Kada

Kada (ქადა), in its sweet form, is a baked confection popular in Georgia in which a filling of wheat flour, fat and sugar is wrapped in dough. When it is cut, a pale, flour-based filling can be seen inside the crust. Although flour and butter are used throughout, the outside becomes a baked crust and the inside a crumbly filling.

In Meskheti in the southwest, some versions wrap a filling of flour and clarified butter without any sugar. In the eastern highlands it serves as a festival offering, and the same name, kada, has been used both for sweet sliced pastries and for breads baked for celebrations.

Toasted-flour filling and mixed-flour filling

In food historian Darra Goldstein’s The Georgian Feast, the kada is made by heating the flour until it turns deep pink and then adding butter and sugar. Toasting the flour first gives the filling a toasty flavor. One shape involves coiling a long roll of dough further into a spiral, and the author presents a method of forming it into a ring with an open center to preserve the flaky texture of the crust.

Georgian food writer Irma Iantbelidze’s rolled kada follows a different procedure. Wheat flour, sugar and softened butter are mixed into a filling resembling damp sand, which is then wrapped in the dough. The filling is not toasted in a pan but cooked in the oven together with the crust. Even with the same three ingredients, whether the flour is toasted in advance or mixed in raw changes the point at which the aroma is created.

The flour filling differs both from a smooth cream and from a jam of cooked-down fruit. Flour and sugar containing fat hold together and crumble finely where they are cut. Even in versions without nuts, the toasted wheat flour supports the toasty flavor.

The cross-section of rolled and sliced kada

In Iantbelidze’s recipe (ingredient proportions and method), matsoni or yogurt, eggs and baking soda are added to wheat flour combined with butter. Matsoni is a fermented milk of the Caucasus. The dough is rested, rolled out into a rectangle, spread with the flour filling and rolled up from one end.

The roll is flattened slightly, brushed with egg yolk, cut into small pieces with a wavy blade or similar tool, and baked. This leaves alternating bands of dough and filling in the cross-section of each piece. It also differs from the large ring-shaped kada in that it is cut before baking. Apart from pastry in which fat is folded in repeatedly to create fine layers, a layered cross-section can also be produced by rolling up dough spread with filling.

Meskheti’s sugar-free flour filling and handling of the dough

In Meskheti in the southwest, there is kada made with lard. The Georgian National Tourism Administration presents the region’s kada as a filled dough baked for New Year rituals and still made today. In Akhaltsikhe, a city in the same region, it is also enjoyed as a sweet, rich, layered baked confection.

Meanwhile, an interview with Nazi, a resident of Khizabavra village in Aspindza Municipality, records a way of making a flour filling without sugar. Erbo (ერბო), a clarified butter, is heated, flour is added and worked in, and the flavor is adjusted with a little salt. The filling is not pressed into a lump but kept loose and crumbly.

This interview describes a method in which the dough containing the flour filling is closed like khachapuri and baked directly on bricks using the heat of the remaining embers. Ways of handling the dough include spreading it with lard and folding it into layers, and winding it repeatedly around the hand, then taking it off and spreading it out with the fingers. In the latter, a mixture of matsoni and eggs is brushed on the surface before baking. Even under the same name, kada, the taste that lingers in the mouth differs between the sweet rolled pastry with added sugar and this method, which brings out the flavor of the flour and fat.

A bread in the dictionary, and an offering in the highlands

In his explanation of nazuki, the 17th–18th-century lexicographer Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani lists a variety of breads made with eggs, milk, clarified butter and other ingredients, and counts kada among them. The name kada has not referred only to the small, sweet sliced pastries of today.

In the beliefs handed down in Pshavi and Khevsureti in the east, kada also serves as an offering. At the festival of Iakhsari (იახსარი) held in the Pshavi village of Shuapkho, kada and candles are the traditional gifts. Iakhsari is a deity long believed in these highlands to protect the people of the community, and people gather at the festival bringing offerings. At this festival, kada is a food that people bake, bring with them and offer to the deity.

In the highlands there is also kada filled with meat, cheese and green onions that grow in the mountains. The festive formulation presented by the Georgian National Tourism Administration wraps finely chopped meat, crumbled cheese and parboiled, well-drained onions in a yeast-leavened dough. It is a savory baked item brushed with butter when it comes out of the oven. Despite sharing the name, its contents differ greatly from those of kada wrapped around a sweet flour filling.

A name that overlaps with gata

Armenia, Georgia’s neighbor in the South Caucasus, has gata, which wraps a filling of flour, butter and sugar. Georgian food writer Medea Chubinidze also calls her own gata recipe “Armenian-style kada.” Gata and kada share the rolled-and-sliced shape and the flour filling, and at the table there are also instances where the two names overlap in use.

In Goris in southern Armenia, a type of gata made into a thick round and filled with a sweet walnut filling is also popular. The baked confections of these neighboring lands range from ones similar to kada, with a flour filling and a rolled cross-section, to ones with nuts at their center.

Sweet kada is also one of the confections that can be bought at street stalls in present-day Tbilisi. Some are baked as rings and then sliced, some are cut small and then baked, and some wrap a flour filling in dough spread with fat. This confection, which uses the wheat flour of the crust for the filling as well, takes many forms within each household’s procedures and each region’s occasions for eating it.

Glossary