Authors: Cobaia Kitchen, GPT-5 Thinking, Claude Sonnet 4.0
Photos: Cobaia Kitchen, Seedream 4.0
This delightful recipe emerged from a fun creative challenge at Cobaia Kitchen: to craft something completely plant-based, low-carbon, and authentically exciting using only what’s readily available in German supermarkets plus our existing pantry stash. Armed with GPT-5’s culinary intelligence, we specified that we wanted to explore a less common cuisine, avoid coconut milk after recent overuse, and create something novel that wouldn’t overlap with our extensive recipe collection. The AI ultimately landed on Azerbaijan – a brilliant choice since qutab, the country’s beloved stuffed flatbread, traces its roots back to medieval Silk Road traders who carried culinary techniques across the Caucasus region. This thin, crescent-shaped delicacy was traditionally filled with wild herbs and cooked on a special griddle called a saj. What’s particularly charming is how the AI balanced authenticity with practicality, suggesting mushrooms alongside traditional herbs to create a substantial filling that German home cooks would find satisfying, while keeping the signature sumac-yogurt pairing that makes qutab distinctively Azerbaijani. The result honors centuries of culinary tradition while being perfectly suited for a modern German kitchen – though as you’ll discover in our accompanying story about a memorable school trip, sometimes the journey to discover Azerbaijani cuisine can be just as adventurous as the cooking itself.
Please read the review before cooking!
Azerbaijani Herb & Mushroom Qutab
Equipment
- mixing bowl
- Measuring cup
- Rolling Pin
- Large frying pan or crepe pan
- Knife and cutting board
- Spatula or tongs
- Small bowl and whisk for sauce
Ingredients
Dough
- 300 g wheat flour plus 60 g whole‑wheat flour for structure (360 g total)
- 1 tsp fine salt
- 190 ml warm water
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Filling
- 300 g mushrooms very finely chopped (button or cremini)
- 1 large onion about 180 g, finely diced
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 100 g baby spinach finely chopped
- 10 g fresh dill finely chopped
- 10 g fresh flat‑leaf parsley finely chopped
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 0.5 tsp ground cumin
- 0.5 tsp black pepper
- 0.5 tsp sweet paprika
- 0.25 tsp chili powder optional
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 0.5 tsp salt to taste
Sumac lemon yoghurt
- 200 g unsweetened vegan yoghurt
- 1 tsp sumac
- Zest of 0.5 lemon + 1 tbsp lemon juice
- Pinch of salt
For cooking
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil for brushing/pan
Instructions
- Make the dough: In a mixing bowl whisk flour and salt, add warm water and 1 tbsp olive oil, then knead 3–4 minutes until smooth; cover and rest 10 minutes while prepping the filling.
- Prep vegetables: Finely dice the onion, mince the garlic, chop the mushrooms very small, and finely chop spinach, dill, and parsley.
- Cook aromatics: Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large pan over medium, add onion with a pinch of salt, and sauté 3–4 minutes until translucent.
- Add mushrooms and garlic: Stir in mushrooms and garlic, cook 5–6 minutes until most moisture evaporates and edges start to brown.
- Season and finish filling: Fold in spinach, dill, parsley, coriander, cumin, paprika, pepper, and chili; cook 1–2 minutes just to wilt, adjust salt, then cool slightly.
- Portion the dough: Divide dough into 6 equal balls (~60 g each) for two qutab per portion.
- Roll and fill: On a lightly floured surface, roll each ball to a thin 18–20 cm circle, spread a sixth of the filling on half, leaving a 1 cm edge, then fold over and crimp firmly.
- Pan‑cook: Heat a dry pan over medium, brush the top of a qutab lightly with olive oil, place oiled‑side down, brush the top, and cook 1–2 minutes per side until golden spots appear and the flatbread blisters.
- Make the sauce: Whisk vegan yoghurt with sumac, lemon zest and juice, and a pinch of salt until smooth.
- Keep warm and serve: Hold cooked qutab under a clean towel while finishing the batch, then serve hot with the tangy yoghurt.
Notes
Serving suggestions:
- Serve two qutab per plate, drizzled with sumac lemon yoghurt and a squeeze of fresh lemon for brightness.
