In one of my favourite recent releases by a Georgian-born author, Leo Vardiashvili’s Hard by a Great Forest, the protagonist is told that meeting a Georgian outside Georgia is so rare it’s akin to winning the lottery. “Because the odds of winning the lotto are much better. You could have been a millionaire, my friend. Instead, you met me.”
There are fewer than 6 million Georgians in the world, with a third scattered across the diaspora. Australia’s Georgian-born population now sits just under a thousand, of which my family makes up 0.8%.
Luckily for anyone who’s ever met a Georgian or travelled there, what we lack in numbers, or lottery wins, is made up for in hospitality, with 6,000 years of culinary and vinting (winemaking) wisdom to create vast feasts. These are known as Supras, featuring peasant-style, veg-laden dishes and cheesy breads. With Georgia at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and a key stopover on the spice trail, Georgian spicing is mildly Middle Eastern, more so Central Asian, the fresh and dried herbs are abundant, and did I mention there’s a lot of cheese?
Matching aromas to available ingredients is one of the challenges of transposing a lesser-known cuisine to the other side of the planet. Spices such as utskho suneli (blue fenugreek), Imeretian saffron (ground dried marigold) and Svanetian salt come in colourful piles at markets in Tbilisi, but in much of the world, they’re a hard-to-find specialty.
While they come by mail order now, in the 90s, émigrés like my mum had to learn to transpose flavours of home into an Australian pantry. Her solution for Georgia’s staple spice mix, khmeli suneli, was Keen’s curry powder – or mild Madras if she could find it – with extra ground coriander.
In a way, her innovation works out better for my professional purposes, because home cooks can try new taste sensations without committing to too many new jars. This permissive playfulness has informed a lot of the liberties in my third-culture recipes, such as swapping in mild chilli flakes and paprika for Svanetian salt, using non-blue fenugreek (quantities halved if grinding fresh), and ground turmeric as a dupe for dried marigold’s golden glow.
This recipe is a spin on a soup Mum’s made since for ever. Instead of red kidney beans used for lobio in Georgia, it has midweek-friendly red lentils, an ingredient introduced to her by her PhD students from the subcontinent.
I’ve stayed true to her Georgian-ish spicing, though it’s not a traditional Georgian soup. If you can find khmeli suneli, swap out the curry powder, ground coriander, fenugreek and turmeric for one heaped tablespoon – you lucky duck.
I’ve added some extra texture to finish in the form of fresh walnuts, and tang from pomegranate molasses – both features in Georgian kitchens and likely to be in yours, thanks to cooks like Yotam Ottolenghi and Claudia Roden.
Because they go rancid quickly, walnuts should be bought freshly shelled, or shelled fresh, if you can manage it. If you need to buy prepackaged, look for packets with as few crumbs as possible. When nuts are banged around, they bruise, release oils and begin to oxidise.
Georgian-spiced carrot and lentil soup
Makes 2 litres, enough for 6 to 8 people
Prep 20 min
Cook 35 min
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large brown onion, roughly chopped
4 medium carrots, scrubbed (no need to peel) and roughly chopped, about 800g
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed, about 300g
200g dried red lentils, rinsed, 1 cup
4 cloves garlic, finely grated
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground fenugreek
1 tbsp mild Madras curry powder
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 cinnamon quill
2-3 bay leaves, fresh or dried, both work!
100g freshly shelled walnuts, chopped, 1 cup
1.5 litres just-boiled water from the kettle
2 vegetable or “chicken-style” stock cubes
1-2 tbsp pomegranate molasses, to taste
To finish
¼ bunch coriander, leaves picked, 30g
250g natural yoghurt, or coconut yoghurt to keep it vegan, 1 cup
Freshly shelled walnuts, chopped
Good-quality extra-virgin olive oil
Pomegranate molasses
Warmed flatbread of your choice, to serve, I’ve used Greek-style pita
If you have a food processor, give the onion, carrot and sweet potato a coarse blitz. Otherwise, dice the vegetables – the finer the dice, the sooner they’ll soften.
Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the chopped veg with a teaspoon of salt flakes (or a quarter teaspoon of fine salt) and a couple of tablespoons of water to keep it from catching. Cook for 15 minutes, lid on, stirring occasionally, until everything starts to slump and smell deeply comforting.
Add the garlic, ginger, ground coriander, fenugreek, curry powder, turmeric, cinnamon quill and bay leaves. Stir for a couple of minutes until fragrant – this is where the spice garden blooms.
Tip in the rinsed lentils and walnuts, give everything a good mix, then pour in the hot water from the kettle and crumble in the stock cubes, making sure to scrape up the fond – that is, the delicious brown bits – from the bottom of the pot.
Bring to the boil, then reduce to a lively simmer for 25 minutes, or until the lentils have collapsed and the carrots are completely tender. Skim the scum from the top and stir occasionally.
Fish out the cinnamon and bay leaves, then with a stick blender, blend the soup until silky smooth. Otherwise, allow to cool, then blitz in batches in your food processor; or serve it chunky. If you like your soup a bit thinner, add another cup of hot water. Stir through one tablespoon of pomegranate molasses, then taste and add salt and pepper to your liking, plus more pomegranate molasses if a bit of extra zip is needed.
Ladle into bowls and finish with a generous swirl of yoghurt, extra chopped walnuts and a liberal drizzle of olive oil and pomegranate molasses, and a sprinkle of coriander leaves from a height. Serve with warm flatbread.
