Persian cuisine: Lavashak. Plum pita bread

My happy childhood occurred in the years when even a six-year-old child could be sent to the store to buy bread and not be afraid that someone would offend him or shortchange him. In the morning my mother gave me 30 kopecks so that I could buy a loaf of black and white bread. Each time I had a few kopecks left, which I put in a saucer on the table.

After 2-3 days, the “change” was just enough for a cube delicious cocoa or a strip of apricot pita bread. This pita bread lay on the counter in a huge sheet, sparkling with droplets of oil and teasing with aroma. The saleswoman cut it with a sharp long knife directly from the parchment backing, smacked it on the scales and cut off a piece several times to finally fit it into my 7 kopecks.

I think my mom got tired of seeing me staring at those orange pita breads in the store, and one day she made the same delicacy from plums.

Now I myself make fruit pita bread from plums or apples every year.

The technology is simple: Mix the fruits with sugar (5:1), add a little water, boil over low heat, strain the juice, grind until smooth puree, spread on parchment and dry in the sun for a couple of days. But our sun is not so hot now, and there are a lot of flies, so I have been making fruit pita bread in the oven for a long time. I successfully experimented with an electric dryer.

The method of producing plum lavash from the “Greedy” series turned out to be no less successful. You also have bouts of saving. So once I got it a large number of waste from juice production using a juicer. Now I regularly make pita bread from them.

The starting position is this. I cook in a juicer plum juice. Sugarless. I put the juice into jars, but the boiled plum mass, without seeds, but with skins, is crushed in a blender. I apply the mixture onto a sheet of parchment (it is advisable to lightly grease it with oil) in a layer of 5-6 mm, carefully level it with a silicone spatula and put it in the oven for 40 minutes at a temperature of 180°C. Then I turn it off, leaving the sheet in the slightly open oven until the morning. In the morning I turn on the oven for 30 minutes and dry it at 150°C. I place the cooled pita bread directly on a baking sheet on open air, in the sun, covered with gauze.

As soon as the pita bread is dry, I remove it from the parchment, roll it up, pack it in parchment and store it in the grocery cupboard.

Cooking fruit pita bread in the dryer means saving a lot of time. It is enough to cut sheets of parchment according to the shape of the drying racks and spread them fruit puree. It is important to cut out a circle or rectangle from paper (depending on the shape of the dryer) slightly smaller than the tray itself and be sure to cut a circle in the middle so that hot air circulated freely. At a temperature of 60-70°C, pita bread dries for 6-8 hours.

Plum pita bread is great for making bigos or sauce for meat. For sweets, you can add crushed cinnamon to the puree. walnuts or seeds. And I like to add lemon zest to apple juice.

By the way, The thickness of the puree layer is important: if you spread a layer too thin on the parchment, the pita bread will be dry and brittle; if it’s too thick, it will be wet and sticky.

In sunny Armenia, fruit trees grow even in the middle of the courtyards of high-rise buildings in large cities. No wonder Armenians know so much wonderful recipes fruit preparations for future use. One of them is fruit pita bread. Of course, it has nothing in common with traditional unleavened pastries, except perhaps the shape, which probably owes its name. However, this dish is not called that way everywhere. Some classify it as marshmallow, although classic marshmallow softer, thicker and much sweeter than fruit pita bread. Many peoples of the Caucasus have similar recipes and Far East. Georgians simply adore something like this. Lavash pastila is also prepared in distant Syria.

Today we will prepare fruit lavash the old-fashioned way Armenian recipe. If everything is done correctly, it will be perfectly preserved and will delight you with its taste in the cold.

Suitable raw materials

Armenians call this delicacy “ttu lavash”, which means “sour”. Most often it is prepared from plums, cherries, and dogwoods. But those who prefer sweet to sour can make it from peaches, apricots, apples, and pears.

About the proportions of products

When preparing fruit pita bread, we do not need kitchen scales and measuring cups. There are simply no strict dosages. It all depends on how much fruit you want to prepare. The only limitation is to calculate the surface on which you will dry the pita bread. In order to use half a kilo of plums, you will need one standard oven tray.

And the amount of sugar is purely a matter of taste. Some people like it sweeter, while others do just fine without sugar at all, being content with the natural fructose contained in plums.

