12 Recipes of Adyghe Cuisine
Inga Kazancheva

© Inga Kazancheva, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0067-6829-1

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

To my grandmother

Aklima Barieva

Introduction

In the childhood memories of every good cook, there’s a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot, and a mom.

Barbara Costikyan

Thank you for choosing this book. You are welcome to the culinary journey in the North Caucasus! On the pages of this book, you find step-by-step instructions and information on how to prepare and serve the top-rated Adyghe dishes. The book also includes the lessons of the famous Adyghe chef Boris Kubatiev, wise tips of my grandmother, Adyghe proverbs, and food stories of the Adyghe people. I hope, the book 12 Recipes of Adyghe Cuisine will be interesting and useful for you.

Before I move on to the main content, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the North Caucasian peoples – Circassians, Kabardians and Adygeyens – refer to themselves as Adyghe. The surrounding peoples, however, call them Circassians. Therefore, Adyghe cuisine is often called Circassian.

The Success Formula

“You must know professionally the work you do every day,” said Ai Mo, the speaker from Canada, and paused. An audience of three hundred people waited for his speech to continue. Suddenly, he asked, “How many of you cook every day?” For the participants of the seminar, this question was unexpected. Almost everyone raised their hands. “And how many of you studied cooking?” Ai Mo himself raised his hand. Only one woman and I followed him. The speaker looked around the audience. “Cooking is a science,” he said. “Everyone who cooks every day must have the appropriate knowledge and skills. The health of a family depends on the knowledge of a cook. Before becoming a chef in your own kitchen, you need to learn cooking.”

I remembered this formula for the success of the Canadian business coach Ai Mo. When I want to learn something new, I look for the best teachers. Often the first, and sometimes the only, teachers are books. And these books can lead to the Masters. So, it happened to me. I wanted to know how diet affects health and I read books about it. These books led me to study the traditional cuisine of my people, who are famous for their health, longevity, and beauty.

The Unique School

The first and so far, the only Adyghe Culinary School was founded in 1994 in Nalchik, the capital of the North Caucasian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, by the Kabardian chef Boris Kubatiev. For several years, he traveled to the villages and cities of the North Caucasus, where the Adyghe people live, studying and collecting traditional recipes of Adyghe cuisine.

The Adyghe Culinary School worked for eight years and over the years the famous chef has taught only 52 students. Boris Kubatiev taught no more than four students at a time. “A larger number of students will negatively affect the quality of practical classes,” he said.

After Boris Kubatiev closed his school, he published two books with more than eight hundred recipes of Adyghe (Circassian) cuisine.

I came to the Culinary School “Kubati” later than the other students. “You’ve come on time. You haven’t missed the most important thing,” said the master. “Next week we will begin our practical classes. So far, the students have only written down the recipes, but this is not enough to learn how to cook. The only thing that matters is what you learn to do with your own hands.”

The teacher asked us to call him just by his first name. In Russian, it is customary to address teachers by their first name and patronymic. But in the Kabardino-Circassian language, addressing only by first name is a polite way of addressing people, including teachers. The chef followed the rules of the Kabardino-Circassian language, and that made him different from other teachers.

The Distance between Dreams

and Reality is Called Discipline

Boris prioritized a clean and organized kitchen for food safety and quality control. He said that only a disciplined person can become a good cook. The teacher demanded that we have a starched toque, an ironed apron, and a change of shoes.

My daughter Ingret was four years old at that time. She wanted to attend classes with me, and the teacher did not mind. Boris called Ingret “Babitsa’. He found joy in feeding her: “Eat, eat, my little Babitsa!” My daughter liked this Adyghe name for little girls, which “Grandpa Boris” called her.

The Idea of Taking Notes

Before starting the practical classes, the teacher warned us: “If you don’t often cook the traditional dishes, you forget the cooking methods over time.” At the same moment, I decided to take notes to retain more detailed information. My goal was to capture my learning experience in my journal.

These detailed notes helped me later, at any time, step by step, to restore the methods of cooking traditional Adyghe dishes and to improve my cooking skills over time. The starting point for this book was the idea of my daughter Ingret that Adyghe recipes can inspire both chefs and home cooks.

I gave myself time to read over my learning notes and to think about how this information could help the people get more ideas for comfort cooking and learn more about the Adyghe people. I am very grateful to Ingret for motivating me to create my own cookbook in English.

