Cook This: 3 recipes from Green Mountains, including two Armenian summertime salads

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Our cookbook of the week is Green Mountains by travel writer Caroline Eden.

Jump to the recipes: two Armenian summertime salads, lamb with plums, green beans and cinnamon, and Gurian khachapuri.

After travelling from southern Armenia to northern Georgia, as much as she could on foot, Caroline Eden knows better than most the comfort and relief a meal devoured after a long walk can bring.

“In Georgia or Armenia, you’re going to be fed something pretty good. At the taverns, the bistros, the homestays, it’s not just a sandwich. It’s going to be a really interesting salad, some freshly baked bread, exceptional mineral water, maybe a glass of wine or Armenian brandy. It’s immense, the food in both of these countries,” says the Edinburgh, Scotland-based writer.

In Green Mountains (Quadrille, 2025), the conclusion of her “colour trilogy,” Eden charts her monastery treks, river strolls, urban ambles and sometimes challenging hikes in the Caucasus. Following Black Sea (2018) and Red Sands (2020), the final instalment marks a decade of researching and writing, during which Eden covered more than 10,000 miles on 10-plus forms of transport (“including my feet”).

Part cookbook, part travelogue, Eden entwines stories about her walks in Armenia and Georgia with recipes and photography. She refers to the recipes as “edible postcards,” inspired by the people and places she encountered along the way. For instance, her two Armenian summertime salads are a nod to “the vibrancy of the Aslamazyan sisters‘ work” that Eden admired at a museum devoted to the painters in Gyumri.

“My idea was to make it like three-dimensional travel writing,” Eden says of the trilogy. “You can see the journey, taste the journey, read the journey.”

Though she hadn’t planned on a trilogy from the outset, once she suggested it to her publisher, Eden knew that she would finish it in the Caucasus — “the lands in between” the Black Sea, where the trilogy began, and the Caspian Sea, where Red Sands (named after Kyzylkum, the desert straddling Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) opens.

Landing on a colour for the conclusion was more challenging than the other two parts of the trilogy. But then Eden remembered seeing the mountains leading from northern Azerbaijan to the Republic of Dagestan for the first time.

“The colour of them was just emerald green,” she recalls. “It’s the same in the three countries in the South Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The hillsides in the summer and the late spring, they’re blooming. They’ve been warmed by the sun, and they’re these great places of shepherding and foraging.”

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Eden had been planning a wider book on the Caucasus, starting in southern Armenia, through Georgia, into Azerbaijan and crossing into southern Russia, ending in Dagestan on the Caspian Sea. As a result of the invasion, she went back to the drawing board and, in 2023, wrote an updated version of Black Sea. That same year, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive and occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in the exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians who fled as refugees.

“It didn’t feel right to include those two countries in the same book because it’s so sensitive, and obviously there’s a lot of upset,” says Eden. Instead of returning to Azerbaijan, she decided to start in southern Armenia and end in northern Georgia, with a fitting finish on the Black Sea coast.

After covering so much ground in Black Sea and Red Sands, Eden made a conscious decision to slow down for Green Mountains. Geopolitics was part of the reason, but on a happier note, “I do love walking, and I think nothing tastes better than a meal served to you after you’ve been on a walk, or even a sandwich eaten on a hillside,” says Eden. The other idea behind it was that “these countries are just begging to be walked.”

Her friend Meagan Neal is the executive director of the Transcaucasian Trail Association, which has been building a 3,000-kilometre hiking trail across Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan since 2015. More than half (1,750 km) of the trail is currently hikeable, making it increasingly possible to experience the countries on foot.

“It’s very wild, and it is a bit dangerous, to be honest, depending on the weather and, climatically, what’s going on. But the hills are just so inviting. They’re so beautiful. You want to walk into them. You want to know what the next village looks like, what the next valley is like. So, they kind of propel you on.”

A “keen walker,” Eden sets out on foot for at least an hour a day wherever she is. “It’s a really good way to try and get under the skin of somewhere quite quickly.”

You’re more likely to notice things you would miss from the back of a taxi or bus, says Eden. Take Georgia’s historic, multilayered, sprawling capital, Tbilisi. She found her way in by covering a one-mile radius of the apartment she rented. By chance, it overlooked the Deserters’ Bazaar — the ideal vantage point from which to explore the city’s history, culture and restaurant scene.

Eden sees similarities between walking and cooking. For one, as someone who uses physical cookbooks, they both force you off the screen.

“You can get into that nice sense of flow, that meditative state, when you’re walking and cooking — where you’re chopping an onion, and following the steps. There’s something linked, I think, to following a map or a route to following a recipe,” says Eden, adding that she appreciates slowing down and, in the case of walking, being close to the soil.

