Apkhazura

Introduction

Hello everyone, I hope that you are all doing just fine!

In this article I want to tell you about this thing called Apkhazura, how it's prepared and how you can eat it. It’s really a delicious thing! However, not many people know about the perks of eating Apkhazura, I guess. You know, I especially love it! We used to have it in our freezer at all times and I would just get it out, put it into a frying pan and prepare it. The whole process was pretty easy and, though it needed some to cook, it was worth it, because it’s very delicious, especially if you eat it with Tkemali, which is a sauce made out of plums. I just love Tkemali and we always used to have it at home; we had plum trees in our yard and garden and my family would pick the plums from the trees and make our own Tkemali sauce. There are different types of plum trees that make different types of Tkemali sauce, of course. So, in the end, we had plenty of it in the bottles and we would open them whenever we wanted some. My favourite is red Tkemali sauce and that’s the one we had the most.

Well, I didn’t really know about apkhazura or abkhazura until some time ago. I only knew about kupati and we used to eat it most of the times, because we really enjoyed it and it was delicious. Besides, we even used to prepare it from scratch from time to time when I was little! I remember storing them in our cellar and then taking them and cooking them into the frying pan and eating them with some sauce and bread. They were so tasty!

When I first saw apkhazura, I thought it was some kind of kupati because it really resembled it. However, it was not like kupati at all, if you want to know the truth. And though I haven’t prepared it myself, I know how it’s made and I will tell you about that. We always buy prepared apkhazura, the one that is frozen and sold in the supermarkets, which just need to be put into the frying pan and cooked there for a while.

First of all, you should know, that apkhazura is a dish made from meat, such as beef, pork or lamb, mixed with barberry or pomegranate seeds and wrapped in caul fat and cooked. It’s a dish cooked mainly in the western region of Georgia.

Ingredients:

• Caul fat, 100-120 grams
• Beef, 500 grams
• Pork, 500 grams
• Parsley, 50 grams
• Fennel, 20 grams
• Green pepper, 1 medium
• Coriander, 100 grams
• Onions, 3 medium
• Pomegranate seeds, 70 grams
• Ground thyme, 1 teaspoon
• Garlic
• Salt to taste
• Ground red pepper to taste

Preparation process

Mix the ground beef and pork with the minced garlic, coriander, fennel and thyme and parsley. Mix in the green pepper, onions and pomegranate seeds as well. The herbs –fennel, coriander, parsley and thyme— should be finely chopped, and the green pepper and onions should be sliced thinly or cut into circles.

Check the caul fat to make sure it isn’t torn. If it is, you can’t really wrap it around the filling, of course, because the filling will come out of it.

After preparing the filling, roll out the caul fat on a table or any cooking surface. Put the filling on it and carefully wrap the caul fat around the filling. That way, you can choose the size of your apkazuras and make as many as you want.

Preheat the oven, put the apkhazuras in a pan and put it in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Apkhazuras should be well cooked and they should have this cooked look on them.

When the apkhazuras are ready, you can take them out and put some chopped onions, herbs and pepper on top and have them served that way. You can also sprinkle some ground barberry or add some pomegranate seeds on them, too.

Preparing frozen Apkhazura

There are some frozen apkhazuras sold in the supermarket and they are very good if you want to have them right away. You just need to put them into the frying pan, and have them cooked on a low heat for about 30 minutes or so. You should flip them every now and then so that they cook evenly. We love those apkhazuras very much and we usually have them at home in our freezer.

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