Georgia
SEASONINGS
Georgian food tastes sour and savory first, then nutty and herbal, with warmth. Flavors are built around contrast between richness and acidity. Sourness is very important; it is created with sour plums, pomegranate juice, grape verjuice, and small amounts of vinegar. Fruit acidity sharpens meats and walnut sauces and often replaces the role that citrus or dairy plays in other cuisines.
Walnuts are a structural element, ground into sauces satsivi and bazhe, used to thicken stews, and mixed into fillings. Walnuts add fat, bitterness, and body without cream or butter.
Fresh herbs define much of the aroma. Fresh cilantro is the most important, used both as leaves and seeds. Dill, parsley, summer savory, and especially fresh tarragon are used generously. Many dishes combine dried and fresh herbs in a single dish. Garlic is used confidently but in balance, rarely sharp.
Georgians use coriander seed, fenugreek, marigold petals, and black pepper a lot. Chili exists, but does not define the cuisine. Blue fenugreek is much more prominent than in neighboring cuisines. It belongs to the same family as fenugreek, but has a milder, sweeter flavor reminiscent of autumn leaves. Also, the marigold flower is quite distinctive, called the Imeretian Saffron. Georgians use the dried and ground petals to give an earthy flavor and bright yellow color to walnut dishes and sauces.
Many spices are dried and ground together rather than added separately; thus there are unique Georgian mixes:
KHMELI SUNELI – a distinct blend, which combines coriander, fenugreek, blue fenugreek, marigold, bay leaf, summer savory, celery seed, dried basil, dill, parsley, and mint. There is no fixed recipe for khmeli suneli, like Indian masala.
SVANETIAN SALT is a popular mix; the recipe originates in Svaneti, but nowadays it can be bought virtually everywhere and is a practical souvenir. Salt contains a mixture of sea salt, dried garlic, fenugreek, coriander, cumin, chili pepper, dill, and several other herbs.
AJIKA – a spicy and subtly flavored condiment made with hot peppers, garlic, coriander, tomato, fenugreek, marigold, and salt. It is a part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Georgia. It comes in red and green varieties, with red being the hotter option. Red ajika exists in two variants – dry and wet. Dry is a seasoning mix used on raw meat, while the wet one has the consistency of a thicker mustard and is used to highlight the already roasted meat.
TKEMALI – Georgian sauce made of cherry and red-leaf plums. The flavor of this sauce varies, but it’s generally pungently tart. Alongside plums, garlic, cumin, coriander, dill, chili pepper, pennyrile and salt are used. Tkemali is used for fried or grilled meat, poultry and potato dishes, and has a place in Georgian cuisine similar to the one ketchup has in the United States.
BAZHE – rich and creamy sauce of ground walnuts, coriander, fenugreek, blue fenugreek, marigold petals and sometimes onions and garlic. The unique texture comes from the way the walnuts are processed and emulsified with water or other liquids. A touch of vinegar or pomegranate juice is often added to balance brightness. It can be served as a dip for vegetables or bread or poured over grilled meats or fish.
SATSIVI is a thicker, more luxurious sauce compared to bazhe. It’s made with ground walnuts, coriander, fenugreek, blue fenugreek, sometimes cinnamon or cloves. Satsivi can be served hot or cold and is a classic accompaniment to poultry dishes, especially chicken or turkey.
Colombia
SEASONINGS
Colombian seasoning is quieter than its neighbors’. Where Mexican cooking layers chiles and Peruvian leans aromatic, Colombian flavor is built on slow extraction: aromatics cooked down until they turn sweet, fats absorbing spice and carrying it through the dish. Traditional Colombian recipes are not spicy; heat is almost always added afterward by the diner using ají. Its not that Colombia does not have chili tradition – it does, and it’s still alive in indigenous communities and on the coasts.
Garlic, long-stem scallions, tomato, culantro, and cumin are core flavorings. They go in early and cook long. Culantro is not a finishing herb like cilantro, but a herb with a more intense aroma, tougher body, and more pungent to survive heat in stews. It goes into ajiaco broths and sancocho, where cooking time would reduce ordinary cilantro to nothing. Cumin also enters with the aromatics, blooms in fat, and sets the baseline earthiness in savory cooking. Oregano, black pepper, bay leaf support. Regular soft cilantro and galant solder guascas finish dishes. Guascas is lesser known outside of South and Central America. It’s an Andean herb, earthy and faintly nutty, somewhere between artichoke and lime, usually added late. Guascas is what makes ajiaco. Leave it out, and you have just a simple broth.
Achiote, or annatto seeds, native to tropical South America, is also steeped in oil at the beginning. That colored oil is what gives rice, soups, and stews their orange tint. It stood in for saffron when Spanish sofrito was adapted locally: achiote was cheap and grew everywhere, saffron was neither. The flavor it adds is faint.
SAUCES
HOGAO is the base sauce. Tomatoes and long green onions are cooked down slowly in oil with cumin until the mixture thickens and becomes jammy. It works at both ends of a dish — stirred into beans, rice, and braises at the start, spooned over arepas and patacones at the table. It looks like Spanish sofrito but parts ways on technique: cooked longer, reduced further.
AJÍ is the table sauce — chopped tomato, scallion, cilantro, and ají pepper, assembled raw and set beside the plate.
SUERO COSTEÑO, a fermented cream from the Caribbean coast, gets drizzled over arepas and fried food as a finishing sauce.
SALSA ROSADA — mayonnaise and ketchup combined, is on every street food: empanadas, patacones, hot dogs, arepas, fried chicken. This one often gets omitted, but it’s arguably the most ubiquitous condiment on an actual Colombian table (source).
