Piti

Preparing to cook piti starts with soaking chickpeas — they should be left in water overnight. Just before making the soup, ingredients need to be prepared: cut a quarter of an onion, clean and chop the meat — flesh, brisket, shoulder, neck, ribs (50 g each). It's important that it comes from different parts of the carcass: brisket adds fat to the broth, while neck and shoulder enhance the flavor.

Place pieces of meat, lamb fat, dried plums, and onion in a tall and narrow clay pot. Fill with water — almost to the top, leaving about a centimeter. Put on high heat and bring to a boil.

When the broth boils, reduce the heat to the minimum and remove the foam. At that time, add a little salt — to season the meat (but adjust the salt to taste at the very end). Let it simmer. (Important point: the broth should not boil vigorously, otherwise it will be cloudy.)

After three hours, add chickpeas to the soup (you can also use dry chickpeas, but then add them at the very beginning when the broth boils) — and wait another five hours. Twenty minutes before it's ready, add a potato to the pot. Finally, after seasoning with salt and pepper, pour in a tablespoon of saffron infusion (which is made simply: soak 1 gram of saffron in 250 ml of warm water for one and a half hours).

Pour the ready soup into a bowl and sprinkle with dried mint. Piti is served with govan onion (Azerbaijani sweet onion resembling shallot) and sumac, which adds a sourness. They are placed in separate bowls: the onion is eaten as is, while sumac is added to the soup to taste.