Are we in the right place? We pull over in front of what’s supposed to be Anna Tatosyan’s bakery in the village of Argel. There’s no sign, and all we see is an open garage door. But then we get out of the car and smell the wood smoke. Wearing a long dress covered with an apron and a pair of slippers, Anna pops out of the bakery to greet us, her round, rosy cheeks shining as she guides us inside, where a deep hole in the floor is filled with crackling logs. Made of clay, this is the bakery’s tonir, a type of subterranean oven that Armenians have used for centuries for baking bread and heating homes. When the logs burn down to embers, four women with their hair tied back in bandanas get to work around the tonir, wielding balls of dough like professional baseball players warming up before a game. These are Anna’s lavash bakers.
Lusine Abrahamyan lobs a piece of dough to Aida Beyboutyan, who flattens it into a smooth sheet with a rolling pin before passing it to Liana Grigoryan. With a sturdy brown apron covering her sweatpants, Liana is the team’s no-nonsense slugger. She frowns, spins the dough in the air, stretching it paper-thin before draping it over what looks like an uncomfortably firm pillow. It actually isn’t a pillow at all but a straw-filled pad called a batat, which gives traditional lavash its long, oval shape. With one decisive swoop, Liana strikes the batat against the wall of the tonir. The dough sticks on contact and begins to puff and blister. After a minute, Hasmik Khachatryan fishes out the lavash with a hook, turns it over to quickly sear the other side, and then stacks it beside her. Flecked with blisters, this is classic tonir lavash, and it’s stunning to behold.
It’s only after the bakers take a coffee break that Liana’s frown relaxes and we start to look around the bakery, taking in the stone walls blackened with ash and lined with bags of flour, the cherry-red, Soviet-era scale, and the abacus used by store manager Nara Ivanyan to make change for purchases. Then we begin asking questions: How much salt is in the dough? Do you add yeast? How long does the dough rest before you bake it?
Before we can query any more, Liana retreats to the kitchen, returning with a pot of just-boiled potatoes, pickled beets, and pickled green peppers. She tears off a piece of lavash, wraps it around a potato, sprinkles salt on top, and hands it to us.
We look at each other—potatoes wrapped in bread with nothing else? Our California minds scan the room for hot sauce. Yet the yellow, waxy potatoes taste as if they were basted in butter and the lavash is still warm, with a crisp-soft crust. These potato wraps are improbable home runs, confirming that traveling across countless time zones to eat lavash in Armenia has been well worth it.
Women (and it’s nearly always women) bake lavash all over Armenia much like the bakers we met in Argel, a village about twenty minutes away from Yerevan, the country’s capital. By making this traditional flatbread, which is eaten daily at almost every meal in the country, they’re also preserving history. Lavash is so important to Armenia that UNESCO added it to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2014.
The journey that brought the three of us—John Lee, Ara Zada, and me, Kate Leahy—to Anna’s bakery, and into homes, markets, and restaurants across Armenia, started in 2015. That summer, John, a photographer from San Francisco, taught a food photography course in Yerevan at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, an organization providing free after-school workshops for Armenian students on subjects ranging from art and animation to robotics. It was on that trip that he discovered lavash—earth-shattering lavash, he called it. Back home, he told everyone about it.
I was one of those people. While working together on a different project, John filled me in on his trip, flipping through images he took with the students. Years earlier, I had studied the link between food and Armenian-American identity for a college thesis, mining for stories in self-published cookbooks, Armenian church bazaars, and the California State Archives. But after John finished his informal slideshow, I realized that I didn’t recognize any of the dishes from those beloved Armenian-American church bazaars or community cookbooks. Instead, I saw mulberries collected on a bedsheet in an orchard, trout strung up to dry on the shores of Lake Sevan, and outdoor tables covered with plates of roasted vegetables bathed in dappled sunlight. It felt new and familiar all at once, a foundational way of eating that cultures around the world have adapted and made their own. I also knew that I had never eaten the kind of lavash that John was talking about.
