Tag Archives: Georgia

This is a Georgian Food Blog

Posted on by
4

A few month ago, I was announcing that this is a Russian food blog — and it worked. But, as you’ve certainly noticed by now, this is more than that. For example, this is also a Georgian food blog. The Georgia we’re talking about here is the Republic of Georgia of course, in the Caucasus; and I dedicated many posts to its food, its dishes, its cooking and its cuisine.

Seriously, Google, look at the top results when one queries “Georgian food blog”! The first one is an excellent blog that I encourage everyone to read (it’s in my blogroll), but it’s essentially about Estonian cuisine. The third one consists of 50 or so Georgian recipes, all posted in December 2007 (five years ago); it’s interesting, but it’s not exactly a blog. Which brings us to the second one, a single picture from the aforementioned recipes, re-posted on some other site; this certainly wins the Palm d’Or for lamest search result.  And so on…

Continue reading →

Lamb Testicle Chashushuli and Cheese Khinkali

Posted on by
2

I seem to be going through an “extreme offal” phase. Only a few weeks ago, I was writing about veal brains, and here I am striking back, this time below the belt! I found these lamb testicles from 3-Corner Field Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket a few weeks ago, and figured that lamb offal would be a good candidate for a nice Georgian stew. Chashushuli usually consists of stewed veal with tomato, onion, spices, and herbs (plus sometimes other vegetables), but there’s no real restriction on the meat you’re using.  If you want to stick to the more traditional veal, I would suggest trying sweetbreads — you can prepare them pretty much the same way as the testicles below.

Continue reading →

Bakery Review: Georgian Bread

Posted on by
Reply

Georgian Bread, in Brighton Beach, occupies what could be the ultimate niche market. As you probably guessed, it makes Georgian bread. Two kinds to be precise: shoti and khachapuri. And this is pretty much it! Sure, there are a few homemade spreads and salads, grocery items like tkemali, adjika, pickled walnuts, sodas, and Georgian-style cheeses — all things that you can find in Brighton supermarkets with a much wider selection. But the two breads are the only bakery items, and they totally justify the trip.

I’ve been going to Georgian Bread for years, but it looks like I missed the blogging bandwagon. Law & Food, Serious Eats and Fork in the Road all recently published excellent posts about the place. Someone even posted a picture of the oven on Yelp.

Back to the breads:

The shoti is a long, flat yeast-dough bread baked in the toné, the Georgian tandoor. This bread is delicious when you eat it fresh from the oven, and Georgian Bread’s rendition is no exception (you have to get there early, as the bread is done first thing in the morning and partly sold to the few local Georgian restaurants). Unfortunately, its very shape means it goes stale quickly. In a perfect world, it would always be baked to order, but even in Georgia this is rarely the case nowadays.

The khachapuri, a cheese bread I’ve already talked about many times, comes in its most classic form, called Imeretian, with the cheese trapped inside the dough. See how the cheese appears in the center? This gives us an idea of how the man must be assembling the pies: the cheese is placed in the center of a disc of dough, then the dough is folded like a purse, the knot of extra dough in the center is cut off,  and maybe the whole thing is flattened a bit to its final shape. This is why you don’t see any sealed edges.

Tasting time! The bread survived the return trip quite well and was still warm when we got home, which is good news as I wouldn’t recommend reheating it or eating it cold. This is certainly the most authentic khachapuri I’ve tasted this side of the Atlantic. Unlike what so many lazy restaurants seem to think, it does pay to make your own dough instead of using crappy store-bought pizza dough — surprise! The oozy cheese mixture, made with a blend of Georgian-style cheeses found at the store, has an unexpectedly light texture and the rich, salty flavor I’m usually looking for, slightly on the mild side. The dough is fairly airy and has a good bread taste.


I’m not going to give Georgian Bread a rating like I do with my regular Restaurant Reviews; it would be unfair to treat it like a sit-down restaurant when it’s really just a counter selling a few items. But needless to say at this point, it has my seal of approval!

