Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, a global tour of whatever foods pique Jon’s fancy at random times. I’m the Jon in charge of said Fancy-Feast, Jon O’Guin, and today we’re making Adjaruli Khachapuri, a string of syllables I’m SURE has some of you scared. But FEAR NOT, FOR ALL WILL BE REVEALED IN TIM-. No, Kado. Stop. The Mystic Curtain is not for clawing. No, don’t bite me. This is not how we do magic. Stop. Eat your damn tuna. I KNOW you want the Salmon, but the box is HALF tuna. I’m not throwing away HALF A BOX of Cat Food because you’ve discovered you’re a bougie fish slut. This intro has gone off the rails. Click here to get to the recipe and get out, and everyone else, let’s GO ON A TRIP.

Georgia On My Mind

So, Adjaruli Khachapuri. (ahd-ja-roo-lee ka-CHA-poo-ree) It sounds like a magical spell, probably something out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

There’s a very niche, very weird reference that dates me. Which is amazing, because Bedknobs and Broomsticks came out almost 17 years before I was born.

But it’s actually super-easy to explain: Adjaruli is a demonym, and Khachapuri is Georgian for “Cheese Bread”. Well, Technically “Curds-Bread”. And to clear up some confusion I deliberately seeded with the chapter title, no, you’re not crazy, the STATE of Georgia did not develop its own language while you weren’t looking, that’s Louisiana, and that’s technically a Creole. So yes, there is, technically, a Creole Creole. If THAT sentence sounds like you’re having a stroke, join me down the rabbit hole for one of my favorite tangents, that has very little to do with today’s topic, because I didn’t have a lot of time to research the topic, so I need to vamp for a bit: “Creole” is the term for a type of language that develops in a multi-lingual region that solidifies and becomes a natural language, with native speakers. It’s based off the French word créole and connected to the Spanish/Portuguese word “Criollo/Crioulo”. Basically, when France, Spain, and Portugal made colonies, they needed a word to distinguish between those BORN in the colonies, and those born in the motherland, because how else could they be elitist assholes?

I mean, look at this guy. This is the 5th Duke of Albuquerque (Also not the one in America), painted by an Italian, and BOY does he look like a dick.

So, a “Españolo Criollo” referred to a Spaniard, from Spanish parents, who was born in a Spanish COLONY, instead of in Spain, and who was therefore, you know, better than the Mexicans, but not as good as an ACTUAL Spaniard. This then gets mixed with…well, mixed race members, and also the language: In Louisiana, the territory contained Native Tribes, then Spanish settlers, then French settlers, and slaves, so there were a LOT of languages, so people hammered out what’s called a “pidgin”, where some words and structures are in one language, and some are in another. (Like, you use Spanish adjectives, but keep them in front of the noun, like in English) THAT’s why those people are called “Creoles”: originally, they were “french Creole” and “Spanish Creole”, and then the groups got so intermingled we couldn’t tell who was what, so we just called them Creole. We named the group after the language.

None of that was relevant, I just love digging around in pidgins and creoles. They’re fascinating. Anywho, this recipe comes from the COUNTRY of Georgia, a deeply Caucasian country. By which I don’t mean “white”, I mean “right in the mountains between Armenia and Russia”.

It’s also between Azerbaijan and the Black Sea, but let’s be real: very few of us knew where those are.

Yeah, that’s where the word “Caucasian” comes from: it’s not just a generic word for “White”, it specifically refers to a mountain range on the edge of Russia. Why is that the term we use for white people? Old-school attempts at imposing a taxonomy on humanity. How old school? The other two terms we used have become functionally racial slurs! AND ONE became an ableist slur, for double “holy shit” points. Basically, the theory was that people first started being ‘people’ in the Middle East. (Since that’s where all the oldest ruins are) Then, the theory goes, we split into three broad categories: one group went North and West, going around the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, and became Caucasoid people, one group went East, around the Black Sea and became the “Mongoloid” people, and the last group went south, and became the…Negroid people. (If you don’t know, “mongoloid” became a slur toward people with Down syndrome. Because, you know, their eyes are shaped more like Asians. (the medical term is that they possess epicanthic folds) Hence the added ableism.) (And, holy shit Windows 10, why do you know that I spelled Caucasoid right, but don’t know the word ableist? That term was coined in the EIGHTIES.)

So, Georgia is, theoretically, the place wear man first became white. Which honestly, I can kind of believe: the SCRIPT for Georgian is the single MOST Elven-looking shit I’ve ever seen in my life.