She recalls a walk with Neal by Mount Kazbek in northern Georgia. The air was filled with mint scents they couldn’t place. “By being present and walking rather than zipping through somewhere in a car, you have many more close encounters of all different types.”

TWO ARMENIAN SUMMERTIME SALADS

Both serve 4 as a side

CITRUS AND WALNUT SALAD

70 g (2 1/2 oz) walnut halves
1 small orange
1 small firm green apple
2 celery sticks, chopped small, leaves kept
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Begin by toasting the walnuts to bring out their flavour fully. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Bake for about 8 minutes, keeping a close eye on them, and remove once they smell roasted. Once cool, break them up to slightly smaller pieces. Peel the orange and remove the pith and seeds carefully. Then, slice it in half and then into crescents. Core the apple (no need to peel it) and cut into thin half-moons. Combine all the salad ingredients with the olive oil and lemon juice and season well.

GRAPE AND TARRAGON SALAD

1-2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, to taste
1 tbsp lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
200 g (7 oz) red or black seedless grapes, halved lengthways
80 g (2 3/4 oz) feta or similar white brined cheese, cubed
Small bunch of tarragon, roughly chopped
50 g (1 3/4 oz) sundried tomatoes, roughly chopped

Make a dressing first by combining the olive oil and lemon juice with salt and pepper. Carefully combine with the other ingredients, without smooshing the grapes and tarragon too much. Finish with a little more olive oil.

LAMB WITH PLUMS, GREEN BEANS AND CINNAMON

Serves: 2 generously

2 tbsp olive oil
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) lamb shoulder, chopped into small bite-size pieces
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
130 g (4 1/2 oz) green beans, chopped into 4-cm (1 1/2-in) pieces
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
4 plums, stoned and chopped into bite-size pieces
500 mL (2 cups) vegetable stock
2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon

In a casserole dish with a lid, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil. Season the meat and fry briefly until browned. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and add the remaining oil. Add the onion, garlic and beans, and fry with a little salt and pepper — if it is catching, add a little more oil — and stir continuously. Cook for 5 minutes until soft, then add the spices, tomato paste, vinegar and plums, cook for another 5 minutes, then add the stock. Return the lamb to the pan. Simmer gently, uncovered, for 15 minutes (you want to thicken it), then for 10 more minutes with the lid on. Let it sit for a while to let the flavour develop, then scatter over the parsley, stir through the lemon juice and serve in bowls with crusty white bread on the side.

GURIAN KHACHAPURI

Makes: 1 large khachapuri

For the dough:
200 g (1 1/2 cups minus 1 tbsp bread flour, plus extra for dusting
7 g (1/4 oz) fast-action dried yeast
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp superfine sugar
90 g (scant 1/2 cup) natural yogurt
1 egg, beaten, for glazing

For the filling:
1 spring onion (scallion), white and green parts, finely chopped
70 g (2 1/2 oz) mozzarella, chopped
60 g (2 1/4 oz) feta, crumbled
60 g (2 1/4 oz) ricotta
Sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
1 large hard-boiled egg, peeled and quartered
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Step 1

Put the flour into a large bowl, adding the yeast to one side and the salt and sugar to the other. Stir through the yogurt and add 5 tablespoons of lukewarm water. Mix to bring the dough together. Tip onto a lightly floured surface and knead until so! and silky, about 10 minutes (adding more flour as necessary). Form into a ball, place in a lightly oiled mixing bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour until roughly doubled in size.

Step 2

When the dough is almost ready, line a baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 200C (400F).

Step 3

Next, make the filling. In a large bowl, combine the spring onion with the cheeses, and mix well with 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper and add just a pinch of salt.

Step 4

Roll out the dough on a floured surface into a 35-cm (14-in) disc. Put the filling in the middle and even out — you’ll have a large gap around the edge and that is fine. Put the egg quarters evenly spaced onto the cheese filling. Drizzle with olive oil and dust with more black pepper. Using your finger, wet the rim of the dough and bring up the edges as evenly as possible. Once you have a closed money bag shape, dust with flour and turn it over using both hands, so that the sealed side is underneath: be careful, as it is heavy. Press down a few times, or gently roll a rolling pin over the surface without tearing the dough, until you have an unevenly shaped round of about 20 cm (8 in). Place on the lined baking sheet and brush with the beaten egg. Scatter over a few sea salt flakes. Bake until puffed up and golden, about 25 minutes. Leave to rest and cool, then slice and serve.

Recipes and images excerpted with permission from Green Mountains by Caroline Eden, published by ‎Quadrille. Text copyright ©2025 Caroline Eden. Food photography copyright ©2025 Ola O. Smit.

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