Tarkhun, Tarragon Soda

Posted on by
6

Tarragon soda was invented by Mitrofan Lagidze in Tbilisi in 1887, and I already talked about Lagidze’s beverages here, in another post. But it wasn’t until 1981 that Soviet Union started mass production and gave Tarkhun (whose name is derived from the word for tarragon in Georgian and other languages from around the Caucasus) its distinctive color by adding malachite green, a dye that is now considered toxic and banned in most countries. Don’t worry though, my recipe’s entirely safe and natural!

As surprising as the idea may first sound, Tarkhun is actually quite good and carries tarragon’s pleasant, mildly liquorice flavor. There are 2 challenges in making perfect Tarkhun:

  • Color. The tarragon syrup will be pale green right after you make it, but will quickly turn yellow. The role of the baking soda and the ice cubes in my recipe is actually to slow down that “yellowing” process, but it can only do so much. If you’re willing to make the recipe a bit more complicated, you could add the lemon juice at the last minute, when assembling the soda — acidity is a big factor in the color.
    You can add a drop of (FDA-approved) green coloring in each glass for a vibrant result (see my picture below). If you want to reproduce the color of the commercial versions (as in the picture at the very bottom of this post), you would probably need to add some blue coloring too. Or you can just choose to consume the all-natural yellow version.
  • Clarity. Chances are your soda will still contain small tarragon particles. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want a clearer beverage, you should consider using a 100-micron superbag. Now THAT will make you a true Tarkhun aficionado!

Tarragon syrup
Yields about 6 servings

8 oz sugar
3 oz water
1/8 tsp baking soda
0.35 oz tarragon leaves
3 oz ice cubes
1.5 oz lemon juice

  • In a saucepan, bring the sugar and water to a boil, stirring constantly. Mix in the baking soda and tarragon, cook for 1 minute and remove from the heat.
  • Transfer to a blender and process until smooth. Add the ice cubes and lemon juice and process again. Pass through a fine chinois and refrigerate.

Tarkhun
Yields about 6 glasses

tarragon syrup
36 oz sparkling water
green food coloring (optional)

  • For each glass, Mix 2 oz syrup with 6 oz sparkling water and a drop of food coloring. Top with ice. Enjoy!

A commercial Tarkhun

Walnut-Stuffed Eggplant Rolls

Posted on by
4

In Georgia, walnut-stuffed eggplant rolls are almost as popular as khachapuri. In Abkhazia, too, apparently, as I adapted this recipe from an Abkhaz cookbook! These rolls make for a very satisfying appetizer, and the filling strikes the perfect balance between spices, fresh herbs, moist onions and rich walnuts. My partner doesn’t even like eggplant, and she liked these!

Walnut-stuffed eggplant rolls
Yields about 24 pieces

1 1/2 lb Italian eggplant
salt
4 oz olive oil
6 oz very thinly sliced onion
2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
4 saffron filaments
8 oz shelled walnuts
2 tbsp chopped mint
4 tbsp chopped parsley
1/4 tsp piment d’espelette
4 oz pomegranate juice

  • Remove the stems from the whole eggplants, and slice the flesh lengthwise into slices about 3/16″ thick, discarding the skin-side slices. Generously season the slices with salt on both sides. Let rest for 15 minutes, then brush both sides with a wet paper towel.
  • Sauté the eggplant slices in olive oil in a hot frying pan until brown on both sides. Reserve on paper towels.
  • Sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil until golden brown. Season with salt, mix in the saffron and let cool.
  • In a food processor, process the walnuts, mint, parsley, piment d’espelette and pomegranate juice to a coarse paste. Transfer to a bowl and mix in the onion preparation. Place some mixture on one end of each eggplant slice, and roll into a cylinder. Refrigerate and take out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving.

