Kartli
Khabidzgina
Ossetian cheese and potato bread: thin, piping hot and brushed with butter
2 h·4 servings
Imeretian cheese
A young Georgian brined cheese made from cow's milk: white, soft but sliceable, mildly tangy and salty.
Imeretian cheese is a fresh cheese from the Imereti region of western Georgia, made from rennet-set cow's milk, matured only briefly and kept in brine. It is white, moist and loose-textured, a little more elastic than feta and noticeably milder, with a fresh, milky tang. What matters in cooking is that it melts softly and stretches slightly when heated without turning oily, which is why it is the classic filling for baked cheese breads. Outside Georgia it is most likely found in Russian, Eastern European or Georgian grocery shops, and sometimes by mail order.
Substitute:
The usual choice is a mix of roughly equal parts feta and mozzarella: the feta supplies salt and tang, the mozzarella the melt and stretch. A mild white brined cheese from a Turkish grocery comes closer in flavour, but if it is very salty it should be soaked in water for a few hours. None of these quite matches the fresh, loose character of the original; feta alone turns too salty and crumbly when baked, mozzarella alone too bland.
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