Cooking fresh field mushrooms again

And I've just cooked mushrooms in spicy yoghurt sauce with some of them.

It was an excellent trip down the main road to Iran and Nagorno-Kharabagh. The road splits iwith a branch going to each  of these destinations at Goris, a small town at the bottom of a deep valley surrounded by high cliffs and jagged rock spires. Here's a picture of Goris from the top of the road which drops down into town after crossing the plateau where we bought the mushrooms (this picture is linked to a bigger one - click on the image to enlarge):

Spectacular, eh, no? 

In the far right distance you can just see the base of some rock spires and they are dotted with caves in which people lived up until the 1950s. We spent a morning exploring round the cave village - the main village extends into a very pretty valley full of walnut and fruit trees. On the way back we watched Egyptian vultures and huge Eurasian Griffon Vultures up close as they soared in to perch on the cliffs.

Just before Goris, we visited Carahunge, an ancient stone circle touted as Armenia's Stone Henge and it is indeed a stone henge, although the comparison with the one in Wiltshire UK is misleading. The Armenian one is quite small, but the location is superb and the stones have quirky little holes drilled in them which were used for mapping the stars. There's a web site at www.carahunge.com where you can read a bit about the place and see some photos. I took some pictures too and I'll put some in my photo galleries when I have time.

From Goris, in the morning, we took the right fork and headed towards Kapan, further down the road towards Iran. It's an unusual town in that it is an industrial centre situated amongst the most beautiful and wild mountain scenery. We went there to visit some friends but scenery along the twisting and climbing road alone makes the visit worthwhile.

We returned from Kapan to Goris to spend a second night at Khatchick's B&B. There are a few small bed and breakfast/homestay set-ups in Goris, but Khatchick's is our favourite. His food, company and picturesque balcony all make for a pleasant relaxing time.... as does his home made mulberry vodka. We spent a couple of long evenings sitting on the balcony after a full dinner with vodka, chatting with Khatchick and his other guests.  We met travellers from France and Poland and on the second evening a party of German visitors were passing on the road below and popped in to join us for an hour. They were on a tour round the churches of Armenia and had come to Goris for one of the best of them all, Tatevi Vank. We went there the next day and were lucky to have dry weather for the rough ride over kilometres of rough tracks to reach the monastery. The journey is well worth it. The building is perched on the edge of a precipice with steep cliffs dropping off on three sides and a high wall protecting the approach. The monks who built the monastery lived in troubled times and clearly being a monk was no guarantee that you would be safe from attack.

I'll post some of the pictures from our trip during the coming week... and I must get on with writing up my recipes too. We're off to Almaty tomorrow for a wee visit, so there might be a little more delay...

Next post from Kazakhstan...