Chakhokhbili

As tradition built it

Serves 4. 20 minutes' preparation, 50 minutes' cooking.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken, cut into pieces
• 400 g onion, finely chopped
• ½ tea glass ghee or butter
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 glass boiled water
• 500 g tomatoes, peeled and stewed
• to taste crushed dried chilli
• 3 sprigs coriander, finely chopped
• 2 sprigs basil, finely chopped
• to taste salt

Method

1. Put the chicken pieces in a pot over a medium heat and let them sweat in their own juices.
2. When the liquid has gone, add the onion and the ghee or butter and fry them together.
3. Add the bay leaves and stir from time to time.
4. Pour in the water and the tomatoes and boil until the chicken is cooked.
5. Add the crushed chilli, coriander and basil, and salt to taste.

Notes

The method is gurmania.ge's, the Georgian recipe magazine; the serving count and times are sakhluri.ge's. Sakhluri.ge sweats the chicken with a little water over a low heat, grates or blends a kilo of tomatoes, cooks 20 to 25 minutes, then 5 more with the herbs, and says it is better the next day. Kulinaria.ge's version cooks breast with vinegar, bay and water, uses oil, garlic and parsley and no basil. None browns the chicken in oil first.

What a modern chef changes

The dish's own contrast with satsivi made deliberate rather than incidental.

No rung, a plating discipline rather than a technique change

Method

1. Serve chakhokhbili and satsivi side by side where the menu allows it, precisely because the two dishes make the same protein taste completely different from the same regional larder, walnut against tomato, cooked-in richness against bright acidity, and that contrast is worth showing rather than hiding.
2. Reduce the sauce further than instinct suggests, since a properly reduced chakhokhbili should cling to the chicken rather than pool around it.
3. Add the fresh herbs only at the very end, off the heat, to keep their aromatic top note distinct from the cooked base.