Preparatory stage

Sort the fruits, rinse, and let the water drain. Do not use rotten, obviously overripe plums. But don’t let the greenish ones scare you - they will ripen during the cooking process. Remove the seeds.

Place the plums in a saucepan, add water so that the fruits completely drown, and cook for 15 minutes.

Preparation

Place the plums in a sieve and drain excess water. Grind using an immersion or regular blender until completely smooth.

Cover a baking sheet with cling film, carefully unload the mixture onto it, and level it. The thickness of the layer should not exceed 0.4-0.6 cm, otherwise the delicacy will not turn out. If you make the layer too thin, the pita bread will dry out and be too fragile. If you pour an excessively thick layer, the mass will not dry out and will remain viscous in the middle. This will not only worsen its characteristics, but also shorten its shelf life.

Leave it in the sun. If necessary, cover with gauze, but so that it does not touch the fruit mass.

After 2-3 days, the fruit pita bread can be easily detached from the film and turned over to the other side. Continue drying for about another day.

Storage

Roll the fruit pita bread into a roll and fold it into plastic bag. It will keep well in a regular kitchen cabinet for a year.

Variety of flavors

Fruit pita bread-marshmallow made from plums is best stored. Practice with a simple one and then continue experimenting with other flavors.

A combination of fruit and berry base. Avoid berries with small seeds that cannot be crushed by the blender blades: raspberries, blackberries, sea buckthorn, currants. In an industrial way, marshmallows are also prepared from them, but at home the dish may not work out. It is better to use cherries, sweet cherries, blackberries, chokeberry, cranberries.

If you don't mind small seeds in the finished lavash, feel free to use any berries. Exotic foods are also suitable for lavash - for example, mango, papaya, nectarine.

Use in cooking

The fruit, which came to us from the East, is very widely used in cooking in its homeland. It is not only eaten as a dessert, but also added to meat dishes, sauces, seasonings, baked goods.

In the Caucasus, fruit lavash is used to make rolls with various fillings: nut, berry, curd. IN birthday cakes and the brownies also add fruit pita bread.

Pastila, reviews of which have reached distant countries, is also loved by the Japanese. They prepare rolls with it, filling it not only with sweet fillings, but also with fish and meat sea ​​creatures, cheese.

Lavashak (which translates from Farsi as “small pita bread”) is the Persian name for a thin, thick mass, like hard marmalade, which is made from fruit extracts: from Hungarian plums, ordinary plums, prunes, apricots and even pomegranates.
Lavashak can taste very different: sweet, sour, sweet and sour - it all depends on what fruit it is made from.
This is my favorite summer treat for children, which their grandmothers sometimes make themselves at home :)

A shop in (northern outskirts of Tehran) where they sell this seasonal sweet
So how to make lavashak yourself?

You will need:
20 plums
1 tbsp. l. lemon juice
½ glass of water

Rinse the plums and remove the pits.

Place the plums, water and lemon juice into a non-stick pan. Cook everything over low heat for 30-45 minutes, until the plums are completely cooked and almost no juice remains. Be sure to stir the plums constantly to prevent anything from burning.

Spray a large foil-lined tray with vegetable oil. Place the resulting “puree” on a tray in a very thin layer (about 1 mm thick). After this, cover the tray with a light material and leave it in the sun for a few days. As a result, the layer should cool, dry completely and become hard.

Once the pita is dry, carefully remove it from the foil. Now all that remains is to cut it into strips/pieces of the desired size - and the sweetness is ready.

I hope you like it!

In Armenia, where even in large cities fruit trees grow in yards, there are many ways to process the crop for long-term storage. In addition to the well-known preserves, candied fruits, jam, dried fruits, marmalade, etc., there is one more interesting recipe. This is a fruit pita. Its second name “ttu lavash” is translated as “ sour pita bread” as it is traditionally made with plums, dogwoods or cherries, although many prefer the sweeter treat of apples, apricots or peaches.

There are analogues of Armenian fruit lavash in Georgia and Syria. Russian pastila is also similar to this one useful product, but it is sweeter and is used only as a dessert. Here lavash is universal product, which can be eaten like candy, made into rolls with nuts, or added to sauce for meat.

