A bit of a belated post, but wanted to share about an exciting event that took place earlier this month. On June 5, I co-hosted the very first Azerbaijani cooking class in Los Angeles with my friend Mike Benayoun of 196 flavors. The class was taught in Santa Monica’s very cool place – Stage+Table.
Mike created the event in honor of the celebration of Republic Day of Azerbaijan on May 28th. It was part of a monthly series of interactive and social cooking workshops hosted by 196 flavors that features a different cuisine or theme every month. He invited me to co-host and I didn’t hesitate to agree.
I personally had an amazing time. We had the most friendly and fun students, open to learning about new, unfamiliar (to most of them) flavors. During the meet and greet, Mike treated everybody to a refreshing Azerbaijani lemon drink sharbat he had made beforehand. Then we proceeded to the fun part – hands-on cooking!
We started with vegetarian dolma—grape leaves stuffed with rice, onions, and copious amounts of fresh herbs. The class did a fantastic job despite the fact that dolma- making was totally new to most of them. Look at the result! So proud of what everybody did!
