Armenian Cuisine

Armenian cuisine is one of the oldest national cuisines in Asia and Caucasus. It was formed many years ago, about 1000 B.C., and since that time hasn’t virtually changed. The most peculiar features of Armenian cuisine are devotion to tradition and succession, which are displayed in the usage of ancient kitchen utensils, technology of making dishes and in preserving the taste range and types of favorite dishes.

The technology of preparing dishes in Armenian cuisine is very backbreaking and complicated. Here there are included whipping, stuffing, making soufflé. In Armenia people put much salt in all the dishes. That fact is explained by the geographical position of the country. It is proved that human body consumes much more salts in countries with hot weather, than in the regions with mild temperate climate. One more distinguishing feature of Armenian cuisine is that all the dishes are very piquant and contain different spices and herbs.

Khorovatz — royal shashlik

To make this dish, Armenians use various sorts of meat. Generally speaking, it is quite typical for Armenia to combine different sorts of meat, that can be joined together only in Armenia, for example, venison and chicken. As for Khorovatz, beef, mutton, chicken and pork are spitted and roasted over burning ashes.

Before roasting meat it is pickled, each sort in a different sauce — made of cognac, vinegar, wine — which contributes to the result that pieces of different sorts of meat get roasted at one and the same time. The usual shashlik is not less popular, Armenians use mutton ribs and shoulder-blade for it. Sometimes shashlik is made of sub products: kidneys, hearts, liver. Usually shashlik is served with roasted peeled tomatoes, pepper and aubergines, mostly chopped and mixed with each other with addition of finely chopped greens and spring onions. Khorovatz is served with red table-wine.

Poch

Poch is a very ancient dish, it is said to be more than 3000 years old. Besides the procedure of making it is rather complicated and requires much time. First of all, the tail is drenched in running water for a day to get rid of unpleasant smell. Then it is chopped and put into a pan. Afterwards Armenians add tomatoes, onions, pepper and pour over with mayonnaise, bitter beer, brewed in Armenia, and with boiling water. Poch is boiled on slow fire for 3 hours.

Sudjukh

Sudjukh is a piquant Armenian snack. Generally, the word “sudjukh” may mean anything you want; the only term is that this anything should look like sausage. There are meat sudjukh and fruit one — it is called also “churchkhela”. Armenians prepare sudjukh from grape juice, which is supplied with a special powder of slightly red hue; it is called “brown soil” in Armenia. It is necessary to use this soil to get the syrup hardened. Besides the soil, flour and spices are put into the pan. While cooking, the juice is filtered to get rid of the soil, which should be thrown away. Then walnuts are threaded and drenched into the pan. After this procedure the threads are taken out, hung up and dried. This fresh syrup tastes like hot jam.

Dolma

Dolma is a traditional Armenian dish. The name of this dish, translated from Turkish, means “stuffed”. For making the dish, Armenians take boiled young grape leaves (in winter they take salted leaves). The stuffing is prepared from mutton, rice, onions, pepper, salt and kinza, which are minced and mixed up. Then the acquired mixture is placed on the side of a grape leaf with projecting veins. The stem is torn away. With the view not to burn the dish, they put a saucer on the bottom of the pan.

Armenian Bread

Lavash is considered to be national Armenian bread. It represents a long thin stripe of baked dough about 1 meter in length. Traditionally lavash is baked in a special stove — tonir. In many districts of the country there has been preserved the ancient tradition of baking lavash in autumn for 3 or 4 month “for a rainy day”. On being baked, lavash is dried, collected in piles, covered with some cloth and kept for several months. Afterwards you may just soak the dried lavash a little with water and cover it with a towel for half an hour, and it becomes soft again.

Armenians use not only different sorts of flour, but also different types of it, based on the quantity of grindings, the amount of which can reach the figure of 15. There exists in Armenia a special kind of flour — pokhinds – which you won’t find outside Armenia. It represents flour made of fried wheat.

Sweets

Armenian sweets and confectionery are distinguished by the way of cooking, which requires much effort and time. For example, the process of preparing sweets from fruits and nuts may take about a fortnight. For pastry they sometimes use rather unusual raw materials — green tomatoes, aubergines, pumpkins, water-melon peels. Due to the talent of Armenian cooks, these commonly useless products turn into original confectionery with delicate refined taste, odor and even consistence. In Armenian cookery one of the most popular and wide-spread dainties are alani, which represent dried peaches, stuffed with nut crumbs and granulated sugar instead of the extracted stone. From grape juice Armenians brew doshab — fragrant dark-cherry syrup, which is believed to possess healing effect. This doshab is also a raw for making thick mealy jelly, which is used for soaking chains of threaded walnut lobes. After this procedure Armenians dry the lobes and conserve for the whole winter. It is one of the most favorite sweets.

In Russia gata is rather popular. It is a round flat sweet cake with fried mealy stuffing. And we may also mention pakhlava — round sweet cake with walnut stuffing.

Armenian Cognac

It goes without saying that Armenia is famous for its cognacs, which have been produced and bottled there for more than 100 years. Nowadays there exist 15 brands of Armenian cognacs.

According to the term of exposure, degree of stronghold and some other features all Armenian cognacs can be subdivided into ordinary, chateau and collection cognacs.