Armenian kitchen

[Tjanaparh]

Yes its in Armenia dear Toramana, here you will find thousands of such breadshops and in the villages every house has such an oven, there is also a second Georgian variant that became popular last years, you can find it in some bakeries, its looknig like that:

[Laila]

Ghapama

Take a big pumpkin, cut carefully the upper part, remouve the seeds, take a big spoon and try carefully to remoove some flesh(we need ca. 1 kg) - if the pumpkin has already thin walls it is better to take on smaller pumpkin for the flesh.
Take some dry fruit(the best is apricots, cornelians, persimons, tut, unab, grapes, apples and so on) and cut them in peaces and soak them a bit in water. Crush some nuts, almonds, clean the pumpkin seed if you can...
Cut the pumpkinflesh in pieces and fry them a bit in butter.
mix the pumpkinflesh with nuts, dry fruits half cooked rice, honey and hel or cinnamon(or both if you like).
Fill the pumpkin with this mass, close it, oil it a bit from outside and bake it in aluminium paper 1,5 hours , remove the aluminium and bake some other 30 minutes.
open the gozrd and put some butter, cut it in peaces and serve.

You need: 1kg.gourdflesh, 200 - 300 gr. dryfruits, 100gr honey, 70-100gr rice, butter, salt, hel, cinnamon


PS: better if you have a tonir(its a kind of oven in the earth where you make bread too - i'm not sure about how You call it, we call it t'onir) - there it'll be much tastier to cook it.

the same could be cooked with bellpeppers or big tomatoes instead of pumpkin

By the way, thank you so much for sharing all of this! its quite a unique culture

[MohannaD]

Dear Mohannad, Ghap'ama should be cutted but easy dividable abterwards, simply at the begining the ricecons will adhere one to the other, but on your dish they should simply divide.
When the pumpkin is ready you cut the whole pumpkin in pieces like a cake.
The wiki article is exactly about that :D

Thank you , might try making one but without the dry fruits .

[MohannaD]

the same could be cooked with bellpeppers or big tomatoes instead of pumpkin

By the way, thank you so much for sharing all of this! its quite a unique culture

Those as well as potatos and courgette are used by us , but not as sweet dishes same with vine leaves .

[Tjanaparh]

My friends You are right - we use to fill tomtoes, peppers, potatos , cabage and grape leafs too - but Ghapama is different , its a sweet dish...it is perfact to do in late autumn or winter when there are not many fresh fruits but many pumpkins