Linguistic cuisine help!

[rootofnewt]

Is anyone familiar with Georgian cuisine (or the language, heck, that would do)?

I'm wondering if there's a distinction made between pkhali made with spinach and other types of pkhali. Additionally, is there a distinction made with lobio made with red beans or kidney beans in a walnut sauce and lobio made with green beans with tomatoes? If there are distinctions, the proper name of the dishes would be greatly appreciated. I can handle Cyrillic, Latin, and Mkhedruli alphabets, though I'd appreciate a pronunciation written out in IPA, English/Latin, or Russian/Cyrillic (okay, you Ukrainians are welcome to reply, as well) if you reply with the actual Georgian term in the Mkhedruli alphabet. I could sound it out, but it would take me a good fifteen minutes. ;)

I'm a language nerd and like to know exactly what I'm serving. ;)

Anyone who replies is welcome to insist that I make these dishes if you ever visit Charlottesville.

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Is it just a sign of the odd places my mind goes that I keep reading lobio as labia?

[krasota.livejournal.com]

Considering the kinds of dried pepper I use in various lobio dishes, it better not go anywhere near labia. ;)

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Ow! The thought almost makes me go cross-legged. :-)

[jenx.livejournal.com]

familiar with Georgian cuisine

Of course, the first thing I think of is sweet tea in Mason jars, fried okra, smoked country ham, green beans, stewed tomatoes . . . and then I realize you said "Georgian" not "Georgia" and that it's not "cuisine", it's "cookin'".

[nadyezhda.livejournal.com]

Lobio, as far as I know, refers to kidney beans. I wouldn't know what the dish would be called if you made it with green beans, and the same with pkhali, that it's made with spinach, although isn't the p supposed to be the aspirated p? (p'khali)

Where'd you grab the recipes? Not sure if you know about Darra Goldstein's Georgian cookbook (probably you do, but hey, she was one of my favorite professors in college, so I'll give her another plug...)

And how do you know sigerson? I seem to bump into you in various shared communities... longhair, linguaphiles, and sigerson's F-list...

[krasota.livejournal.com]

Lobio is sometimes a general term used for beans (not pulses, but beans), in certain parts of the Transcaucasus and the middle east--sometimes it's lobio, sometimes it's loubbieh--the transliteration and pronounciation always varies, according to region and transliterator and original alphabet. Or so I've been told. ;) I pronounce the p in pkhali as an aspirated p, yes. Pkhali can also be made with beets and eggplant. (Green pkhali, red pkhali . . . hrm, maybe *that* is the delineation.)

I use Anya von Bremzen's "Russian" cookbook quite often, though I modify the recipes slightly (none of her Georgian recipes call for khmeli suneli). The cookbook is more like a (pan) Soviet cookbook than a Russian cookbook. I've seen Goldstein's cookbook, but I don't have it.

sigerson and I went to the same high school.

[linnapaw.livejournal.com]

You should talk to pallasathene82, 'cause she might be able to help you.