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Georgia is where wine was invented. The oldest traces of grape wine are around 8,000 years old, and the method is still in use: the grapes ferment with their skins and stems in qvevri, large clay vessels buried in the ground and sealed for months. UNESCO has inscribed the technique on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. What is now sold as orange wine in every natural wine bar is therefore not a modern invention, but part of everyday Georgian life stretching back thousands of years.
The food is considerably more vegetable-led than you might expect. Walnuts run through almost everything, in pkhali, which are vegetable pâtés, and satsivi, a walnut sauce, while fresh herbs are used in quantities that would make a Swede hesitate. Lacto-fermented vegetables have a natural place on the table. Then there is khachapuri, the cheese bread which in its Adjarian form is served boat-shaped with an egg and a knob of butter in the middle, as well as khinkali, filled dumplings held by the knot and eaten around it.
This is the first Swedish book on Georgian food. There are more than 140 recipes, adapted so they can be made with ingredients available in Sweden, interspersed with reports from cheesemakers, bakers, market traders and wine producers. Karin Bojs has written the foreword and the photography is by Bianca Brandon-Cox.
It works equally well as a book to read and as a collection of recipes, and makes particular sense if you drink natural wine and want to know where it comes from.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 304
Language: Swedish
First published: 2019
