Mtsvadi

As tradition built it

Rest 3 to 4 hours, then 15 to 25 minutes over the coals.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

• pork neck, or tenderloin, ribs or loin, in bite-sized pieces
• to taste salt
• to taste black pepper
• onion, chopped, for the rest
• a little at a time wine, for basting
• as needed dried vine canes (ts'alami), or oak, birch or fruit wood, for the fire

To finish

• onion, cut into rings
• pomegranate, squeezed for its juice

Method

1. Take the meat out of the fridge several hours ahead so it comes to room temperature.
2. Cut it into bite-sized pieces. Mix well with salt, black pepper and the chopped onion, and leave 3 to 4 hours in a cool place.
3. Pick off the onion and pepper, which burn on the fire. Pat the meat dry, because wet meat stews instead of grilling.
4. Thread the meat on skewers.
5. Grill over coals that have died down and gone white, 15 to 25 minutes. Turn the skewers now and then so every side cooks.
6. Pour a little wine over the meat as it cooks, so it does not dry. If fat flares on the coals, scatter salt on them, not water.
7. Slide the meat into a deep dish. Add the onion rings and squeeze pomegranate juice over.

Notes

The method is gastronomia.ge's, the Georgian food magazine, from two pieces on salting and grilling mtsvadi; the second is syndicated on primetime.ge. Georgian Wikipedia, citing the Ethnographic Dictionary of Georgian Material Culture, has Kakhetian mtsvadi salted only and sprinkled with qvevri wine or pomegranate juice. Kulinaria.ge's lamb mtsvadi layers 1 kg of fatty lamb with three onions, 2 tbsp vinegar, parsley and coriander for 3 to 4 hours, salts it only on the skewer and finishes it with raw onion and parsley; gastronomia.ge says wine is better than vinegar, which dries the meat.

What a modern chef changes

The fire itself treated as the ingredient it is.

Rung 6

Method

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.