, red and rich pomegranate suace

Of course, that wasn’t the end of this fine meal.

Azerbaijanis KNOW how to feast.

Next came the , more lamb. Beautifully skewered and propped against layers of lavash and a mound of fresh greens. Lamb! Bring it on!

And indeed there was more. The meal went on and on. More lamb. More roasted vegetables. The toasting went on. The weird conversation in English and Azerbaijani went on, my friends translating back and forth between me with Fuad, the consummate host. It was weirdly wonderful, bizarre, perfect.

After our meal, Fuad wanted to give us a tour of his plantation. We went for a lovely walk through his acres of pomegranate trees. Our stroll ended near a huge pot, bubbling and steaming in the cool night air over an outdoor fire. It was the magnificent pomegranate sauce, being boiled down to a sweet thick sauce.

Then, because no Azerbaijani dinner is complete without an entire slew of desserts, we went back to the garden for candied apricots swimming in syrup, vanilla cookies, and Samovar tea, which had been brewing. All of this laid out on a huge stone slab that had been hauled up from the river, serving as our table.

We sat in the cooling evening, with a Fall mist starting to settle. Me, Firengiz, Kamala and Fuad, an unforgettable meal, a perfect moment in the small city of Göyçay, Azerbaijan.

Dessert & Samovar Tea at Fuad’s Restaurant