Penovani Khachapuri

The introduction

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

In this article I want to tell you about my dish, which I prepared the other day and it’s this national dish of Georgia, called Khachapuri. There are some different types of Khachapuri and all of them are very different, though the ingredients are mainly the same and the filling is just this cheese, however, all of those Khachapuris taste pretty differently and that’s why some people like Imeretian Khachapuri and some like Ajarian Khachapuri and so on and so forth.

Well, there’s another type of Khachapuri, we can say, and it’s called Penovani Khachapuri. It’s prepared with this specially prepared dough, which is not the same as the usual Khachapuri dough. Many people just like using this kind of dough in their dishes, however, I think, that it’s pretty difficult to prepare this dough, because it takes really long time to be prepared. It’s very popular to be used in this cake called Napoleon, which people in Georgia pretty much love and you can find this cake almost in every bakery and even supermarkets.

Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t really love Khachapuri if it has only cheese in its filling. People can add some potatoes to the cheese filling, so that it won’t be too salty, because sometimes the cheese is pretty much salty.

So, anyways, let me tell you about the recipe for Penovani Khachapuri.

Ingredients:

• Dough, 400 grams, 2 pieces
• Cheese, 300 grams
• Potatoes, 2 medium
• Egg, 1 medium
• Unsalted butter, 20 grams
• Oil
• Matsoni or kefir, 2 tablespoons
• Coffee powder

Preparation process

Well, since the preparation of that kind of dough takes a pretty long time, I found a solution and it’s really a good idea, I think. So, instead of preparing the dough yourself, you can buy one in the supermarket and just roll it out like that, because it doesn’t need anything else. This other time, when I was in the supermarket, I checked the frozen doughs and there were these 400 grams of doughs, which cost only about 2 Laris, so that it was not a big deal, and I bought 2 pieces of them for the khachapuri. It was just enough for my baking pan and the size was pretty good, too. However, I still rolled them out for them to be exactly the baking pan size. And, besides, they were a little bit thicker, than I wanted, and that was one of the reasons why I rolled them out, and, I think, that I did it correctly.

So, now you see, that it doesn’t need for any dough to be prepared. However, we still have to prepare the filling. And it’s not something, that you can not really do easily.

First of all, you need to have some potatoes peeled and boiled. To tell you the truth, I usually slice them into thin pieces and then I put them into a saucepan and cover them with some water and put the saucepan on the gas for it to be boiled and then for the potatoes to be cooked. If you want the water to be boiled really quickly, you can boil some water into an electric kettle and then add it to the potato slices. That way the water is already boiled and it will be boiled in that saucepan pretty easily, so you won’t have to waste your time waiting for the water to get boiled.

After getting the water boiled, you should wait a little bit for the potato pieces to get cooked. Usually, it doesn’t take much time for them to be ready. It’s ready in about 15 minutes, I guess. so that after that, you can just put the potato pieces out and wait for them to get cold, or kind of warm.

I usually take that cheese and cut it into some smaller pieces, so that it will be easier for my chopper-blender to shred it. When I shred the cheese, I add one medium egg and mix them together. After that, the potatoes are usually cooled down and I add them to the cheese mixture. And I taste the filling then and I decide, whether I like the taste or not. Sometimes the cheese is so salty, that I need to add plenty of potatoes for the filling to be just like I want it to be.

Well, after the filling is done and the doughs are rolled out, you can just assemble this khachapuri.

First of all, I rolled out one of the doughs and put it into the oil greased baking pan and rolled it out, so that it would be all the way to the edges of the baking pan. It is not that easy, because there’s some oil on the baking pan, so that the dough kind of gets like a ribbon. But everything’s doable.

After that, I put the filling on the dough and spread it evenly on it. And then I roll the other dough out on a table, so that it’s the size of the baking pan and I just take it with the rolling pan and put it slowly on top of the filling. Then I kind of make sure, that the margins are stuck together and that’s it, everything’s ready to be put into the oven and baked.

There’s another thing, too, and many people do it. You can take 2 tablespoons of Matsoni or Kefir and add a little bit of coffee powder and mix them together. Then you can spread the mixture on the top of khachapuri, so that when it bakes, it will have some golden colour and it will look even more tasty.

Well, after you have done all of that, you can put your penovani khachapuri in preheated oven and have it for 30 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius. If you keep it there for more than half an hour, the dough will be more like penovani, the one that’s easily breakable or whatever. I prefer not to keep khachapuri in the oven for more than half an hour, so that the dough will be just fine like that.

Anyways, that was the article about my penovani khachapuri, which I prepared with already prepared dough, which was just prepared and frozen and it was really easy to use it instead of preparing the dough myself, because it really needs much time and effort comparing to buying the frozen dough and it’s not that expensive, either. In fact, the price of the dough needed for this recipe is just great for that. So that, you can just prepare this recipe and it will be a good thing for just having it for yourself or serve it to some friends. They will like it very much, I must say.

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