Lavangi fish

In Azerbaijan, lyavangi are cooked in almost every home, and each hostess considers her own version to be the best - and this is certainly true. We cooked fish the way it is done in Lankaran. A dish that is perfect in its simplicity and leaves incredible scope for interpretation!

Ingredients

• 1 kutum or carp weighing about 1.5 kg
• salt, freshly ground black pepper
• vegetable oil for greasing a baking sheet or wire rack
• For minced lyavangi:
• 300 g very fresh walnuts
• 300 g red onion
• 1 sheet of pita bread (cherry plum marshmallow)
• 1/2 tsp plus a pinch of ground sumac
• 1 sprig fresh cilantro
• salt, freshly ground black peppe

Directions

1. For minced lyavangi, pass the peeled walnuts through a meat grinder, put in a large bowl. Tear lavashana in small pieces, put in a deep plate. Pour in so much boiling water that the pita bread is only covered with liquid. Leave it on for 20-30 minutes.
2. Peel the onion, cut into large pieces and pass through a meat grinder. Wrap the resulting mass in a double layer of gauze and squeeze the juice out of it. For this recipe, only the onion mass is needed; juice is not needed here. Chop the cilantro very finely, mix with the nuts. Add squeezed onion, 1.5 tbsp. l. lavashan paste, 0.5 tsp. sumac and cilantro. Stir until smooth. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir again.
3. Clean the fish from scales, gut through the abdomen, rinse, dry thoroughly. Fill the belly with the resulting lywangi mixture. You can leave the stuffed fish as it is, or you can tightly sew the edges of the cut with cotton thread or fix it with wooden skewers.
4. Measure out 2 tsp. lavashan paste, add a pinch of sumac, the same amount of pepper and salt. Mix well. Preheat the oven to 160 ° C. If the fish is not sewn up, lightly grease its sides with the prepared spicy mixture, then place the fish on the grill greased with vegetable oil on its side so that the filling does not leak out during baking. Place the wire rack in the middle of the oven and place a baking sheet under it.
5. In the event that the fish is sewn up, lightly grease its back with a spicy mixture, then place on a baking sheet greased with vegetable oil, back up, and place in the oven, preheated in the same way as in the first case. If the fish is cooked on its side, then after 10 minutes. it should be carefully turned over and the oven temperature should be reduced to 150 ° C. Cook for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 140 ° C and continue cooking for another 10 minutes. Remove the cooked fish rack from the oven. Let cool slightly, about 5 minutes.
6. If the fish is cooked upside down, after 20 minutes. reduce oven temperature to 140 ° C and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove the cooked fish pan from the oven. Let cool slightly, about 5 minutes. Remove thread or skewers.
7. You can serve lavangi fish as a cold appetizer or hot, as a main course, with a folding Azerbaijani pilaf.