For as continued as they accept lived in the country’s highlands, Armenians accept harvested the aboriginal comestible blooming plants, transforming them into admired dishes.The top mineral agreeable of Armenia’s soil, fabricated accessible by centuries of agitable ash, makes the country a botanist’s dream.Thus, while some may crop breach at the old Russian proverb, “What are weeds for Russians is aliment for Armenians,” there is some accuracy in the saying.
Every year, locals aces endless bulb breed from the mountains and hillsides.Novel to adopted tongues—both in accentuation and palate—many of them anatomy the courage of signature acceptable recipes.
Yet for those searching to apprentice added about these comestible plants, a simple Google seek will not suffice.Save for a few efforts to bottle Armenian foodways, like The Thousand Leaf Project, the abandoned way to admission these foods in their accurate anatomy is by traveling to the base of the countrysides and meeting those who carry the accountability of the nation’s comestible heritage: Armenian grandmothers.
Greta Grigoryan is your quintessential Armenian tatik.She lives in Yeghegnadzor, a bizarre boondocks in Vayots Dzor arena two hours south of Yerevan, the capital city.For centuries, Yeghegnadzor and its surrounding regions accept been the website of abounding hardships, from invasions by adjoining empires to famines and endless earthquakes that accept adapted the region’s arid, arresting terrain, giving the arena the name “Gorge of Woes.” Despite the acrid history of this land, its humans are miraculously resilient, a trait which is generally bidding through food.
Greta expertly maneuvered her small, Soviet-era kitchen preparing surj (Armenian-style coffee), doling out old wives’ tales and aliment preferences of her ancestors members.With abrupt motions, her active easily darted from tabletop to countertop, chopping, measuring, and cloudburst ingredients.She used the a lot of basal elements—onions, walnuts, garlic, and lots and lots of oil—making way for the brilliant of this meal: aveluk.
Greta handles tough, continued braids of broiled aveluk with affluence as she prepares her signature salads. (Photo by Karine Vann, Smithsonian)
Greta Grigoryan reveals the aveluk she calm from fields adjacent and braided in the spring. (Photo by Karine Vann, Smithsonian)
Aveluk is a agrarian amber specific to assertive regions of Armenia.It is acclaimed for its alleviative backdrop and altered taste, evocative of the blooming fields from which it is harvested.Each spring, villagers expedition to these fields to autumn its leaves—sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, depending on whether they are agriculture their families or affairs in the shookahs (markets).After harvest, the leaves are generally afraid to dry and acclimated year round—sometimes abiding up to four years, according to Greta.
In its broiled form, aveluk is about consistently braided into long, blooming plaits.The adjustment of braiding is itself a tradition, about performed by women sitting outdoors if the acclimate is nice or in the adumbration of their patio, chatting, and casual the time.The breadth of braided aveluk accept to according four times the acme of the getting braiding it.“Because families were so big,” Greta said, “we accept to braid continued braids to accomplish abiding we can augment everybody.”
“All these plants and weeds accept fed the families of this region, even in times if aliment was scarce,” Greta explained.“And now, everybody loves these dishes—the poor as able-bodied as the rich.”
But it wasn’t consistently that way, she recalled.Her grandmother, for example, brash adjoin assertive plants.“She acclimated to say that even donkeys won’t eat sheb [wild amber variety].I asked her, ‘Well, Tatik, what again should I eat?’ And she would reply, ‘Aveluk, my dear.You should eat aveluk.”
Greta has calm endless books absolute admired admonition on Armenia’s herbs and comestible plants, which are difficult to acquisition anywhere else.She has aswell adored old hand-written recipes, anesthetized down from her grandmother and great-grandmother. (Photo by Karine Vann, Smithsonian)
Her grandmother’s admonition did not assume to affect Greta’s affection for even the a lot of abstruse greens.She ashamed off bulb names—spitakabanjar, mandik, loshtak, pipert—insisting anniversary be accounting down and accustomed fair recognition, even venturing abysmal into accumulator to retrieve assorted broiled greens, answer anniversary plant’s adventure and claimed significance.
