Ossetian pie by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Ossetian Pies
Flat round (and sometimes triangular) closed pies with a thin layer of dough and a solid layer of filling are loved throughout Russia. In the homeland of the dish, the name of the pie changes depending on the filling, for example, a pie with minced meat is called fiddzhin, and with wild garlic leaves and dawongin cheese.
Ossetian Pie by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
The filling can be anything from cabbage or beet tops to pumpkins and cherries. Historically, the dough was bland, mixed with water; now it is often prepared with milk, kefir or eggs.
Incidentally, Ossetian pies are an irreplaceable element of the national ritual called “Three Pies.” The pies are served one by one on a wide dish and together symbolize the trinity of sun, water, and earth. There can be more than three pies on the table, but it has to be an odd number – it is important for the ritual.
Flame by Alexander AverinFederal Agency for Tourism
Dagestan Lamb
If tourists in Italy go straight for the pizza and tourists in China go straight for Peking duck, visitors to the Caucasus (especially if they are Russian) head straight to a shashlychnaya for some lamb grilled on a skewer.
North Caucasians are for the most part Muslim and do not eat pork, but historically lamb has always come out wonderfully here. Either the locals have some sort of secret or mountainous pastures are the best terrain for sheep.
Steak by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Moreover, a new brand of product has already appeared in Russia – Dagestan lamb. Whether it is from Dagestan or not is difficult to tell, but if a restaurant in Moscow, Sochi, or Saint Petersburg wants their guests to enjoy their lamb dish, they will definitely say it is from Dagestan.
Khinkal Brothers by Khinkal BrothersFederal Agency for Tourism
Chudu, Khychiny, Khingalash
Typologically speaking, Dagestan chudu, Chechen-Ingush khingalash, and Kabardino-Balkarian khychini (just like Azerbaijani qutab) are close relatives. They are all flatbreads with fillings and all bear the high rank of pirog, which means they are dishes for special occasions.
Tortillas by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
These pies can be thin, thick, round, oblong, semi-circular, they can be made from yeasted or unfermented dough, from whey or kefir, their filling can be lamb or beef, vegetable or leafy greens, potato or cheese. These are all usually dry fried, but they are served slathered in clarified butter, often layered on top of each other like pancakes. There are, however, nuances. Classic Chechen khingalash usually has a pumpkin filling and is sliced into several pieces before serving.
Khychins are dry fried but sometimes can be fried on extremely hot butter like chebureki, or grilled over charcoal. There are countless variations on chudu in Dagestan: berkaly (botischaly), tskany, kyachi… and those are only the beginning. An entirely specific type of chudu is Dargin chudu, which is made from yeasted dough, filled with meat, and baked in the oven instead of bring fried.
Khinkal by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Khinkal
At the base of the numerous variations on khinkali are unmixed cooked pieces of dough of this or that form, a boiled piece of meat, and the broth from the meat, served separately. It is thought that this is how Chabans in the mountains cooked for themselves – they boiled the lamb separately and then cut it into pieces, cooked the pieces of dough separately, and ate everything with sips of broth from the meat. Whether that is the case or not, Dagestan is home to a hundred typ
Khinkali are usually eaten with your hands, dipping them in the sauce and sipping the broth, but you can eat with utensils as well – it depends on the type of dish and the situation. The Chechen culinary pantheon places their own equivalent of khinkal in first place –zhizhig galnash. This is often translated into Russian as “galushki with meat.”
The dough is worked in such a way that the pieces really do look like galushki (dumplings) and the meat (lamb or chicken) is cooked separately. A portion of galushki and a piece of meat are served on the same plate, and broth and sauce are served alongside.
The main difference is the form of the flatbread (yeasted or unfermented, cornflour or wheat flour): square, oval, round, large, small, slices. Today people use different kinds of meat as well, not just boiled. They add pepper and herbs to the broth and serve the dish with sauce – white sauce (smetana and garlic) or red sauce (tomatoes and garlic).
Kurze by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Kurze
Kumyks are one of the indigenous peoples of what is now Dagestan, Chechnya, and North Ossetia, as well as a large Turkic nation in the Northern Caucasus. They provided the region’s national cuisines with a number of dishes, one of which is kurze, the famous Caucasian pelmeni-vareniki.
The dough is shaped into braids (or snakes) and the most common filling is lamb or beef. A secret to making sure the dish is juicy is adding milk whey to the filling.
Corn, tortillas by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Siskal To-Beram
This is two dishes instead of one: the first word stands for corn cakes fried without fat, where tail fat is used for the dough. The second word stands for a mixture of tvorog and salt dressed with smetana. Usually they are served together – the siskal is broken into pieces and dipped in the to-beram.
Ordering this dish in a Vainakh is already a challenge – at establishments in Grozny, this sort of comprehensive lunch is usually hidden behind a surprising linguistic construction such as “siskal to-beram.”
Urbech by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Urbech
Yet another answer to the question “why do people who live in the mountains live a hundred years?” is sticky pasta made from roasted or dried flax seeds (or ground apricot stones), ground with a millstone. Recently this product that has long been known in the Caucasus (for the most part amongst people from Dagestan) has become famous as a superfood in central Russia.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that mountain-dwellers use urbech as an energy drink on long trips. Today urbech is made not just from flax seeds, but also from sesame, hemp, sunflower, poppy, and pumpkin seeds, apricot stones, walnuts, hazelnuts and other oil cultures.
Checneh ramson by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Cheremsha, or Wild Garlic
Spring in the Northern Caucasus begins when the first wild garlic pickers return from the forest with sacks of tightly-packed fragrant herbs. Wild garlic appears at markets in February and the picking season ends in March.
Marinated or salted wild garlic is also popular in the Caucasus, but during the wild garlic season people use it for cooking from sun-up to sun-down, making salads, dressings, or individual dishes from wild garlic stewed in milk or fried. People also love spring nettles, which they cook in all sorts of ways while it is fresh.
Dried sausage by RustourismFederal Agency for Tourism
Dried Sausage
This is a real delicacy invented as a way to preserve meat – dried sausages made from ground beef with spices. The meat is first kept for a couple of days, then it is minced and used to fill an intestine. It is then dried and hung colourfully in the open air.
Over the next two weeks and under the effect of the sun, wind, and natural temperature swings, the sausage loses half of its mass, dries out, and then can be kept for a long time. It is boiled for soup or for khinkali, or eaten as it is. Meat dried in the wind is also a local specialty. It can be boiled, the way fresh meat is.
Сhief Сonsultant — Ekaterina Drozdova, restaurateur, gastronomic entrepreneur, food and social activist, Contributors — Natalia Savinskaya, Proximity Russia, Translation Services Win-Win, Kamila Parkueva, Aiyshat Gabarova
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