Ojakhuri: Georgian Potatoes with Pork and Veal in a Clay Pan

Step-by-step recipe

1. For homemade ojakhuri we use raw vegetables – medium potatoes, onions, bell and chili peppers. The pork neck and veal are cut into pieces and always browned first to get a crust. All the vegetables are tossed with spices and laid in a ketsi together with the meat, or in a similar unglazed clay dish. The roasting time depends a lot on your oven and the size of the pieces.
   
2. Potatoes slightly bigger than a chicken egg work best. You can peel them, but the dish is at its best when the potatoes roast unpeeled. For that, scrub them very thoroughly with a sponge. Pat the potatoes dry and cut each into 4–6 wedges, just like for country-style potatoes. Put the wedges in a bowl, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and add 0.5 tsp sweet paprika. By the way, Svan salt – salt crystals mixed with herbs and spices – gives an excellent result instead of regular salt. Toss the potatoes with the spices and leave for 5–10 minutes.
   
3. Carefully clean the pork neck and veal of any bone fragments. Cut the meat into pieces about the size of the potato wedges – ojakhuri is often eaten with your hands or scooped up with bread, so this makes the pieces easier to pick up. Pour 1 tbsp vegetable oil into a regular frying pan. Once the oil is hot, fry the meat, turning it often. The meat will stay half-raw inside – the goal is a clearly browned crust.
   
4. While the meat is frying and the potato wedges are “resting” with the spices, peel the rest of the vegetables. Cut the onions into wedges or thick strips. Cut the bell peppers fairly large – into chunks or strips – and the chili pepper into rings. Roughly chop the garlic clove. Combine all the raw vegetables in a bowl.
   
5. Drizzle the spiced potato wedges with 1 tbsp vegetable oil and toss. Add all the other vegetables to the potatoes and toss again. This way the paprika barely colors anything except the potatoes. Prepare the clay pan: fill it with warm water beforehand, pour the water out after 10–15 minutes and wipe the clay dry. Put the vegetables into the ketsi.
   
6. Lay the browned meat on top of the vegetables. Pour the fat left in the frying pan over everything. Now the ketsi goes into the oven. To avoid sudden temperature changes, I put clay and ceramic dishes into a cold oven and heat them up together. Don't stir the ojakhuri while it cooks – everything browns perfectly on its own.
7. I usually heat the oven to 200–220°C. At this temperature all the vegetables are done in 45–60 minutes. I check doneness by the potato wedges – if a toothpick goes in easily, they're ready. The vegetables roast without any liquid, so they may seem slightly underdone – remember potatoes baked in embers?
   
8. When everything is done, take the ketsi out of the oven and set it on a clay plate. That's how the dish goes to the table – you can add individual plates if you like. Just before serving, sprinkle the roasted potatoes, meat and vegetables with finely chopped green onions and cilantro. Serve with a hot sauce – adjika or salsa – and fresh lavash.
   
9. You can add other vegetables too – tomato wedges, carrots, eggplant, zucchini. Ojakhuri is delicious with slices of liver, beef tongue or tripe. Coriander and savory (kondari) are common additions. Sulguni cheese is often added as well – the taste is amazing. You can quickly sear the meat on a grill instead of in a pan, and put the ketsi into a wood-fired oven rather than a regular one. This dish leaves plenty of room for experiments – and they always turn out well.