Plenty of cooked gomi was left over from my afternoon meal. Gulisa heated it gently, then handed the heavy wooden paddle to me to begin beating cheese into the grits. Periodically dipping the paddle into hot water to keep the mixture from sticking, I stirred and stirred until the grits had absorbed roughly three times their weight in cheese. Finally Gulisa allowed me a break and covered the pot to help the cheese melt. From time to time she lifted the cover and peered in, anxious to catch the elarji at just the right moment, when the grits form a stringy union with the cheese but are still pliable.
Perfectly judging the time she had left, Gulisa quickly chopped some cilantro to add to the pork stew along with pomegranate seeds and a spoonful of her famous ajika. She served us each a helping of pork stew and chvishtari, then tossed some salt into the elarji and immediately spooned it out onto hot plates. Nearly enveloped in steam, we sat down at the tiny kitchen table and commenced our feast, laughing as we tried to maneuver the strings of cheese-laden grits politely into our mouths, then just giving up and digging in, utterly happy, oblivious to everything but the wonderful intensity of our friendship, this place, and the cheese.
Art For Soup’s Sake
Niko Pirosmani was born in 1862 in the eastern Georgian wine region of Kakheti. After moving to Tbilisi, he worked variously as a signboard painter, as a brakeman for the Transcaucasian Railroad, and as a purveyor of dairy products—which he sold from a small shop that he had embellished with pictures of cows. With a better visual than business sense, Pirosmani soon closed his shop and became an itinerant painter, decorating signboards for the bakeries, taverns, wine shops, and grocery stores located near the railroad yards, all in exchange for food and shelter. The Zdanevich brothers, prominent members of the Russian avant-garde, discovered Pirosmani’s work in 1912 and arranged for it to be exhibited in Moscow. But Pirosmani preferred the obscurity of his Tbilisi life to celebrity and continued to paint for food and drink until his death in 1918.
Pinterest
