In every country, among all peoples, autumn marks the harvest, when ripe vegetables ripen in the fields, sweet apples poured juice in the gardens, shelves in barns and pantries are bursting with supplies for the winter. It was at this time that the grape harvest, the preparation of wine began in the Caucasus, and they also prepared a wonderful tasty and warm autumn dish ghapama, well, to better understand, it’s enough to say that this is a sweet Armenian pilaf cooked in a pumpkin.
This dish symbolizes abundance, as it combines all the ingredients of a well-fed and rich table - depending on the taste and preferences of the hostess, raisins, dried apricots, nuts, candied fruits, honey and many other goodies are added to the rice, flavoring everything with cinnamon. And to make the Armenian ghapama both juicy and beautiful, and most importantly delicious, our step-by-step recipe for making ghapama with a photo will help you cope with the task.
Simultaneously with the arrival of autumn, the harvest, fun also comes to the mountainous Caucasian villages - the time of weddings begins. And here you can’t do without hapama - a juicy pumpkin is present on all wedding tables, as it is carefully prepared by the relatives of the newlyweds with the wishes of a beautiful, rich family life. This dish is so traditionally Armenian that Armenians even have songs about it. The most famous American Armenian Harut Pambukchyan, the treasure of the Armenian people, sings a song about the ghapama dish - "Hey, jan, ghapama!", This is an almost ready-made recipe for cooking a dish beloved by Armenians.
She talks about how a wonderful pumpkin ripened in the fields, how it was chosen for making ghapama, how it was brought home, filled with delicious stuffing, how no less than 100 guests were waiting for its preparation. This comic song is usually performed in the middle of the celebration or closer to its end, when the guests are already full and want to have fun. And if the hostess cooks everything correctly, the ghapama will turn out beautiful and appetizing, that all these hungry relatives will gobble up the fragrant pumpkin on both cheeks, Harut Pambukchyan talks about this.
Let's start cooking. To make the rice crumbly, first of all we sort it out, then we wash it and soak it for a couple of hours in cold water
When the rice gets wet, rinse it again and cook in a saucepan with a thick bottom for 20 minutes
For this dish, we also need a cute pumpkin. We will convert it into a pot and for this we will cut off the top with a tail, thus imitating a lid
Clean out the seeds and all the thread-like insides of the pumpkin
We sort out large high-quality raisins
All the dried fruits necessary for ghapam are poured with boiling water and steamed
Now that the dried fruits have reached the desired condition, put them on a napkin to dry
Cut the apple in half and peel it, cut it into small cubes, about 1x1 cm.
To free up more space in the pumpkin with a knife or spoon, thin its walls a little, removing the pulp. We also use the pulp and for this we also chop it into cubes
Prepare walnut kernels
It is important not to crush the kernels, but leave them whole
Place all products in a blender container and add dried apricots there
Transfer the boiled rice to a colander and strain
Transfer dry rice to nuts and dried fruits
Spice the filling of ghapam with cinnamon and add sugar
Mix well the stuffing for ghapam
Lubricate the prepared pumpkin well inside with butter
We shift the filling into the pumpkin
We close the hapam with a "pumpkin" cap
Now the pumpkin should be wrapped in foil
Pour about 100 ml of water into a baking dish and place the pumpkin in it. Hapam should be baked at a temperature of 200 degrees
Total cooking time will be about an hour and a half. To make sure that the dish is ready, pierce the pumpkin with a fork - it should be absolutely soft. We leave the finished hapam in the switched off oven for another 30 minutes
When the pumpkin has cooled down, unfold the foil, place the beauty on a plate, remove the lid from it and cut the meal into slices. Call everyone to the table and enjoy your meal!
Enjoy your meal!
Traditional Armenian dishes are very tasty and very healthy, as they are mostly prepared with dried fruits, lots of greens or matsoni. Armenian ghapama also contains a number of vitamins and useful microelements. After all, the main ingredient of this dish, pumpkin, has B vitamins, youth vitamins A and E, vitamin T. This beautiful orange fruit includes almost the entire chemical table of Mendeleev, it has a lot of fiber,
pectin, as well as potassium, zinc. A fruit with so many useful qualities still needs to be looked for!
And this vitamin range is complemented by dried apricots, raisins, nuts, which contain more active substances than fresh fruits, since in fact they are a concentrate that has potassium, iron, and magnesium. Dried fruits are a useful prevention of cardiovascular diseases, as well as cancer. Together with nuts, they are of great help to the body - they soothe, relax, and have a beneficial effect on the human immune system. Armenian ghapama is not only beautiful due to its color, but also very tasty and healthy, it is a real storehouse of useful substances. Be sure to cook the ghapama at home and surprise all your 100 hungry guests with it!