Georgian Gregg’s Pasty

Georgia, slapped in the middle of the Caucasus, has erratic electricity, arsenic mines and its own alphabet. It produced Katie Melua and Stalin, and is famed for the longevity of its people. The Georgians believe that their diet – rich in olive oil, pulses and vegetables, light on meat and favouring wine over vodka, has a lot to do with that.

I had never met anyone from Georgia, until I lived in Beijing 12 years ago. Beijing, like Hong Kong and other places I have lived as an expat, is a bit of a goldfish bowl. Everyone knows and is interested in each other’s business – which I understand, but find tiresome. Everyone hangs out in the same places after work. It’s all rather parochial and wife-swapperish.

I got around that problem by finding new places to go out, where I wouldn’t bump into the whole of the British Embassy visa section, the expat football team and all of the Hash House Harriers. I managed to do this by being mistaken for a Siberian prostitute. It happened to me a lot – simply because Beijing was awash with Russian girls from over the border, keeping the various Azerbaijani shoe salesmen, Kazakh fur traders and Libyan gun runners nicely serviced during their business trips. Because I am blonde and tall and have the sort of bone structure normally found in a socialist country, I used to get propositioned a lot if I found myself in the wrong part of town. I didn’t mind, apart from the fact that I was never offered very much money. Clearly it’s not a lucrative profession in the Middle Kingdom. However – one bonus of my ‘prozzie’ appearance was that I could get into a nightclub for free, a rough boozer/knocking shop, catering for ‘businessmen’ from the former countries of the USSR, where I never saw anyone from my community, unless I took them there. One night I saw a Libyan stab an Algerian. Another night, I watched a cat fight between two Russian hookers, pulling at each others gaudily coloured nylon wigs. It was brilliant.

When my friend Katie came to visit at the end of a year travelling, I wanted her to have a different experience. She is very game and I suggested a trip to my favourite club. I made her wear more makeup than normal, taught her how to say ‘Good Evening’ in Russian and we set out to dance with some gangsters. The doorman looked at her dubiously (she is a real English Rose and was trying not to laugh) but let us in. We headed to the bar, where the form was that the girls sat around it in a circle, waiting to be approached by the punters. It wasn’t an aggressive place (apart from the stabbing/cat fights) it was quite low key. We got chatting to a Georgian man and were interested and relieved to find out that he spoke perfect English.

He was very pleased that we had approached him and scolded us for being in bar full of ‘bad women’. He answered all my moronic questions about how old his relatives were (he had a 70 year old grandfather, a 92 year old great grandfather and until fairly recently (he was in his twenties) had some old boy knocking about who was pushing 110. He told us about Georgian green wine, a type of spirit, that steals your memory and makes time stand still. He told us a slightly worrying story about how he and his father would play tricks on each other, by nailing their shoes to the floor. The most important thing he told us, was that Georgian cuisine was by far the finest in his neck of the woods. The Russians prized it. Every city in Russia had a Georgian resturant for people who didn’t like sweaty schnitzels, and didn’t want everything smothered in smetana.

I checked out Georgian food shortly after meeting our new friend and he was absolutely right. Georgian cuisine is the perfect thing for me – as Russian food is fairly unforgiving to the vegetarian. When I subsequently travelled to Russia and Uzbekistan, I found Georgian restaurants my salvation. And the wine is pretty good too. There is an emphasis on freshness and simplicity. Lots of beans and pulses, which is good. One thing which I loved was this delicious  cheese pie – called Khachapuri. The pastry is made with a yeast dough, rather than a shortcrust. Serve with salads, ideal for picnics and more delicious and exotic than a Ginsters cheese and onion. There are recipes around which use a non-leavened dough – but I would give them a miss. This is the one I trust – and the coriander in the dough is just perfect. Gaumarjos