Recipe - Mantabour (Yogurt Dumpling Soup)

This is one that I found a ton of different variations for.  Manti is a word for dumpling, but it's not the Armenian word.  It's Turkish.  Tanabour is a yogurt soup.  A very similar soup with different shaped dumplings is Agenchik Soup.  The manti could also be served with a chicken broth instead of this yogurt based one.

As you can see by my army of references, I was trying hard to get something authentic.  I think the agenchik style might be a little more common, espcailly when in the broth, but the whole region has dumplings shaped like this and I liked the shape of the exposed meat on the top.  These little guys are pretty ubiquitous across most of Central Asia, the Middle East and the edge of Eastern Europe.

Apparently, in parts of Turkey, when a girl meets her future mother-in-law she is suppose to prepare manti.  The smaller the manti the better a cook the girl is.  They should be small enough that 40 can fit on a spoon.  My manti are considerably larger.   Maybe I'll try for the tiny ones when I get to Turkey.  You are meant to eat the manti in one bite to keep the juices from the meat intact.

The soup broth could be eaten without the dumplings either hot or cold.  It could even be watered down to a drink, Tahn.  I think the reason that I wanted to go with the yogurt soup is because of how much I liked the Afgani lamb stew that I made which also had a yogurt base.

Mantabour 

Dough

3 1/2 cup flour
3/4 t salt
2 T sunflower oil
1 T melted butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk

Filling

1 pound ground lamb or beef
1/2 cup water
1 large onion, diced
2 T minced parsley
1 t salt
dash black pepper
dash allspice

Soup

24 ounce strained yogurt
1 cup wheat berries (optional, I didn't use it)
2 eggs
1/2 onion
4 cups beef or chicken broth
1/4 cup sunflower oil
8 cloves garlic, minced

Dumpling Dough

Mix the dough ingredients together.  Let the dough rest for 2 hours.  I actually made this the night before and let it sit in the fridge.  I took it out about 30 minutes before I planned to use it.

Dumpling filling

Cook the meat and water on low heat, stirring occasionally.  Once the water has evaporated, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until onions are translucent.  Remove from heat.

Dumpling assembly

Roll the dough to about 1/8 of an inch thick and cut into squares of about 1 1/2 inch or smaller.  Mine were 1 1/2 inch, but i could have gone smaller for sure.

Put a marble size of the filling in the center of the square

Pinch the sides up to make a canoe shape.  Keep going until you've used it all up.

Pack your little boats tightly on a cookie sheet.  Pour 2 T melted butter in the cookie sheet around your boats.

Bake the dumplings at 375 for 20 to 30 minutes.

Soup

Simmer chicken broth and wheat berries until it is reduced by 1/2.  Set aside to cool.
Beat yogurt and egg.
Saute onion and garlic in the sunflower until the onion turns a light brown (20 minutes).
Whisk the cooled chicken broth into the yogurt egg mixture then heat slowly, stirring constantly.

Assembly
Put five or six manti in the bottom of a shallow bowl.  (or more if your manti were a lot smaller than mine).  I added some soup around the manti and was careful to not submerge the manti.  But that was more for presentation.

References

• http://atelierchristine.com/archives/7503/recipe/mantabour-armenian-yogurt-dumpling-soup
• http://www.thearmeniankitchen.com/2010/09/marian-amiraians-yogurt-soup-tanabour.html
• https://books.google.com/books?id=VR1JSEoUOGIC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=agantch&source=bl&ots=XLxhVgOzXO&sig=QF78aLIO9cBu6MeuxpHjpb8e9aM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAWoVChMIoYLR3ID0xgIVSVWICh1nvgN4#v=onepage&q=agantch&f=false
• http://www.dimasharif.com/2012/01/armenian-manti-and-quickie-in-beirut.html
• http://www.littlearmenia.com/html/cooking/recipe-details.asp?id=196
• http://www.thearmeniankitchen.com/2014/05/agenchik-soup-specialty-from-musa-dagh.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manti_(dumpling)
• http://www.sras.org/manti