This is a very timely sentence to learn how to spell in Georgian. (It’s “Happy Independence Day”)

So, we’re making Cheese-bread from the mountains. That explains Khachapuri. And somehow, centuries of colonialism and ‘race science’. But what does Adjaruli mean? I told you: it’s a demonym. A demonym, if you’ve forgotten, is the word you to say “(Mostly people, but sometimes things) from THIS PLACE”. Japanese is the demonym for Japan, Norwegian Norway, Monegasque Monaco, Buckeye Ohio, etc. Specifically, there’s a region of Georgia called Adjara, and while you can just use “Adjaran”, in Georgia you sometimes use –ruli as the end of a demonym. So this is “Cheesebread, from the region of Georgia Adjara”. Is that a lot of information to convey in one name? sure, but on the other hand, if I told you I brought some New York Pizza, some Detroit Pizza, and some Chicago-Deep-Dish, you would know those are different things, made different ways. Same thing, just in a different region.

So, that’s the back-story, what’s the deal?

A Bowl, A Boat, A Bun

Basically, there are different regional takes on khachapuri in Georgia, but Adjaruli specifically does a couple things that make it visually interesting and enticing to Americans. Two of them we’ll get into later, but the first one is that the bread is a boat.

I would joke that maybe it’s something more risque than a boat, but the large amount of cheese stuffed inside makes that a very weird and off-putting reference.

Yeah, this recipe is basically just “Molten cheese in a bread bowl”. IF you just buy pre-made pizza dough, the entire recipe boils down to “ shape the dough in an interesting way, bake it with cheese, add some final touches”. WHICH IS WHY we’re NOT doing that. NO, for TODAY marks a return to NORMALCY, A DAY-damn it, Kado, what do you want? I fed you literally less than an hour ago. Is it the yelling? Is that it? Is the house so boring with Nate out and about that any time I shout it’s time to see what’s happening? I’m not even actually shouting, I’m WRITING. No, I’m not getting you more food, because I know you still haven’t eaten the Tuna pate.

Look, I finally got my hands on some yeast, okay? Turns out if you just go to the fancier neighborhoods, their supermarkets are better stocked and still have tons of yeast. Literally one mile toward the golf courses, and boom. I’m sure that perfectly normal, and not at all worrisome.

I’m busy rockin’ with the Yeasty Boys to really care about that.

So I made my own pizza dough. Not a complicated process: yeast, salt, sugar, flour, add some water. The biggest damn problem was that apparently the big food processor wasn’t put back together fully correctly, and doesn’t WORK anymore, a discovery I made only AFTER filling the bowl with dry ingredients. And the other food processors don’t have a way to add oil to the machine while it’s running. Eventually, I worked it out, by just dumping the oil in at the start, hoping for the best, and turning until I got a ball of dough.

Balls of dough in processors are very hard to make look good on film.

Knead that sucker for a couple minutes until smooth, and it bounces back when poked, then slap it in a greased bowl, cover, and let it proof for an hour. Then you’re ready for step two, which is to make-a da football. Please enjoy that brief bit of racial performance, what some might call “red-sauce-face”, as a way to atone for forcing you to learn about the history of slurs on your way to making cheesebread. Anywho, it turns out the football shape is actually really easy: just roll your dough out into a 12” circle, and then roll up the bottom edge about 2.5”, and the rest of the bottom-half about the same amount. Then spin the thing around, and roll up the other side. It’s going to naturally push out at the ends, because you didn’t roll that part up smoothly like the rest, so you just gotta pinch it a little to get a football.

I don’t play a lot of sports.

Now, that bowl in the middle of the sucker is 7 inches across in the middle, and like, 10 inches wide. That’s good, because you are about to put almost a POUND of cheese in the middle. Now, Georgia has a lot of interesting cheeses that we do not know about in America, so the way to best replicate the same texture/flavor is to mix 8 ounces of low-moisture mozzarella, and 6 ounces of feta…FUCK. Goddamnit.

I’m sorry, it’s not the extended bit with the cat again: I JUST realized I misread the fucking recipe. It’s 8 ounces WHOLE MILK mozzarella. You have no idea how irritating that is to read. Like, ALL my issues and weird outcomes with the dish are explained through that ONE fuck-up. So, when you do it, let me tell you: don’t use low-moisture. We’ll get to why in a minute.

Anyway, back the cheese bowl on a baking sheet in an oven for like, 16 minutes.

The cheese IS in a big pile, that’s normal.
Also, this is before the baking.