Through TUMO’s global network, we met Ara Zada, a chef in Southern California. In 2016, he taught a culinary workshop for TUMO, working new techniques into Armenian dishes. Ara grew up in an Armenian-Egyptian household in Los Angeles, attending Armenian school through seventh grade. But the food he encountered in Yerevan was different—Armenian, sure, but not what he had at home. As a kid, he ate more pita bread than lavash, and he had never heard of Panrkhash (page 201), a layered lavash bake that has more in common with mac and cheese than anything from Alice Bezjian’s The Complete Armenian Cookbook—the book that his mom (and every other Armenian mom in Southern California) used. He wanted to learn more about the food of Hayastan, what Armenians call their country.
The three of us cobbled together a culinary recon mission that involved traveling to Armenia and documenting how to make this bread—and other forms of hats (Armenian for “bread”)—as well as what to eat with it. We met a mix of experts: chefs from establishments such as Tufenkian Old Dilijan Complex in Dilijan and Old Armenia in Gyumri, as well as home cooks throughout Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh. And every time we found a bakery, we walked in, introduced ourselves, and chatted with the bakers. A skeptical reader might wonder why anyone was willing to share trade secrets with three outsiders like us, but while traveling in Armenia and corresponding from California, we encountered extreme generosity and patience, meeting people who wanted to share their recipes merely because we asked.
The stories in this book are not only about food but also about Armenia, a tiny republic in the South Caucasus that today sits at a crossroads between its Soviet past and an uncertain (but promising) future. Rather than a definitive guide, this book is a collection of dispatches from the road, of the flavors and foods that stayed with us after traveling in this immensely hospitable country. These stories are tributes to a nation of makers, of adaptable people who have lived through times where the only way to guarantee a stable source of food was to produce it yourself.
In this context, lavash fits perfectly with that adaptability. Need a soup spoon? Shape a piece of lavash into a scoop to help slurp up broth. Need to keep your soup hot? Cover it with a piece of lavash. Need a takeout container for your khorovats (grilled meats and vegetables)? Bundle the grilled goods in one big sheet of lavash. Need a break from lavash? Dry it out and store it for later, then spritz it with water to bring it back to life. But in all honesty, we have yet to find a need to take a break from lavash.
Beyond lavash, what is Armenian food? Well, it’s complicated.
The collection of recipes in this book represents the dishes we sampled on our travels within Armenia, the ones that we came to love and could re-create back home with ingredients that are easy to find, such as fresh herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs, and yogurt. Many of the dishes in this book may be unfamiliar to those who know Armenian food outside of Armenia, and some might wonder why their favorite Armenian-American recipes are missing. The truth is that Armenia itself represents a homeland shared by people with very different histories and food traditions. These differences became much more pronounced in the twentieth century, when Armenians in the west were displaced due to genocide while Armenians in the east became Soviet citizens. Over time, diaspora communities evolved separately from Soviet Armenia and both adapted to their very different political and social situations, absorbing new food influences as well. While Armenians around the world still make the cured meat Basturma (page 138), stuffed vegetable Summer Tolma (page 178), and various kinds of baklava (page 239), Armenians in Armenia also embrace Soviet foods, like Salat Vinaigrette (page 95), a hearty salad, as well as potatoes, sour cream, and vodka.
As members of the diaspora move to Armenia, however, they are bringing their traditions with them and broadening the scope of what Armenian food in Hayastan can be. Some recipes in this book, such as Lahmajo (“Armenian pizza,” also known as lahmajoon, page 64) and Chikufta (page 126), a steak tartare–style preparation, are examples of this evolution. Other recipes we’ve included, like Harissa (page 196), a porridge made of wheat berries cooked with a little meat, are much older, with roots in an ancient Armenian nation that once was much larger. Still others, like murabba (page 226), a type of fruit preserve eaten throughout the Caucasus and Middle East, speak to cultural exchanges that have taken place in this part of the world for centuries.
Just because a dish is important to Armenia doesn’t mean that it is exclusive to Armenia, and we have no intention of untangling politically charged “who made it first” stories. Instead, we focus on what’s grown and made in the country today. In the spring, that means heaps of fresh greens, much of it wild, while in the summer, it’s about fruit, from plums, cherries, and grapes to the country’s famous apricots, all of which are dried or preserved in various ways. In the fall, next to boxes of apples and quince are persimmons from Meghri, a city near the Iranian border, and the market stalls fill with potatoes, cabbage, carrots, walnuts, and dried fruit.
