Pkhali - Georgian answer to hommous (ფხალი)

 

hiz together in a blender:

1. A can of red beans (although my Mom would also use nearly anything veggie-like: boiled cabbage leaves, freshly boiled spinach, cooked beet roots, fried aubergines, etc.)
2. A handful of walnuts.
3. 1-3 cloves of garlic.
4. Half a handful of coarsely chopped parsley or coriander leaves.
5. A glug of olive oil.
6. Some salt (as I do, I use fish sauce)
7. A generous sprinkle of khmeli-suneli (ხმელი სუნელი), an indispensable Georgian mix of dried herbs, which is best made at home as supermarket versions are invariably inferior. Simply mix equal shares of dried mint, basil, marjoram, parsley, oregano as well as bay leaf powder, ground coriander seeds and black pepper. If you can get hold of dried hyssop and fenugreek leaves, by all means add those too.

Spread some on grilled bread and decorate with a sprinkle of pomegranate sauce (sold in Turkish shops as nar ekşisi) and finely chopped coriander leaves.

Mimino revisited: never enter the same river twice

here is a golden Buddhist rule: never try to recreate the same sensation. You are bound for disappointment because you can never enter the same river twice. I thought I knew better but I did let exactly that happen with Mimino, a Georgian restaurant in London's swanky Kensington. My initial visit was enveloped in warm glow and scintillating sparkle that Olga puts on everything with her magic touch. After a schmooze party at the RBCC we only had time - and available stomach capacity - for sampling a platter of starters and, boy, were they not utterly scrumptious! For months on I was longing to go back. My imagination pictured feasting on the gifts of the Caucasus mountains, full of herbs and charcoal flavours, and washing them down with treacly Georgian wines.

And finally the blessed moment arrived on a chilly December evening. Hot and noisy Mimino packed to the rafters with Russian Londoners and a sprinkling of their local friends, Kirill and Sasha waiting up for us over a bottle of Tarkhun, a tarragon-flavoured soda drink from the Soviet days. As we tuck in the salads platter (სალათები, £15), the frosty chill outside swiftly fades away from our minds: we are in the land of the Golden Fleece, Queen Tamara, the Knight in the Panther's Skin and One Million Scarlet Roses. Certainly a line of associations that speaks more to a Russian than a Westerner.

Sprinkled with ruby-like pomegranate arils exploding in your mouth with sour-sweet juice, this assorted goodness proffers:

• Badrijani - grilled aubergine rolls with creamy walnut sauce;
• Espanakhi - a ball of minced spinach delicately flavoured with herbs so that they do not overpower the strong grassy note of fresh spinach;
  
• Adjapsandali - a ratatouille-esque sauté, served cold, with the accent on the aubergines that really taste grilled;
  
• Pkhali - a leek-and-walnuts ball with a heady fragrance of aromatic herbs;
• Lobio - stewed red beans with walnut sauce, fresh coriander and dried herbs;
• Imeruli khachapuri - fragrant thin-dough flat-bread stuffed with piping hot cheese.

The thick and spicy kharcho (ხარჩო, £7) soup made from lamb, rice and finely chopped vegetables has a nice kick and a good tomato-based flavour. It is certainly one of the most known Georgian gastronomic exports to Russia, a staple of many a factory canteen and street corner café. Our demure and taciturn waitress Elena adds to kharcho a few pieces of delicious home-made rye bread that is not on the menu.That's because Sasha and Kirill are friends with her.

With the arrival of the mains, however, all this culinary exuberance turns into a culinary non-event. A huge flop, to put it straight. Floyd who's never quick to criticize food murmurs that the mains have no flavour at all. No, nothing is bad enough to send back to the kitchen but nothing is a match to the divine starters. I cannot believe they came from the same kitchen.

Tsyplyonok tabaka (წიწილა ტაბაკა, £12) is another Georgian dish probably more popular in Russia than in its country of origin. It comes in the shape of a quail-sized chicken generously salted, flattened and fried accompanied by a heap of deep-fried matchstick potatoes, the ideal shape to absorb grease. No wonder they taste like starch ampoules bursting in your mouth with the unmistakably smelling mini-fountains of frying oil.

Kalmakhi (კალმახი, £12), a battered trout, salty as the Black Sea that licks the balmy shores of Georgia, arrives with a tablespoonful of mashed potatoes and an equal quantity of sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. All as bland as a roll of toilet paper.

Mtsvadi (ქაბაბი, £15), is the Georgian shish kebab gently flavoured with liberal amounts of salt. I start suspecting that all this salt abundance could very well be management's ploy to trick us into ordering more drinks. Who knows. Georgian barbequed meat is famous in Russia as shashlyk, the most popular weekend picnic fare. Here it tastes just slightly better than if it were made by a bunch of not very sober Moscow office workers at a weekend corporativchik (a company-sponsored team-building event involving colleagues in a countryside setting). The sides of pickled cabbage, fried potato wedges and a tablespoonful of salad are just as forgettable.

