23. March 2009 by Azat.

I am making dinner tonight for 2 friends who are coming over and thought I would share the main entree recipe…

Manti - non vegetarian
.5 lb ground beef
.5 lb ground lamb
2 table spoons of finely chopped parsley
1 small onion, minced
salt
pepper
won ton wrappers - I have been known to make the dough as well however won ton skins work almost as well.
2 cups water
2 cups plain yogurt
2 cloves garlic
6 tbsp butter

To prepare the filling, combine the ground beef, ground lamb, onion, salt, pepper, and parsley in a large bowl and mix well. Set aside. While in the pack cut them in half then cut about 3/4 of an inch from the other side. You would end up with two stacks of skins at about 1 1/4 inch by 1 1/2 inch. Place half a teaspoon of the filling in the center of each square. Pinch the two ends with your fingers to form a canoe-shaped pastry.(I brush it with water to make it stick together. Arrange the manti close together, meat-side up, in a well-buttered pan. Add table spoon of butter to the top of the manti every 2 rows. Bake at 350 degrees about 20-30 minute, or until the manti are golden brown. Keep warm. Boil the water as the manti is almost ready. Combine the yogurt and garlic in a mixing bowl. When The Manti is ready add the 2 cups of boiling water on top of the manti right in the pan and let it simmer for 2-3 more minutes in the oven to get the pasta to become aldente. To serve, place the manti into individual bowls, add garlic-yogurt mix. My dad also likes to add a tablespoon of tomato paste that has been fried in a pan with butter and a little bit of water to make it more runny.

Manti Vegetarian.
Same as above except replace the beef and lamb with the ground tofu(it tasted amazingly good) and add a bit of olive oil and 2 table spoons of tomato paste to the mixture. Everything else follows the same.

I made 2 pans today and the whole thing took me about 70-80 minutes

I have also seen the manti taken out of the pan and dumped into a yogurt soup like spas with no bulgure however cant say I have tried that.

Adding a link to a video on youtube by a wonderful Armenian cook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVg3vzkYei8

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23. March 2009 by Azat.

Its been a while since I wrote here.  Have had a crazy few weeks.  Rumors started about a month ago that we were going to have the 3rd set of layoffs at work and finally last Friday the layoff did happen.

As expected I was on the list of the layoffs but will continue to work there for 2 more months.  Its pretty amazing to me how fast we imploded within.  We went from 95 to 420 back down to about 100 again in a short period of time.  For the first 2 years coming home before 10PM I would feel embarrassed and ashamed as my team was all still at work.  We all worked so hard and gave up SO much of our lives away for this company but unfortunately so many dreams had to come to an end.

I feel like I have one more startup type of environment left in me and after that I would be only able to work at a big company.

The good days at Spot Runner were the BEST and I will forever miss them.  And the group of people I met and became friends with many are wonderful.

Such is life  Time to move on.

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