Like apricots, pomegranates are also a universal symbol of Armenia, important enough through the ages that they were carved into the doors of monasteries—nearly always next to bunches of grapes, another celebrated crop. On the table, pomegranate seeds can be eaten for dessert, sprinkled over main courses, like Lavash-Wrapped Trout (page 183), for color, or folded into the herb filling of the flatbread Jingalov Hats (page 58). All year round, there’s no escaping tomatoes and cucumbers, which are grown in greenhouses in cold months. And no matter what time of the year, a bouquet of fresh herbs—flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, dill, and opal basil—is part of every meal. Fresh herbs are so prevalent that we could have ended every ingredient list in this book with “handful of mixed herbs, chopped.” This is how important they are to recreating Hayastantsi flavor.
There is an enduring belief that the best food of all is what’s made at home. Whether they live in Yerevan or in the countryside, Armenian cooks pick wild greens in the spring, make pickles in the summer, and cure basturma in the fall. On one crisp November day in 2017, we visited a home in Yeghvard, a town outside of Yerevan. Neighborhood women had gathered in the back of the house around the tonir to help bake lavash, keeping the fire hot by feeding it scrap pieces of wood. Sheets of bread already lay on the roof and in the hallways to dry. The women explained that they stack and store the lavash in a spare bedroom to keep for winter when it’s too cold to fire up the tonir, sprinkling it with water to soften the bread before eating. It’s this act of preserving, whether it’s applied to bread, meat, vegetables, or fruit, that creates the backbone of the Armenian table.
To understand the food in Armenia today, it helps to know how this small country in the South Caucasus evolved out of a much larger nation.
Founded in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Armenia is slightly larger than Massachusetts but with half the population. Although small, Armenia’s high-altitude landscape is diverse, bringing to mind stretches of the American West mixed with California’s agricultural Central Valley and the forests of Vermont. Lake Sevan, the largest body of water in this landlocked country, sits at 6,234 feet [1900 m] above sea level, and in the fall its shores are speckled orange with sea buckthorn berries. On a clear day, the capital city of Yerevan has unobstructed views of the two snow-capped peaks of Mount Ararat, the resting place (according to legend) of Noah’s ark. That Mount Ararat, a lasting symbol of Armenia, lies in Turkey is a heartbreaking reminder that the epic history of Armenia is complex, tragic, heroic—and still unfolding.
Historic Armenia—also called the Armenian Highlands and the Armenian Plateau by writers and historians throughout the ages—has been a specific geographical location since antiquity, at one point covering a swath of land between the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean seas. Armenia emerged out of the ancient Urartu civilization, first in the sixth century B.C., before falling under Achaemenid rule, and later in the second century B.C. In the early fourth century A.D., Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its religion. Religion would not only change Armenia’s spiritual practices but also its politics, culture, and written word. It was the drive to spread the gospel that prompted Mesrop Mashtots to create the first written Armenian alphabet in the fifth century A.D. Today, this patron saint of language is immortalized with a tree-lined boulevard in central Yerevan dead-ending at the Matenadaran, a library devoted to ancient books that is dedicated to him.
Language and religion differentiated Armenians from their neighbors, yet the Armenian people were also skilled at building multicultural trading networks along the land routes of the Silk Road, which happened to cut through Armenia. This geographic advantage had a downside, though, making the nation a prized acquisition for everyone from the Romans and Mongols to the Persians, Turks, and Russians. It was constant pressure from various empire builders that eventually led to the fall of the last major Armenian kingdom in A.D. 1045, and Armenians wouldn’t regain statehood within their historic homeland until the twentieth century. Perhaps common Armenian phrases, such as tsavet tanem (“let me take your pain”), which conveys a friendly attitude, evolved out of the nation’s constant struggle for survival.
