With the support of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Baku is hosting the finals of famous Russian culinary specialist Stalik Khankishiyev's competition in preparing Azerbaijani dishes by the Russians. Qualifying rounds were held on Khankishiyev's YouTube channel, and today seven finalists are competing in the capital of Azerbaijan in cooking sabalid qovurma.
The famous chef told how qualifying rounds were held. "It turned out that people in Russia love and know how to cook Azerbaijani food. At the second stage, we and the National Culinary Association gave everyone a personal task - someone cooked dolma, someone cooked pilau," he said.
Speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, Stalik Khankishiyev stressed that Azerbaijani cuisine occupies a worthy place on the culinary map of the world. "All this is due to the work of a large number of people: first, our ancestors who created national cuisine; second, enthusiastic chefs who have been working on Azerbaijani cuisine in recent decades. Since Azerbaijan gained independence, Azerbaijan’s cuisine has been developing. That's how it should be - the cuisine should be developed through contacts with fraternal countries," the famous chef noted.
"The culinary map of the world, if you look at the cuisines of Islamic countries and surrounding nations, with whom we had long-term cultural ties, such as China, India, Europe, Russia, seems like a huge carpet with very diverse patterns. Azerbaijani cuisine is one of the worthy patterns on this carpet," he said.
According to Stalik Khankishiyev, the Azerbaijani cuisine is properly presented in Russia. "At the same time, we have something to strive for, not only in Russia, but in world culinary as a whole. While we are present in the world culinary space with our books - five of my books won the international culinary book competitions. Tahir Amiraslanov just recently returned from Macau, where his book with 381 recipes of Azerbaijani dolma won first place. Since 2013, nearly a dozen books about Azerbaijani cuisine have won first places at various competitions, and we are leaders in the CIS countries," the culinary specialist said.
