I first met Gulisa in Khobi, the small town in western Georgia where she grew up. Trained as a pharmacist, Gulisa knows all the secrets of Georgia’s wild edibles and works wonders in the kitchen, coaxing amazing flavors from all of the produce that comes under her spell. Her ajika, the fiery Georgian salsa made from herbs and chiles, is dark and complex, the heat of the peppers bolstering—never overwhelming—the fragrant spices she grinds with her mortar and pestle, her steady circular motion conjuring images of medieval alchemy. Even though Gulisa has lived in Tbilisi for a decade, I picture her standing amid hundreds of roses in the courtyard of her beautiful house in Khobi, tending the fire in a toné, then hurrying off to pick sweet white cherries and apricots for an afternoon snack. After civil war broke out following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the family fled to Tbilisi, where they opened a small guesthouse. Ever resourceful, Gulisa discovered new markets and purveyors, and now she spends hours tracking down the finest cheeses, the most pungent peppers, the most aromatic herbs.
As always, I found Gulisa in one of the kitchens at the back of her guesthouse. She has two: one very rustic, the other a Western-style kitchen with built-in cabinets, laminated countertops, a full-size refrigerator, a stainless-steel sink, and a streamlined cooktop. I’ve never seen Gulisa use this modern kitchen, which appears sterile, devoid of magic. But beyond, through an unheated passageway, lies the rudimentary kitchen where the real wizardry takes place. A small, unheated room, it has two old-fashioned gas stoves with tightly spaced burners, a chipped ceramic sink, open shelves, and a small table covered with oilcloth. When I arrived, Gulisa was busy with mortar and pestle, pounding walnuts into a paste with garlic and salt. She sat me at the table and presented a salad of poached chicken, walnuts, pomegranate seeds, and cilantro, with just a hint of earthy shafran, ground dried marigold. Her arm moving rhythmically, she insisted that I also try some freshly made gomi, white corn ground to the consistency of grits and boiled in water until thick. Gulisa stirred the bubbling grits with a large wooden paddle, then piled a steaming mound onto my plate. It wasn’t until after I’d eaten some gozinaki (chewy diamonds of honey and walnuts) with spoonfuls of dusky quince and green walnut preserves that she deemed me properly welcomed.
After this impromptu meal we set out for the small village of Tsodoreti, in the foothills west of Tbilisi. The roads were still messy as we bumped over ruts and potholes, swerving to avoid stray dogs in the roadway, until we reached a tidy farmstead, at the edge of the village, where Shala, Gulisa’s favorite cheesemaker, lives. Shala, who supplies a small number of Tbilisi connoisseurs with sulguni and matsoni (yogurt), greeted us in the yard and sent us inside to meet his family while he trudged off to the barn for the evening milking. His wife, Nino, and sister-in-law Lamara stood by a blazing woodstove as one-year-old Maria practiced her new walking skills, nimble despite the layers of thick woolen clothes swaddling her. Shala soon appeared with frothy milk still steaming from the cows and strained it through cheesecloth into a pot. Then Lamara took over. After stirring rennet into the milk, she covered the pot, wrapped it in warm towels and a heavy blanket, and set the bundle down by the stove.
While the milk rested, Nino treated us to homegrown winter squash, roasted and cut into wedges, sprinkled with sugar, and served hot with strong Turkish coffee. Soon the milk was thick. Lamara stirred the curds with her hands and then left the developing cheese to rest for another 15 minutes. Meanwhile, we tasted the matsoni for which Shala’s family is rightly known. When the cheese was ready, Shala gathered it into a mass, squeezed it free of liquid, then put it in a small bowl. We hurried back down the mountain to Gulisa’s kitchen, where the real work began.
Sulguni is usually salted for longer keeping. Held at room temperature, its flavor intensifies and small holes develop. Sometimes the cheese is smoked over an open fire for a month—30 minutes each day—until it turns almost russet in color. But there is nothing like freshly made sulguni that is still buttery and pliant, and Gulisa had to caution me not to nibble too much of Shala’s masterpiece on the drive home—we needed plenty of cheese to make some of the most glorious dishes in all of Georgian cuisine: elarji (the previously mentioned grits with cheese), gadazelili khveli (sulguni flavored with mint), and chvish-tari (sulguni and cornmeal cakes). Back at the guesthouse, Gulisa set about making the gadazelili khveli. She placed half the cheese round in boiling water, stirred until it melted, and then turned the mass out onto the table and kneaded in some chopped fresh mint. The kitchen smelled like a summer meadow. Gulisa broke off small pieces of the softened cheese and tied them into knots, then lowered them into a pot of hot milk into which she mixed nadugi (fresh curd cheese), more mint, the water from melting the cheese, and salt. The gadazelili khveli was now ready, and we ate it as our appetizer.
Next, gulisa turned to the cornmeal cakes. She coarsely grated half of the remaining cheese and mixed it in equal proportions with fine white cornmeal, adding a little water to make a stiff dough. After kneading in a bit of salt, she heated some olive oil in a skillet and shaped the dough into oval cakes, chvishtari, which she slowly fried in the hot oil. By this time, I could hardly wait for the decadently rich elarji, usually reserved for feasts because it is so expensive and laborious to prepare. But Gulisa had other intentions. She didn’t want to serve the chvishtari plain, considering them better suited for mopping flavorful liquid from a soup or a stew. So, abracadabra, she produced a suckling pig that she’d boiled earlier in the day. Using only a small paring knife, she deftly cut the meat into tiny pieces, which she tossed into a pot along with plenty of the fat and dried summer savory that she had pounded with garlic and salt. She added a finely chopped red onion, dried marigold, coriander, fenugreek, and enough olive oil to moisten the mixture. She covered the pot and set the stew to simmer while we prepared the elarji.
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