Many of the differences between the way that Armenians of the diaspora cook (with olive oil, spices, and—as Ara says—a lot of lemon juice on everything) and the way Armenians in Armenia cook (with seed oils, mild paprika, and sparing use of apple cider vinegar) emerged in the twentieth century. But the foundation for this division came about as early as the eleventh century.
The fall of the last Armenian kingdom in historic Armenia gave rise to the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which established itself away from the highlands and along the Eastern Mediterranean coast. Aligning itself with the European Crusaders, Cilicia flourished for three centuries as a coastal kingdom and center of trade for everything from raw silks to spices, raisins, and wine. Although the kingdom fell in the fourteenth century, eventually becoming part of the Ottoman Empire, the cities within it retained Armenian communities and Eastern Mediterranean character well into the early twentieth century.
Meanwhile, from the Middle Ages on, control of historic Armenia bounced between several powers, most significantly the Ottoman sultans and the Persian shahs. In 1639, the Treaty of Zuhab granted some respite from war, giving the South Caucasus to Persia and everything west of it to the Ottoman Empire. After the treaty took effect, foreign travelers began using the phrases “Western” or “Turkish” Armenia for Ottoman- controlled Armenia and “Eastern” or “Persian” Armenia to refer to the portion of Armenia under the control of the shahs. While foundational foods, such as lavash, harissa, and yogurt, were eaten on both sides of the split, Eastern Armenians were also influenced by Persian traditions. Yet across historic Armenia, food was simple: a good meal consisted of bread, butter, yogurt, and cheese served with greens, while rice and meat were delicacies. By the nineteenth century, a declining Persian Empire opened the door for another power to take control, and Eastern Armenia become part of the Russian Empire.
By the twentieth century, Armenians living in Eastern Armenia and elsewhere within Imperial Russia faced wildly different fates than those in Western Armenia, who endured an increasingly precarious existence as Christian minorities under the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, instability and famine across Eastern and Western historic Armenia prompted those with enough resources to migrate to cities. The most prosperous joined the communities of Armenian merchants, artisans, and intellectuals in Constantinople in the west and Tbilisi (called Tiflis by Armenians) and Moscow in the east. While city life preserved Armenian culture, geographical and political differences also furthered the gap between the west and east.
Beginning in 1915, a river of Armenian refugees fleeing the Ottoman Empire began arriving in Yerevan, then a multicultural though provincial outpost of the Russian Empire, which was on the brink of collapse. The reason for the arrivals: massacres on a scale that had never been seen before.
It was not the first time in modern history that Armenians had been the targets of violence. In the late nineteenth century, rumors of Armenian insurgencies led to the killings of thousands of Armenians in villages and Constantinople. While political shake-ups within the Ottoman Empire in 1908 and 1913 offered hope for greater equality and democracy, it soon became evident that the new rulers, the “Three Pashas”—Ismail Enver, Ahmed Djemal, and Mehmed Talaat—sought to promote the idea of a superior Turkish race at the devastating expense of minorities within the empire.
After the Ottoman Empire entered World War I as a German ally, Talaat, the minister of the interior, used the guise of homeland security to justify rounding up Armenian civilians. By the spring of 1915, a pattern emerged across the empire: Armenian men were called out of cities and villages and then shot or hung. The next day, the women and children were ordered to pack whatever they could carry so officials could move them to safer places. A secretive government force made up of former prisoners accompanied by a military escort would then either kill the women and children or force them to march into the Syrian desert toward Aleppo. Many died of dehydration and starvation, while others were picked off along the way.
A genocide does two things, explains Noubar Afeyan, a founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, which supports those who fight genocide around the world: It wipes out an entire group of people—those who are killed—and it destroys a nation by dispersing and disconnecting those who survive. An estimated 1.5 million Armenians, as well as thousands of Greeks and Assyrians, lost their lives between 1915 and 1918. Those who weren’t killed were displaced from their homes forever, most of them moving far from historic Armenia or the former Kingdom of Cilicia. To this day, the Turkish government denies that the Armenian genocide occurred.
Armenians did persevere, though. Diaspora communities grew in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, France, America, and beyond. And although reduced in size, a corner of Armenia’s historic territory was gained back—with some help from the Soviet Union.