The only animating feature that, to a very slight degree, redeems the lacklustre mains is classic Georgian tkemali (ტყემალი), a dip made from tart cherry plums alycha: refreshingly sweetish-sour but invariably same for chicken, fish and meat. Unknown parties seem to have strongly impressed upon the owners that customers might very much enjoy their conversations completely drowned out by some seriously loud noise. So half an hour into our dinner, a keyboard-and-crooner duo starts churning out Russian pop hits and criminal ballads adding a note of demi-monde decadence to the already deafening din of voices and clanking cutlery. We have made sure to ask for a table "as far away from the band as possible" but in Mimino's petite dining hall there's no escape from this post-Soviet cultural ambassador. Back in Russia this obligatory song-and-dance routine used to annoy the bejesus out of me, but these days I have learnt to laugh it off as a quirky and mildly entertaining post-Soviet "ethnographic" flavour.

Kinzdmarauli, a saccharine red wine made from the endemic Georgian Saperavi variety was allegedly Stalin's libation of choice. It used to be a big hit in the former Soviet republics, sold in Russian supermarkets in 5-litre boxes at quite a premium price - until a spate of hostility between Russia and Georgia found Georgian wine imports halted. Its syrupy mellowness with not a wee hint of tannin is quite a departure from your regular European-style red, owing to grapes for Kindzmarauli being harvested later than for any other wine, when they are fully ripe and, perhaps, even frost-bitten. I imagine that it probably tasted the same when the Argonauts visited Colchis, an ancient Georgian kingdom in their search of the Golden Fleece, so here it is really part of the 'authentic experience'.


Pro's: Splendiferous starters.
Con's: Highly disappointing mains. Noise levels on busy nights. Great place to replenish your salt levels.
In a nutshell: Come on a weekday when there is no minimum charge per table and no band to torture your ears. Order the salatobi platter, you won't regret it. Skip the rest.

Grape leaves for stuffing and wrapping

rapping is a great way of cooking. Russians use cabbage leaves, Thais - pandan leaves, the Chinese - lotus leaves, the Japanese - bamboo leaves, Indians - banana leaves, Mexicans - corn husks. In Laos and Vietnam they stuff food into pieces of bamboo trunk. The whole shebang is about letting the wrapping flavour permeate the rest of the ingredients.

In the Near East, a vaguely defined area spanning from Greece and Romania to Armenia and Syria, grapes leaves (a.k.a. vine leaves) enjoy a wide coinage. Their flavour is not that strong but the pleasantly sourish kick they bring to food is well worth the trouble of wrapping. My parents are lucky to use fresh ones from their garden but I have to buy them jarred. Most of the preserved varieties I see in Europe are imported from Turkey. I buy mine in an Iranian-run shop at Brixton Market. The first dish I cooked in London using grape leaves was charcoal grilled sardines.

Mimino (მიმინო) -Georgian restaurant london review

Mimino revisited - our most recent visit

eorgia for Russia is what Spain is for Britain. Sultry machos, fun-in-the-sun vacations, wine and, very importantly, great food. When Russian food is spiced to the brim, it's mostly about black pepper and parsley. It is no wonder that Georgian exuberance of basil, marjoram, pomegranate sauces and walnut dips completely takes our fancy.

Georgian food is hardly known outside the former USSR. I put it down to the faulty branding. For Westerners, the phrase "Georgian food" conjures the images of grits, pork chops and Hoppin' John that have naught to do with the multi-millenia culinary sophistication of the Trans-Caucasian nation. Despite the rumours of Georgia being renamed Barackia with Obama in power now, I believe it should be better off with something more catchy and lasting. I suggest Kartvelia.

As you might have already surmised, Olga knows everything and everyone worth note in London. Last night after a RBCC networking event, she took her charming friend Tanya and yours truly to a Georgian (or Kartvelian, if you please) restaurant she had been to a couple of times. The Mimino is named after a 70s Georgian cult movie that every Russian worth his salt knows.

It was our reconnaissance visit, so we shared a starters platter for two with Olga, while Tanya, who was fasting for the Lent, just nibbled on a bowl of delightfully herby bean soup Lobio.

Our platter was nothing short of an epiphany. Last time I had Georgian food was back in 2002, in a St. Petersburg restaurant frequented by Vladimir Putin. While the cooking was consistently good, the emphasis there was on presentation and interior. The Mimino, however bets it all on food and does so with distinction.

Our preview of Mimino's utterly munchable goodness consisted of:

• Badrijani - grilled aubergine rolls with walnut sauce;
• Espanakhi - a herby spinach ball, with a strong grassy note of fresh spinach, a sharp contrast with the bland overcooked spinach your get more often than not;
  
• Adjapsandali - a ratatouille-esque stew with the accent on the aubergines;
  
• Pkhali - a leek-and-walnuts ball with a heady fragrance of aromatic herbs;
• Lobio - the dry version of Tanya's bean soup, with walnuts, fresh coriander and dried herbs;
• Imeruli khachapuri - fragrant thin-dough flat-bread stuffed with piping hot cheese,
  

Pro's: Lean and herby, little known.
Con's: Little known, unfortunate branding.
In a nutshell: Toe-twirlingly delicious, exotic food like you've never tried before.

P.S. For the British a "Georgian restaurant" must be some kind of eatery in a John Nash mansion. Go for Kartvelian, really!