FOOD BLOG: Khinkali (or how I learned to love the Caucasus)

By Blogger Max Holtz - St. Louis' native son, I have returned from living in New York and Michigan for the past 6 years schooling and working. I'm back and I'm hungry.

During my last trip abroad I spent a significant amount of time immersed in the culture of "the heavy." Heavy is hard to define by simply using words and is best described by example. Briefly, it is a phenomenon that is most purely displayed outside of the boundaries of Western culture. The realm of the heavy is one that encompasses taxi drivers, drunkenly consuming offal at odd hours of the night, tacky, anachronistic pop music, creative swears, Ladas, street food, mustaches, hairy chests, gold chains, and poor english. Eastern Europe, The Balkans, and Turkey are decidedly heavy. North Africa is heavy. The Caucasus, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan are all very very heavy. I suppose that the closest that America can offer is the stereotypic uneducated southerner or rural dwellers of remote Appalachia but heaviness in the context mentioned above goes far beyond trailer parks, relying instead on the weight of thousands of years of historical narrative.

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photo by Ralph Hälbig (my first khinkali made in Leipzig)