BAGHACH the Armenian pie

Asparagus

It's spring now and time to eat all sorts of herbs. Here comes asparagus with eggs. I boiled it, and fried with eggs. Super easy and tasty.

Aveluk

Another favourite herb of mine. Aveluk needs to be dried and stored for winter and below you can see how it looks like. You will need pour hot water to cover it, leave it for several hours, then wash and boil it. And then simply fry it with onion and oil, add garlic and walnuts. You can also make a soup: first fry onion with potatoes, then add aveluk and wheat.

Soup with pipert

No idea on how pipert is translated into English or even Russian. You can easily find this herb in every region of Armenia. The soup is super easy to make. Fry 1 small onion with 2 potatoes, boil them, and then add pipert in the end. Boil all this for 5 minutes not more, then add one egg and salt. The soup is ready!.

HARISA

This is a dish from my childhood. My grandma used to make harisa on weekends and all of us would get together to eat it. She would start preparations from late night, then put harisa on fire and it would be ready by early morning. The ingredients are only two: dzavar (пшеница, emmer or hulled wheat) and chicken meat. Better take a whole chicken. Dzavar is недробленная пшеница  in Russian, korkot in Georgian and in Turkish.

You will just have to wash the chicken, add 2 cups of dzavar, add water to cover all this and then cook it on a slow fire. Usually it takes 2-3 hours. When served, add butter on top. And, of course, do not forget about salt.

Beet leaves (բազուկի տերևներ)

Here is how we eat beet leaves in Armenia. We boil them slightly, very slightly with little water and then fry with onion, oil and fresh herbs (coriander for example). You can then add fresh yogurt and enjoy it.

Another option is to make pickles. For a small bowl you will need one pack of leaves, 05 l water, 1 table spoon salt, garlic, black pepper, 1 table spoon vinegar. Boil water, add salt. Put the leaves in a small bowl (so that there is no free space), add garlic, pepper, vinegar. Put the bown in a cold place (or simply in the fridge) for a couple of days.

DDMO MSHOSH - Դդմո մշոշ (ddum - pumpkin)

This is a garnish recipe, borrowed from Sonia Taschyan's book. An old Armenian dish comprised of pumpkin, dried apricots and lentil. I boiled the lentil with apricots, fried (boiled) pumpkin with oil and butter and the mixed everything. This was an unusual, but very interesting addition to meat. I had 1 full cup lentil, a big slice of pumpkin and 15 dried apricots. Do not forget about the salt and red pepper.