Taste of Georgia (part I)

Have you ever loved something so deeply that you would condemn yourself to the eternity in hell?!  So, Georgian cuisine is beyond that kind of love.  You will absolutely adore it. Georgians are not just making dinner or cooking they create art from it and every dish is like unique, exquisite and just unforgettable masterpiece.

People traveling in Georgia, will see that guests on Georgian table are always welcome and accordingly appreciated, as Georgians believe that guest is ‘gift from God.’ And, probably it will become most memorable moment of their lives.

Georgians use such kind of spices you will not meet anywhere around the world. Spices are very important in Georgian cuisine. They are used in preparing  breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be parsley, fennel, ramson, mint, basil, savory, estragon and other greens. Not a single Georgian dish  is prepared without spices.

Despite that, Georgian cuisine is diverse, there are several dishes you must taste while visiting this beautiful and incredible country.

First comes khachapuri – this is flat cake with cheese, but there are several varieties of it: Imeretian khachapuri with imeretian cheese, Mengrelian khachapuri with Sulguni cheese on the top, Adjarian Khachapuri with cheese, butter and egg filling and Achma – pie with cheese made with several slices of doug.

Adjarian Khachapuri

Achma

Imeretian Khachapuri

Mengrelian Khachapuri

Khinkali is also one of the main dishes of Georgian cuisine. It is dumplings and as a tradition is eaten with fingers. Forcemeat for khinkali is made from beaf or veal.

Khinkali

Khinkali

Mtsvadi is a meat dish which is cooked on an iron sticks over an open flame. There is used preferably marinated beef or lamb. Cooking with such technique makes meat juicy and with special aroma. Usually Mtsvadi is eaten with Tkemali – special kind of sauce made with spices and tkemali itself.

Mtsvadi

Mtsvadi

Lobio and lobiani – dishes made with beans. The first one is like bean soup with seasonings. Seasonings for lobio are onion, vinegar, chilies, Coriander parsley celery leeks and much more. Lobio is mostly eaten with cornbread called Mchadi.  Lobiani is pie with beans with some seasonings and the taste is interesting one.

Lobio

Lobiani

Lobio

As Georgian cuisine is so diverse I decided to break discussion into two posts. So this is the first part of our journey in Georgian Tastes. Soon there will be the last but not least part of our gastro traveling.