Armenian cuisine: how to cook like a local

Want to learn about the cuisine of Armenia? Discover what makes this unique cuisine special, plus three recipes to try, from Hisham Assaad. For more global recipes, check out our guides to Venetian food and Vietnamese food.

Recipes extracted from Green Mountains by Caroline Eden (£28, Quadrille Publishing). Photographs: Ola O Smit. Recipes are sent by the publisher and not retested by us.

Armenian cuisine

It’s no wonder when you look at the geography of mountainous Armenia, bordering Turkey, Georgia, Iran and Azerbaijan, with its abundant forests and vineyards that the country’s food would mirror its enticing landscape.

In Armenia a restaurant might serve tolma (rice and herbs wrapped in a grape leaf), bean-based patês, cold and slightly sour thick matsoon yogurt, big glass bottles of ice-cold Jermuk mineral water, chargrilled beef, salads of citrus, and grapes and tarragon, eetch (a wonderfully refreshing dish similar to tabbouleh), roast peppers or perhaps trout wrapped in paper-thin lavash bread. Lavash, forming the backbone of Armenia’s diet, is guaranteed to be on the table during mealtimes and usually it is served blistered and hot from the oven.

But there are more breads to know, too. Jingalov hats (hats means bread in Armenian) is a must-try and when this stuffed bread arrives to you in a café, often warm and in the shape of a deflated rugby ball, it is sometimes served with three bowls containing salt, cumin and paprika. Ingredients for the green filling varies, depending on what herbs are available, but it tends to include dill, coriander, greens (maybe spinach or sorrel) and spring onions. If the ingredients are super fresh and flavoursome, little more is needed.

Like neighbouring Georgia the weather and terroir of Armenia means it too offers stupendous wines, ready to be more widely discovered. The grape to start with is the dark and complex Areni grape, known to everyone as Areni noir.

For sweet things, gata is a dense almost bread-like cake which certainly deserves to be better known. In Armenia, it is especially linked to Geghard Monastery, where vendors have displayed and sold gata for as long as anyone can remember.

It pairs excellently with a cup of coffee. And then there are the almost indescribable apricots: dozens of varieties grow in Armenia and 6,000-year-old apricot stones have been dug up from the country’s soil. Prunus armeniaca is the fruit’s Latin name, hinting at its native origins. Do not leave the country in summer without trying them.

Caroline's recipes from Armenia

Lamb with plums, green beans and cinnamon

This fine-spirited meal-in-one showcases fruit in a savoury dish – ideal for late spring or summer when nature’s gates are thrown open, providing an abundance of garden herbs, fresh vegetables and fruit.

Summer tolma with barberries

A little fiddly but worth it and much easier with practice. Think of tolma as a beginning and call on whatever is in the fridge to make simple textured dishes to go alongside a meze set-up – perhaps feta crumbled over a herby tomato salad, aubergines grilled with za’atar, or a crunchy cabbage and carrot salad.

Gata with apricots and nuts

Gata is a bread-like cake and it is for you if you like, say, half and half popcorn, because it is as salty as it is sweet. In Armenia it is especially linked to Geghard Monastery where vendors have displayed and sold gata for as long as anyone can remember. For this gata I used a variety of seeds – any mixture of the following works well: pumpkin, sunflower, sesame and brown linseed.