Armenian gata: cooking the famous oriental sweet at home. Armenian gata: cooking recipe and ingredients Baking how to bake Armenian gata
Gata, or kata, or kada is an oriental sweet, the most famous Armenian pastry, extremely tasty. It reminds either puff pastries, or rolls with a sweet filling. During cooking, the gata is cut into small pieces, which is why they began to call it cookies.
To prepare this oriental sweet, you need a fairly simple set of products, but the cookies turn out to be incredible, with a complex and unusual taste. When I tried gata for the first time and tried to figure out my taste impressions, I thought that gata somehow resembles juicy, although there is no cottage cheese in Armenian cookies. Perhaps the fact that a large amount of butter in the dough and filling makes the cookies soft, tender, buttery, with a distinct creamy taste. And gata reminded me of baklava.
But now I don't compare gata with anything. For me it is incomparable to anything, but just very, very tasty and loved.
Traditionally, butter, flour and sugar, as well as vanilla, are taken as fillings for gata. Of course, there is no doubt that it is best to use natural vanilla for making gata, which Armenians love to add to their desserts. In some versions of cookies, chopped walnuts are also added to the filling, while in others the dough is kneaded without eggs.
Cooking time: about 1 hour
Ingredients for making 14-16 cookies
Ingredients
- 250 grams of butter
- 3.5 cups flour
- 0.75 cups of kefir
- 0.5 cup sugar
- 1 egg and 1 yolk for greasing cookies
- 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
- 0.5 tsp baking powder
- a pinch of salt
You can start making cookies with the horiz filling. To do this, pour the sifted flour into the bowl and make a recess in it. Melted butter should be poured into it.
Then the flour with butter must be mixed and rubbed with a spoon or hands until it becomes a wet crumb. If necessary, you can add a little flour to make the choriz crumbly. 
Then sugar should be added. Cookie dough usually does not have sugar added, so the filling should be quite sweet.
In some cases, Armenian chefs replace the sugar in the filling with honey.
Horiz needs to be mixed again and put in the refrigerator. In a closed container, it can be stored for several weeks and used as needed.
After that, you can start kneading the dough. Pour 2/3 of the measured flour onto the table. . In the center of the hill of flour, make a recess and put cold butter cut into pieces into it.
With the help of a knife, the flour must be mixed, chopped with butter. You should get particles the size of buckwheat.
If you don't have butter, you can use high-fat margarine as a last resort. Margarine is not salty.
Then it must be re-assembled in the form of a slide. In the center, make a wide funnel and break eggs into it, separating one yolk. It will be needed to grease the gata before baking.
Eggs must be carefully mixed with a fork.
Then you need to pour in the matsoni and mix it with soda. A lot of foam will appear.
After that, add vanilla sugar and salt. Carefully grasping the flour crumbs from the edges, it is necessary to knead a soft dough.
Add the remaining flour as needed. The dough should come together into a soft, pliable ball.
From this amount of ingredients, you will get quite a lot of servings. Therefore, you can not bake everything at once, but half or a third. Put the rest of the filling and dough in the refrigerator (in a container or plastic bag), use after a couple of days. Thus, you will always have fresh pastries during the week.
The dough should be divided into two portions. Each of them needs to be rolled out into a rectangular layer 2-3 mm thick. The dough is quite fatty, so it does not need to be sprinkled with flour.
Pour half of the choriz onto the cake and level it, leaving 1 centimeter free from the edges.
Then the dough with the filling should be rolled into a tight roll.
It must be greased with egg yolk and pricked in several places with a fork.
After that, the roll must be cut into portions. The width of each piece should be 2-2.5 cm.
The roll is sometimes cut not into rectangular bars, but into triangles.
Gata should be carefully, using a wide knife or spatula, transferred to a baking sheet covered with parchment. Bake products at a temperature of 200 degrees for 20 minutes. The finished product has a beautiful golden color.
It is recommended to serve pastries with matsoni, kefir, milk; with black, green or herbal tea.
