Boregi

Boregi is the sweet of the Adjaran Iukha Feast, a household tradition of Upper Adjara where a family opens a hundred or more thin iukha dough sheets at once to make sinori, tavmacaroni and boregi for a gathering. The dough, with a little oil and soda, is fried red, filled with sugared walnuts or hazelnuts (or left unfilled in a croissant shape), soaked in boiling syrup and finished with a pour of hot iaghi, salted butter. The combination of syrup then salted butter is distinctly Adjaran.

Crisp, glassy, syrup-soaked pastry with a salty edge from the butter pour, a sweet nutty centre where filled. The salt of the butter against the sweet syrup is the Adjaran signature, unlike any standard baklava.

The dough is fried hard until red and crisp (not pale-baked like baklava), which gives it a glassy structure that holds up to the syrup bath. The filled version is rolled like a roulette; the unfilled is shaped like a croissant. After frying, the pastries take a boiling syrup bath that penetrates the crisp layers, and finally hot salted butter is poured over them. The syrup goes on first, butter second, so the butter sits as a layer rather than being absorbed.