Churchkhela and Aioli. Or in other words, just a lot of rambling.

As I mentioned in my Israel Day 9 post, there is a traditional Georgian dessert called churchkhela. I told my mother that I bought it at the market in Tel Aviv. To my surprise, it turned out that she had been well acquainted with it- but thought it was an Armenian dish. Further digging showed that we were both right- it's a regional, not a national treat.

Churchkhela is a great example of the complexity of cuisine. Cultures don't truly end at the border of a nation- they flow and mingle, so many nations in a region can all lay claim to similar dishes. The morning that I wrote this, I listened to a rebroadcast of the ninth episode of one of my favorite podcasts- "A Hotdog is a Sandwich". In it, the hosts Josh and Nicole discuss whether or not mayonnaise and aioli are the same thing. Aioli is just mayo with a chip on its shoulder in my opinion, but that's beside the point at the moment. The part relevant to this chain of thought was their breakdown of the condiment's history. 

What most people consider aioli, an emulsion of olive oil and garlic, is the Catalonian version. But the spelling "aioli" is the spelling from Provance, who add egg yolks to their sauce. In Catalonia, it is spelled "allioli". So essentially, we currently use the French spelling and the Spanish recipe. Fair enough. But what about toum? The Middle Eastern sauce also is an emulsion of garlic and oil. So maybe they're in the right? But to complicate matters further, before any of the aforementioned sauces were pleasing anyone's palates, Pliny the Younger wrote about aliatum. "Alia" traveled west, influencing the name of the sauce in Catalonia and Provance, while "tum" went east, turning into "toum". All this is to say that culture and food are complicated and calling churchkhela Georgian or Armenian is, frankly, kind of arbitrary. Just don't tell anyone from either of those countries that I think so, or else they might be a little upset.

Anyway, back to the original topic- churchkhela. I decided to surprise my mom with a homemade version since I had some extra grapes and walnuts. Traditional versions use the grape pulp left over from winemaking, but grapes in a blender seem to have worked alright. 

Ingredients:

• ~ 1 liter pureed grapes or grape juice
• .5 lb walnuts
• .25 cup flour

Recipe:

1. Mix the grape juice with flour in a pot
2. Simmer and reduce by about half, whisking regularly (or until nice and thick)
3. While the grapes cook down, thread walnuts onto strings
4. Coat walnut strands in the thick grape juice, let it drip
5. Dry for a few days - I used my oven since it seals, and I wanted to avoid fruit flies 
6. Repeat the coating process? (Would make for a better casing, but I didn't do it since I didn't have any more grapes)
7. Eat and enjoy