Pork Brains Telavi

Posted on by
1

Unlike some of my previous dishes questionably named after Eastern European cities, this recipe truly was inspired by something I ate in Telavi, Georgia. Against all odds, the deserted restaurant in the town center featured brains on its menu, and they were delicious! The whole dish has a very mild flavor and melts in your mouth, and the way it’s prepared makes it easy for the squeamish to forget what they’re eating.

This is a very quick recipe, the main challenge being to find brains. You can use lamb, pork or veal brains based on their availability, the only difference will be their size. It is not uncommon to have to buy a whole head, in which case I recommend you ask your butcher to cut it in half for you — cutting the head yourself at home, either with a hand saw or a hammer and chisel, is a pretty tedious task. As I learned the hard way.

Pork brains Telavi
Yields 2 servings

2 pig brains (about 8 oz)
kosher salt
black pepper, ground
1 1/2 oz butter
1 oz scallion, white part only, thinly sliced
2 oz wine
2 oz chicken stock
1 egg, beaten
1/4 tsp scallion, green part only, thinly sliced
1/4 tsp chili pepper, thinly sliced

  • Place the brains into a brine made with 1.5% kosher salt, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours.
  • Drain the brains and gently pat dry with paper towels. Coarsely chop into 1″ cubes, and season with salt and pepper. Melt 1/3 of the butter in a pan over medium-high heat until brown (not black!). Add the brain cubes and scallion whites, and cook until golden brown, stirring regularly. Add the wine, reduce by half, then add the stock and cook until completely reduced, still stirring occasionally. Mix in the egg and the rest of the butter, cook for a couple minutes, and remove from the heat.
  • Transfer to a bowl, top with the scallion greens and chili pepper, and serve immediately.

Adjaran Khachapuri, or Death by Cheese

Posted on by
6

Wherever you go in Georgia, you can be sure to eat khachapuri at least once a day. These national cheese breads come in various shapes. The Imeretian khachapuri is a round pie filled with cheese, by far the most common. The Mingrelian one is similar, but topped with more cheese. The cheese is usually whatever is produced locally, from curds to sulguni, fresh or aged.

Today we’ll look at the Adjaran khachapuri, an open-face version topped with tons of cheese, plus an egg and slices of butter for maximum artery clogging. The bread is comparable to pizza dough, and many places actually sell both khachapuris and pizzas.  If you travel to Abkhazia, you’ll find out that the exact same dish (though sometimes without the egg) is marketed as the national dish:

Don’t call it Adjaran there though — you might get shot in the head! Locals have renamed it “lodochka”, “little boat” in Russian, which is particularly funny when you know that the only boats you’ll see in Abkhazia are Russian war ships.

Continue reading →

Chicken Tabaka

Posted on by
2

Chicken tabaka is a Georgian dish prepared in a special pan with a lid, called the tapaka. A small bird (usually a poussin) is flattened and fried whole until brown and crispy on all sides. You can get some very good pictures of the process here (the site is in Russian, but Google Translate does a decent job). The carcass is sometimes flattened with a meat pounder; it’s not rare in restaurants to hear loud banging noises coming from the kitchen just after you order your tabaka!

My main problem with the original recipe is that you end up with too little meat and too many bones.  I like replacing the poussin with a fleshier bird, like a guinea hen, and splitting it in half to serve two people. I get rid of the carcass and some of the wing joints, and keep only the bones that most people enjoy gnawing on. This also allows me to expose most of the skin to the frying pan.

The rest of my preparation focuses on optimizing two qualities of a good chicken: tender meat and crispy skin. To that effect, I brine the meat as with the Guinea Hen Satsivi, then fry it in a hot pan skin side down, before finishing it in a very hot oven without flipping it.

This dish is meant to be complemented with sauce or vegetables, which is why the recipe lists so few ingredients. Try it with tkemali or with a red pepper purée.

