Walking down memory lane....

I grew up in Batumi - a lovely town on the Black Sea cost of Georgia near the border with Turkey. My elder sister and I would spend autumn, winter, and spring going to school in Batumi, but would spend the long summer school break with our maternal grandmother and her two sisters in Voronezh, Russia. My father was a captain in the merchant navy, and when my sister and I were old enough we would join him on his ship

during our summer breaks sailing around the ports of the Black Sea. 

Batumi’s location on the coast made it a mini-Babylon – a real melting pot of nationalities; Georgians and Adjarians, Russians and Armenians, Greeks and Kurds, each bringing with them their own languages, religions, cultures, customs and, of course, food! We lived within a five-minute walk of the port. The early-morning fishing boats would bring in their catch of fresh fish and a colourful Greek girl named Marika would mercilessly haggle with the fishermen using some very colourful language. Marika would then come into our yard and with a heart-rending (and very piercing) voice cry out enticing descriptions of her lovely and fresh fish. In the autumn, there would be whitebait which we would arrange in a frying pan in the shape of flower petals, fry and then serve sprinkled with finely-chopped red onions, parsley and a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Delicious. In the spring, it would be fried plaice served with tkemali (a savoury plum sauce), and, of course there would be halibut with bazhi (walnut sauce). In the summer, we would go out of town on a picnic, usually to Tzikhis-Dziri – a resort destination about half an hour by train from Batumi. This place was an absolute wonder; it had azure seas, cliffs, sub-tropical vegetation and, most importantly, a wild beach where you could do khorovats – Armenian barbecue. The night before, my father would marinate the meat and chicken and prepare the grill, skewers and vegetables. At the bakery near Batumi station we would buy tornis puri – hot, fresh bread similar to naan bread. The train journey would be spent looking forward to swimming, barbecues and, most importantly, mussels! At the beach, my father and elder sister would spend their time diving and harvesting mussels from the rocks, while my mother and I would be engaged in a more prosaic manner – cleaning the mussels and clams. At the end of the day, we would take our cleaned catch home, where Dad would cook his pilaf with mussels – we would set up a large table on the terrace, invite an enormous number of guests, set a huge pot of pilaf in the centre of the table and let the feast begin! My sister and I would use the mussel shells as impromptu spoons – very inventive and saved on the washing up!  Batumi Market was another place of wonder! On entering you would be overwhelmed with the incredible variety of smells, colours and sounds. On the ground floor were spices, herbs, pickles, fruit and vegetables. On the upper floor were meat, poultry, cheese, yoghurt and flowers. I would walk the aisles inhaling the varied scents while looking for bargains to buy. Another gem was Adjarian khachapuri – a boat-shaped doughy bread filled with cheese and butter. Eat it for breakfast and you definitely won’t be hungry again until dinner! A restaurant near where we lived used to make the best khachapuri, baked in a birch wood furnace. This would be my sister’s and my favourite breakfast before going to school. One of my abiding memories involves khachapuri for breakfast. For some reason it always seemed to be my turn to go to get the khachapuri, and this time I was particularly angry about this. While explaining at length to my sister about this injustice I managed to sprinkle sugar over my khachapuri instead of into my tea. I will never forget my futile efforts to scrape the sugar out of the melted butter…  Our relatives had a fig tree growing in their garden. I loved these fresh figs, and often would eat so many that I would come out in rash. Fresh figs in themselves are very tasty, but when made into jam they become the food of the gods! Sadly, the plastic-wrapped figs available in England just don’t have the vibrancy of the ones picked fresh from the tree.  Georgia has a centuries-old winemaking tradition. In Batumi, you can often see wild red grape vines climbing all over the terraces in the gardens. The juice from these grapes can be used to make pelamushi – a jelly made by mixing the juice with corn flour. On summer evenings, when the heat has subsided the tradition in Batumi is to walk along the Boulevard – a park that runs along the shore where you can enjoy the lush vegetation and light and musical fountains, all with the accompaniment of incredibly fresh sea air. Coffee drinking – kofepitie – is a national pastime in Georgia and Armenia. It is drunk at any time – in cafes, restaurants, hairdressing salons, offices and, of course, at home with friends and neighbours. The coffee itself is very similar (if not identical) to Turkish coffee, and the word for the special pot used – dzhezve – is Turkish in origin. The traditional method is to brew the coffee on a bed of hot sand in a dzhezve, each of which makes a single cup of coffee. The principle is very simple; the sand is heated with an electric element, and the dzhezve are placed in the sand. The dzhezve sit in the sand, with sand coming up the side of the pot. As the sand has different temperatures in different places, the dzhezve are moved around in the sand so they heat evenly and come to the boil. Once boiled, the coffee is poured into an espresso-sized cup and served immediately. Of course, if you don’t have a sand box, you can just boil it up on a hob – but where’s the fun in that? A very important part of kofepitie – especially when it’s a group of ladies partaking – is Coffee Cup Reading - gadanie, which is telling your fortune from the dregs of the coffee. I must admit, that for some people this “ritual” was a part of their life – the designated “Coffee Cup Reader” will tell you all the high and low spots of the day ahead, although the quality of the detail will be down to how vivid the reader’s imagination is, and how gullible the audience are! My mother joined the Batumi community from Russia, where this practice is virtually unknown, and soon became – due to her rich imagination – a star “Coffee Cup Reader”, which says it all really! Voronezh, where we would spend our summers, is a city on the river Don in the south of Russia, which, although landlocked, was the birth place of Peter the Great's navy. This region is  known as the " Black Earth" due to the rich and fertile soil, which produces wonderful vegetables, fruits and berries, as well as the huge fields of wheat and rye. It was always hot in Voronezh during the summer, but there was always plenty of shade in grandmother's garden from the fruit trees. We spent many a happy summer with our grandmother and her two sisters. Towards the end of summer we would help grandma as she would make copious amounts of jams and preserves in preparation for the long cold winters.

– Elena Riddle