From 1917, following the collapse of the Russian Empire, to 1920, Armenia tried to establish itself as an independent country. But without the wealthy Armenian community of Tbilisi, which was part of Georgia, the new republic was left with a poor countryside surrounding then-small Yerevan. And Yerevan was filling up with refugees from Western Armenia who desperately needed food and shelter. (In the United States, a famous post–World War I campaign to send aid to Armenia urged Americans to “remember the starving Armenians.”) By 1920, only 720,000 Armenians lived in Eastern Armenia, and nearly half of them were refugees. The country was once again vulnerable to takeover, which came with the arrival of Lenin’s Red Army.
Soviet rule significantly changed the course of Armenian history, both politically and culturally. In the 1920s, as Armenia occupied itself with feeding its people, Moscow ceded the land west of the Arax River, including Mount Ararat, to Turkey and granted Nagorno Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian province (called Artsakh in ancient times and by Armenians today), to Azerbaijan, which was economically stronger. These actions not only removed Armenia’s most iconic mountain from Armenia, but also eventually led to war in the 1990s with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh, a conflict that remains unresolved (see Artsakh, page 85).
Socially, the Soviet Union further divided the culture within Armenia from that of Armenians elsewhere in the world. An agricultural state became an urban one, and entire villages moved from rural settings into Soviet apartments to work at factories or state-run farms. Yerevan was transformed entirely from a scruffy trading outpost into a Soviet-style city, with broad boulevards and buildings constructed from the pink tufa rock. On a hillside, a statue of Stalin glowered at the population, seeming to compel Armenians to learn Russian. (The statue has since been replaced with another Soviet monument, Mother Armenia.)
There was also an effect on food and drink. After surviving decades of hunger, Soviet Armenia’s food supplies stabilized through central planning. Prior to World War I, Russians had been unsuccessful in introducing pork to Yerevan, where butcher shops mostly sold lamb. During the Soviet era, however, the preference flipped, and even today, pork and beef are more popular than lamb. Also, despite having a heritage of winemaking that goes back to prehistoric times (see Ancient Wine in the Twenty-First Century, page 213), Armenians were discouraged from producing wine. Grapes once used for wine became earmarked for Armenian brandy production—Georgians made enough wine, the Soviets reasoned. Somewhat ironically, the man credited as the architect of the Soviet food industry was Anastas Mikoyan, an Armenian born near the Georgian border and one of the few members of Stalin’s inner circle who lived long enough to enjoy a peaceful retirement. Among the commissar’s many contributions to the Soviet table, one of the most lasting was publishing The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food, a cookbook first released in 1939 offering recipes ranging from stuffed cabbage to fish in aspic. With millions of copies and countless editions in print today, the book came to define aspirational Soviet home cooking.
Cookbooks were one form of Soviet propaganda; another was a campaign encouraging Armenians to move to Soviet Armenia. Beginning in the 1940s, messages proclaiming a bountiful, welcoming land reached diaspora communities, encouraging those from Aleppo, Beirut, Cairo, America, and elsewhere to resettle in a country that served as a link to the historic highlands. Those who came, however, found they had neither a job nor a place to live upon arrival. They also didn’t speak Armenian exactly the same way (see Language Lessons, page 27) and they bemoaned the lack of spices in the local food. They were called akhpars (slang derived from the word yeghbayr, Armenian for “brother”), which rather than being a welcoming gesture, further pointed to the newcomers’ differences. Lahmajo (page 64), the popular flatbread topped with ground meat eaten everywhere in Yerevan today, was an exotic akhpar food in mid-century Soviet Armenia. These repatriates also helped open up Armenia to other new foods. One woman told us that it was an akhpar neighbor from Cairo who first introduced her to zucchini, a squash she had never seen as a child.
