The Armenian cuisine is a poem, every line of which has a peculiar and
unique scent. It includes a number of big and small secrets.
Armenian cuisine consists of numerous kinds of vegetables and fruit, different sorts of herbs,
cheese, meat and fish, wine and pastries.
Cheese, herbs and lavash: any ceremonial dinner lovers,
even those Armenians who live very far from their native country, never forget about their bread
lavash.
Lavash is a very thin, easily rolled layer of dough approximately one meter high, which
is baked on a hot wall of a stove-tondir (stove dugged in the ground), which is burned and heated
by a dry vine bough.
After having traveled in the Caucasus, Alexander Dumas offered the French to
taste khorovats (pieces of meat piled on a skewer and grilled on a burned charcoal without fire)
with lavash, which he particularly liked.
Basturma (long pieces of cured meat, covered with crust
of bitter seasoning) and sujukh (flat meat sausages, spiced by various seasoning) are also very
popular in Armenia.
The biscuit gata (a flat cake of ferment or flaky dough with a filling of butter,
sugar and flour) is very popular, too.
Wines as well
as cheese occupy a particular page in culinary art. Roots of viticulture and winemaking
in Armenia go back to the oldest times. It is confirmed by the cuneiform inscriptions in Urartu
(an ancient state populated by Armenians).
Wine cellars in Armenian houses were filled with aroma.
There stood wide clay jars full of wine, grapes were dried for winter (which is popular in Armenia
even nowadays), winter sorts of grapes, peaches, quinces and pears were piled on a thread and hung up.
Nowadays numerous kinds of wine are produced in Armenia: “Malaga,” “kagor,” saperavi, pomegranate,
Muscat, etc. Matchar (new grape wine) is very popular in Armenia. Combination of brightly shining sun
of Ararat valley, fertile soil and pure water give the opportunity to create real works of art when
producing wine and cognac.
We offer you to try to cook some of the dishes, especially loved in Armenia, yourselves,
in order to really appreciate all taste colorings of the Armenian cuisine.
Good luck and good appetite! (The recipes will be continuously updated).
Recipes
Cakes, Sweets
Gata
Yeast: 250 grams of flour, 250 grams of ferment, 200 grams of water.
Pastry: 750 grams of flour, 200 grams of melted cream butter, 5 eggs, 200 grams of sugar,
a pinch of salt, a pinch of vanilla.
Filling: 800 grams of flour, 350 grams of melted cream butter, 300 grams of sugar powder.
To spread egg yolk on gata topping.
Make the yeast. Beat butter, melted beforehand, separately for 10 minutes: add sugar, eggs,
vanilla, salt and mix until well blended. Fill it into the yeast and mix for 5 minutes. Afterwards,
add flour with small portions (beating dough all the time), knead dough and put it in a warm place
for 30-40 minutes.
Filling: knead butter with flour, add sugar powder and vanilla.
Put dough on a table covered with flour, knead it a little, cut it into some pieces of about 250 grams, and roll them into round pancakes of 0, 5 centimeters width. Spread butter on one pancake surface and put filling (1 cup), then close it with another pancake, join edges, spread egg yolk, put different patterns and prick some parts with a fork. Bake it in a frying pan covered with butter in the oven for 30-35 minutes.
Meat Dishes
Khash
Scorch cleaned cow and ram trotters, scrape them, wash carefully and chop them up into pieces.
Leave them in cold water for some days (it is better to change the water every 2-3 hours). Wash
the trotters again and put them into a large wide boiler, fill it with water (water must be higher
than the trotters for 15-20 centimeters), cook it without salt not letting it boil very hard.
Constantly, skim off the scum. It will be ready if the meat is picked off the bones easily.
Khash is served very hot, and it is usually eaten early in the morning. Salt, dried lavash, chopped garlic and radish are served with khash.
Meat-Balls (4 portions)
1, 5 kilograms of beef
200 grams of melted butter
25 grams of onion
Egg, 50 grams of milk, 12 grams of flour, 30 grams cognac, salt, pepper, greens to your liking.
Separate meat from the bones (make broth with the bones) and beat them with wooden hammer,
then put chopped onion on them, continue beating it until getting a soft mass. Add flour,
milk, eggs, cognac to the mass and beat it with hand. When the mass is half-watery, sand salt,
pepper, greens and put it into the fridge for 30 minutes. After that make small balls from the
mass, make a hole, put little melted butter or well-boiled egg and give them a form of balls.
Cook it in water or broth on a weak fire. Serve it with hot melted butter.
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