I wrote in an earlier entry about the retail triumvirate of butcher-baker-green grocer that is common in all neighborhoods. In fact, there seems to be a green grocer on about every third corner. Our neighborhood is no different. The bakery is particularly attractive. There is a huge wood-fired oven. The bakery bakes and sells – fresh out of the oven – primarily pita and the flour tortillas called Lavash. The pita is really an oval flat bread. You can get the same dough baked as what we know as pocket bread – kupan, as it’s known here. Leavened loaves of bread are not baked at these establishments.
We’ve often noticed people coming and going with really yummy looking casserole dishes, usually prepared in round aluminum pans that are sold all over town. Many of the kitchens in the local apartment buildings don’t have ovens, so people “outsource” their baking. We’d been told that we could take one of those aluminum pans to the butcher and he’d put together a casserole for us. This weekend we decided to try it out.
I took our pan to the butcher and somehow communicated we wanted a lamb casserole for six people – dictionaries and pantomime helps. He walked with me over to the green grocer, and we picked out potatoes, onion, garlic, sweet red peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. I paid for the vegetables and handed them over to the butcher. We told him we’d like to pick up the casserole at 6:30 PM. That was it. At 6:30 we returned and picked up this fabulous meal, including hot bread right out of the oven. The butcher had seasoned the mean very well – a bit on the spicy side for lamb, but I loved it. We all agreed a repeat performance was in order.
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