Ingredients:

• plums – 2 kg;
• sugar – 200 g;
• water – 200 ml.

Preparation

1. For fruit pita bread, you can use plums of any variety with easily separated pits. They can be sweet or sour, dark or light, large or small. The main thing is that the plums are ripe, juicy and healthy. They must be washed under running water.

2. When the excess liquid has drained, the plums should be cut in half and the pits removed.

3. Fruits need to be filled 1/3 with water. If desired, you can add a little sugar.

4. Bring the plums to a boil over medium heat. Then cook them over low heat for 15 minutes. Strain the resulting compote through a metal colander or sieve.

5. Transfer the thick fruit mass to a blender.

6. At medium speed, beat it until smooth.

7. Pour the still hot fruit puree onto a tray lined with cling film or parchment. The layer should be 4–6 mm thick. More thin pita bread it will turn out too dry and brittle, and the thicker one will remain wet and spoil.

8. Use a spoon or knife to smooth the surface of the puree.

My happy childhood occurred in the years when even a six-year-old child could be sent to the store to buy bread and not be afraid that someone would offend him or shortchange him. In the morning, my mother gave me 30 kopecks so that I could buy a loaf of black and white bread. Each time I had a few kopecks left, which I put in a saucer on the table. After 2-3 days, the “change” was just enough for a cube of delicious cocoa or a strip of apricot pita bread. This pita bread lay on the counter in a huge sheet, sparkling with droplets of oil and teasing with aroma. The saleswoman cut it with a sharp long knife directly from the parchment backing, smacked it on the scales and cut off a piece several times to finally fit it into my 7 kopecks.

I think my mom got tired of seeing me staring at those orange pita breads in the store, and one day she made the same delicacy from plums.

Now I myself make fruit pita bread from plums or apples every year. The actual technology is simple: mix the fruits with sugar (5:1), add a little water, boil over low heat, strain the juice, grind to a smooth puree, spread on parchment and dry in the sun for a couple of days. But our sun is not so hot now, and there are a lot of flies, so I have been making fruit pita bread in the oven for a long time. Now I’ve experimented with the dryer.

Yesterday I put the sheet in the dryer (I was still drying apples in 3 sections!). But this time there was no classic lavash, and the so-called “Greedy”. And all because I felt sorry for throwing away the waste from juicing, and I had run out of sugar.

In short, my experimental plum lavash, despite all the violations of the recipe and preparation method, was a success.

The starting position is this. I prepared plum juice in a juicer. Sugarless. The juice was put into jars, but the boiled plum mass, without seeds, but with skins, was supposed to go to the chicken feeder. But the toad strangled me. And I crushed the still warm mass with a blender. Most applied to a sheet of parchment (it is advisable to slightly grease it with oil) in a layer of 5-6 mm, carefully leveled it with a silicone spatula and put it in the oven for 40 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees. Then she turned it off, leaving the sheet in the slightly open oven until the morning. This morning I turned the oven on again for 30 minutes and dried it at 150 degrees. When the pita bread cooled down, I placed it directly on a baking sheet in the open air, in the sun, covering it with gauze.

As soon as the pita bread dries, I remove it from the parchment, roll it up, and pack it in cling film and put it in the grocery cupboard - it will be stored there for at least six months, unless, of course, we eat it. It is great for making bigos or sauce for meat. For sweets, you can add cinnamon, crushed walnuts or seeds to the puree. And I like to add lemon zest to apple juice. All that remains is to beautifully cut the finished lavash and forget the way to the confectionery department of the store.

But the pita bread is already ready in the dryer. I did it like this. The rest of the puree was spread in a thin layer (4 mm) onto a parchment sheet and placed in the dryer. Here it was important to cut a circle out of paper with a diameter slightly smaller than the tray itself and be sure to cut a circle in the middle so that hot air could circulate freely.

My lavash took about 8 hours to dry. Then I easily removed it from the parchment, cut it into 4 segments and rolled them into rolls, sprinkled powdered sugar. We ate one roll right away. Sour!!! But it’s definitely better than any gummies from the store.

By the way, the thickness of the puree layer is important: if you spread too thin a layer on the parchment, the pita bread will be dry and brittle, if too thick, it will be wet and sticky.