Spoilers, that picture of the baked one earlier was actually this recipe. And it’s darker than it should be, because that’s something that low-moisture mozzarella does. “Browns easier” is literally one of its selling points. Now, you finish the dish: drop a pat of butter, and an egg yolk onto the hot cheese. Bring to the table and serve basically immediately. You’re supposed to stir the cheese mixture with the egg and yolk, which will allow the whole thing to smooth into a kind of cheese sauce. MINE didn’t do all that well, with the ‘sauce’ remaining fairly grainy and weird. But OF COURSE IT DIDN’T GO RIGHT, I lost like, 10 grams of dairy fat in the mixture!

Proof that “throw an egg on it” was a trend CENTURIES before we Millennials showed up with our Avocado Toasts and Pastas.

Like, I was going to go on a whole thing about how the flavor profile’s really weird, and the texture’s different, and that while I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it, and Nate straight up accused all of Georgia of being bad at cooking. ( “Jon, where’s this recipe from?” “Georgia. The country” “Wherever it’s from, those people don’t know how to make good food”.) And I was going to chalk it up to different preferences in cheeses, but it turns out it’s because I MISREAD the cheese. DAMN IT. Now I have to go make this AGAIN, and see if whole-milk mozz really fixes all my problems!

This is a total catastrophe, no one really liked it, it’s probably all my fault, and I don’t have TIME to switch and write something else for today’s post, so HERE you go: a Dish that may or may not work, because apparently I’m illiterate. It’s 3 AM, I’m going to bed. (Editor’s Note: once Jon had something like a good night’s rest, and got some food in him, it’s worth acknowledging that the PROCESS basically worked, and that he’s legitimately hopeful that, made with the correct cheese, it’s probably a fine, if somewhat strange dish (as an American, melted Feta IS a new texture/flavor combo, and if you don’t think your family would be into it, maybe mixing Mozzarella and Parmesan would give you something similar with a flavor profile that’s more appealing.)

THURSDAY: I COULD TALK MORE ABOUT THE CUISINE OF GEORGIA, SINCE I KNOW I WATCHED AT LEAST ONE TRAVEL SHOW ABOUT IT…MAYBE DO A BREAKDOWN OF CHEESES? I DON’T KNOW.

MONDAY: IT’S EITHER EGGS AND POTATOES, OR CABBAGE AND BEEF, AND EITHER WAY, IT’S PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU’RE EXPECTING.

Now we're making

Recipe

Adjaruli Khachapuri

Recipe from Cook’s Country

Serves 6

Ingredients

Dough

1 ¾ cups (8¾ ounces) all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast

¾ teaspoon table salt

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons cold water

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

The Cheese

6 ounces whole-milk mozzarella cheese, shredded (1½ cups)

6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (1½ cups)

1 large egg yolk

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Preparation

Process flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in food processor until combined, about 3 seconds. With processor running, slowly add cold water and oil and process until dough forms sticky ball that clears sides of bowl, 30 to 60 seconds.
Transfer dough to counter and knead until smooth, about 1 minute. Shape dough into tight ball and place in greased bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise at room temperature until almost doubled in size, 2 to 2½ hours. (Alternatively, dough can rise in refrigerator until doubled in size, about 24 hours. Let come to room temperature, about 2 hours, before proceeding.)
Turn out dough onto lightly floured 16 by 12-inch sheet of parchment paper and coat lightly with flour. Flatten into 8-inch disk using your hands. Using rolling pin, roll dough into 12-inch circle, dusting dough lightly with flour as needed.
Roll bottom edge of dough 2½ inches in toward center. Rotate parchment 180 degrees and roll bottom edge of dough (directly opposite first rolled side) 2½ inches toward center. (Opposing edges of rolled sides should be 7 inches apart.)
Roll ends of rolled sides toward centerline and pinch firmly together to form football shape about 12 inches long and about 7 inches across at its widest point. Transfer parchment with dough to rimmed baking sheet. Cover loosely with plastic and let rise until puffy, 30 minutes to 1 hour. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees.
Combine mozzarella and feta in bowl. Fill dough with cheese mixture, lightly compacting and mounding in center (cheese will be piled higher than edge of dough). Bake until crust is well browned and cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown in spots, 15 to 17 minutes. Transfer sheet to wire rack. Add egg yolk and butter to cheese filling and stir with fork until fully incorporated and cheese is smooth and stretchy. Lift parchment off sheet and slide bread onto serving dish. Serve immediately.