Kabardian cuisine: recipe with photos

The North Caucasus is a multinational region. Small nationalities, however, necessarily have their own dialects, national costumes, songs, rituals and, of course, culinary dishes. So, the Ossetians have all kinds of pies, the Chechens have meat with dumplings - zhizhig-galnash, in Dagestan they eat khinkal, the Lezgins make amazing cabbage tskan, and the calling card of the Kabardians is gedlibzhe.

We can go on and on, because the region is home to about a hundred different ethnic groups. Of course, a long stay together in mountainous conditions left its mark, even mixed marriages appeared, which means that the traditions of different peoples were united in one family. Yet the basic national “principles” are carefully guarded and passed on to the youth. As well as recipes for “signature” dishes, one of which you will learn to cook today.

Kabardian dish gedlibzhe

The main component of this dish is chicken. By the way, this is a very popular product among these people, which is grown in every yard. Affordable and dietary meat, if cooked correctly, is also surprisingly tender and tasty. You just have to try hard for this.

The sauce is the component on which the taste characteristics of Kabardian-style gedlibzhe depend. To get the perfect option, prepare:

Recipe for making libzhe in Kabardian style

This dish is slightly reminiscent of goulash in terms of cooking technology, but still has some characteristic features. In libzhe, lamb (less commonly beef) is first boiled and then stewed with vegetables until the resulting gravy resembles a sauce in consistency. Thanks to the carrots, the gravy turns out dark, but if desired, you can also add finely chopped tomato to the dish.

Libzhe (Kabardian cuisine) is made from lamb, which is cut into equal pieces and then cooked directly in a frying pan under a lid in a glass of water. When the liquid has evaporated, vegetable oil, onions (the same volume as lamb), and then carrots are added to the meat. Fry the vegetables and meat for a few minutes, then add a spoonful of flour, the same amount of sour cream and half a glass of water. Keep the dish on the stove for a few more minutes until the sauce becomes thick. Serve with traditional pasta.

How to cook gedlibze

Cut and washed pieces of chicken meat are placed in a hot frying pan with vegetable oil and fried on all sides for 7 minutes. The semi-finished product is pre-salted and peppered. Next, close the container with a lid, turn the heat to low, and stew the meat in its own juices for about 25 minutes.

At this time, you can have time to peel and cut the onion into half rings and the garlic into large slices. In general, the Kabardian dish gedlibzhe is prepared quickly and does not require any special manipulations. The main thing in the recipe is to maintain the proportions and not to violate the time interval.

After the specified time has passed, it is necessary to remove the lid from the pan and allow all the moisture to evaporate - only chicken and fat remain in the container. Now add the cooked onions and garlic and fry for another 5 minutes. Add paprika and spices - this is up to the hostess’s taste. After this, add cream, pour warm broth over everything, add flour in a thin stream, mix everything.

When the chicken is stewed in the sauce for about 10 minutes, you yourself will feel that the dish is already asking for the table, and your stomach produces juice with such force that you can’t wait any longer. However, there is no need either - the dish is ready!

Gedlibrze - chicken in sour cream sauce.

Gedlibzhe is a national Kabardian dish. The calling card of Kabardian cuisine. This is a very simple and incredibly tasty dish. In Kabardino-Balkaria, it is as widespread as borscht))) And if it is made from homemade chicken and homemade sour cream!!! Mmmm... Like any folk dish, it has a lot of variations. I am sure that there is something similar in other national cuisines. My recipe is based on the classic version and is not the only possible one. The main feature of my version is the minimum of ingredients, utensils and effort. We will need

large frying pan with a lid, chicken or chicken parts (drums, thighs, etc.). Onions - 1-2 heads (finely chopped into cubes), sour cream 1 jar, garlic 3-4 pcs. (cut into slices), butter (about 20 grams), spices to taste (black pepper, paprika, thyme, etc.), flour - 2 tbsp. I always prefer to cook with a whole chicken. Firstly, I can later prepare broth from parts not included in this dish, and secondly, it is more economically profitable. Wash the chicken, disassemble it by joints and cut into portions (about 12 pieces will come out). We are talking about plucked and prepared chicken)))) Fry, or rather, simmer in its own juices under a lid. In a DRY frying pan. Remove the lid and fry in the resulting fat.

