Georgia
Zarmatsuli Khachapuri
The lazy khachapuri: a loose cheese batter fried golden in the pan
35 min·4 servings
Suluguni cheese
Georgian stretched-curd cheese made from cow's or buffalo milk and matured in brine: salty, mildly tangy, elastic and pulls apart in layers.
Suluguni is a cheese from western Georgia whose curd, as with mozzarella, is stretched and kneaded in hot water and then kept in brine. It is noticeably saltier and a little tangier than mozzarella, firmer to bite, and can be pulled apart into fibrous layers. When heated it melts smoothly and forms long strings without releasing much water or fat, which makes it well suited to filled breads, baking and pan-frying. It comes both fresh and smoked; the smoked kind has a savoury, spicy flavour and is mostly eaten cold. Look for it in Russian and Eastern European grocery shops, occasionally in Turkish supermarkets, or order it online.
Substitute:
A mix of roughly two parts low-moisture mozzarella (not the kind in brine) and one part feta comes closest: the mozzarella provides the melt and the stretch, the feta the salt and tang. The filling turns out somewhat softer and more crumbly, and the layered texture you can pull apart is lost; the difference is more obvious when eaten cold than when baked.
Used in · 1 recipe