These recipes are hereditary, she explained, anesthetized down from grandmother to mother, mother to daughter.Sons are afar from this transmission, as gender roles are adequately austere in acceptable Armenian households.Men’s affable duties are generally bound to advancing meat and alive in the field.
As she abounding through her Soviet Armenian album of agrarian plants, Greta remembered that from a adolescent age she harbored a abounding adulation for the abounding abounding greens.“I admired to aftertaste all the grasses in my garden.I was analytical about it, added so than added girls my age.”
Today she maintains her own garden, growing vegetables from bounded seeds—a attenuate abnormality these days, as a lot of Armenian farmers opt to use adopted seeds.Local varieties, unfortunately, do not crop ample harvests—only abundant to augment one family.
Despite the bounded and amusing significance, these greens are not universally loved, even a part of Armenians.The aftertaste is so carefully intertwined with the fields that it is black for some.There is aswell the abashing over Western Armenian aliment against Eastern Armenian food, a aftereffect of the burning of Armenians from the above Ottoman Empire at the about-face of the twentieth century.Aveluk is about as Eastern Armenian as it gets.
Armenia’s civic cuisine is so diverse, in fact, that what may be advised a acceptable bowl away may not be frequently eaten in Armenia.Arianée Karakashian, a Canadian-Lebanese Armenian, afresh fabricated her aboriginal cruise to her affiliated citizenry and reflected on her expectations against the absoluteness of Armenian food.
“Here in Yerevan, it’s the Syrian restaurants that admonish me of my mother’s affable aback in Canada,” she said.“Coming from an ethnically Armenian family, you would apprehend the Armenian aliment your mom makes to aftertaste agnate to the Armenian aliment an absolute mom in Armenia makes, but it is so absolutely different.For now, I’m aggravating to aggrandize my aftertaste bud knowledge.You ascertain new things about what you anticipation would be self-evident, but that’s the point of growth.”
Greta’s bootleg aveluk bloom in the final stages of preparation. (Photo by Karine Vann, Smithsonian)
Aveluk soup at Dolmama, one of few restaurants that offers avant-garde examples of this signature Armenian dish. (Photo by Karine Vann, Smithsonian)
This is conceivably why abounding restaurants in Yerevan adopt to play it safe and, alfresco of the casual item, not action these acceptable dishes.One barring is Dolmama, a quaint, catholic restaurant on Pushkin Street that has carved itself a alcove for alms acceptable dishes of both Eastern and Western Armenia with an affected spin.The card includes signature soups fabricated from aveluk and pipert, both of which accept become acutely accepted items for their change and taste.
Omitting these signature plants from the airheaded of restaurants in tourist areas highlights an absorbing dilemma.On one hand, abounding of these dishes abide preserved in their accurate contexts, to be accomplished in the regions in which they originated (as continued as you apperceive breadth to acquisition them).
But that agency a lot of travelers in Armenia are missing out on the flavors and generations-old practices that acknowledge so abundant of the nation’s identity.And if they’re missing out on that, what are they getting served instead?
So, while it can be difficult to acquisition abounding of Greta’s admired vegetables alfresco of her kitchen, it may be that there is artlessly no appeal yet.Tourists don’t apperceive to apprehend these dishes aloft accession to Armenia, and the locals who adulation them charge attending no added than their own kitchens.For no amount how abounding restaurants action aveluk on their menu, if you ask a bounded how they like it able best, they will consistently say the aforementioned thing: “The way my grandmother fabricated it.”
This commodity originally appeared on the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage's "Talk Story: Culture in Motion" blog. Karine Vann is a biographer based in Yerevan and originally from the D.C.area.She is the communications administrator for My Armenia, a affairs developing cultural ancestry in Armenia through community-based tourism. For added reading on Armenia, analysis out the "My Armenia" project.
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