In Tbilisi, Copious Garlic Transforms the Humble Chicken
Heaps of garlic form a potent, flavorful undercurrent in Georgian cooking
Reimagined with French flavors and Italian technique, Georgia’s classic garlicky chicken
Like most Georgian cooks, Mako Tchabashvili isn’t bashful about garlic. Time and again during my visit to the former Soviet republic, I watched—somewhat horrified—as cooks added garlic to their recipes by the fistful. Sometimes grated. Sometimes whole. Sometimes chopped. Always in volumes that left me thinking I’d regret it.
Tchabashvili was no exception. But... There were no regrets!
She’d agreed to teach me two versions of shkmeruli, a classic, speedy, simple and oh-so-very garlicky Georgian chicken dish. The cooking was so simple, in fact, she easily prepared both versions simultaneously in her tiny Tbilisi kitchen.
Both recipes—learned from her mother and grandmother—began with a whole spatchcocked chicken. One was seasoned with red adjika, a local seasoning paste built from chilies, spices and (more!) garlic. The other was seasoned with Svanetian salt, a blend of coarse salt, numerous spices and (you know where this is going, right?) tons of garlic.
Each bird was browned for a bit in a skillet, then flipped and browned some more, then flipped back and browned further. This continued for 20 or so minutes until both birds were perfectly seared outside, but still juicy and tender inside. Both then were transferred to platters to be cut and torn into chunks.
Tchabashvili then returned each skillet to the heat. To the pan used for the adjika chicken, she added a heap of shredded garlic, salt, black pepper and water. To the salted chicken pan, more garlic, heavy cream and milk. Both simmered until the pan juices created rich, aromatic sauces. The meat was mounded in bowls, then doused with their respective sauces.
The results were at once deeply comforting and wildly vibrant. Both chickens were deliciously unfussy, the sort of meal that demands hunks of rough-torn bread for sopping up all those juices. The sort of meal you tuck into on a cold, rainy night.
Which, conveniently enough, perfectly described my experience four days later when I next encountered shkmeruli.
I was across town at Craft Wine Restaurant, where chef Giorgi Andghuladze blurs the line between respecting his country’s culinary traditions and using them as inspiration to play with flavor and technique. His shkmeruli, for example. I expected a soupy affair similar to Tchabashvili’s. But his cooking style leans Western European, and in this recipe that shined bright.
His approach to shkmeruli is best described as minimalism inflected by French flavors and Italian technique. Instead of whole chickens, he used boneless chicken halves, skin on, which he rubbed with oil and garlic, then placed in a ripping hot skillet. As they seared, he compressed the birds with a metal plate and brick, similar to Italy’s pollo al mattone.
He cooked it this way—periodically flipping the chicken—for about 15 minutes, halfway through adding eight massive, lightly crushed garlic cloves and fresh thyme sprigs. As he cooked, he tilted the pan to bathe the garlic and herbs in the oil and rendered fat, turning the cloves golden and tender while filling the kitchen with their aroma.
When the chicken was cooked through and the skin nicely crisped and browned, he moved it and the garlic to a serving plate. To the oil and herbs in the skillet, he leaned French, adding butter and chicken stock. This quickly turned into a pan sauce, rich with garlic, thyme and savory chicken drippings.
The result—once that sauce was poured over the chicken—was rich and garlicky without being pungent. The skin was crackling crisp, the meat tender, and all of it came together in minutes. And don’t even get me started about the fat-poached garlic cloves. I mashed them on my plate and shmeared some on each bite of meat. And that poaching—like Tchabashvili’s simmering—made all the difference, taming the garlic’s bite, but deepening its savoriness.
For our take on this dish, we borrowed flavors from all three versions, adding seasonings drawn from adjika and Svanetian salt, as well as Andghuladze’s thyme. We kept the garlic, of course, but made the cooking even easier by moving it into the oven. Hands off, ridiculously well-seasoned and utterly, completely comforting.
As I said, no regrets.
