Ghapama: The perfect Armenian dish for Autumn

One of the delightful culinary surprises I had living in Armenia was when I recently saw an ad for a holiday dish called ghapama. I started doing a little research and asked around and found it is served usually in the fall.   This is a pumpkin filled dish with rice and various fruits and will serve your sweet tooth heartily. The organization I work at offers a cooking class and I was fortunate to be there in attendance when they were preparing this.

The ingredients are quite simple.

pumpkin

rice

raisins

dried apricot

prune

apple

honey

almond nut

cinnamon

To make this, first remove the top 15% of the pumpkin and remove the inside of the pumpkin. Next, chop and dice all the various fruits involved. Then boil some rice and slowly add the various fruits and honey and cinnamon. Mix all the ingredients and carefully stuff the pumpkin to the top. Afterwards, spread cooking oil around the pumpkin and wrap in tin foil. Place in oven until the pumpkin is soft. I can’t tell you the exact temperature or for how long since most ovens over here don’t have a thermometer. Cut into various pieces and enjoy. It goes great with a cup of tea too.

Enjoy and happy traveling.