Armenian cuisine
A typical meal in an Armenian household might consist of bread, butter, buttermilk, cheese, fresh and pickled vegetables, and radishes.
Armenian cuisine also makes use of mixed flours made from wheat, potato and maize, which produces flavors that are difficult to replicate.
[4] Archaeologists have found traces of barley, grapes, lentils, peas, plums, sesame, and wheat during excavations of the Erebuni Fortress in Yerevan.
[7] Mezes made with chickpeas, lentils, beans and eggplants play a role in Armenian cuisine, often served with traditional lavash bread.
[3] Armenian cuisine also features filled pastry pies called boereg, various types of sausages, toasted pumpkin seeds, pistachios, pine nuts, basturma, and dolma.
[14] Harissa (Armenian հարիսա harisa, also known as ճիտապուր) is a thick porridge made of wheat and meat cooked together for a long time, originally in the tonir but nowadays over a stove.
[18] Armenian rices are discussed by Rose Baboian in her cookbook from 1964 which includes recipes for different pilafs, most rooted in her birthplace of Aintab in Turkey.
[28] Some greens were dried and used to season cooking including garlic, spinach, parsley, mint, coriander, dill, summer savory, thyme, tarragon, leek, chive, celery, marjoram, bay leaves, and basil.
When used as a marinade, (mostly for basturma) the spice blend is added to tomato paste, parsley, crushed garlic cloves, and either olive oil, or matzoon.
[42] Armenian-American cookbook author Rose Baboian explains that Armenian cheesemaking techniques date back to an era before refrigeration was widely available so cheeses had to be preserved in brine solution.
[44] Yeghegnadzor is an Armenian steamed cheese made from pasteurized cows or goats milk that is mixed with local greens stored in clay pots then buried in the mountains and left to mature for at least 6 months before consumption.
Motal is prepared in locally made terra cotta pots sealed with beeswax, a method that dates back at least 5,000 years.
Sourki cheese was a mixture of spices and curds shaped as a pyramid, dried, and stored in glass until it began to turn moldy.
[31] Baboian gives several different recipes that can be prepared with madzoon like barley matsoon soup, jajek (which she calls Easter Spinach Salad) and sauce served with koftas.
[12] In the 1950s, Sarkis Colombosian, an Armenian who had fled Turkey in 1917, began selling yogurt from an Andover, Massachusetts based dairy farm, which he purchased during the Great Depression.
[72][73] Another variation is similar to the Greek style of baklava, which is supposed to be made with 33 dough layers, referring to the years of Jesus's life.
It is made with 25 dough layers, has a filling of cleaned and dried chopped walnuts, sugar and a syrup that is poured over the finished baklava consisting of honey and flowers.
[86][87] The Mikado cake (Armenian: միկադո տորթ) is an Armenian layer cake made by stacking up layers of baked dough (the dough mainly consists of flour, sour cream, butter, and egg[88]) and a buttercream that mainly consists of butter, chocolate, brandy and condensed milk on top of each other.
Dolma is usually made with either stuffing wine leaves, cabbage, eggplants, peppers, or other vegetables with a mixture of spiced ground beef and rice.
[96] Basturma (Armenian: բաստուրմա) is a salted meat that is dried, and cured, before being rubbed with a special spice-paste called cemen (See: Herbs, spices and sauces section of this article).
[103] Chickpea balls called topik are a common Armenian appetizer; they are spiced with currants, onions, and cinnamon and served with a tahini sauce.
[133]Mantapour (Armenian: մանթապուր mantʿapur) is a soup typically made with matzoon, beaten eggs, flour, garlic and meat broth, to which Manti, either raw or pre-cooked are added.
There is also another version of mantapour, which consists of Manti simmered in a clear broth, and then eaten with a dollop of matzoon or sour cream and parsley on top.
[136] Armenian cuisine includes many typical seafood dishes like fried mussels (midye tava), stuffed calamari (kalamar dolma), mackerel (uskumru) and bonito (palamut).
The brandy is aged in oak barrels and is made from selected local white grapes grown in the Ararat Valley which is giving it a shade of caramel brown.
[178] Artsakh is a well-known brand name of Armenian mulberry vodka (tuti oghi) produced in Nagorno-Karabakh from local fruit.
Winemaking took a downward plunge in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but is undergoing a revival, with the addition of world-class labels such as Zorah Wines.
During excavations in the castle of Teyshebaini around traces of 480 different types of grapes were found, and in Toprakkale, Manazkert, Red Hill and Ererbunium 200 pots.
The evidences of high-level and large-scale wine production in Armenia are as foreign (Herodotus, Strabo, Xenophon and others) and Armenian historians of the 5th–18th centuries, as well as sculptures of architectural monuments and protocols.
In addition to grapes, wines have been made with other fruit, notably pomegranate (Armenian: նռան գինի nran kini), apricot, quince, etc.