The culinary product does not go stale for a week, it can even be frozen for future use, and then, if necessary, defrost and heat with a microwave oven.
Delicious, satisfying and ancient Armenian round gata with walnut choriz today, like many centuries before us, does not leave anyone indifferent. The first mention of this delicacy was found in a 13th century fable. In those distant times, gata was served on big church holidays. Before baking, the hostess hid a coin inside for good luck. To this day, not a single traditional wedding in Armenia is complete without a festive gata, although no one will refuse to enjoy its delicate creamy-nutty taste on ordinary days. Over the long years of the existence of this dessert, almost every region of Armenia has its own recipe for its preparation. Today you can try gata of different shapes, with different fillings and from different doughs. In this recipe, the Armenian round gata with walnut choriz is prepared from chopped dough in ghee with milk. Crushed walnuts are added to the filling, which makes the dessert especially fragrant. This pastry stays tasty and fresh for several days.
To prepare the Armenian round gata you will need:
- Sour milk - 100 ml;
- Ghee - 100 g;
- Chicken eggs - 2 pcs.;
- Salt - 1 pinch;
- Soda - 1 tsp;
- Sugar - 100 g;
- Flour - 300 g.
Horiz Ingredients:
- Sugar - 100 g;
- Ghee - 50 g;
- Flour - 100 g;
- Walnuts - 50 g;
- Yolk for lubrication - 1 pc.
Armenian round gata and horiz recipe
Sift flour and mix with sugar, soda and salt. You can add vanilla sugar. Do not defrost cold melted butter. Add it to the dry ingredients and chop with a knife. Small, completely wrapped in flour oil grains should form.
Beat eggs.
Pour the cold milk into the well in the center of the flour mixture.
Knead the dough quickly. Wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
How to cook horiz
While the dough is cooling, prepare the choriz. In modern cooking, it is called streusel. Mix flour with melted butter and sugar.
Add chopped walnuts.
Grind until crumbs form.
Divide the dough into 2 parts. Roll out the first cake with a thickness of 3-5 mm. Put half of the choriz in the center.
Gather the edges of the cake. Connect so that the filling does not spill out.
Turn the bag over and flatten it with your hands, making sure that the filling inside is evenly distributed. Finish the formation of the Armenian round gata with walnut choriz by rolling it out with a rolling pin.
Calories: Not specified
Time for preparing: Not specified
The Armenian gata is very tasty and unusual. Recipe from puff pastry with an unusual filling. Few people will guess what ingredients are included in its composition. Armenian gata is prepared easily and quickly, even a teenager can handle it. This is quite a budget pastry that does not require large expenses. Products for her are always available in the kitchen of every housewife. Also see how to cook.
Required products:
For the test
- butter - 150 g,
- wheat flour - 250 g (plus a little more),
- natural yogurt - 100 ml,
- baking powder dough - ½ tsp.,
- salt - a pinch.
For filling
Sugar - 200 g,
- wheat flour - 200 g,
- butter - 80 g,
- vanilla sugar - 10g,
- yolk for lubrication.
How to cook with a photo step by step
1. In a bowl, combine the sifted wheat flour, baking powder, salt and butter (preferably cold). Chop the mixture with a knife or grind into crumbs. Tip: You can use margarine instead of butter. 
2. Add natural yogurt to the resulting crumb. Tip: Matsun (matsoni) is traditionally used, but it can be replaced with natural yogurt or kefir. 
3. Knead an elastic, moderately soft dough. If the dough sticks to your hands too much, you can add a small amount of flour. Roll the resulting dough into a ball and wrap in cling film. Place in refrigerator for 40-50 minutes. Tip: the dough for gata does not need to be kneaded for a long time so that the butter does not start to melt from the heat of the hands. As a result, more flour will be required - and this will change the structure of the dough for the worse. 
4. In the meantime, prepare the stuffing for the gata. In a bowl, combine sugar, flour, butter and vanilla sugar. Thoroughly grind all the ingredients into crumbs. Tip: for the filling you need to use only butter, do not replace it with margarine. The taste of the filling will depend on this, and it should be fragrant with creamy “notes”. 
