Where there’s smoke, there should be smoked food, even if you don’t have dedicated specialist equipment, as in my case. In our last week in Svaneti before heading south-east to Tbilisi for the winter, with my wife away for a study week in Austria and a glut of nice big tomatoes on my hands, I fired (er, smoked) up the outdoor barbecue box and got to work.
Now, in these last months of several video posts daily to Facebook, it’s become clear to our current 27,000+ followers that they really want to see Lali’s face and hear her voice. Whether it’s a cooking clip or something extolling the beauty of Svaneti or a local business, starting the video with her smiling face is what gets the reactions and comments flooding in. Fair enough. I still post my own videos, photos and so on, and am fine with her mostly getting the lion’s share of the responses. Even now, from Austria, she continues to send me videos, which I upload.
But here I am making smoked and then oven-dried tomato halves, and chutney from the scooped-out pulp too. These are both my recipes, so why not video the process and share it? Yes, I post mostly in English, and most of our followers are Georgians. Never mind, they’ll get the gist.
Usually, when one barbecues, one wants fire, followed by hot coals to last long enough to finish whatever one is making. So, dry wood, and emphasis on heat rather than smoke. But smoking is different altogether. Here the smoke IS the vital thing, the heat entirely secondary, and in my case, not even desirable. So, we’re not trying to start fires at all, just to get that white cloud of flavoring, usually with a minimum of flame and plenty of green leaves. In my case, leaves from pruned tqemali (sour plum) trees in our garden.
I use paper or uncoated cardboard to start the burning, and get just enough temperature for the smoke to start. A sandwich-type grill holds the halved, scooped-out tomato shells, and they sit, skin up on a pair of shish kebab skewers put across the box’s width. I repeatedly restart the fire as its smoke peters out, using a lighter, not matches; but over time, things get warm enough in the box that simply stirring things around brings more smoke. About half an hour to an hour per set of tomato halves. While these are smoking, I return inside the house to cut and scoop out more fresh halves for the next smoke. All the scoopings go into their own large pot for the chutney. Nice rhythm going.
Once I have enough smoked tomato halves, I turn on our electric oven to about 80 degrees C, and put them onto baking sheets, skin side down, to slowly dry out, with the window just propped open a few millimeters to let the moisture out. This process can take 8 hours or more, so having free electricity in Upper Svaneti is a great bonus! The house fills with tantalizing aromas, as do my clothes and self, from all the smoking.
I do this whole thing over two days, as there’s too much for just one. Early evening, I put the chutney pot on to boil and then simmer for some hours, then cool overnight.
Chutney, a fabulous Indian sauce, can be made with tomatoes, but also apples, peaches, plums and more as the base ingredient. Its other important ingredients are vinegar, sugar or another sweetener, salt, and as many of the curry spices as one wants to use. Onions and garlic too. The spices might include: ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander, black pepper, chili pepper, fenugreek, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, star anise… Amounts of everything are hard to quantify, as I’ve been doing this for long enough not to measure anything anymore. But there should be a balance of tart/sour, sweet, salty and spicy flavors. You simply boil everything up; simmer a few hours to let the tomato soften; cool enough to touch, and put it through the blender just enough to break up all the tomato and get a thick sauce (better to use just enough vinegar to keep it thick when boiling it; you can always add more vinegar at the end), Then jar and bottle.
Great with anything savory, including many classic Georgian dishes, like khachapuri, kubdari, khinkali and more. Store it in a cool dark place: the vinegar, sugar and salt act as preserving elements.
In the end, the chutney takes up about five times more volume than the shriveled smoked skins… but both are equally delicious.
The smoked tomato halves, when fairly dry and shrunken, but not crisp, you just cool and pack into jars and cover completely with olive oil, a half-teaspoon or so of ground black pepper, and a couple of slices of raw garlic per jar. They, too, will last months at least, in the cool and dark. Use in salads, rice or with potato, cheese or egg dishes, whole or cut up. The oil gets its own wonderful flavor too.
There are so many other things you can cool-smoke like this: hard fruits; cheese; other vegetables; nuts; bread… The flavor is marvelous.
And both of these tomato dishes have no added fat, and are completely vegetarian/vegan! The chutney isn’t great for diabetic diets, but that’s about it. Enjoy. Lali and I certainly will.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
