Experiment #1: Khingali ala Ararat

Khingali is a boiled Georgian meat-filled dumpling that's quite popular here in the Caucasus. Traditionally, the meat inside is left uncooked so that the juices fill the dumpling and can be sucked out. In this respect, it's quite similar to the Shanghai soup dumpling, such as can be found at Shanghai Joe's in New York City.  In fact, looking at the Shanghai Joe's website, I'm pretty sure that the soup dumpling and the Khingali are exactly the same thing.  Convergent evolution, or did some enterprising Georgian guy make it to Shanghai?  Perhaps we'll never know.  The major difference between the Khingali and the Shanghai Dumpling is the spices.  Let's face it, the Khingali is delicious but usually pretty bland.  It's traditionally served with some unspicy pepper dumped on top and lots of oil, while the Shanghai dumpling meat is cooked in tasty tasty Shanghai sauces.

That's where our friend Mr. Ararat comes in.  For this experiment, we'll see if beer can improve the blandness of store-bought frozen Khingali.

Ararat Beer is a pretty new label in Armenia.  It's come out in the last year, while I've been here.  That means that most of the stocks on the shelves are pretty fresh, but the quality and taste is still not quite down.  I'm not a huge fan, but it's very popular with my friends.  Still, it's cheap, at 300 dram (about 85 cents) to the bottle.  The Khingali I got frozen for 650 dram from the store in my village, and the red pepper on the street in Armavir, a town the locals still call Hocktembryan (October Town) 20 years after the fall of the USSR.  I got the imported Olive Oil at a supermarket in Yerevan, the capital.

My Russian's not so good, and the Georgian alphabet looks like this: კუჭი [1] but there was a little picture of a clock on the front of the package, a big 10 and the Russian word минут, which pretty much anyone can figure out is "minute,"[2] so I poured the beer in a pan, turned on the gas, and got to boiling the suckers up.

As the Khingali simmered, I noticed something: my kitchen smelled great.  It smelled like warm, yeasty, fresh baked bread was rising in the oven.  My oven hasn't worked since Perestroika, and Armenian typically eat a flat, unleavened bread called lavash [3], so it could only be the beer.  The smell alone almost made the experiment worth it.

Until I got to this:

It was time for the ultimate test: would cooking with beer compensate for the blandness of Khingali?


Answer: Yes.

The beer did an excellent job on the otherwise bland, mass-produced dough on this store-bought frozen Khingali.  The dough tasted much richer and more "bready."  This is a pretty heavy meal, with lots of starch and meat and oil, so I recommend washing it down with a lighter beer like Peroni to cut the heavy flavors.

Experiment: Success!



[1] This means "Belly button"
 [2] (The M is an M, the backwards N is an I, the H is an N, the Y is an oo and the T is a T.  Pronounced like "minoot")
[3] Armenian friends: Lavash is delicious. Lavash is great. I am in no way denigrating lavash.  I will eat lavash for the rest of my life.  America is sad because we don't have lavash. Seriously guys, fresh baked lavash is awesome.

What is to be done

Welcome one and all to "Now We're Cooking With Beer," a blog where I, a bachelor male with no particularly fine cooking or culinary skills, will document my attempts to learn to cook with beer.  I do this based on the advice of Mark Bittman, food and opinion columnist at the New York Times, who wrote a column which said

"Cooking with beer makes sense: not only is it more flavorful than water, but it’s also more flavorful than any store-bought chicken stock and less ethically objectionable as well. And unlike wine or liquor, you can substitute beer cup-for-cup for stock or water when you’re braising or making soup. Yet like wine, beer is acidic, which comes in handy when you’re baking quick bread, cake or fried foods, because you need a little acidity to activate baking soda.

In fact, beer’s flavors are arguably more varied and complex than any ready-made liquid besides wine. And like bread, to which it’s closely related, beer loves to team with meat, cheese and strong flavors like onions, garlic and spices."

You can find the column here.

A bit about myself:

I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small village in the Republic of Armenia, so my selection will include many beers that are not available in the states, most notably the brands Ararat, Gyumri, Kotayk and Kilikia.  Occasionally, I will throw in Russian brands such as Botchka and Baltika 3, 5, 7 and 9 as they become available in my town's store.  The store does stock such imports as Heineken, Peroni and Holstein, but I don't have the money to use them as cooking stock.  

Here's a photo of a beer flight at  Les Trois Brasseurs in Montreal, Canada, to get you started.