We had my 92-year-old great-aunt join us for lunch yesterday, and I reckoned (correctly) that despite her career as a domestic science instructor she had little experience of Georgian cuisine. I produced the following:

1. Khinkali - though not too many, since this was only lunch
2. Eggy mushrooms with herbs
3. Beans with garlic
4. A new recipe for me, beetroot salad: ( recipe )
5. As a side dish, pomegranate seeds. I discovered (in the run-up to F's birthday party) the Secret we northern Europeans are never told about pomegranates. It is this: split them open and hold them in a bowl of water. The seeds sink and the pith floats. You may have to encourage the seeds to detach from the pith quite vigorously, but you end up with a very munchy pile of purplish nibbles.

It all went down well, anyway.

A fairly experimental set of recipes last night, with friends M and E coming over for dinner, and my mother-in-law staying, so it was cooking for five.

( Starter: Asparagus Soup, Georgian recipe )
( Main course: Bobatee - South African recipe )
( Side dish 1: Cucumber and sesame seeds - Cambodian recipe )
( Side dish 2: Green beans and garlic - Georgian recipe )
( Dessert: Rhubarb crumble - Doctor Who recipe )

Thanks to a locked post on my friends-list, I now know where to eat next time I visit the Great Wen.

(Coincidentally, the nickname "The Great Wen" was coined by William Cobbett, who had a garden more or less where the Gerorgian restaurant is now.)

Anne had got a massive chunk of lamb for dinner yesterday, which was just about enough for seven adults (including my mother, liberaliser and the future Mrs liberaliser, and the future Mrs liberaliser's parents, who mainly speak Hungarian). I found a really good recipe for it, as follows:

( Lamb recipe )

Along with it I did yer standard boiled potatoes, the braised celery and walnuts which had been successful in January (this time over-catered rather than under-catered) and two more vegetable recipes, both of which I had to adapt slightly to fit my resources.

( Spiced Peas and Yogurt )

( Carrots with oregano and lemon )

There were no complaints, which is a good sign.

Had three more successful recipes over the last couple of days, one New Internationalist, one Georgian, and one even from Good Housekeeping, which I shall record here.

( Colombian beef stew with fruit )

( Braised celery with walnuts )

( ხის სოკო: Khis soko, Georgian wild mushrooms )

Over the holiday weekend I did a number of Georgian recipes, some for the first time, some that I had succeeded with before. I know a few of you are interested in cooking, and anyway posting them here is a good way of keeping the recipes to hand if I should ever find myself somewhere without the recipe book but with an internet connection (and adds to previous posts).

1) Chicken with herbs (Chakhokhbili) - total preparation time about an hour and a half; recipe claims it serves 6 to 8 but in fact I found it about right for five. The recipe stipulates that you must chop up the chicken by hand yourself into about ten pieces. Probably you could do this with just pre-packed legs or breasts, but it goes against the spirit of it.

( recipe )

2) Green beans with egg (Mtsvane Lobios Chirbuli) - total cooking time about 45 mins; recipe claims it serves 4 but I think that is only as a side dish (in our case, with the chicken). I found I had used too much water and butter, and had to add a second egg to even things out, with much more stirring and cooking towards the end than perhaps should have been the case.

( Read more... )

3) Khinkali/ხინკალი. These are real Georgian delicacies, dumplings stuffed with meat (though you can use cheese as well) and poached. See the Wikipedia article for a picture of them. I really love them, and approached the cooking process with reverence and trepidation, not least because it is years since I last grappled with any cooking involving pastry; I couldn't actually remember the last time I used a rolling pin. I didn't use enough flour on the working surface, so found that the result was a bit sticky, and unfortunately the bottoms fell off the earlier ones I made. Still, they tasted delicious even if the presentation wasn't quite what I had hoped. This recipe claims to make 25 but my unpracticed technique delivered only about 18. It's enough food for four or five people though. Took me about two hours but that would be less with practice.

( Read more... )

To eat them, hold up by the topknot, and carefully bite off the bottom corner so that you can catch the stream of juice in your mouth. After eating the meaty part, you don't have to eat the topknot itself (traditionally thrown to any passing dogs). Yummy.

At least I think it is called სოუსი in Georgian; that's the most likely transliteration of the name given in the recipe book (sousi) and I found it on a cookery webpage in Georgian, but am still not completely convinced.

Anyway it was a delicious beef stew. Recipe as follows:



What really lifted my spirits about this meal is that B, who had been grumpy and unable to communicate with us all day, really loved it, actually dancing for joy between forkfuls of meat and potatoes. She is the least fussy eater of the three children, and was not at all perturbed by the presence of hot peppers. The recipe claims to be enough for 4 to 6, but between two adults and a hungry nine-year-old we finished it all up.

artw pointed out as we licked our lips afterwards that for all this is presented as a typical traditional Georgian recipe, several of the vital ingredients - potatoes, tomatoes, both types of pepper - must have arrived in Georgia some centuries after The Knight in the Tiger Skin left. I'm sure Georgian cooking was pretty good even before 1492, but I bet that the introduction of said new ingredients has done no harm at all.

