#16 Georgia
- Jen
- May 18, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2022
“Whatever you do Jen, if you want to do it in true Georgia style, you will need to get shit-faced.” A colleague, 2020.
The supra is a Georgian feast centred around toasts, and seemingly, eating and drinking to excess. The Tamada is the leader of the supra and it is their duty to lead the toasts to the country, to God, to the guests and to just about anything and everything else.
What’s the first rule of supra? See it off.
What’s the second rule of supra? See it off.
The chosen Tamada must finish his/her drink after each toast and it is frowned upon to start with a glass that is less than half full. Guests are encouraged to follow suite. Many courses of food are consumed around all of the toasting and the job is not complete until everyone is drunk, full and singing.
What a shame that Georgia has come out of the pan during lockdown because I would bloody LOVE to host a proper supra! I am having deja-vu though…I’m sure I’ve experienced this before…oh wait, I’m thinking of a rugby social.
Georgian cuisine is a wonderous fusion of Turkish, Persian, Caucasus and Mediterranean influences.
Walnuts are life: as oil, as flavour, as crunch, as butter, as candied in honey. If walnuts are life, marigold and fenugreek are air and water.
Meat stews, dumplings, fresh herbs, flatbreads, beans, cheeses, vegetables and soups…you get the gist. Georgians love their food!
Adjika to Georgia is what harissa is to Morocco. It’s a spicy pepper dip, used as a condiment or ingredient. I was tempted to buy a jar online to see what it’s like, but I do really want to go to Georgia (maybe hiking the Caucasus Mountains) so it would be nice to leave myself some surprises.
Puri and khacha
Khachapuri translates as “cheese” “bread”. My sources tell me that khachapuri is ubiquitous and that after a few days in Georgia you will definitely be sick of it. This is a cheese-filled bread, whereby the crust can be ripped off to dip into the cheesy filling. As it’s such a staple, it’s actually used as a measure of inflation by the “khachapuri index”. There are different varieties of khachapuri in different regions. I think the best one sounds like adjaruli khachapuri, from the Adjara region, which also includes a baked egg with a runny yolk.
If a country can have a national cheese, Georgia’s is sulguni, which is a brined cheese. The following is lifted directly from the sulguni Wikipedia page:
“…sulguni accounted for around 27% of cheese production in Georgia. It was the third most popular picked cheese of the Soviet Union.”
Shotis puri is an everyday flatbread baked in an oven called a tone, a bit like a naan in a tandoor oven.
Lobiani is a bread stuffed with beans.
A few Georgian favourites
Chakapuli – Lamb stew with herbs and plums. One of the most popular dishes in the country.
Nigvziani badrijani – fried aubergine rolls with a garlicky-walnut filling. These unusual-sounding morsels are found in most restaurants and are usually served on crackers or a piece of crusty bread so they can easily be eaten sans cutlery.
Satsivi is a cold walnut paste eaten with turkey at Christmas. Hmmm. Walnuts 0, cranberries 1 I reckon.
Lobio – mashed beans and walnuts, usually served with adjika.
Khinkali are traditionally spiced mincemeat dumplings but the filling can vary regionally. These should be eaten using your hands; the top pleated part of the dumpling is tough and designed for use as a handle rather than to be consumed and is discarded onto your plate to indicate how many khinkali you’ve eaten.
Ispanakhis pkhal – From what I can gather, this seems to be a sort of spinach and walnut dip, although it can be made with other leaves. I’m going to make it so see below for further information.
Churchkhela sound bizarre. They look like sausages but are layers of hardened grape juice that’s been poured over lines of walnuts. They’re surely worth a try on a trip to Tbilisi.
The wine Garden of Eden
Scholars maintain that Georgia is the birthplace of wine. It’s like my Mecca! They’ve been making wine in the region for eight THOUSAND years! Freshly stomped grape juice would be decanted into clay pots called qvevri and buried underground while it metamorphosed into the sweet, sweet nectar that is wine.
Today some wine is still made using the traditional method and there are plenty of ancient grape varieties on offer.
Orange wine is popular but it’s referred to as amber in Georgia. Orange/amber wine is made by leaving the skin on white grapes during fermentation. I also got myself a bottle of this but haven’t yet opened it for review.
Perhaps the most famous Georgian wine grape is saperavi (so obviously I bought a bottle from an online realter called Taste of Georgia, who, another source tells me, also have a shop somewhere in Croydon). Saperavi grapes have been grown in Georgia since 1886 and produce dry, deep red wines.
The saperavi was indeed very dry but it was also rather enjoyable. The enjoyment was over fairly quickly as a result of all the toasting, but it sounds like that’s how the Georgians intend their wine to be consumed!
Chacha is similar to grappa and seems to appear quite a lot in normal everyday life…I read somewhere that it’s not uncommon to take some with breakfast.
Sipping supra
My preparation for this feast was significantly hindered by my decision to perform 1 x burpee every minute on the minute for several hours that day. I cannot begin to explain to you just how much of an inconvenience such a feat is. Kneading bread dough at the seriously sticky stage burpees? Don’t even go there!
Adjaruli khachapuri: I love that I’m getting the opportunity to make so many different kinds of bread for this blog! This dough is enriched with butter, egg and milk and shaped like a boat to hold a cheesy mix of feta, mozzarella, egg and yoghurt. Towards the end of the baking, I made a well in the cheese and cracked an egg in. The rim was lovely and crusty, and I don’t need to describe what ripping bits off and dipping them into the baked cheese and runny yolk was like. This type of khachapuri would be great winter breakfast to keep you warm.
Nigvziani badrijani: The walnut paste is walnuts (shock), garlic, a dash of white wine vinegar, ground coriander and fenugreek and a pinch of cayenne pepper, zizzed up into a dry peanut-butter consistency paste. This is spread onto thin slices of fried aubergine (some of the slices didn’t make it to this stage as they had met an untimely demise falling into my mouth) and the aubergine is rolled up into cute little bitesize pieces. The end result was strangely satisfying. I used slices of cucumber as vehicles for their transportation from plate to mouth, which also added a welcome bit of fresh crunch.
Ispanakhis pkhal: Cooked spinach, walnuts, garlic, some vegetable oil, a dash of white wine vinegar, ground coriander and fenugreek and fresh coriander are blitzed to make a chunky solid kind of dip. I found this dish quite odd. I can’t tell you whether I liked it or not; it was just odd. I did keep eating it so that’s probably a good sign.
Khinkali: The dumpling wrappers are made from a plain flour dough. The filling is minced beef, onion, fresh coriander, ground cumin and fenugreek, a bit of chilli powder and some water to create a meaty broth inside the dumpling. My dumpling construction skills need work because mine don’t look much like those in Google! The flavour was lovely, but I don’t think they were executed that well as there wasn’t much liquid inside.
I really enjoyed the uniqueness of this meal and the incessant toasting was an absolute hoot!
This is the best bit…MALTA next!
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