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A delicious dish for hard times: Ğapama

Alin Ozinian

For those living in big cities where everything is available year round, the wait for seasonal fruits and vegetables – that longing to see them for the first time in ages in markets – loses all meaning. And it’s not just the meaning that’s lost – it’s the smells, flavours, and even the true colours of seasonal produce.

While cooped up at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been thinking for the last couple of weeks about the kinds of non-perishables I should be keeping in my pantry. The first things that come to mind are more or less the same in every country: dried pasta, flour, sugar, canned foods, and dried fruit.

Some staple products in Western Asian and Mediterranean households are traditionally part of preparations for winter; for example, tomato and pepper pastes, home-canned vegetables, jams, tarhana (a fermented dried vegetable soup powder), handmade dried noodles, pickles, cured meats and sausage, fruit leather, sun-dried fruits and vegetables, boza (a winter drink made from fermented wheat), meat confit, filo pastry, and brined grape leaves.

Rolling out dough to make noodles and orzo, boiling for hours grapes for molasses and candied walnuts, pickling every vegetable under the sun, drying the tarhana, canning produce, making jams out of plums, pears, figs and stranger fruit like aubergines – all elements outside of city living, although the products do make their way into urban pantries.

Nowadays, traditional food preservation techniques have been replaced with industrial approaches, but especially in Anatolia, alongside factory-made food products, traditional home preserves still remain. Even in bigger cities, women still use traditional preservation methods to prepare for winter, for scarcity, and for hard times. From another perspective, preserving food, a communal effort for many, is a way of keeping traditions alive and remembering our roots.

In Armenia, the methods of storing meat and the reasons for doing so are almost exactly the same, and widespread in almost every Armenian village today. The methods used for centuries in Armenia to preserve grains and oil still attract the attention of historians.

Although ğapama (Ղափամա) is an Armenian dish, it undoubtedly takes its name from the Turkish verb “kapatmak,” meaning “to close.” It is made by baking a hollowed-out pumpkin, rubbed on the inside with honey and butter and filled with rice and dried apricots, prunes, apples and raisins. It’s a very showy dish made for holidays, banquets, and even weddings.

Ğapama is to be shared with guests, and there are even songs written about it. While the dish symbolises abundance and fruitfulness, it is made from ingredients that are usually stored for times of scarcity and hardship. Years ago, I read that its inventor mixed whatever was available in the pantry, making ğapama a saviour during hard times. It changed the way I viewed the dish.

Now that we’re shut in our homes, perhaps some of you would like to know how to make this old saviour. Let me explain.

You’ll need a medium-sized, roundish pumpkin that will fit into your oven. Cut around the top neatly to open it, and turn it into a small pot by carefully cleaning out the insides. Roast the seeds in the oven for a snack. Soak 10 to 12 prunes, same amount of dried apricots, and a half cup of raisins in warm water for 15 minutes. Drain the fruit, squeezing to remove all extra water, and dice bigger pieces to be about the same size as the raisins.

Wash and drain two to three cups of rice, and then place into a pot with enough water to cover it. Boil and drain the rice. Melt a half tablespoon of butter in a pan, mix in the dried fruit, and then add the rice and stir.

In the Goris region of Armenia, onion is added into the rice, so you can add a handful of onion. I sometimes add a little “Armenian Istanbul” by including pine nuts, but that’s not a part of the original recipe. In some regions they also use walnuts, but it’s really up to you.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Using your hands, rub the inside of the cleaned pumpkin with about two tablespoons of room temperature butter, followed by two tablespoons of honey. Pour the rice mixture in, and add a cup of water, some cinnamon, and a pinch of salt. There’s no need to add too much water because the pumpkin’s juices will cook the rice.

Bake the pumpkin for 45 minutes to an hour, checking with a knife to make sure it is cooked through. Slice the pumpkin as soon as you take it out of the oven, and you can serve it as a rice dish.

While hiding out from the coronavirus, perhaps this Armenian dish will remind us how, for centuries, people fought and survived a thousand hardships like scarcity and famine, taking in all that life gave them. Bon appetit!


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