A World Food Adventure: Country 8

Armenia is a mountainous country on the borders of Western Asia and Europe. It is surrounded by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. It was part of the USSR and has a very long history as it is situated on the Great Silk Road. Its borders have changed many times and so it has many cultural influences.

Armenian borders have changed so many times that there are many influences to its cuisine. Cooks like to 'stuff, froth and puree' their food and lamb, aubergine/eggplant and bread are staples, they tend to use bulgur wheat rather than rice or maize.
Herbs are more popular than spices to flavour food with mint, parsley, basil, tarragon, thyme and oregano being the most popular.
The two national dishes are: Harissa - a porridge made of wheat and meat stewed together for a long time; and Khash - a type of soup made by boiling cows or lambs feet (tempting but we were unable to source the animal feet!)

For our Armenian meal we decided to make Manti, Dolma and Armenian Eggplant Casserole.

The trouble with making 3 unfamiliar dishes is timing and today I was working solo because Gary had meetings until late. Luckily, I like to keep a tidy, organized (sort of) kitchen and our large table allows me to spread out and keep everything in little groups. Both the Manti and the Doma needed slightly different stocks and I did get confused abut which was which a couple of times. In the end we managed to fit a small cocktail in before dinner was ready! :D

I thought dolma was a Greek dish involving vine leaves but apparently middle eastern countries use the term for any stuffed vegetable.

I was only making a quarter of the recipe - Dolma - stuffing red peppers with minced lamb, green pepper, and I also added some courgette/zucchini. They needed to be roasted in a covered pot sitting in broth. The broth was made with stock - I used vegetable, lemon juice and chopped tomatoes.

Making the broth

Mixing the lamb, onion, herbs and rice. The recipe and tradition calls for bulgur wheat, unfortunately when I got our bag of bulgur wheat out of the pantry I saw the best before date was 2011 - I guess I haven't used it a lot recently!

Prepping for the Aubergine Casserole.
The herbs are parsley, oregano, thyme and basil

I had to add some water during the cooking, sometimes just
making a quarter of a recipe is tricky!

I was excited about making Manti.
They are crispy lamb dumplings - with the dumplings
made in the shape of little boats.
The whole dish is baked in the oven and served with broth and yoghurt.
The dough is a bit like pastry made from flour, egg,
melted butter, water and milk.

After you roll out the pastry you have to cut it into little 4 cm squares. Then you place the lamb, onion, garlic, fennel seed mixture, rolled into in small balls, in the centre of the square.

The edges are pinched together - just like a boat!
I forgot to take a photo before I put them into the oven!

Everything smelt delicious and we were excited to try our Armenian meal. We were not let down, everything was delicious, that's two weeks running now that we have actually enjoyed the food!!!