The Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post Magazine
TRADITIONAL GEORGIAN PASTRIES
The best way to familiarize yourself with a new culture is by sampling its cuisine. You can learn so much about people by the aroma and flavors of the traditional dishes they serve. This week, we are going to delve into Georgian cuisine, which is replete with a host of incredibly juicy and rich dishes.
You’ll find a wide variety of herbs, wheat, cheese, potatoes, apples, onions and garlic in recipes hailing from Georgian cuisine. Many recipes for savory and sweet dishes also include walnuts. Fish is often cooked in walnut sauce, and walnuts are included in the filling for stuffed eggplant and zucchini recipes, too. Moreover, these nuts appear in a large number of traditional desserts served in Georgia.
I was surprised to learn that lemon is almost never used in Georgian cuisine in salads or cooked dishes. Instead, pomegranate juice, plums, green plum sauce and alcohol are used in both savory and sweet dishes. Another interesting tidbit I discovered is that oftentimes, a pinch of ground chili pepper is added to desserts to give them a little punch. A typical Georgian meal consists of salads, pickled vegetables, and a wide variety of cheeses, such as sulguni cheese.
Georgian desserts include a number that were borrowed from other regions, such as Napoleon mille-feuille puff pastry from French cuisine and debla from North African cuisine, which are called burbushella in Georgia. Other examples include baklava, which is also popular in Turkish, Greek, Iraqi and Kurdish cuisine, and is called pahlava in Georgia.
I was having a hard time deciding which recipes to include in the column this week, so I decided to invite to my kitchen chef Avi Dan Dadiashvili, who grew up eating traditional Georgian food. Avi, 40, and father of three, says that while growing up, his family was always hosting guests in their home for meals that were full of authentic Georgian dishes, good music and, of course, plenty of chacha, a Georgian grape brandy.
Avi began experimenting in the kitchen at a very young age and worked long hours in catering as a teen to help out his family with expenses. He then went on to train at the Ort Zerifin Culinary Arts program, followed by jobs as a sous-chef at hotels and wedding halls, such as Keter Harimon in Bnei Brak, and as a chef at Kfar Maccabiah.
Avi is currently running a kosher-concept gourmet catering business overseas.
Avi helped me choose three of his favorite pastry recipes that offer a little taste of Georgian cuisine. All three of them include cheese filling that can easily be swapped out for meat or vegetarian fillings.
I hope you enjoy preparing these tasty Georgian pastries.