There are special days at the family of Hasmik Hovhannisyan, native of Gyumri, when guests gather to eat panrakhash (‘steamed cheese’).

“I tell my sister, who lives in Akhuryan village, (Shirak) in advance to send me chechil cheese. It is impossible to imagine panrakhash without chechil cheese,” Hasmik explains.

Chechil (string cheese) looks like a thick ball of white thread and can be separated into thin small threads.

Panrakhash is an ancient Armenian traditional dish. This dish was mainly popular in Shirak province. It is made of dried lavash (Armenian traditional bread), chechil cheese, and stewed onions.

Hasmik starts working. There are some bowls on the table. Dried lavash, cut into small pieces and chechil cheese are put in separate trays. Hasmik says that it is necessary to carefully arrange lavash and cheese in each bowl layer by layer.

She makes small pyramids of lavash and cheese in the bowls. At the same time she explains the peculiarity of chechil cheese.

“When people skim milk in villages, the butter-free mass, which is left, is used for preparing chechil cheese, which, in fact, does not contain fattiness at all,” Hasmik says. (This type of cheese may be found at supermarkets.)

When Hasmik finishes arranging lavash and cheese in bowls, she passes to the next procedure of panrakhash preparing.

She takes two onions, chops them, and puts in a frying-pan, where she has preciously melted 250 grams butter. The tasty aroma of stewed onions is spread in the kitchen. She mixes it all the time so that not to burn the onion.

“This dish reminds me my childhood. As if I fly to our mountains in my mind. It is a colorless dish, and it is somehow plain and simple, but it is very delicious, it is a rather respectable and popular dish in Shirak,” Hasmik says.

She adds 0.5 liters of boiled water to the stewed onions, leaves on a gas fire for some minutes and puts the frying-pan aside.

Then she adds the stewed onions to the small lavash and cheese pyramids in the bowls and lets it all melt together. The dish is ready.

The following ingredients are necessary to prepare panrakhash:
3 dried lavash
400 grams chechil cheese
2 onions
250 grams butter

How to prepare panrakhash:

Arrange dried chopped lavash layer by layer in a bowl, then add some cheese, then again lavash and cheese until the bowl is full. Prepare stewed onions using two chopped onions and 250 grams butter. When the stewed onions are almost ready, add 0.5 liters boiled water, and leave the frying-pan on a gas fire for a couple of minutes and take it away. Later add the stewed onions to the lavash and cheese so that they absorb the stewed onions. When the mass in the bowls becomes a bit softer, it is ready.