Georgian food

A Little Introduction About Georgian Cuisine Khachapuri is made with everything from cornmeal to flaky sheets as thin as phyllo, but most styles begin with yeasted, white wheat flour dough, though they are often mixed to different consistencies.

The Complete Khachapuri Field Guide Mapping the ooey-gooey cheese breads of the Caucasus

BY BENJAMIN KEMPER

The boat-shaped adjaruli khachapuri benefits from a wetter, pizza-like dough that’s easy to roll out, holds its shape well during baking, and is satisfyingly tender to pull apart from the addition of a bit of oil.

Other styles, such as the common imeruli and its variations, are more like naan or pita, and are made with stronger, stiffer doughs that use less water. The lower hydration and lack of added fat gives these versions the strength and extensibility necessary for wrapping around a filling and being rolled quite thin.

Both doughs are easy to handle and quick to prepare. You don’t need any special equipment, but an electric stand mixer fitted with a dough hook cuts the effort down significantly. Dry instant yeast eliminates the finicky temperature-sensitivity of ordinary dry yeast and an unbleached, all-purpose white flour like King Arthur ensures quick gluten development. Both styles of khachapuri are technically flatbreads, meaning they don’t require a second round of proofing before going in the oven, though the adjaruli style holds it shape better with a 15-minute rest between shaping and baking.

Then: Choose Your Cheese The two cheeses most commonly used in khachapuri are imeruli and sulguni. Imeruli is a fresh, crumbly, mountain cheese from the Imereti region. It is made with a mixture of cow’s milk and the whey leftover from making firmer cheeses. Sulguni, from the coastal Samegrelo region, has a firmer and more elastic consistency and a briny tart flavor. When combined and melted, they become a filling that is creamy and stretchy, with a feta-like funk.

Georgia is not licensed to export its dairy products to the U.S. or the EU, and Georgian-style cheeses can be tough to find. American-made imeruli and sulguni are occasionally available at Russian and Ukrainian markets, or online, or you can try your hand at making your own.

For convenience, our recipes use a mixture of low moisture mozzarella and crumbled feta, a combination that we find comes very close to the traditional recipe, and a trick many Georgian restaurants in the U.S. use as well.

Adjaruli Khachapuri: The Cheese Boat Here in the U.S., the most popular khachapuri comes from the region of Adjara in the southwestern part of the country bordering the Black Sea. This canoe-shaped incarnation is traditionally heaped with the standard mixture of sulguni and imeruli cheese.

In the final minutes of baking, a whole raw egg is cracked into the basin of the khachapuri to cook until the white is just barely set. When it comes out of the oven, a few slices of butter are plopped onto the egg and it is served immediately. Diners stir the melting butter and the runny yolk into molten cheese, making a savory, gooey sauce in which to dip the fluffy, soft crust.

This style of khachapuri can range in size from an individual single-egg serving for one or two, all the way up to the size of an 18-inch pizza, loaded with 8 or 10 eggs. Adjaruli khachapuri is an event, meant to be eaten fresh and hot, as a hearty snack or shared as an appetizer.

While not called for in traditional recipes, I found that brushing the exposed dough with olive oil immediately before baking allowed for more even oven-spring, less overflow, less cheese-loss, and tidier khachapuri in general.

This style is always baked in a very hot oven; to avoid a soggy bottom (bane of pizzamakers and pie-bakers the world over), use a sheet of parchment paper to slide the khachapuri directly onto a preheated pizza stone or steel.

Imeruli and Friends Across the rest of Georgia, many khachapuri styles take their cues from the west-central region of Imereti. Imeruli khachapuri can be filled with either imeruli cheese or an imerulisulguni mixture. It is always served as a part of a supra, the traditional Georgian feast spread; the filling, savory pastry is generally treated as a side dish or dinner roll and is meant to be eaten alongside a full meal.

Since imeruli uses a dry dough, it tends to develop a skin, so be sure to keep the pieces you’re not working with covered with a loose sheet of plastic film or a clean, damp towel.

Once the dough has fermented, it will be quite cohesive, so flour your surface and rolling pinsparingly; too much flour and the dough won’t stick to itself to seal in the filling. While Imeruli khachapuri can be baked in an oven, it is just as easily cooked on the range, using an unoiled flat griddle or heavy skillet.

Once you’ve mastered your imeruli technique, you’ll be ready to tackle its many flatbread cousins. To make a Megruli-style khachapuri, start with an Imeruli, then smother the top in crumbled imeruli and sulguni in the last few minutes of baking. For a take on lobiani, skip the cheese inside and stuff the Imeruli dough with this smoky spiced bean filling, or opt for a lamb-and-onion stuffing to make Svaneti-style kubdari.

SATSIVI Satsivi (Georgian: საცივი) is a thick paste made from walnuts and served cold (‘Tsivi’ means ‘cold’ in Georgian). It is used in a variety of meat (usually chicken and turkey), fish and vegetable dishes. Traditional Satsivi, eaten at Christmas and New Year, is made with turkey. At other times of the year it is usually made with chicken. In this recipe we show how to make Satsivi with chicken.

