Georgia’s Addictive Cousin to Pizza? Article About Khachapuri on bbc.com

“Khachapuri, a gooey, addictive, cheese-stuffed flatbread, is ubiquitous in Georgia. However, most bakers believe that it can only be made properly by happy people,” begins the BBC website article published today about one of Georgia’s most loved national foods. 

This is not the first time that Georgian cuisine has attracted the attention of international news; we are seeing it more and more as Georgia’s popularity as a tourist destination continues to grow. 

The article tells the story of the writer’s experience of eating one of these cheese boats “at a roadside restaurant on the Rikoti Pass in central Georgia,” seeing it prepared and then making it himself. 

“To prove her point, Kavtaradze stood up from the table and started walking toward the kitchen. ‘C’mon,’ she said. ‘I’m going to show you the woman who made this, and I guarantee you she will be as happy as this khachapuri is delicious.’” 

“In the back of the kitchen, a rotund woman was sitting in a chair with a pile of freshly kneaded dough next to her, rolling balls of sallty sulguni cheese for khachapuri. She looked up and flashed a large smile at us, two strangers who probably shouldn’t have just barged into her work space. ‘See,’ Kavtaradze said. ‘She’s happy.’” 

The author references a local man telling him how you must only prepare when you are happy, as sadness will spread to the finished product. “’If you’re in a bad mood or sad, when you’re grieving the death of a loved one or have a broken heart, you should never even touch dough; just stay away from it,’ said my friend Mako Kavtaradze, a born-and-bred resident of the capital, Tbilisi, and executive director of Georgian spice company Spy Recipe. ‘If you’re not in a happy mood, we will be able to tell when we taste the khachapuri that you make.’” 

Full Article: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20171120-georgias-addictive-cousin-to-pizza 

By Tom Day