Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 11, The Walnut and the Vine
Mtsvadi
Kakheti
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours 15
- Researched
- 8 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Serves 4. Marinate 2 hours or more, then 15 minutes.
Ingredients
- 800 g pork shoulder, or lamb, cut into bite-sized pieces
- to taste salt
- as needed, for continuous basting qvevri wine or fruit juice, for basting
Method
- Salt the meat and thread onto skewers.
- Grill over embers, traditionally from grapevine cuttings or hazel wood.
- Baste with qvevri wine or fruit juice while turning, continuously through the cook.
- Cook until well coloured outside and tender within.
What a modern chef changes
The fire itself treated as the ingredient it is.
Rung 6
Method
- Use lump charcoal with a genuine proportion of fruitwood or grapevine prunings if any can be sourced, oak or apple wood as the nearest widely available substitute, rather than commodity charcoal alone.
- Bank the coals into a mound, a hot centre and a cooler holding edge on the same fire, the same charcoal discipline this atlas has used before.
- Baste continuously while turning, not once at the start, since this is what actually renders and flavours the meat through the whole cook rather than leaving the basting liquid to drip away unused.