Ingredients: 1.5 kilo whole chicken (or turkey), 700 grams of walnuts, 5 medium sized onions, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 tbs of white wine vinegar, 1 tsp of dried coriander, 1 tsp of blue fenugreek, 1 heaped tsp of dried marigold, 1 heaped tsp of dried red pepper, half tsp of cinnamon, 5 crushed cloves and, salt (amount dependent upon personal preference). Preparation: Add 2 liters of water to a deep pot and add the chicken. Heat on a medium heat until parboiled. Remove the chicken from the pot and add to a roasting tray. Do not discard the water that the chicken was boiled in as this will be needed later. Use some of the surface oil in the pot to baste the chicken. There should be no need for additional oil. Roast the chicken on 180 C heat until cooked. Cut the roasted chicken into medium sized pieces. Finely chop the onions and add to a pan with a little of the surface oil from the pot use to parboil the chicken. Fry for 6-7 minutes. Add the fried onions to a mixing bowl and use a blender to make them smooth. Add the onions to the pot used to par boil the chicken. Grind the walnuts. We used a meat grinder. If the walnuts are not old, the grinding process will produce some walnut oil. Save this. Re-grind the walnuts. Add 1 tsp of dried coriander, 1 tsp of blue fenugreek, 1 heaped tsp of dried marigold, half tsp of cinnamon, 5 crushed cloves. Mix by hand and use your hands to crush the mixture to extract any remaining oil from the walnuts. Save the oil. Add 1 heaped tsp of dried red pepper, 4 cloves of garlic and salt (amount dependent upon personal preference) to a mortar and use a pestle to crush the ingredients. Add the crushed red pepper/garlic/salt mixture, together with 2 tbs of white wine vinegar, to the ground walnuts and mix thoroughly. Gradually add water to the nut mixture from the pot used to parboil the chicken, mixing as the water is added. Keep adding and mixing until the mixture has a smooth consistency, like in the picture below.

Once mixed, hold a sieve over the pot used to parboil the chicken and pour the mixture into the pot. Discard any remaining large pieces left in the sieve. Add the chicken pieces to the pot, bring to the boil and remove from the heat. Allow to completely cool before serving. Serving: Serve cold. Any excess walnut oil that was extracted during preparation can be poured onto the dish.

Khinkali is a very popular Georgian dumpling made of twisted knobs of dough, stuffed with meat and spices. It is considered to be one of the national dishes of Georgia.

Different regions of Georgia make khinkali with different fillings. The most popular filling is a pork/beef mix. In the mountains, khinkali is often made with a lamb filling. Fillings can also include Imeretian cheese mixed with cottage cheese; mushrooms; and mashed potato. City versions include kalakuri khinkali (with thinly chopped parsley) and khevsuruli khinkali (without parsley).

This is how to make them: Ingredients for 30 Khinkali: Dough – 1.4 kilo of flour (1.1 kilo for the dough and .3 kilo for dusting and kneading) , 2 eggs, 450 ml of warm water; Filling – 700 grams of ground beef and pork mix, salt, half tsp of dried red pepper, quarter tsp ground caraway seed, 2 small onions (optional) and 500 ml of water. Cooking – water and salt for the cooking pot.Preparation: Add 1.1 kilo of flour to a mixing bowl. Make a depression in the middle of the flour and add the eggs.Add 450 ml of warm water.

Mix the ingredients from the middle of the bowl until all of the flour is mixed.The dough should be formed into a ball.Divide the dough into two pieces.Sprinkle a work surface and one of the balls of dough with flour and knead (very firmly) and fold the dough.Continue kneading and folding until the dough is very firm.Roll out the dough until it is about 1/3 of an inch thick.Cut out circles of about 2.5 inches in diameter with a drinking glass.Carefully remove the excess dough.Use a rolling pin to roll each circle into a thin eight inch round. These rounds will be filled with a meat and spice mixture to make khinkali.

NOTE: Repeat the whole process of kneading, folding and cutting and rolling of rounds with the remaining ball of dough. You will then have enough rounds to make about 30 khinkali.Preparation (the khinkali filling): Add the meat, spices, 2 finely chopped onions (optional – we didn’t use onions) and salt to a mixing bowl.

Mix the ingredients by hand and then add 25 ml of water and squash and squash the mixture. Repeat this process 20 times until you have mixed at least 500 ml of water with the meat. This will ensure that your khinkali have lots of ‘juice’.The meat should look like this at the end of the process.Preparation (making the khinkali):Take one round of dough from your pile of rounds.Add 1 heaped tbs of the meat mixture to the center of the round.Use your thumbs and index fingers to make an accordion type fold all around the outside.It will become easier with practice! 19 folds are considered to be ideal.When all pleats have been formed the khinkali should look like the one in the picture below.Roll the nubbin of the dumpling between your finger and thumb and pinch off extra dough. The khinkali should look like this.

Put each khinkali on a board or work surface that has been dusted with flour.Carefully place the dumplings into a deep pan of boiling salty water, about 10-15 at a time (depending on the size of your pan).Boil for 12 to 14 minutes. If the dough has been made properly the dumplings will not burst.Serving: Khinkali are served hot with no garnish other than black pepper.

Eating khinkali: There is an art to eating Khinkali. The doughy top, where the pleats all meet, is never eaten, but used as a handle for holding the hot dumplings and is left on the plate to show how many have been eaten. In Georgia, this top is called the “kudi” (Georgian ქუდი, hat) or “kuchi” (Georgian კუჭი, belly button).

Mari and Nini