Chicken tabaka
Yields 2 servings

1 chicken (or guinea hen), 2 1/2 to 3 lb
kosher salt
3/4 tsp piment d’espelette
1 oz clarified butter

  • Cut off the last 2 wing joints of the chicken and reserve for stock. Separate the meat from the carcass in two halves, starting from the breastbone. Each half should now consist of a boneless breast and bone-in wing joint and leg, skin-on and in one piece. Reserve the carcass for stock, as well. Place the chicken halves in a pot, cover with a brine made of cold water blended with 7% salt, and refrigerate for 6 hours.
  • Discard the brine and soak the chicken in fresh cold water for 1 hour, changing the water every 15 minutes.
  • Pat the meat dry with paper towels, and sprinkle with piment d’espelette on all sides. Melt the clarified butter in a hot pan, add the meat skin side down, and sauté over high heat until brown. Transfer to a 500 F oven for about 15 minutes without flipping. Remove from the pan, let rest for a couple minutes, and serve.

Pheasant à la Russe

Posted on by
2

Here is another recipe I adapted from the Derrydale Game Cookbook. The original had you keep the whole bird on the bone, which must have been pretty hard to cut and eat once it was wrapped in forcemeat and ham! My pheasant is completely boned before being rolled, and the legs and wings, which are too tough to be enjoyable, are used for stock. I also made several other small tweaks throughout the recipe.

According to the Greek historian Aeschylus, common pheasant originated along the banks of the Rioni River in Georgia. Hence its scientific name, Phasianus colchicus, as Colchis designated a region of Western Georgia in ancient geography.

I encourage you to use real wild pheasant, whether you hunt it or buy it. You’ll have to watch out for buckshot, but it’s worth it for the taste. Serve the dish with a mix of mushrooms, also wild if possible.

Pheasant fabrication
Yields 4 servings

2 wild pheasants, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb each
1 lb additional pheasant or other poultry meat, skin included
livers from the pheasants if available
6-8 slices prosciutto
salt
black pepper, ground
3 oz dried cranberries

  • Cut the wings and drumsticks from the pheasant carcasses, and reserve for stock. Position each pheasant on its breast, and starting from the middle, separate the meat from the caracass. Once you’re done, you should have the breast and thighs still attached together. Bone the thighs and remove the skin. At this point, the meat is likely to break into 2 or 3 pieces (the skin was largely responsible for holding it together), but this is fine. Reserve the carcass and bones for stock.
  • Process the additional poultry meat, skin, and livers through a meat grinder using the small die. On a sheet of plastic wrap, arrange 3 or 4 slices of prosciutto so that they form a rectangle slightly larger than each boned pheasant. Cover with half of the ground meat, leaving a border clear around the edges. Do not season with salt as the prosciutto is already salty.

  • Arrange a boned pheasant on top, so that it more or less covers all of the ground meat. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with half of the dried cranberries. Starting from the edge near you, wrap the meat into the prosciutto to form a log. Tightly wrap the log into 2 layers of plastic film.
  • Repeat with the other pheasant. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours.

Smitane sauce
Yields 4 servings

3 oz onion, small dice
1/2 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1/2 oz butter
salt
black pepper, ground
2 oz white wine
6 oz pheasant or chicken stock
4 oz sour cream

  • Sauté the onion and garlic with the butter in a pan over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper, and cook until soft. Add the white wine and reduce almost completely, then add the stock and reduce to 1/4. Add cream, simmer for 5 minutes, and let rest for 15 minutes.
  • Process in a blender until smooth, then pass through a chinois and reserve.

Assembly
Yields 4 servings

pheasant logs
olive oil
smitane sauce

  • Remove the pheasant logs from the plastic film, and tie with butcher’s twine to further secure shape. Sauté with olive oil in a hot pan until brown on all sides. Add 1/2 cup water  and transfer to a 200 F oven. Cook for 1 1/2 hours, turning the meat when halfway done.
  • Cut off the twine and slice eat wrap into 4 pieces. The thigh meat will still look pink, which is fine, whereas the breast part will be much whiter.
  • Reheat the smitane sauce in a small saucepan and pour over the meat. Serve immediately.

