Chakapuli

As tradition built it

Serves 4 to 6. About 1 hour.

Ingredients

• 1 kg lamb or kid goat, cut into pieces
• 3 bunches fresh tarragon, a generous bunch
• 1 bunch each green onion, dill, coriander
• about 250ml (a scant ½ litre jar) fresh, or 300g slightly underripe plums unripe green plums (tkemali fruit), or substitute a sharp underripe plum
• 200 to 300ml, added in two stages white wine
• to taste salt

Method

1. Combine the meat with the tarragon, green onion, dill and coriander in a heavy pot.
2. Do not sear or brown the meat. This chapter's sourcing is explicit that the dish's name relates specifically to this no-searing method, meat and herbs stewed together from raw.
3. Add the unripe plums and a generous pour of white wine.
4. Cover and stew gently until the meat is tender, wine added again toward the end of cooking.
5. Season with salt.

Notes

The quantities above are scaled from a published recipe by the Georgian cook Tamaz Aliashvili, via the food culture site vinoge.com/Marani, an in-tradition source, halved from its original 2kg meat base to the 1kg given here.

What a modern chef changes

The no-sear rule respected as the actual technique, not a shortcut.

Rung 1's discipline, applied here to a different kind of restraint

Method

1. Resist the instinct to brown the meat first. Every other stew in this atlas rewards a hard sear; this one specifically does not, and searing it here would be imposing a technique this dish was never built around.
2. Add the wine in two stages, once at the start and again near the end, rather than all at once, for a fresher, less cooked-out acidity in the final sauce.
3. Use the sharpest, least ripe plums available, since the dish's whole acid structure depends on genuine tartness; a fully ripe, sweet plum will flatten the dish.