It wasn’t all bad, though, and certain Soviet foods became beloved. Every mom in Armenia knows how to make Salat Vinaigrette (page 95), a classic Russian salad of boiled beets, beans, and potatoes. Smetana, Russian sour cream, is common in cooking and baking, and caviar and trout roe became delicacies. Every kitchen also seems to be outfitted with the same Soviet-era meat grinder. Grinding meat at home instead of buying it already ground from a butcher is a habit that Armenians from Armenia, even those who later move away, never lose. And old traditions didn’t die out. The same people who moved to apartments returned to their villages to collect fruit from mulberry trees or forage for wild greens and herbs. While Soviets tried to downplay the value of lavash in exchange for thicker breads, the tradition of baking lavash in a tonir never stopped, and villages like Argel, with reputations for lavash, became required stops for picking up provisions on the way to spend the weekend at a dacha (no-frills vacation home).
On our trips to Armenia, we witnessed a country in transition, especially around Yerevan, where a new generation of Armenians from Europe and America are putting down roots to help rebuild the country. Diaspora Armenians are investing in the wine industry, creating tech startups, and aiding with infrastructure projects, while Syrian Armenians displaced by war are reinvigorating the local restaurant scene, offering polished hospitality and Middle Eastern flavors that are a break from the state-run restaurants of the past. Politically, Armenia is also changing rapidly. In 2018, peaceful protests across the country succeeded in ousting unpopular prime minister Serzh Sargsyan and putting Nikol Pashinyan, a highly popular opposition leader, in power, kicking off a wave of reforms.
Yet some older residents are nostalgic for the Soviet years. On April 24, 2018, Remembrance Day, as we walked along with thousands of others to pay tribute at the Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, an older woman behind us lamented the rise of materialism in Armenia. It used to be that no one knew what they were missing, that they were all the same, she said. Part of the reason for the nostalgia stems from fresh memories of the difficult times that followed the collapse of the USSR. Under the Soviet Union, Armenia became a hub for engineers and physicists. Yerevan’s art scene also flourished. In contrast, in 1991 the republic became a tiny independent country without the infrastructure to deliver basic needs. In those dark days, kerosene and bread were handed out by international aid organizations, and sometimes all there was to eat was bread and water, which cooks turned into Konchol (page 108), a soup flavored with caramelized onions, chopped herbs, and an egg, if you were lucky. Those who were kids in Yerevan in the 1990s remember bracingly cold winters and their parents’ attempts to distract them by playing games or instruments, or encouraging dancing to keep warm. When the lights flickered on for a rare few hours, the entire city celebrated.
There are different challenges today. During the Soviet era, one kept the same factory job for life. But in an Armenia that wants to participate in global trade, employers require more flexible skills, and some people feel left behind. The problem was not lost on the diaspora, which was how the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies came to be. Armenian-Texan philanthropist Sam Simonian and his wife, Sylva, founded TUMO in Yerevan in 2011 with a mission to close the education gap with technology and creative endeavors. Thousands of Armenian teenagers have since taken TUMO’s after-school workshops led by pioneers in robotics, film, graphics, music, food, and writing. The same grandmothers who miss the old days are proud of their grandkids, the TUMO generation, who will be the ones to lead change in the country.
These days, whenever we find ourselves chatting with anyone—Armenian or not—who has traveled through the country, we end up sharing this little excited smile with each other. It’s like we’re in on a secret, pulling a fast one on the rest of the travelers of the world, who tick through the obvious international tourist spots, dodging selfie sticks while enduring greatest-hits menus. In this place between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the ancient sites become open-air museums set against dramatic terrain, and the hospitality is honest and gracious. And these days, there is also always plenty of lavash to go around.
In the recipes we include in this book, we sought to re-create the spirit of the food we ate with ingredients we could find where we live. With some exceptions, we focus on widely available ingredients, from parsley, cilantro, and green onions to yogurt, tomatoes, cucumbers, and potatoes. Most Armenian recipes are purposefully simple, with little to hide behind, so their success can depend on the quality of the ingredients. The descriptions that follow explain what we look for when shopping for ingredients and how we use them.
The butter, cheese, and yogurt made in Armenia all have the advantage of starting with high-quality local milk. When using this book, look for the best dairy products you can buy for the best results.