Salt. Add a piece of butter, finely diced onion and half the garlic. Add a couple of tablespoons of corn or wheat flour to thicken. (If you fry the flour in advance in a dry frying pan, it will be tastier, but this is not necessary). You can sprinkle with paprika for color if desired. Stir so that there are no lumps. Pass everything together. Add a little boiling water to better dissolve the spices and flour, then add sour cream. If necessary, add more boiling water (or broth) so that all the pieces are “drowned”, reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the remaining garlic, pepper, spices, and adjust the salt to your taste. This time, I used sumac and thyme as spices. There wasn't enough sour cream, I added yogurt)))

Simmer for another 10-15 minutes and you are ready to serve.

In the simplest version, you can eat it as is, dipping fresh white bread into the sauce. Goes very well with a side dish of spaghetti or pasta. A generous amount of sauce coats the pasta perfectly.

With mashed potatoes, couscous, bulgur or rice as a side dish, it will also be an excellent filling.

Bon appetit.

Another gedlibzhe in Kabardian

The ingredients included in this recipe are absolutely the same. The only difference is in the process itself - you will prepare the sauce separately.

So, put washed, dried, greased with salt and pepper pieces of chicken in one frying pan, and we will need the other for the sauce. While the chicken is stewing, fry the onion rings. Then add finely chopped garlic, add cream, paprika, broth, add flour, take out your most “delicious meat spices” from the treasured jars and simmer it all over low heat for 7-10 minutes. When ready, check the “condition” of the onion. Some housewives pound it and turn it into a paste, then the sauce turns out completely homogeneous.

When the meat is almost ready, add our sauce to the container and leave to simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes. Bon appetit to both you and your household.

How to serve the dish

Here is such a simple recipe. Now you know how to cook gedlibze, but that's not all. It is much more difficult for a novice housewife, and even if she ended up in the house of a husband from “another nation,” to serve the food correctly. There are also 2 options here.

If you are going to have dinner with a close family circle, then gedlibze is placed on the dining table directly in a frying pan. Perhaps this is not very aesthetically pleasing, but in this way the housewife demonstrates that for her all family members are equally loved, and they, including children, have the opportunity to eat exactly the piece of meat they like.
When there are many guests in the house, the pieces of chicken are immediately laid out on plates, generously poured with sauce and brought to the table.

Keep in mind that this dish is eaten with your hands, and pieces of bread are dipped into the sauce. No forks and knives - that's normal.

Guide to Adyghe cuisine: What are ashryk and zhaubaur?

1. Geblizhe

2. Lyagur

3. Ashryk

4. Zhaubaur

5. Jersh closer

6. Lakumas

One of the gastronomic highlights of the region is Adyghe cuisine. The traditional trades of the Circassians were cattle breeding and agriculture, so meat and dairy products occupy the main place in cooking.

Finding Adyghe delights in Moscow is difficult, but possible. For example, you can go to the well-known “Moscow Heights”, the menu of which is made up of dishes from the peoples of the former USSR. But the main place of power in terms of Adyghe cuisine is “5642 Height” by Arkady Novikov. In the local menu, a special section is dedicated to Adyghe cuisine, which is constantly replenished through the efforts of chef Fatima Dmitrienko - several times a year she brings authentic recipes from Kabardino-Balkaria to Moscow, which chef Vladimir Bogozhavets then adapts to suit the capital’s stomachs, which are not accustomed to fatty dishes.

Since hospitality is one of the characteristic features of the peoples of the Caucasus (along with large families and large feasts), the serving size in establishments with Adyghe cuisine will pleasantly please even the most notorious lovers of a hearty meal.

So, let's talk about the very, very Adyghe dishes.

Chetlibzhe (Dzhedlibzhe) - chicken breast stewed in chips sauce

The most traditional Kabardian dish. Grain-fed chicken fried in melted butter, served with chips sauce and pasta. It’s worth saying more about the sauce, because almost all dishes in Adyghe cuisine are served with sauce, and most often it’s chips - it’s prepared on the basis of rich homemade sour cream with the addition of meat broth and spices to brighten the aroma.

Lyagur - dried veal meat with nettle flavor and shchips sauce

The peculiarity of the dish is that lyagur (thinly sliced slices of smoked beef) must be brought to Moscow directly from Kabardino-Balkaria, where the meat is smoked over a nettle fire, and this is what gives it its unique taste. Then the meat is fried in melted butter, after which shchips sauce is added. Also served with cold pasta.