Achma, Georgian Cheese Lasagna

Posted on by
8


Achma is a kind of cheese lasagna found in the Adjara and Abkhazia regions, where the crisp top crust contrasts with the tender cheesy layers. Somehow, I’ve eaten more of it in Moscow than in Georgia itself, but here it is in the picture above, next to the pomegranate juice, in a food stall in Abkhazia.

This is more time-consuming to make than it seems: count 2 1/2 hours from start to finish, as the assembly easily takes an hour. Most recipes spread the cheese mixture only on one or two layers and cover the other layers with butter, but I prefer to alternate cheese and butter layers. In Georgia, one’s choice of cheese is generally determined by local production, so feel free to experiment with any combination of rustic cheeses. It’s best to avoid mixing too many different cheeses, though, or the result will have a nondescript, generic cheesy taste that will make you regret you tried so hard. Here, I’m using two cheeses with complementary flavors: a tangy brynza (Bulgarian feta would be a good replacement) and a rich Ossau-Iraty (a firm sheep’s milk cheese from the French Pyrénées).

Achma
Yields one 9″ x 13″ pan

11 oz flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
2 oz milk
3 oz butter, very soft
8 oz brynza (or Bulgarian feta), coarsely crumbled
8 oz Ossau-Iraty, coarsely grated

  • In the bowl of an electric mixer fit with the paddle attachment, add the flour, salt and eggs, and mix over low speed until homogeneous. Add the milk, and mix for another 2 minutes. Form a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and let rest for at least 30 minutes.
  • Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Using a pasta machine, roll each piece to the next-to-finest setting. Grease a 9″ x 13″ Pyrex pan with some of the butter. Cook one pasta sheet in salted boiling water for 1 minute, shock in ice water, pat dry with paper towels, then arrange into the dish to form 1 layer, cutting as necessary. Cover the layer with 1/4 of the butter, spread with a knife or an offset spatula. Cook and arrange another pasta sheet the same way, and top with 1/4 of the brynza and Ossau-Iraty. Repeat this procedure 3 more times.
  • Bake the dish in a 400 F oven for 30 minutes, then finish under the broiler until brown, for 1 or 2 minutes.
  • Let cool for a couple minutes and serve.

Here is another variation for the holiday season! The butternut squash pasta dough and butter are inspired by a recipe for butternut squash cavatelli by Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot, found here.

Roasted butternut squash
Yield varies

1 butternut squash

  • Pierce the squash with a knife in a few places, then roast in a 350 F oven for an hour. Let cool for 30 minutes.
  • Cut the squash in half, lengthwise. Scoop out and reserve the seeds and pulp. Remove the skin, and reserve 1 lb of the flesh. Use the rest of the flesh for another recipe.

Butternut squash pasta dough
Yields enough dough for one 9″ x 13″ pan

1 lb roasted butternut squash flesh
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tbsp honey
1/2 oz butter
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
10 oz flour

  • Mix the butternut squash, garam masala, nutmeg, honey and butter with a fork. Transfer to an oven-safe dish, and bake in a 325 F oven for an hour. Let cool for an hour.
  • Transfer to a blender and process until smooth. Measure 8 oz of the purée, and transfer to the bowl of an electric mixer fit with the paddle attachment. Add the egg and salt and mix over low speed, then incorporate the flour in 2 additions, and mix for 3 minutes. Form a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and let rest for at least 30 minutes.

Butternut squash butter
Yields 2 1/2 to 3 oz

4 oz butter
4 oz butternut squash seeds and pulp

  • Place the butter and butternut squash seeds and pulp into a small saucepan, and cook in a 325 F oven for 1 hour.
  • Pass through a chinois and reserve.

Butternut squash achma
Yields one 9″ x 13″ dish

butternut squash pasta dough
butternut squash butter, melted
8 oz brynza (or Bulgarian feta), coarsely crumbled
8 oz Ossau-Iraty, coarsely grated

  • Assemble and bake as the regular achma above.