Dish #4 of 11 from the Year in Food
Adjika
Central market, Sukhum, Abkhazia
Oliver Bullough, one of the great chroniclers of the Caucasus, set off our fiercest food fight of the year when he offered up his ode to adjika, a chili-garlic sauce claimed by both Georgia and Abkhazia, contentious neighbors with a deep, patriotic love for this fiery condiment. After angry commenters cried foul, Bullough trekked across the border to try the Georgian version of adjika in a follow-up report, but it was his time in Abkhazia, including a condiment-heavy conversation with President Alexander Ankvab, that won us over.
The market was a chaotic noisy place full of vegetables and bread and furniture and clothes and hustlers. I smiled at the thought of Chirikba, careful and precise in his beautiful suit, walking through here.
But he was right: everyone knew Seda, who was pleasingly nonchalant about having her produce recommended by the country’s top foreign policy official.
“Of course, mine is the best,” she said, pulling out a jar from under a counter covered in vegetables. “It is the purest so it is the best.”
She opened the jar and offered me a spoonful to try. More coriander in this one, I thought, as I waited for the garlic and chilli explosion at the back of my mouth. And something else in there too: dill seeds? Cumin? It was indeed wonderful.
She just smiled at my questions though: “I will not tell anyone anything about what’s in here”.
A bald man, 40 years old or so, was listening to our conversation and chipped in to support Seda’s boast. When he heard I was writing about the national sauce, he insisted on his viewpoint being recorded as well.
“Write that Adjika is Abkhaz, not Georgian. They say it is theirs, but they lie. They always lie,” he said, before stumping off, a string bag of vegetables in each hand.
The Georgians, of course, have their own thoughts on this. But since the word Adjika comes from the Abkhaz word for salt, I am a believer in Abkhaz claims to the invention of it.
Seda dipped the jar in spices to seal it, screwed on the lid, and handed it over.
“Everyone knows me,” she said. “Seda, Seda, Seda, in America, in Israel, auntie Seda, they call me. Auntie Seda.com for adjika. Ha!”
There is, alas, no website. I checked.
With the jar safe in my bag, plus one from her blonde neighbour too, I headed off to see President Alexander Ankvab. We did cover the issues I wanted to discuss—American opposition to Abkhazian independence, Russian support, the return of Georgian refugees. But it was perhaps inevitable we would spend some of our time talking about a particular spicy condiment.
“Adjika is number one,” he said with finality, when I asked him to rank it in the world top 10 of sauces. “I can remember, when I was a schoolboy, when we went to the village, the old women would grind the adjika on a stone like this.”
I looked on in amazement. I had somehow provoked the president of a war-torn semi-recognised country into miming the action of grinding spices on a stone. He had a glint in his eye too.
“There were so many herbs in it, starting with garlic and ending God knows where, but the taste was heavenly. The most tasty kind was done like this, with a stone.”
Source: roadsandkingdoms.com
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