Posted on 11/24/2017 8:25:50 PM PST by nickcarraway
Khachapuri, a gooey, addictive, cheese-stuffed flatbread, is ubiquitous in Georgia, the Caucasian country that shares borders with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey. Except for when there’s a funeral.
“If you’re in a bad mood or sad, when you’re grieving the death of a loved one or have a broken heart, you should never even touch dough; just stay away from it,” said my friend Mako Kavtaradze, a born-and-bred resident of the capital, Tbilisi, and executive director of Georgian spice company Spy Recipe. “If you’re not in a happy mood, we will be able to tell when we taste the khachapuri that you make.”
We were eating one of these dairy-and-carb bombs at a roadside restaurant on the Rikoti Pass in central Georgia, not far from the town of Surami, home to an ancient Jewish community. This version was from the nearby region of Imereti: a one-inch-thick, double-crusted wheel of dough stuffed with soft, molten cheese. You may also be interested in:
• The hidden meaning in a pot of stew
• How to survive a Georgian feast
• A Georgian welcome on the frontline of war
But I was doubtful of Kavtaradze’s claim about the connection between human emotions and cheese bread.
To prove her point, Kavtaradze stood up from the table and started walking toward the kitchen. “C’mon,” she said. “I’m going to show you the woman who made this, and I guarantee you she will be as happy as this khachapuri is delicious.”
In the back of the kitchen, a rotund woman was sitting in a chair with a pile of freshly kneaded dough next to her, rolling balls of sallty sulguni cheese for khachapuri. She looked up and flashed a large smile at us, two strangers who probably shouldn’t have just barged into her work space. “See,”
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
That is a healthy looking raw egg. Good vitamins.
LoL
That looks tasty. I wish I could still eat cheese without a care.
I sometimes have a small amount of it, but not very much.
The few times I have a little pizza, it seems way, way too salty. I used to love it so much. Maybe taste buds change as you get older.
If you cook at home and then have packaged or fast food, the salt is overwhelming. And also I can detect small amounts of completely unnecessary added sugars which they put in even savory items, just for getting you addicted.
I want some of this.
I wouldn’t tale Lipitor if you paid me.
I like how the egg white is just barely cooked on the edges. They probably broke the egg on it after the bread was just taken out of the oven. Nice, orange yolk.
recipe:http://simplyhomecooked.com/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread/
Most cultures have a variant of this. My mom makes it for me and never knew its name.
Orange yolks, a sign of healthy chickens eating outside. Yum.
(Unless you’re in the US and it’s from a fake chemical supplement.)
And the bread looks amazing.
I tasted this Georgia pizza in a Brooklyn Georgia restaurant.
It was amazing.
Actually traditional or ‘imeretian’ khachapuri is more like a Polish-Russian pierog but flat and of square form. It has suluguni cheese stuffed inside pastry.
An open one resembling a boat with an egg is baked this way in Ajaria. Egg is usually well-baked and the pastry is different from classic imeretian khachapuri too.
The one which is more like pizza is from Mengreli. It is big and round but the difference with pizzais it has cheese both stuffed inside and on top.
There is an Osetian variety with cheese inside and no cheese on top. Also Osetians has more East European influence and they don’t call it khachapuri. Also every Georgian variety is stuffed with suluguni cheese but in the Osetian one there is usually a Russian variety of processed government cheese and it might also have minced lam or chicken with potatoes instead of cheese inside.
Vital farms yolks are always that color, when I see yolks from regular eggs they look so pale and gross.
Yum.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.