Anna Richards delves into northwest Armenia to discover how its cuisine has bound Armenians the world over.
Sausage-like strings that look like fat beeswax candles hang from the washing line. Lifting the cast iron skillet from the oven, or tonir (a chimney-like stone fire pit that reminds me of a wishing well) is a two-person job, and my hosts, Gohar Aragyan and her husband Arto wrap old t-shirts around their hands to tackle it. The skillet of tolma explodes with colour: aubergines, a bruise-like deep purple, chargrilled cabbage leaves, earthy-looking baked apples, scarlet stuffed tomatoes and lime green peppers. Their vibrancy would put a 1970s dinner party spread to shame, but these colours are natural.
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Ashtarak, northwest of Yerevan, Armenia, is famed locally for wine and walnuts, which are so revered there’s even an annual festival to celebrate them. Gohar hands me a needle and we sew walnut halves onto long threads, jabbing the metal through the little grooves to avoid breaking them.
The toffee-like mixture on the stove next to us bubbles and spits, wafting the thick scent of cinnamon and butter. Right before, we dunk our walnut garlands in their toffee bath, and Gohar adds granulated sugar for crunch.
Sujuk, or Armenian Snickers, says Gohar as she hooks the resulting product that I’d thought looked like candles on the washing line to dry.
Ashtarak Guest House opened in 2019, in Gohar’s family home. She has a large family, including five grandchildren, but as the oldest woman in the family, she is responsible for the bulk of the cooking. A mother-in-law would never let her daughter-in-law cook, Gohar tells me, because these recipes have been handed down from mother to daughter.
The older you are, the better tolma you make,” she says matter-of-factly. An Armenian woman never retires.
Armenia’s history is complex, raw and incredibly tragic. First established in 2,300 BCE, it was the first country in the world to adopt Christianity, in 301 CE. As empires and countries pillaged, massacred and conquered – the Mongols, the Persians, the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union – Armenia suffered. During the genocide of 1915-17, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered, almost destroying the entire nation (the current population of Armenia stands at just under three million). As a result, the country’s diaspora is immense, estimated at around eight million.
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Armenians may be scattered across the world, but when they come together, mealtimes are a serious affair. Gohar’s table barely has room to fit a saltshaker, let alone the glasses of tan (soured, fermented yoghurt), grape juice and red wine that I’m served simultaneously.
This focus on hospitality and gastronomy, particularly in rural Armenia, led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) funds many small-scale farmers to open their homes as ‘gastro yards’. Here, guests are invited to pick, prepare, eat and sometimes stay with their hosts.
Gastro yards are invigorating traditional cuisine, but I’m keen to see what the future holds for Armenian food, so I go to Dilijan, some 100km north of Yerevan, to meet Ani, an art-historian-turned-baker and experimental chef.
“I ate this ice cream topped with toasted grains, and it tasted and smelled like the bakery in my grandma’s village, she says. The memory was so powerful that I cried.”
Thirty-four-year-old Ani Harutyunyan is the founder of the Arm Food Lab, a gastronomic initiative and bakery that uses local ingredients and herbs and vegetables (largely foraged) to create recipes.
“I asked myself, what is contemporary Armenian cuisine? And I decided that it’s simple, sociable and aesthetic,” says Ani.
She hands me a slice of homemade tomato and thyme sourdough and it smells like sunshine.
“There are over 100 different vegetables and herbs growing naturally in Dilijan National Park alone,” says Ani. She’s always looking for new wild greens to forage and doesn’t see herself as a chef, but rather as a researcher.
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Ani’s mum isn’t impressed by her cooking. Rather than making tolma using her grandmother’s recipe with years of experience under her belt, she’s creating new twists on harissa. In Armenia, harissa isn’t the spicy red tagine paste, it’s a grain and meat stew, but Ani’s is made with foraged amaranth leaves, and topped with strawberries.
Many of the Armenian diaspora have kept strong ties with their heritage. The Canadian-Armenian author of The Vegan Armenian Kitchen, Lena Tashijan, is in Yerevan at the same time as me. I’m fascinated to learn how she’s created a vegan recipe book about a cuisine that gives such prominence to meat and cheese.
Thirty-seven-year-old Lena was already vegan when she first visited Armenia in 2011. She’d just finished studying and signed onto a three-month volunteer programme in agriculture to connect with her roots. She ended up staying for over six years.
“No one understood when I said I was vegan, says Lena. I was living with a host family, so I adapted and became vegetarian, but as I learnt more about Armenian cuisine, I found that it could easily be vegan. Take tolma. During Lent, many Armenians eat a plant-based diet, and by asking for pasuts tolma (Lenten tolma), I’d receive a vegan version, stuffed with vegetables and grains.”
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None of my hosts will let me leave hungry, and when I depart I’m armed with an entire gata, a bag of peaches, a bottle of wine and of course, an Armenian Snickers.
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