5. Divide the chilled dough into two parts and roll one of them into a thin layer. 
6. Spread a portion of the filling over the entire surface of the layer and compact it a little. 
7. Roll the stuffed layer into a tight roll. 
8. Using a soft brush, brush the surface of the roll with egg yolk. 
9. Cut the roll into diamonds 4-6 cm wide. To make the cut look much prettier and more appetizing, use a curly knife (ribbed). Do the same for the rest of the test. 
10. Cover the baking sheet with parchment. Transfer the blanks to a baking sheet. Make a “lattice” with a fork - this is a traditional pattern for the Armenian gata. Place the tray in the preheated oven. Bake the puff Armenian gata at 2000C for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat and continue baking until cooked at 1800C for 20 minutes. The gata should be nicely browned. Remove from pan and cool. 
11. Armenian puff pastry gata is ready. You can call the family for a cup of aromatic tea. 
Enjoy your meal!
Also try to cook
Gata can be flaky and rich, with or without nuts, sweet and bland. A feeling of home and a taste from childhood are associated with this amazing pastry. A memory of my grandmother, whose scents wafted from the kitchen as we returned home. She inherited this skill from her mother, who, in turn, cooked gata like no other. Basically, the great-grandmother made an insipid gata, which was distributed to numerous members of her large and extensive family.
The gata has an ancient history. The first mention of the dessert can be found in the fable of Vardan Aygektsi (Armenian fabulist and preacher of the 13th century - author's note) "The Pig and the Gata". They served gata from time immemorial, and it was customary to do this at the Presentation of the Lord. They certainly put a coin in it, a hundred promised great luck to the one who found it. In some regions of Armenia, the gata was laid out on a tray and placed on the back of the youngest in the family, and only then cut. It was baked in tonyr, and in some regions of the country the tradition has been preserved to this day, for example, in Garni.
Armenian women who cooked gata tried to convey all the warmth and love to family members through the dish, so that they would be lucky all year round.
Let's make a short trip to the regions of Armenia and see how it is prepared in different parts of the country. The main varieties are: Artsakh (dough with vanilla), Stepanavan (dough, dough, stuffing prepared as for Artsakh), Karakilis (Kirovakan), which is also prepared in a dangerous way. For Yerevan gata, for example, the filling is fried and cut into pieces with a special figured knife. Gyumri is prepared like Yerevan, only sugar is not put in the filling. And many housewives add walnuts, almonds and even raisins to the filling, and cardamom and cinnamon from spices. Gata is served with matsun and tea from mountain herbs; it can be stored for a long time and even frozen.
Gavar gata recipe
7 eggs, of which 2 yolks will go to the filling, and one egg to lubricate the gata.
3 cups matsun
1 teaspoon soda
400 grams softened butter
0.5 teaspoon salt
Mix soda with matsun, let it rise. Next, add the eggs and mix thoroughly. Enter oil. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. Mix the dough and divide it into 3 parts.
For filling:
400 gr. butter, 2 yolks
2 cups granulated sugar
Soda on the tip of a teaspoon.
Grind all the ingredients thoroughly until smooth and add flour to make the filling soft so that you can easily grease the dough with it.
Divide the filling into 6 parts
Cooking method. Take one part of the dough and carefully roll it out. Brush the dough with 2 tablespoons of melted butter. Next, take one part of the filling and carefully apply to the surface of the dough. Fold the dough into a small square and set aside. Do the same with the remaining two parts of the dough. And then re-roll all three parts and apply the filling, since we have 3 parts of the dough and 6 parts of the filling. After that, already roll out each part of the dough in the form of a round gata. Lubricate with an egg, apply a pattern with a fork and bake at 180C until golden brown.
Whatever recipe and whatever filling you choose, dessert will always be a symbol of national cuisine, family traditions and an invariable attribute of the feast.
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