Georgian
Chakapuli (Lamb Stewed with Tarragon and Green Plums)
Georgian lamb stew: lamb cooked in white wine, with unripe cherry plums and whole bunches of tarragon added at the end. Those two ingredients exist only from spring into early summer, so that is when it is made, and it often appears at Easter.
Tklapi (Sun-Dried Fruit Leather)
Georgia's fruit leather: cooked, sieved fruit spread 2-3mm thin and dried in the sun. Sweet sheets of apricot or peach are eaten as they are; sour ones of cherry plum (tkemali) are torn off a piece at a time and dissolved into soups such as kharcho to sour them. Dry a whole fruit and the outside dries first and traps the water inside; spread it as a thin puree and there is no inside to trap it, so it dries in days.
Satsivi (Poached Poultry Under a Cold Walnut Sauce)
Poached chicken or turkey served cold under a walnut sauce — a Georgian holiday dish whose name means "the cold thing", and the cold is the method. The walnuts are ground fine and let down with the poaching broth, garlic, vinegar and spices, and the sauce is never cooked. Heat it and the walnut oil separates and the sauce breaks. It goes on the table at New Year and Christmas.
Khinkali (Twisted Dumplings with Broth Inside)
A dumpling from the Georgian mountains. Broth gets inside a wrapper in more than one way: xiaolongbao sets stock into a jelly and puts the water in as a solid, and buuz says outright that its juice is rendered fat rather than stock. Khinkali is the plainest of them. Warm water or broth is stirred straight into raw mince until the filling is slack, and the only things holding it in are a thick dough and the knot on top. That knot is not eaten: it is the handle, and the ones left on the plate are how you count what you ate.
Churchkhela (Grape-Must Nut Strings)
Walnuts threaded on a string, dipped into grape must thickened with flour, hung to dry, and dipped again once dry. No single dip builds any thickness, so it takes five to eight of them over two or three days. The method is not the dipping but the drying between dips: lower a string into the pot while the last layer is still tacky and the new syrup drags the old one off instead of adding to it. The recipe is a schedule rather than a procedure.
Khachapuri (Cheese Bread)
A boat of bread heaped with salty cheese and crowned with a runny egg and butter — Georgia's iconic Adjaruli khachapuri. Swirl the yolk, butter, and cheese together and tear off the bread to dip: as dramatic to look at as it is comforting to eat.