The two Georgian recipes I did the other night (from the Darra Goldstein book, us, uk):

NB - quantities are given in American, so I had to estimate. But Georgian recipes are more a matter of adherence to the spirit than the letter of what is intended, so you just go with what seems right.

Salmon Buglama (ie stew)

¾ cup oil
2 pounds (ie 900g) salmon, cut into 1 ½ inch (4 cm) pieces
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 cup chopped cilantro (ie coriander)
2 medium onions, peeled, sliced and separated into rings
2 small lemons, sliced
4 bay leaves
1 ½ lb sliced tomatoes (or 700g tinned)
garlic to taste

Use a deep saucepan and stack up the stew in the following order: ¼ cup oil; salmon; salt and pepper; cilantro/coriander; onions; lemons; bayleaves; another ¼ cup oil; tomatoes; the final ¼ cup oil; more salt and pepper, and garlic if you like. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, simmer over a low heat for 15 minutes, eat it up. Dead easy.

Soko Arazhanit (mushrooms in cream)

1 tablespoon butter
1 pound (500g) mushrooms, thickly sliced
salt
freshly ground pepper
1 ½ cups (I reckon about 200g) heavy cream

4 handfuls of fresh parsley
4 handfuls of fresh dill
5 whole black peppercorns
2 inches (5 cm) of cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
3 cloves

Melt the butter. Toss the mushrooms in the butter. Add salt and pepper. Heat the cream to boiling and pour over the mushrooms.

Now for the tricky bit. Tie the remaining ingredients into a "cheesecloth bag" (as previously noted, I disassembled some teabags and used them instead) and add to the mushrooms.

Cover and simmer for 45-50 minutes. Remove the cheesecloth bag (or in my case the teabags) and serve.

Two more Georgian recipes to do again:

Salmon Buglama, a stew with coriander and lemon
Soko Arazhanit, mushrooms in cream.

The latter was the more technically taxing, in fact. My recipe book demands that the herby ingredients be tied into cheescloth, which is an alien concept this side of the Atlantic. So, on Anne's suggestion, I unstapled and emptied a couple of tea bags, stuffed the herbs in instead, and stapled them shut again with the desk stapler from our study. It seemed to work OK.

And our visitors from Manchester seemed satisfied.

I tried two more Georgian recipes last night, one of which, for the first time since I've been using the book, was not totally successful (a lamb and bean stew - somehow there didn't seem to be enough ingredients and the tast of the herbs didn't come through) though the other was good (fry slices of aubergine, smear with crushed garlic, scrape the garlic off again, serve bedecked with coriander leaves).

Another beautiful day here. I still have those two writing tasks from earlier in the week (and thanks, sameen and agirlnamedluna for your input - and I see also Carl Bildt is thinking about it). But will try and fit it all in before going to England (for conference in rural Sussex) tomorrow.

In response to a hail of requests (well, two, from crazysoph and mkjuliemk), I'm posting the two Georgian recipes I did for Saturday dinner.

The main dish specifies pheasant (or cornish hen, whatever that is, at a pinch) but I substituted guinea fowl and the results were satisfactory. I think the key is to have two birds of about 2.5 lb, 1.2 kg each, preferably with a flavour of their own. The sauce base is, er, unusual - I think it is the first recipe I have ever seen for a rich sauce using tea - but very easy.

( Moshushuli Khokhobi )

That was not bad at all, if I say so myself. I did rice with it, and also this Georgian bean recipe, which was very herby and flavoursome in the best Georgian tradition, and uses that very scientific measure of herbs, a sprig (good excuse to lay in some fresh herbs though):

( Mtsvane Lobios Chirvuli )

All from Darra Goldstein's book. Will report back as I do more.

The word ჩანახი should look rather like this:

It tastes delicious.

I have been cooking ჩანახი. I put it in the oven after lunch, and then had to come into work for the afternoon. Now I am going home to eat it. Mmmm.

11) The Georgian Feast: The Vibrant Culture and Savory Food of the Republic of Georgia, by Darra Goldstein

I don't usually blog books until I've finished reading them, but this has to be an exception, as I will take several more months to absorb the full range of possibilities here. Georgian food is very yummy indeed (as those of you reading my July entries will be aware). Have been working through these recipes, and while my natural instinct of to try and cook those with the most unpronounceable names (Tklapi, Chkmeruli) in fact I've been restricted by availability of ingredientrs and my own willingness to experiment with new cooking techniques. So, basically, we've had grilled trout, cheese with mint, chicken stew and salmon stew (that last for the in-laws last night, while Anne and I went out). It all tastes yummy. No wonder this book won the Julia Child Cookbook of the Year award.

Gebzhalia - rolled slices of cheese in mint sauce. Mmmm.

I'm not sure if this is really chicken. It tastes better than any chicken I've ever eaten. (Let alone cooked.)

Pickled garlic, and the best dolmades I've ever had. With tkemali.

Tarragon-flavoured lemonade and chvishtari by the river as the sun goes down.