Georgia...the country, y'all

Last night we finally made our May country meal. In A Taste for Adventure, Anik See detailed her journey to Georgia, and we realized that the countries in that region of the world are greatly underrepresented on our cuisine-tracking world map.

 The Menu


Sabza-Kourma PilauMutton and Vegetable Pilaf


Alma DolmasyStuffed Apples

Khachapuri
Cheese Bread

Adzhapsandali
Vegetables similar to Ratatouille

This is what Patrick did while I made our meal. Usually we cook together, but yesterday I gave him a break!

Georgian food turned out to be perfect for my new High Blood Pressure diet; lots of vegetables and not much salt. Most of the recipes I found seemed to call for a lot of mutton and things that can be grown in a home garden. (Not knowing where to find mutton, I used lamb.) You'll notice a lack of dessert on the menu. The one I found, Milk Sherbet, had a confusing recipe.

Milk Sherbet

Note:

Azeri people often end their meal by eating sherbet.

Ingredients:

30 grams sugar
70 grams water
100 grams milk

Directions:

1. Boil water. Add sugar, and stir until dissolved. Cool.
2. Boil milk separately, cool, and add to the sherbet.

Really? Is sherbet in Georgia just boiled sugar water mixed with boiled milk? I suspect there may be a freezing step missing. Most of the recipes from this, usually reliable, library database, Culturegrams, seemed to have incomplete recipe steps, such as; "cook lamb until it's done." This poor recipe oversight may have been the reason we did not enjoy the Mutton and Vegetable Pilaf very much.

Cheese bread...this is supposed to be a square...I've found it's difficult to cook sometimes in Patrick's place. Guys don't often seem to have things on hand like food processors or saffron...or enough space to roll out dough!

Lamb stuffed apples

Spooning caramelized onions on the apples.

The apples and cheese bread were the highlights of this meal. I don't want to hurt Georgia's feelings, but, sadly, this was not one of our favorite eating experiences. The food wasn't bad, just a little blah.

Next month we will post from Portland, where exotic restaurants abound!