Ashryk - milk soup with pieces of lyagur

A soup that is prepared in milk with the addition of grains of white boiled corn, pieces of the aforementioned lagur and a small amount of red beans. A little unusual dish for metropolitan residents, but it’s definitely worth a try.

Veal zhaubaur on coals

Traditional jaubaur is made from chopped lamb or veal liver, wrapped in lamb fat mesh, rolled and fried. But there is another way of cooking: the flesh of the veal is wrapped in a fat mesh, so the dish turns out less fatty.

Jershblizhe - soft red bean sauce

A traditional sauce that, in addition to red beans, contains homemade sour cream and spices. Served with cold millet and corn semolina paste, which is somewhat similar to hominy, only thicker. It compensates for the fat content of the dish.

Lakums (Shalyama) with Kalmyk tea

These are airy donuts, hollow inside, served with smoked Kabardian cheese and Kalmyk tea. The combination of the milk base in the tea, the notes of bitterness of the Ivan-tea herbs and the addition of crushed black pepper gives the dish a special interesting taste. And in winter they also add a cube of butter.

Adyghe cuisine

About the nuances

And in conclusion, a few words about tastes and preferences. An amazing pattern is noted by housewives of various nationalities: in the same family, children raised by the same parents, permanently living together, have different favorite and unloved dishes since childhood.

Some happily gobble up any salad, others sit over the plate and carefully “sort” the onion rings in the soup, and still others will not touch the dish at all if you put regular dill in it. But after all, a mother loves all her children, and that’s why she tries to please everyone. And therefore he “modernizes”, conjures a classic dish, often violating the proportions. What won't you do for your beloved child?

Yes, some housewives

They generally don’t put garlic in the dish.
Others make the sauce thicker and richer, sparing no fat sour cream.
Still others, as already mentioned, carefully grind the onion so that it becomes “invisible.”

What else is good about this meat? It is necessary to exclude frying from the cooking process, remove hot seasonings, and the dish will become completely dietary. Can you imagine how important this is in a family where there is a child with a stomach problem? He can’t eat anything fried, or pickled, or fatty, but then his mother figured out how to cook gedlibje so that all family members could enjoy it. So try it yourself, and teach your loved ones and friends what you can eat:

at the festive table;
in a narrow family circle;
people who are prescribed a diet.

Tasty, appetizing, aromatic, tender, decorated with chopped cilantro or sprigs of fresh parsley, this dish has long ceased to be exclusively Kabardian. It is prepared both in Russian restaurants and far beyond the continent. And all because delicious food knows no borders or nationalities. This is us about gedlibzhe.

And only proud Kabardians always emphasize that the homeland of this dish is their small, but so beloved and dear Kabardino-Balkaria. They hospitably treat everyone who wants to taste the national dish. And when traveling outside their country, on occasion, they are sure to prepare gedlibzhe, since it has long become the calling card of this distinctive people from the North Caucasus.

Alternative option

In the North Caucasus, locals are very fond of “Gedlibrze”. The Kabardian recipe has two independent cooking options. In the first case, the sauce with meat is prepared in one container, and in the second - separately. The result remains virtually unchanged. True, novice housewives prefer the second option. It will require the following components:

chicken weighing no more than 1 kilogram;
a glass of sour cream;
3 onions;
50 milliliters of sunflower oil;
5 cloves of garlic;
3 grams each of ground red pepper and paprika;
20 grams of salt;
teaspoon curry;
parsley.

The cooking process consists of several parts:

First, the carcass must be divided into pieces, and then fried in boiling oil. After this, cover the pan with a lid, reduce the heat and continue processing for about another half hour.
To prepare the sauce, first of all, randomly chopped onions along with garlic need to be fried in vegetable oil. In just 5 minutes it will acquire a golden hue. After this, the contents of the frying pan need to be transferred to a blender and blended in it until pureed.
Add the remaining spices according to the recipe, chopped herbs and mix well.
Transfer the mass into a deep saucepan or cauldron and pour in the broth, and then add a little more water.
Place the fried meat into the sauce and simmer for 15 minutes, covered.

The best side dish for such a dish would be tender mashed potatoes.