Chechen cuisine - Delicacies

Korta-kogish (mutton head and legs)

Thoroughly wash and treat with fire (best with blowlamp) mutton head and legs until all hair is burnt away. Then boil the head and legs in a big pan. Take out the boiled head and legs and put them in an oven to dry and stay warm.

Use the broth to boil dumplings made from wheat or corn flour. Serve the dumplings, head and legs on one big dish. Garlic sauce is prepared depending on the number of portions.

A guest is offered the head and he is the first to cut off the piece he fancies.

Fried eggs with ramson and cheese (one portion)

Fresh ramsons - 264 g or pickled - 182 g, butter - 10g, egg - 1, salted cottage cheese, salt - 3g.

Remove all stalk from the ramsons and wash thoroughly. Put the ramsons into boiling salted water and boil 5-7 minutes, then sift so that the water will trickle down.

Separate pickled ramsons from the marinade, sort out and cut into pieces.

Fresh or pickled fry ramsons on a hot frying-pan on butter. Top the fried ramsons with beaten up eggs. When the eggs are fried too, add the salted cottage cheese. If there is not enough salt in the cottage cheese, add salt to your taste.

Serve hot or cold.

Chicken country style

1 chicken, 0.5 kilo of quince or apples, salt and other spices to taste.

Put chicken in warm salted water for 1.5-2 hours, dry, stuff with slices of quince or sour apples, rub in ground spices (zra, pepper, coriander). Then wrap into a clean moist napkin, put on a baking sheet into the oven, sprinkle with water and bake for 50 or 60 minutes. Add water from time to time to prevent it from burning.

Serve in one big plate and decorate with vegetables, herbs and hardboiled egg cut into rings and lobules.

Adzhabsanda

500g meat, 150g fat of sheep's tail, 500g potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and onions, 2 sweet peppers, 100g garlic, 1 bunch fresh coriander leaves. Salt and pepper to taste.

Adzhabsanda is prepared on steam. For that take two pans - one big and the other - smaller. Cut potatoes into cubes and carrots into fine threads and put the potatoes and carrots on the bottom of the smaller pan. Top with sliced tomatoes, onions, cloves of garlic. And top that with pieces of fat of sheep's tail and meat. The ingredients should be put in such a way that would lie 3 or 4 centimeters below the brim, otherwise the sauce that forms during the boiling might flow out. Put a bit of salt and ground pepper between the layers. You can also add cut fresh coriander leaves and sweet pepper. After that put the smaller pan with the food into the bigger one, pour water into the bigger one and put it on fire. Close the bigger vessel with lid tightly so that the steam will not go out. As the water will be boiling away, add more. You might fail to prepare the dish if the bigger pan runs out of water or if it is not closed tightly with a lid and the steam goes out.

Preparation of the dish takes about 1.5 or 2 hours. The longer you boil it (for example, 5 or 6 hours), the tastier it gets.

Serve in plates or drinking bowls.