Chakapuli, a Lamb Stew from Georgian Russia

A few months ago I was treated to dinner at a Russian restaurant.  I had looked at the menu online in advance, so I knew I wanted to try chakapuli.  It was described as a lamb stew with onions, tarragon, wine, and plum sauce.

I had no idea how it would taste but I knew I wanted to try it.  And it did not disappoint:  The lamb shank was served in the bowl and rice was on the side, which I mixed into the stew as I ate.  The broth was rich and flavorful, and I loved every bite.

That, of course, meant I needed to try it at home!  There was a challenge in making it myself:  the plum sauce was made from unripe plums, which are not always found in the markets.  I read many recipes online and some of them said to use tkemali sauce, which is made from the plums and can be purchased online.  Well.  I really wanted to avoid purchasing the tkemali sauce because I had found recipes for it.  But it all came down to finding the unripe plums.

My local imported foods market had never heard of tkemali sauce but the other day I went in hoping to find canned unripe or sour plums.  I asked for them and -- hooray! -- was sent to find fresh, FRESH unripe plums that looked just like all the pictures I had seen online.  I was happy to bring a bag home, along with a bunch of fresh tarragon that was just asking for my attention.

I had already procured the lamb shank, so I felt like I was ready to try chakapuli.

I don't have a specific recipe that I followed for this post.  Chakapuli is such a beloved stew in Georgia that there are many variations, probably as many as there are families who make it.  Some called for hot chilies, others for waxy potatoes.  Some required tkemali sauce but others just said to use the plums and add the spices that would be in the tkemali sauce right into the stew.   I wanted to reproduce the version I had in the restaurant, so I decided to skip making the tkemali sauce.

For the seasoning, I chose the spice mix my daughter brought home from her trip to Uzbekistan.  My Russian friend tells me it is a "Universal Spice Mix", and it has dried herbs and vegetables as well as a variety of spices.  I've tried it before on baked chicken and in other stews, and liked it.



The ingredients are approximate as I didn't really measure.  Basically I crossed my fingers and hoped for a good result.  Do you know how hard it is to cook with your fingers crossed?

My Version

1 lamb shank
1 - 2 tablespoons butter
1 to 1 1/2 cups white wine
4 cups water
a good sprinkling of the Universal Spice Mix, or whatever spice mix suits your fancy
a heaping teaspoon of minced garlic
half a bunch of tarragon
half a bunch of green onions
about 1/2 cup parsley
8 to 10 unripe plums

I used about half of the herbs and onions you see here.

I used a big Dutch oven for the whole process.

Melt the butter and then add the lamb shank.  While it is browning, strip the leaves off the tarragon stems, throw the stems away, and coarsely chop the leaves.

Check the shank and turn it to keep browning it.

Trim and slice the green onions.  Pull the parsley off the stems (a few stems are fine) and chop those.

Lovely herbs!

When the lamb is nicely browned, pour in the white wine and reduce by one half or more.  You can see it deglazing the pan.

Browned and now the wine is reducing

Once the wine is reduced, add in the other ingredients.  I saved the spices for last and sprinkled it all over everything.

Getting hotter now

Bring it to a simmer, put the lid on, turn the heat to low, and go do other things for a few hours.

It is ready when the meat is tender and falling off the bones.  The smell is heavenly but you have to wait patiently!

Now a lovely stew

I added a little salt (about 1/2 teaspoon) at the very end.  I also pulled the rest of the meat off the bone.

The Verdict

I served it over some very dry European style bread.  More (fresh) bread was on the side as well as some butter.  White wine (the same as in the chakapuli) was the beverage of choice.  Fresh apricots were dessert.

You really want more plums than this in your bowl

The meat was tender enough to cut with a spoon but not overcooked.  The hard plums had softened into squishy balls of fruity-but-tart morsels.  (Beware the pit.)  The broth was rich and meaty, and the herb flavors came shining through.  It was also a little tart but more like a background flavor.

The broth was very well balanced in flavors, but every so often the slight licorice flavor of the tarragon dominated in a spoonful.  This was not a problem!  It made for a tasty dance on my tongue.

The dried bread made a perfect sponge for this stew which I would have called a soup because of the amount of broth.

Success!!!

It was just the right amount to serve for two.

I know that fresh, unripe plums have a tiny window of sales in the market.  I think I just happened to get lucky that the market had them on that random day I wandered in.  What will I do if I want to make this at another time of year?  It is traditionally a springtime dish, which coincides with the plums.  I think, if I can get some more, I will freeze them.