I decided to write a book in which I can share the culture of the Adyghe people with the help of their cuisine. It is an honor for me to introduce you to the centuries-old Adyghe cuisine, which is a rarity in the Western world. Enjoy the cuisine that you might otherwise never encounter.

From the Stories about Hodja:

What Can You Do without a Recipe?

Once a famous chef treated Hodja to fried liver. Hodja liked the dish so much that he asked the chef for the recipe and wrote it down on a piece of paper. Then he bought two pounds of fresh liver and went home.

Suddenly, a big bird snatched the meat out of Hodja’s hand and flew away. “You can have the liver, but I have the recipe! And what can you do without a recipe?” shouted Hodja.

A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.

Thomas Keller

Chapter 1. Adyghe Supper for the German Friends

Happiness comes with a guest.

Adyghe proverb

In 1985, as a university student, I visited the German Democratic Republic. The Kabardino-Balkarian State University sent me to Dresden as an interpreter for a student construction team from Nalchik. The best students from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Mozambique, the Soviet Union, and the German Democratic Republic gathered at the intercamp “Raduga”.

At the holiday called “Day of Nations”, our team performed the Adyghe dance of the aristocrats “Kafa”. Everyone liked not only the traditional dance and national costume of the Adyghe people, but also the Adyghe etiquette – a code of laws known as the “Adyghe Khabze”: respect for elders and women, honor, hospitality.

That evening we decided to surprise the camp leaders Frank and Ralph with Adyghe dishes as well. Our German friends accepted our invitation with enthusiasm.

Boiled chicken with sauce is a classic dish of Adyghe cuisine. We were sure that this hearty dish would make a pleasant impression on our new friends.

No sooner said than done! The table was set at 6 p.m., and our friends were also on time.

While Ralph, the main leader of the camp, tried to eat with a fork and knife, as etiquette requires, Frank, the cultural leader, showed more ingenuity.

“Can I eat it with my fingers?” he asked.

“Yes, of course! We eat boiled chicken with our hands. It’s a common practice in our culture,” I replied.

Frank put aside his cutlery and enjoyed his meal while Ralph spent the evening trying to separate meat from the bones with a fork and knife. But both Ralph and Frank could not leave behind the wonderful sauce, and they used the leftover pasta to soak it up.

Boiled Chicken with Sauce or Djedlibzhe

There are several methods to prepare boiled chicken with sauce (in the Kabardino-Circassian language ‘djedlibzhe’). However, I want to share with you the classic version that I learned from Boris Kubatiev. If you follow this recipe step by step, you can surprise your guests with a new dish.

This dish consists of two parts: the boiled chicken and the sauce (“shyps’ in the Kabardino-Circassian language). First, you need to cook the chicken.

Boiled Chicken

Ingredients
chicken, cut into pieces
water
garlic – 1 head
salt – to taste

Preparation

Rinse the chicken pieces well, put them in a large pot, add cold water until the meat is covered and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium. Remove the foam and let the meat cook until it is almost finished.

Crush the garlic cloves with salt in a mortar until the garlic is very fine. The teacher did it only with a wooden pestle in a wooden mortar. Add half of the garlic to the boiling broth, cover the pot and finish cooking the chicken over low heat. Remove the pot from the heat, strain the chicken pieces with a slotted spoon, and transfer them to a deep bowl. Strain the broth. Then wash the pot and wipe dry.

Add some fat-free broth to the remaining garlic, stir well, and pour this mixture over the chicken pieces. Cover the bowl and shake it vigorously, but carefully. “It is important to soak each piece in the mixture, but make sure that the meat doesn’t fall apart during shaking,” explained the teacher.

Tip

“People who immediately wash their dishes after use can cook without helpers,” taught Boris. It is a good habit, isn’t it?

Sauce (Shyps)

Ingredients
onion – 1 head
clarified butter – 50 g
wheat flour (or corn flour) – 50 g
chicken broth – 500 g
salt – to taste
ground red pepper – to taste
paprika powder – to taste

Preparation

Chop the onion very finely. Heat clarified butter in a dry pan. Add the chopped onion and roast it, stirring constantly with a wooden spatula, until the onion reveals its flavor. It will take less than one minute. As soon as you get a nice aroma from the roasted onion, add wheat or corn flour to thicken the sauce. Fry stirring continuously for a couple more minutes. Season with pepper. Then add paprika powder and keep stirring for another one minute. Paprika powder adds a pleasant flavor, a delicate taste, and a beautiful color to the sauce.

