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Georgian national cuisine is rather diverse. Moreover, abundance of spices and greens used, specific culinary techniques of making meat dishes, various sauces and dressings give it peculiar daintiness.
Every traveler who happens to visit Georgia at least once will certainly avail himself of local hospitality and will participate in friendly repast.
Usually Georgian table is overloaded with appetizers and wines. Tender aroma spreads from the plates with chihirtma soup. It is cooked from chicken or turkey and slightly dressed with onion which is fried in oil mixed with flour, and an egg beaten in grape vinegar. In order to make harcho soup garlic, fresh tomatoes and rice are added to mutton broth and, of course, it is seasoned with tkemali sauce.
Rich, hot, with a lot of garlic, the broth cooked from sheep legs, heads and entrails, known as hash, is especially good in the morning after overnight friendly feast.
Any soup is served with puri- wheat bread in the form of a loaf, corn scones mchadi or gain - porridge-like mix made of wheat and corn flour, a specific bread of semi-fluid consistence. Not a single Georgian meal can do without hachapuri - cheese pies.
The most delicate dish of Georgian cuisine is a lamb saddle. Thin edges of the loins of the lamb carcass are bent and bound by a string in the form of a saddle, then it is fried in oil and baked in the oven until it is ready. As for its popularity, lamb saddle can be rivaled only by mutton brisket stuffed with mixture of boiled rice or buckwheat with small pieces of bacon or ham, onion, dried apricots, green parsley and basil, salt and pepper.
Perhaps, the most peculiar Georgian dishes are made of poultry. Chahohbili is cooked from turkey or chicken stewed in wine and vinegar supplemented with fried onion, tomatoes, and spices. Satsivi is a dish cooked from chicken in walnut sauce.
On holidays, just as on weekdays, the Georgian meal will include without fail lobbio - stewed beans. The dish is served with fresh greens and boiled or baked meat.
Georgian culinary experts are famous for various dishes cooked on skewer above burning coals. In this way they cook pork or mutton shashlik, pork gammon and lamb brisket, fish, tomatoes or eggplants; they even roast cheese on skewers.
The sauce tkemali is always served with the meat dishes. It is made of boiled sour plumps, grated through sieve, with salt, ground pepper, pounded garlic and chopped green coriander and dill. However every hostess has her own small secret in respect of tkemali recipe.
It is impossible to imagine friendly Georgian feast without dry and semi-dry wines. In the eastern province of Georgia, Kohetia, the art of wine making has been known since ancient times. The fertile lands of Alazan valley are occupied by vineyards, and wine cellar can be found in every peasant's house. The famous brands of Georgian wine are manufactured here: Tsinandali, Gurgiani, Kindsmarauli, Mukuzzani. Ethyl alcohol is used to manufacture local strong vodka - chacha.
Georgian feast is not just a simple regaling of friends with a substantial meal. It is an ancient ritual, a real show directed by a "show man" - tamada. During the feast the magnificent sounds of Georgian polyphonic singing, performed only by men, can be heard. In the intervals, while dishes are being changed, one can watch folk dancing, in which languid light movements of the girls contrast expressive and passionate men's dancing.
Tamada will pour wine to the honored guest not into a goblet but into artistically decorated horn of a mountain goat. No matter how many guests there are sitting at the table - 4 friends or 40 guests, tamada will give each the opportunity to propose a toast and will make every guest at the table deliver an "addition" to the toast - alaverdy, and everyone present should listen to all these speeches to the end without touching their wineglasses. The guests can drain them only after the ritual of alaverdy is over. Maybe that is why, in spite of big amount of wine, there are no drunken people at Georgian feasts.
Delicate Georgian wines are served with fruits, tangerines and special sweets chuchella - small garlands of walnuts in grape juice, boiled to the thickness of marmalade.
To make a long story short Georgian cuisine is so exotic that you'll fall in love with it at first sight and you'll never forget its charm.
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