One wonderful feature of this recipe is how easy it is to prepare:  all of it uses one cooking pot; once everything is in, you put the heat on low and ignore it, and you serve it in a bowl.  Simple, savory, good.

I can also say that this recipe gives me a heightened appreciation for fresh herbs in my cooking.

The Second Time

I tried the recipe again the next day, using a lean, boneless pork roast, about 2 pounds in weight.  I used up the rest of the plums and put the roast in whole for cooking.  There were about twice as many plums in this batch as in the previous.

Once it had cooked for two hours, I took two forks and shredded the pork.

The result?  Everything was still very tasty -- the broth was a little more sour than previously but not in a negative way.  The only thing I could say is that the pork wasn't as tender or flavorful as the lamb.  It was a little dry, even after the shreds soaked in the broth for an hour or so.  But we still ate and enjoyed it!  I would recommend the lamb over pork, or to try a fattier cut of pork.

Carob Molasses: Gulepp tal-harrub

UPDATE:  The pods you see in this post are NOT carob.  They are toxic and should not be used at all.  Please see my updated post for the correct pods.  Here is a link to the effects of ingesting this plant:  https://wagwalking.com/condition/golden-chain-tree-poisoning/

I recently acquired a copy of The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home -- The Happy Luddite's Guide to Domestic Self-Sufficiency, by Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger Henderson.  One reason it appealed to me was that the recipes were of very basic but interesting skills, exactly what the title promises:  lost arts, like unusual (to me) breads, making soy sauce, pickling fish, distilling and brewing, and even non-food skills like making soap, brooms, braided rugs, and your own exterior bread oven.

ISBN 978-0-399-53777-6

One recipe caught my eye, on page 43, called Carob Molasses.  Carobs are used as decorative features in my area -- they are pretty trees -- and I have always wondered what I could do with the pods.

Dr. Albala wrote up this particular recipe and I loved his description:

Carob is one of those health foods that suddenly appeared on the market when I was a kid, as a substitute for chocolate, which it isn't.  

This made me laugh, as that was exactly the experience I had as a kid!  I recall having it handed to me with a statement like, "This is made of carob, and tastes exactly like chocolate!"  No, no it doesn't.  Not even close.  I didn't know about being a foodie back then, but I knew carob's flavor was a poor imitation of chocolate and I wasn't going to accept it as an alternative.

But this recipe intrigued me.  It didn't promise to be like chocolate, just a long-valued syrup to be used in beverages or even (as he suggests) in barbecue sauce or chili.

Carob Molasses

To make the syrup, just break up the pods, boil them for several hours in water and then strain.  Cook this down until thick, adding a little sugar to taste if you want.

It was easy to gather an armful of pods off the ground around a convenient tree.

Easily two feet long or more

These pods are big!  I had to break them into fourths to fit them into my 6 liter Dutch oven.  I washed them first to get off dust and bugs.  The wash water turned light brown almost immediately.

Adding water to cover

I had originally thought the syrup would be made from the seeds, but it is the pods that contain the flavor.  The seeds are hard, and I tasted a piece of pod but really got nothing from it.



Wet pods gave off a slightly sweet scent.

I brought the water to a boil and reduced the heat to a rapid simmer and set the timer for 3 hours.  After about 30 minutes I decided to put the lid on to reduce evaporation, since I had already needed to add boiling water to keep all the pods covered.

I wasn't sure what would happen to the pods while cooking.  I imagined they would get pulpy or soft, but honestly, they remained hard.  You can see the water got very dark brown.

I removed all the pods and strained the liquid.  It measured 8 cups.



So I put it into another saucepan and brought the heat up so the liquid was steaming.  After another 2 1/2 hours, it had reduced to 2 cups.  Not thick but definitely thicker.



At this point, I decided to taste it.

The Verdict

It was pretty awful.

The dark brown, slightly thick liquid had only one flavor:  bitter.  No, let me restate that, it was BITTER.  Deep, concentrated, make-your-tongue-curl bitter.

The recipe suggested to add a little sugar but I realized that no amount of sugar would offset that intense bitterness.

Failure.

I must have done something wrong.  There is no way a concoction like this could be so loved and reproduced over the years.  I decided to contact Dr. Albala to get his opinion on my disaster.

He was kind enough to reply!  Our conversation led me to believe that either the pods were already bitter or that boiling them hard might have been the culprit.  Other online recipes suggest more soaking in hot water or simmering them very gently.

If I get the opportunity to get more pods, I will try it again.  I would really like to see what people enjoy about this food.