Chicken tabaka - one of the most popular, perhaps, dishes were in Soviet times. Both at home and in cafes and restaurants. And all because getting a soft and tasty chick was much more real than an equally soft and juicy piece of fried meat (if the institution was from the category of democratic).
Meat in inexpensive catering establishments was most often initially supplied of quality "chopped together with the booth," as they said then.
However, the chickens were also "blue". I remember an anecdote from those times:
There are two chickens on the counter, ours and a Polish one. The imported boasts:
- Look, I'm all so fat, pink and white, smooth, and you? Blue and scary!
Our chicken answers her:
- But I died a natural death!
It was much later that we all realized that bluish and harsh birds were, in fact, barely tastier (in comparison with the current broilers), and then everyone dreamed of tender chickens... Delicate chickens - especially gherkins - I have not seen on sale.
Well, okay, back to the tobacco chickens. Everyone already knows that they are tapaka. But why were they soft somewhere before, and not gnawing somewhere?
To be honest, the recipe from the collection did not give any clues. He looked mute, not even Georgian.
Moreover, I have not even seen such a chicken - to be fried in sour cream.
I went to my aunt Zina for explanations (I already wrote about her, I worked all my life in public catering, a very cunning very old lady)
The explanation was trivial:
- Somewhere, maybe they did it. Somewhere it's simple - you spread salt with pepper, and on a frying pan. It depended on the authorities, and on how many people there were. I remember that she worked in Yalta - there we will only salt and fry. There are so many vacationers in the season that they will be eaten, every day there are queues. And where “for their own people,” where the audience is permanent, there, of course, they already did it normally.
In the evening, chickens "for flounder" - flat, that is - cut, beat off with a rolling pin, mix salt-pepper with oil and garlic, a little lemon juice or citric acid, well, if there is, add suneli hops, put them in a pan in a pan - to press it with a load later, and in the refrigerator for night.
And in the morning, peel off the garlic and start frying. To the crust on one side, to the crust on the other, and then you take a glass of water, in it - a third or a half of a spoonful of salt and grated garlic, stir - and this water in a frying pan. Heating is medium, simmer for twenty minutes under the lid.
We remove the lid five minutes before readiness, increase the heating and evaporate all excess. After this, even the mummy became biting!