To avoid lumps, add the chicken broth gradually and stir vigorously between each addition. Cook the sauce over low heat stirring occasionally until it thickens. Make sure that the onions in the sauce become transparent. “The Adyghe shyps should be thick and the onions – see-through,” explained the chef.

Tip

Adyghe shyps tastes better when you cook it in a cast iron pan.

Serving

Djedlibzhe consists of boiled chicken and sauce, but this recipe calls for warm pasta. You can find the recipe in the next chapter.

Serve all dishes at one time, but each dish separately. Place the chicken on one plate, the warm pasta – on another plate, and pour the shyps into a shallow bowl. And now break off one bite-size of pasta with your fingers and then dip it in the sauce. Mmm… The taste is divine! Enjoy it as a tasty side dish for the chicken. A five-star recipe for sure!

From the Stories about Hodja:

I’m not Tired

One day Hodja was a guest in another village. Nobody offered him something to eat, but the people asked him many questions. “Hodja, why do people yawn?” was one of the questions. “There are two reasons: one of them is tiredness, the other is hunger,” replied Hodja. Then he yawned for a while and finished his words: “I’m not tired.”

Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people get together to eat.

Guy Fieri

Chapter 2. A Grain of Joy

Salt and pasta deserve respect.

Adyghe proverb

Anyone who hears the word ‘pasta’ automatically thinks of Italian cuisine. However, the Adyghe people also have pasta. It replaces bread in their diet. They pair it with a wide variety of dishes. The unique Adyghe pasta is prepared from millet.

Millet is one of the world’s oldest cultivated grains. It has been consumed by humans for thousands of years. People used small millet grains for its health benefits. In the Middle Ages, millet was called the ‘grain of joy’ because it could help with depression.

Since ancient times, millet has been highly valued by the Adyghe people. Murat Umetov, a doctor and professor at the Kabardino-Balkarian State University, explains the secrets of Adyghe longevity through the prism of centuries-old traditions. Dr. Umetov is convinced that, along with applying the principles of the Adyghe moral and legal code “Adyghe Khabze”, physical activity, traditional clothing, nutrition plays an important role in longevity. The traditional diet of the Adyghe people is characterized by moderation, balance, low salt intake, using of natural products. The basis of the Adyghe diet is millet pasta.

In Russian culture, guests are greeted with bread and salt. Instead of the Russian expression ‘to share bread and salt’, Adyghe people say ‘to share salt and pasta’. The tradition to share salt and pasta is a gesture of welcome and hospitality. The Adyghe people call ‘salt and pasta’ any food. A simple way to express gratitude for a meal is: “May your salt and pasta multiply.”

The Adyghe people are very hospitable. They want to make their guests feel comfortable. The host tries to feed his guest to his heart’s content. And it might be fair to say that the best recipes are recipes from Grandma’s kitchen, first of all millet pasta! The Adyghe pasta is a culinary heritage, a cultural symbol that reflects the history and traditions of the Adyghe people.

What is so great about pasta? Let me show you how to do it!

Millet Pasta

Ingredients
millet – 100 g
water – 500 g

Preparation

Pour water into a cast iron pot and bring it to a boil. Meanwhile, place the millet in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse it under cold running water until the water runs clear, then rinse it with boiling water. Add your millet to the pot with boiling water. Bring to a boil, stirring from time to time with a wooden spatula. Cook the millet uncovered for some time to skim off the foam. Then reduce the heat and simmer it covered for about 10—15 minutes.

Make sure that the millet gets super tender. Once it is tender and there is some water that has not been absorbed, mix and stir it vigorously, scraping the bottom of the pot, so that the grains will not stick to the bottom.

Allow the millet to absorb any remaining water, stirring and fluffing it with the wooden spatula. Fluffing releases excess moisture and prevents your millet pasta from becoming sticky. A bad pasta sticks to the palate, and you can feel the grains while chewing. A good pasta melts in your mouth. Continue to fry until your pasta is dry and leaves the sides of the pot. If you are happy with its taste and consistency, remove the pot from the heat.

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