- Add a simple chopped tomato‑cucumber‑onion salad dressed with olive oil and a splash of apple cider vinegar for a refreshing side.
Allergens:
- Wheat (gluten)
- Soy
Emission Hotspots:
- Shop to home transportation, if a combustion car is used
Sustainability tips:
- Use up leftover greens or mushrooms from your fridge in the filling—almost any hearty leafy green or edible wild herbs work, which helps reduce produce waste.
- Choose seasonal, locally grown vegetables; in Germany, opt for domestic mushrooms, spinach, and fresh herbs, as transports from abroad increase emissions.
- Repurpose any extra filling as a savory spread for bread, topping for baked potatoes, or veggie omelet (using chickpea flour), so nothing goes unused.
- Compost your vegetable trimmings and herb stems, turning them into nutrient-rich soil instead of landfill waste.
- Consider growing your own herbs on a sunny windowsill
- Walk or bike to the supermarket and farmer’s market to cut transportation emissions
- Store any cooked leftover qutab in an airtight container and reheat for lunch—these are just as delicious the next day and help avoid food spoilage.
- Guinea pigs 🐹 love any fresh spinach leaves as an occasional treat
Carbon Footprint
Featured Story
The School Trip
As a high school teacher with twenty-three years of experience and the emotional scars to prove it, I thought I’d seen everything. I had navigated parent-teacher conferences with mothers who insisted their precious angels were “gifted misunderstood geniuses” (usually while said angels were setting fire to their homework in the background), survived budget cuts that left me teaching chemistry with baking soda and vinegar, and even endured the Great Vaping Crisis of 2023. But nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for the four-month odyssey that was planning our senior class trip. My thirty-two twelfth-graders had turned destination selection into a Kafkaesque nightmare of democratic process gone wrong. Barcelona was “too mainstream.” Prague was “just another Instagram trap.” Rome? “Ugh, Miss Johnson, it’s like, all old stuff.” Every suggestion met with the kind of withering dismissal usually reserved for cafeteria meatloaf. Meanwhile, our budget—generous enough for a weekend in Stuttgart, optimistic enough for maybe Berlin—sat there like a rebuke to our collective delusions of grandeur.
Then salvation arrived in the form of Mia, a girl whose primary academic achievement was memorizing every Eurovision winner since 1956. “What about Baku?” she announced during our fifteenth planning meeting, the words cutting through the usual chorus of complaints like a butter knife through overpriced Swiss cheese. “Azerbaijan. You know, from Eurovision 2011? ‘Running Scared’? They had those awesome flame towers and everything looked super fancy but also kind of affordable?” The room fell silent, thirty-two teenage brains processing this revelation with the intensity of quantum physicists discovering a new particle. A quick Google search revealed a city that seemed almost too good to be true: futuristic architecture, ancient history, Caspian Sea beaches, and—most miraculously—prices that wouldn’t require me to sell a kidney. The clincher came when someone pointed out that if Azerbaijan could host Eurovision, it must be in Europe, right? The logic was bulletproof in the way that teenage logic always is—completely wrong but somehow impossible to argue against. Our school’s travel policy, a document that hadn’t been updated since the 1980s when everyone thought the Berlin Wall would last forever, mandated bus travel for all European destinations. Perfect.
What followed was forty-eight hours of rolling purgatory across a continent, but here’s the thing nobody tells you about chaperoning teenagers on a bus: it’s basically foolproof. Confined to their seats like expensive, moody cargo, my usually feral students transformed into something approaching manageable human beings. They read books. They had actual conversations. They slept for more than three hours at a time. I experienced something I hadn’t felt in two decades of teaching: genuine peace. No worrying about lost students in Parisian metros, no hunting down stragglers in London pubs, no fielding panicked calls about missing passports. Just me, thirty-two contained teenagers, and the hypnotic rhythm of highway travel. I actually caught myself thinking, “This is brilliant. This is the future of educational tourism. I’m a genius.” The hubris was so complete, so perfect, that I should have known the universe was sharpening its knives.
