Georgian Cooking Class

I've turned 56 today and my niece, who is visiting me in Tbilisi, gave me a most wonderful birthday present - a Georgian cuisine cooking class taught by a wonderful chef Karolina. Before retiring, she used to be a tour guide, so we had a pleasure of not only learning how to cook traditional Georgian dishes but also of listening to her stories about Georgia and its culture.

This is a highly tailored individual class where you can request the dishes to be taught and tried. My niece requested that we make khachapuri (traditional cheese bread or as locals sometimes call it, Georgian pizza that makes Italians cry), khinkali (Georgian dumplings), and Shkmeruli (chicken in cream sauce).

We started out with the chicken as it would have taken the longest to cook. This is a recipe from the village of Shkmeri in the Racha region of western Georgia — a mountainous, relatively isolated area.

Karolina told us the legend behind the dish: Once many years ago, a Shkmeri woman had to entertain unexpected guests. Since she only had chicken and dairy at home, she seasoned the whole chicken with local spices (salt, hot red pepper, safran, and cilantro), flattened it in a ketsi (clay pan) and roasted it for about 30 minutes. Then she took it out and drowned it in the sauce made of half-and-half and a whole head of garlic (not just 2-3 cloves). Then the chicken was sent back into oven for another 10-15 minutes to finish cooking in the sauce. So it's a relatively simple dish made unique with the combination of spices and the sauce.

While the chicken was roasting, we started making khinkali. These are traditional Georgian dumplings, perhaps the most famous item in the national cuisine. It is different from other dumplings in the way the dough is made (very dense and hard to roll out) and the meat stuffing that is a combination of 700 grams of beef and any other meat except chicken (lamb, pork, veal or even duck), spiced up with fresh onions and the special combination of spices, where the main ingredients are cumin and mint.

Khinkali must contain some juice inside, so the stuffing is deliberately made watery. Once they are rolled out and shaped, they need to be boiled for about 10-12 minutes. Again, a relatively simple meat-and-dough dish with a distinct Georgian kick to it.

Khinkali is such a staple of Georgian cuisine that Karolina has a t-shirt on her studio wall with the following message in Russian:

Never, you hear me, never, ever eat khinkali with a knife and fork - it's a total failure! Never eat their tops either - this will be the final nail on the failure's coffin. Khinkali must be eaten with hands only, holding them by the top and sinking your teeth right into their side, slurping the tastiest bullion out of them, and tossing the tops out to the side like a true djigit (Georgian horse rider and warrior).

I have to confess: I buy frozen khinkali from a family-run vegetable stand and they are always good. So I see little value in making them on my own, especially now knowing how hard the dough is to work with. But it was a great experience to learn all the steps and do it from scratch in the class.

While the khinkali were boiling, we have worked on the last dish - khachapuri. Karolina had the dough already started before we came because it's a yeast-based dough that takes time to "ripe." So all we had to do is to mix is with three types of cheeses (soft goat and cow milk cheeses), flatten it on the pan and send it to the oven.

Karolina also treated us for a glass of white wine from the Tsinandali estate - a famous Georgian winery that was started by Alexander Chavchavadze, who brought to Georgia the European technology of making white wines. It was delicious and the entire lunch was an unforgettable experience!

What a great Birthday gift it was, for which I am forever grateful to my niece.