BUTTER The texture and flavor of Armenian butter is rich and reminiscent of more famous European butters. The best butter changes with the season, turning from creamy pale in winter to rich yellow in May and June when the cows graze on wildflowers. Most of the butter used is unsalted, because people are choosy about the quality of the butter and because salted butters in Soviet times were inferior. Yerevan local Tatev Malkhasyan’s family makes salted butter by pressing a layer of softened butter in the bottom of a cast-iron pan, covering it with a layer of salt, and repeating the process a few more times. They let the butter sit for a couple of days in a cold place until it releases water, then they remove the water and melt the butter until it’s clear, with a thin layer of foam on the surface. At that point, they boil the butter until the foam is gone. When cool, it’s packed into jars. Both clarified butter and whole butter are used in cooking and sweets.
CHEESE The most common cheeses in Armenia are salt-brined cheeses with holes—“eyes” in the language of cheesemaking. The more sour the milk, the larger the eyes.
While the two most common cheeses—Lori and chanakh—are used interchangeably, Lori is firmer and chanakh is saltier, explains Robert Ghazaryan, a cheesemaker and farmer in the northern Lori region who makes both cheeses with local cow’s milk. Sheep’s milk feta, such as the French cheese Valbreso, comes close to the salty, funky tang of these cheeses, and it makes a good addition to any herb and cheese plate served with the recipes in this book.
Other Armenian cheeses include Chechil, which is similar to string cheese in America (though with finer strands), and a few funkier creations for the more adventurous. If you’re looking to try one of these more adventurous cheeses while visiting Armenia, ask to sample motal, a goat cheese packed into clay pots and sealed with beeswax, or an aged cheese buried for several months with herbs, a style attributed to the town of Yeghegnadzor. For many, the pungent, barnyard-like flavor is an acquired taste, though others can’t get enough.
YOGURT (MADZOON) Long before yogurt became a probiotic elixir in the United States, Eastern and Western Armenians alike had long credited eating yogurt with living a healthier life. Neighbors borrow a bit of madzoon from each other to culture a new batch of fresh milk. To prepare for winter, some Armenian women dry disks of defatted yogurt mixed with a little flour in the sun to keep on hand for when cows aren’t producing milk. Called chortan or choratan, this dried yogurt is turned into yogurt soup in the winter. When it comes to fresh yogurt in Armenia, it is always whole-milk (full-fat), plain yogurt, and some are thicker than others. In this book, yogurt is often mixed with a little grated garlic, which is great on noodles or drizzled over greens, as is done in “Aveluk Salad” (page 100). Yogurt is not hard to make at home, but it takes time. For a more in-depth look at making yogurt, look for cookbooks on the subject by writers Janet Fletcher and Cheryl Sternman Rule.
DRINKING YOGURT: A popular way to cool off in the summer is to drink a thinned-out, savory-style yogurt drink called tan or tahn. Pair it with the “Armenian pizza” Lahmajo (page 64) for lunch. The thickness of tan and whether you add mint to the glass is a personal preference.
To try it for yourself, use a fork to whisk 1/4 cup [60 g] plain, whole-milk yogurt in a glass with 3/4 cup [180 ml] water and 1/4 tsp salt. You can add a little chopped mint, though purists leave it out.
One of the reasons that vegetables and fruit taste so vibrant in Armenia is that most produce is grown locally. The Ararat Valley is the backbone of Armenia’s agriculture, and it’s close to Yerevan. There are also small village farmers around the country that drive their produce into the capital city to sell at a higher margin.
In the spring, tart green plums the size of large cherries (shlor) begin to pop up, while in summer, boxes of stone fruits and eggplants crowd stalls. In the fall, quince, walnuts, dried fruit, cauliflower, and cabbage take their places. Greenhouses now make it possible to have tomatoes and cucumbers year-round. One clarification on cucumbers: Those eaten throughout Armenia resemble what Americans call Persian cucumbers, not what we call Armenian cucumbers. Those large, pale-green vegetables are technically a type of melon.
