Churchkhela (Grape-Must Nut Strings)

Name: Churchkhela (Grape-Must Nut Strings)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 50 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Georgian
Ingredients: 2 L red grape must; 200 g plain flour; 100 g sugar; 400 g walnuts; 4 m thick cotton thread; 1 a large needle; 1 set a rod to hang them from, and paper underneath

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.

Ingredients

8servings

For 8 churchkhela
red grape must · pressed red grapes; unsweetened grape juice works2 L
plain flour200 g
sugar · only if the must is sour100 g
walnuts · halves, dry rather than fresh400 g
Equipment
thick cotton thread · it carries the weight for weeks4 m
a large needle1
a rod to hang them from, and paper underneath1 set

Steps

Double the thread, cut it into 35cm lengths and thread walnut halves onto it with a needle, leaving a loop at the top and 10cm bare at the bottom. Pack them tight against each other — a gap fills with nothing but syrup and that is where the piece snaps later.
⏲ 20 min
Simmer the must over medium heat until it has reduced by about a fifth, skimming the foam. Add the sugar here if your grapes were sour.
⏲ 30 min
Whisk the flour into 400ml of cold reserved must until completely smooth first, then pour that into the hot pot in a thin stream, stirring. Dry flour tipped into hot liquid gelatinises on the outside and seals dry powder inside a lump.
⏲ 10 min
Cook the tatara for 12 to 15 minutes, stirring the whole time, until it coats the back of a spoon thickly and no longer tastes of raw flour. Off the heat, let it fall to 50-60°C. Hotter and it runs off the string; cooler and it sets in the pot.
⏲ 15 min
Hold the loop, lower a string into the pot and press it under with a spoon, then lift it out slowly and let the excess run back. Hang it from a rod with paper underneath. The first coat is startlingly thin. That is correct.
⏲ 10 min
Leave it until a fingertip no longer marks the surface — two or three hours to half a day depending on the weather. This is the whole method.
Dip again once dry, and dry again. Five to eight times over two or three days. The thickness is decided by the number of dips, and hurrying between them makes it thinner rather than thicker.
After the last dip, hang them somewhere shaded and airy for two to three weeks, until the outside is leathery and no longer tacky to the touch.
Wrap in cloth or paper and keep at room temperature. A white dust that appears after a month is not mould but sugar that has crystallised out on the surface.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Other nuts: hazelnuts and almonds are threaded the same way — walnut in Kakheti, hazelnut in Imereti — and raisins or dried apricots are sometimes strung between them.
White grapes: white must gives a pale golden churchkhela with a little more acidity. The colour is the grape, not a different sweet.
Pelamushi: pour the tatara into a dish and let it set instead of dipping anything in it and you have pelamushi, a pudding. Same batter, minus the dipping — which is one way of showing that the dipping is the entire dish.
Turkish cevizli sucuk: south-eastern Türkiye makes the same idea, sometimes with mulberry or pomegranate juice in place of grape. This page files it under Georgia because that is where the name and the written record are.
Keeping, as in yokan: very little free water and a great deal of sugar, so it lasts months at room temperature. Sugar's fifth job — preservation — is explained on that page.

Tips

The drying between dips is the method. Dip onto a layer that is still tacky and the fresh syrup softens it and carries it down with it: the piece gets thinner rather than thicker, and the surface goes streaky. When a fingertip no longer marks it, it is ready for the next one.
The flour is there for gravity, not for flavour. Grape must on its own simply runs off a vertical string. Thickening sorts thickeners by how they feel in the mouth; the requirement here is that the coating stay on something hanging up.
Why flour and not cornstarch, from that same guide. Must is acidic, and acid cuts starch chains; flour is the most robust of the options. The price is that it "has to be cooked out or it tastes raw", which is why the tatara gets a full twelve minutes.
Use dry walnuts. A fresh one still holds water, and sealed inside sugar for several weeks it spoils.
Against setting it in one go. Tanghulu is dipped exactly once, with the sugar driven to 155°C so that it sets like glass. This is dipped many times, into something with flour in it specifically so that it will not set hard. One is a shell, the other is a body. And lokum takes the same two ingredients and stirs them for an hour into a block you cut — three sweets stopping at three different points on sugar and starch.
The white dust is not mould. Water leaving during the cure carries dissolved sugar to the surface and leaves it there, exactly as on gotgam. Mould stands proud like wool and has colour in it.
Put paper underneath. For the first few dips the syrup runs off the bottom in drops. Those icicle-shaped tips in the photograph are what that leaves behind.