We rolled into Baku at sunrise, the city’s famous Flame Towers catching the morning light like something out of a fairy tale, and for exactly forty-seven minutes, everything seemed perfect. The students pressed their faces against the windows, genuinely awestruck by the juxtaposition of medieval walls and space-age architecture. Then I made the announcement that would define the rest of our trip: “Alright everyone, we have today to explore! The bus leaves for home tomorrow at dawn.” The silence that followed was so profound it seemed to have its own gravitational pull. Thirty-two faces turned toward me with the kind of unified expression that said everything and nothing all at once. In that moment, watching my students file off the bus—their Eurovision-fueled excitement now tempered by the mathematical reality of our situation—I realized that sometimes the journey really is more important than the destination. Though I suspect they might have preferred a slightly longer destination to appreciate that particular life lesson. As we set off to explore Baku with the urgency of people who had exactly eighteen waking hours to see an entire country, I couldn’t help but think that we’d all just learned something valuable about the difference between planning a trip and actually taking one.
Culinary Reality Check
Look, let’s be honest. Some recipes promise a quick, exotic escape from your usual dinner routine, a culinary passport to a far-off land. This one delivers on the exotic part, but “quick” is a word I’d use with the same caution I’d use when handling a recently awoken teenager. It’s an adventure, to be sure, but one that requires a certain level of emotional and temporal investment. Here’s the debrief from our kitchen expedition.
Taste
A genuinely lovely departure from the usual. The mushroom and herb filling is earthy and satisfying, but be warned: the dill arrives with the subtlety of a houseguest who’s decided to stay for a week. A little less of it, and you’re in business. Otherwise, it’s a solid, enjoyable flavor profile that feels both rustic and refined.
Portion Size
A small miracle. In a world of chaos and uncertainty, the portion size was calibrated with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. It was, to put it simply, spot on.
Combination
The qutab and sumac yogurt are a match made in heaven, a perfect marriage of savory and tangy. But let’s be real, a meal composed entirely of beige and white needs a third wheel. A simple side salad would have been the perfect fresh, crunchy counterpoint, had we not been too exhausted to even consider chopping a cucumber.
Texture
A triumph. The dough, once you wrestle it into submission, fries up into a beautifully blistered, slightly chewy flatbread that holds its own against the soft, savory filling. No complaints here; the mouthfeel is delightful.
Spices
The dill needs to read the room. While it may have been invited, it certainly wasn’t meant to be the guest of honor, the keynote speaker, and the band. A little less of it—or perhaps none at all—would allow the other, more subtle spices to have their say.
Timing
Here’s where things get… creative. The 45-minute estimate provided by our AI chef is a work of pure science fiction, a testament to the optimism of a machine that has never had to finely chop 300 grams of mushrooms. Budget a solid 90 minutes, unless you happen to have a team of sous chefs hiding in your pantry.
Processing
Despite our initial skepticism and a frantic mid-recipe Google search on “how to fry qutab without setting off the smoke alarm,” the instructions were surprisingly clear and effective. We followed the steps, and against all odds, we ended up with something that looked exactly like it was supposed to. A small victory for humanity.
Completeness
The recipe’s suggestion of a side salad was technically correct but emotionally tone-deaf. After our 90-minute kitchen pilgrimage, making a salad felt as achievable as building a ship in a bottle. The meal also felt a little light on the protein, like a beautifully written prologue to a dinner that never quite arrived.
Environment
Here, the recipe atones for its temporal sins. With its low carbon footprint, it’s the kind of meal that makes you feel like you’re doing something good for the planet, even if you’ve just lost an hour and a half of your life to it.
Health
It’s a mixed bag, really. On one hand, it’s packed with vegetables and healthy fats. On the other, it relies heavily on white flour, which is sort of the junk food of the grain world. Think of it as a salad wearing a tuxedo made of Wonder Bread. It’s trying, and we appreciate the effort.
Tips for Redemption
- Recruit a sous chef (or at least a willing family member) to prevent culinary martyrdom and actual starvation while waiting for dinner
- Stage an intervention with the dill—either eliminate it completely or use it so sparingly that it whispers rather than shouts
- Consider protein-rich filling variations like vegan minced meat or smoked tofu to make it feel more like a complete meal and less like an expensive appetizer
