Green beans with onions, garlic and herbs: a recipe from Georgia – Φασολακια με κρεμμυδι σκορδο και μυρωδικα, μια συνταγη απο τη Γεωργια

Today I am happy to share with you a recipe from the mountainous and brave country of Georgia.

It features one of the simplest and freshest ingredients of the summer, green beans.

In Greece we usually either boil them and serve with olive oil and lemon, or cook them with onions, herbs and red tomatoes (yahni).

The Georgian recipe I present today is different, and in my view it is superb. As it maintains all the essential features of the green bean, and enhances them with the herbs and onions and garlic.

Here it goes.

We boil the beans in a pot with plenty of water, a littke salt, and a pinch of baking powder.

In parallel, in a shallow pan we brown finely chopped dry onions  in olive oil.

In a mortar we pulverize garlic cloves and gradually add fresh basil leafs and chopped coriander.

I am very proud of the leafy basil I grow in my veranda. Likewise, for the extremely aromatic coriander, whose seeds came all the way from Georgia.

We add chopped basil leafs and coriander to the browned onions and let the mix relax for 5 minutes.

If you like hot stuff, add a finely chopped green pepper to the mix that goes into the onions. As you can see in the photo below, my veranda is big enough to carry the hot stuff in addition to everything else.

In the meantime, the beans are done and we strain them, and after they cool off we squeeze the liquids off them.

We add the contents of the mortar, and then the onions with the herbs. Please note that the mashed garlic, basil and coriander does not get cooked at all! You just add it to the mix at the end of the preparation.

Mix by hand, and let the mix relax for ten minutes.

Add a few drops of lemon to counterbalance the olive oil and the garlic, and enjoy one of the best dishes on this earth.

P.S. It goes particularly well with hard white goat or sheep milk cheese, like feta.

Greek Ratatuille (Briam, Turlu) with two kinds of Herba Basilici (Basil)

As Summer is now with us, I felt like greeting it with a dish that resembles ratatuille, but is influenced by the flavours of Eastern Mediterranean and Georgia. I took the Greek briam or turlu recipe, and modified it to adopt some elements of its Gerogian relevant dish. This modification is the use of “Rehani”, a variety of basil that has bluish and green leaves, and hot green peppers. Here is what happenned.

My good friend from Georgia, Lali, grows in her garden “Rehani”, which you see in the picture above. It belongs ot the family of “basil”, but has bluish leaves and more assertive taste. Rehani is used in briam, and in fresh salads. I decided to follow this trail of freshness, and went to a farm outside Athens, near Marathin, where they grow organic vegetables, and bought eggplants, tomatoes, and zucchini.

Eggplants

The first ingredient that goes in the baking tray is the eggplants.

Green and red eppers, and zucchini

I then added sliced zucchini and chunks of red and green peppers, coarse sea salt and black peppers, along with finely chopped hot green pepper.

Fresh Tomatoes

I use only fresh tomatoes, plenty of them, and do not bother to pulp them. I just cut them in chunks and throw them on top of the previous stuff.

Finally, I add chopped dry onions, chopped rehani and wide leaves of vasil, and parseley, more sea salt and black pepper, and some olive oil to add taste. Bake in 250 degrees celcius for about one hour, and let it rest for 30 minutes before eating.

Ready to serve

This dish is a triumph of nature! All the cook needs to do is to know how to bake it so that it does not try out, nor is it too watery. The rest is left to the natural flavours of the super fresh and excellent ingredients!!! With dishes like these, I would be a vegetarian anytime!

Georgian Cheese Bread – Khachapuri

Today I want to share with you the experience of preparing Georgian Cheese Bread, which is delicious, simple, and accompanies every winter meal in a nice way. The preparation and the baking that I present here has been done by my good Georgian friend Lali.

First we must put the clay round dishes in the fire to heat up. They come in pairs, one fits on top of the other, and as they are very hot, what is inside cooks itself without the need for additional heat. Their surface is rough. This pair of clay dishes came by special delivery from Georgia.The dough can be prepared in many different ways. I prefer plain flour, some yeast, a bit of butter or olive oil (note that in Georgia does not produce olive oil, so they use butter), salt and water.

The cheese they use in Georgia is called sulguni. It is a pickled cow’s milk cheese that requires to be cut in slices and left in water for a few hours to softer up and reduce its salt content. In Greece you can use feta, but any hard white cheese with a kick will do.

The technique of preparing the cheese bread is based on enlarging circles. You start with a rather thick (1 cm) and 5cm in diameter piece of dough, you put on top some of the pieces of cheese, and then you make a pouch of it.

You then press on the pouch carefully so that it becomes a 10 cm thin flat disk, that will be baked. As you can see, the cheese is this way enclosed in the casing of bread. There are variations with the cheese on top. I prefer the encased one.  There are also variations with eggs in the cheese. Again, I prefer this extremely simple one, because it is very basic and lets the flavors of the cheese come out.

We place the round flat disk in the bottom dish and cover it gently with the top dish.

The bread is ready in less than one minute.

The smell of the bread is it comes out of the excruciatingly hot clay dishes, is out of this world. Sprinkle some olive oil on top, cut and serve immediately!

If you do not have a fireplace, or do not want the hassle, you can bake in the oven. However, the taste is completely different. There is no comparison whatsoever to the clay baked cheese bread!