When Zviad Guruli gets homesick, he calls his friends back in the Republic of Georgia on Skype, but is careful not to spill his special sauce on the keyboard. Like many Georgians, his national identity is tied up in food and he cooks up a batch of favorite dishes before ringing his friends and inviting them to an electronic supra (feast). There might be lamb with the spicy plum-cilantro sauce tkemali or grilled meat rubbed with khmeli-suneli, a complex, dried herb mixture of coriander seed, basil, dill weed, summer savory, parsley, mint, fenugreek leaves, ground marigold and bay leaf. Guruli, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., plants a glass of red wine in easy reach, then he and his faraway friends toast, talk, and sing away the miles between Tbilisi and Northern Virginia, where Guruli, 34, lives with his American wife, Erin and four children, Sofie, Michael, Noah, and Nick.

Every country has national dishes, but few boast as distinctive a cuisine as Georgia. Darra Goldstein, a professor of Russian at Williams College and the author of The Georgian Feast, credits geography first. Its neighbors are Russia to the North, Turkey and Armenia to the South, and Azerbaijan to its East. The Black Sea bounds its West, but it is the mountains throughout the Caucasus that keep ingredients and recipes local. Until the 20th century, malaria outbreaks around the Black Sea scared travelers away, so the classic Georgian dishes borrow little from other cuisines. Instead, its flavors are a bough-reach away – for example, sweet and sour cherries and plums and several types of walnuts, which are used in every manner of dish, from cold appetizers to desert. Georgian cooks—Zviad’s father for one—extract oil from the walnuts with their own firm hands and then drizzle it as a flavoring onto food.

Goldstein, editor in chief of Gastronomica, says Georgian pride comes quickly to the fore at the supra. The tamada (toastmaster) waxes lyrical about friends, family, country and Georgian culture. Even drinking a glass of good Georgian wine is orchestrated so guests only quaff after a toast. Getting drunk is a disgrace. The supra builds community, says Goldstein, and has helped preserve Georgian identity through wars, occupations and almost 70 years as part of the Soviet Union. It speaks volumes about the link between Georgian eating and Georgian nationalism that when a toast is finished, everyone at the table cries Gaumarjos! –or victory.

Guruli’s longing for Georgian food—someday he hopes to satisfy it by opening up a Georgian restaurant in the United States—comes from his discovery of food in his youth. It’s the “nature of the experience” that makes the food unique, he says wistfully. I’m intrigued by that statement and ask him to explain what he means. To answer, he relives a fine day as a young boy at his grandfather’s estate far from Tbilisi. He decides to make a bow and arrow and finds a perfect piece of wood for its construction. He begins to suck on it. It is hazelwood and tastes just slightly sweet. He files away that taste memory for a later day, when he is a young man preparing to grill sturgeon from the Caspian Sea. He makes skewers from the hazelwood tree and cooks the fish over grapevine branches, which burn without flames. It is a culinary triumph. “You find this only in Georgia,” he crows.

Guruli tells me that “taste comes down to the essentials,” of fresh vegetables and meat, as well as other touches, such as eschewing metal utensils to avoid metallic overtones and using local water with high clay content, which renders a rich, earthy flavor. Newcomers to Georgia like the food as much as the locals do. It is savory, highly seasoned, and best accompanied by Georgian wines.

But there is one caveat: Eat slowly. Guruli, who used to work as a foreign ministry translator before he moving to the United States 12 years ago, would warn visiting dignitaries to pace themselves at the lavish, long supras. Only two groups consistently ignored his advice and paid for it the next morning: Visitors from France and from the city of New Orleans.

—Victoria Pope

Zviad Gurili’s Khinkali

Khinkali is Georgian dumplings or pot stickers. Almost every culture has its own version of this dish, but Guruli thinks none are as flavorful as the dish comes from the mountain regions of Georgia. Guruli designed the recipe with ingredients easily available outside Georgia.

Ingredients

Flour: 1 five-pound bag
Egg: 1 egg yolk
Meat: 1 lb. beef and 1 lb. pork (both ground)
Onion: 1 medium-sized bulb (finely chopped)
Cilantro: 2/3 of medium-sized bunch (finely chopped)
Parsley: 2/3 of medium-sized bunch (finely chopped)
Caraway: 1 teaspoon (finely ground)
Lukewarm water
Salt: to taste

Directions

Dough

Fill a wide bowl with 1/2 of a bag of flour and slowly start adding slightly warm water and 1 egg yolk. Slowly add enough water to form the flour into a ball of dough.

As you are kneading the dough, continue slowly adding the remaining flour to bring dough to the desired consistency. The best way to determine if the dough is ready is to cut it in half with a sharp knife—the inside edges should be as smooth as the surface of smooth cheese.

Meat

Mix beef, pork, onion, cilantro, parsley, and caraway together in a large bowl; add salt to taste. Add 1½ cups of water for consistency (especially if the meat is too lean).

Cooking

Flatten the dough so that it is ½ inch thick. This should be done on a flat surface; make sure there is enough flour on the surface to avoid the dough sticking to it.

Cut out circles using a hard plastic cup (or round cookie cutter with smooth edges). Further flatten each circle to make it as thin as a cotton shirt. Place one tablespoon of the meat mixture in the middle of the circle and form the purse by gathering the edges of the dough around the filling and then pinch off the excess dough from the top. (Note: You will have some dough leftover.)

Place each khinkali on a cookie sheet lightly covered with flour. Bring the water to a boil and salt to taste. Once the water is boiling, add khinkalis and let them boil for 10 minutes from the moment they are placed in the water. Once boiled, remove them using a large serrated serving spoon and sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper.

Guruli says the dish has only two failings: “It is meant to be consumed with beer rather than wine; of course, this is a flaw only for Georgians who consider wine to be the ultimate drink.” And: “My mother, who is one of the best cooks I have ever known, does not have a genuine appreciation for the dish, as she does not consider it sophisticated and complex enough.”

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