GARLIC AND ONIONS Raw, cooked, pickled, or charred on a grill, garlic and onions are foundational flavors in Armenian cooking. To reduce garlic’s pungency, mix minced or grated garlic cloves with salt. Armenian green onions are much skinnier than American green onions (also called scallions), with a more delicate flavor. If the green onions you have are large, slice them in half lengthwise before serving them on an herb and cheese plate. Once you cut off the roots, use both the white and the green parts of the green onion. The other onion used frequently in this book is the everyday yellow onion. They vary quite a bit in size, but some variance is fine. In general, the yellow onions we use weigh approximately 8.75 oz [250 g] each and equal about 2 cups [480 ml] finely diced or 21/2 cups [600 ml] sliced. For all kinds of onions, soaking raw slices in cold water or in a mix of water and any kind of vinegar helps dilute the astringency and makes them more pleasant to eat raw. When recipes call for finely diced onion, you can also grate the onion using a box grater.
DRIED FRUIT The combination of local harvests, dry summers, and three hundred days of sunshine makes Armenia ideal for drying fruit. The most celebrated is the apricot—what the Romans called Prunus armenicus, Armenian plum. Today, apricots, both fresh and dried, remain a symbol of Armenia, but dried hon (cornelian cherries) and dried sour plums are also favorite snacks. For this book, dried sour cherries best approximate hon, and prunes paired with vinegar or another tart ingredient substitute for sour plums. Together, they make for nice combinations in stuffed rice dishes, like Ghapama (page 186).
Bread wheat, emmer, and barley have been farmed in the Ararat Valley since the Neolithic era, later becoming an important part of the Armenian diet. The importance of wheat didn’t diminish during the Soviet era, but it shifted. Wheat remained the most important cereal crop grown in the USSR, but from the 1950s on, most of it was grown in the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. Nowadays, Armenia grows wheat and emmer, while barley is mostly grown for livestock. On the other hand, the delicious speckled beans that grow around the city of Goris are a New World crop. Rice is also popular in Armenia, but it is imported.
WHEAT BERRIES AND FARRO Wheat berries are milled into flour and cooked in a range of porridges. Some are toasted and crushed for Khashil (page 193), others cooked low and slow for Harissa (page 196) and Kurkut (page 198), and still others processed into bulgur. Occasionally, emmer (also called farro) is used, but not as often. Go to a shop in Armenia and you’ll be able to pick out wheat berries specifically processed for the dish you’re making. In America, we have to get a little more creative.
Pearled farro replicates the texture of the wheat berries used in harissa and is easy to find (it is also sometimes labeled farro perlato, the Italian translation). White wheat berries, such as Sonora, are softer, and work well for dishes like harissa. Kurkut, a porridge from the Republic of Artsakh, uses a type of hard red winter wheat berry. To replicate it, we use unpearled farro or Turkey Red wheat berries, which (contrary to their name) were brought to America by Mennonites from the Ukraine. When cooking wheat berries, use 4 cups [960 ml] water to 1 cup [180 g] wheat berries. For faster cooking, soak wheat berries overnight and drain before using.
BULGUR Made by boiling, drying, and grinding wheat, bulgur is quite different from whole or crushed wheat berries and isn’t a substitute for them. In this book, it’s used as a filling for Pasuts Tolma (page 174) and as part of raw beef preparation Chikufta (page 126) and its vegetarian cousin, Eech (page 129). Use medium-grain bulgur, also called “#2.”
RICE Buttery rice plov (pilaf) most likely reached Armenia through connections on the Silk Road, but it never displaced cooked wheat berries, which were easier to grow in Armenia’s arid climate. For that reason, rice was historically a delicacy. Besides plov, rice is an integral part of stuffed vegetable dishes, such as Grape Leaf Tolma (page 171) and Ghapama (page 186). For the recipes in this book where rice is used, opt for any long-grain variety of white rice.
BEANS The southern Armenian city of Goris and the villages that surround it are famous for their speckled, purple-magenta shelling beans. The beans’ vibrant colors dull when they’re cooked, but what they lose in appearance they gain in flavor and their creamy-on-the-inside, chewy-on-the-outside texture. To best approximate Goris beans, look for cranberry beans, also called borlotti beans. While it is easier to find these beans dried, they are also available canned in some stores, especially those stocked with Italian and Mediterranean ingredients. Though slightly smaller, dried or canned pinto beans are good substitutes.
COOKING DRIED BEANS: Rinse the beans and pick out any debris. Place the beans in a bowl and cover generously with water. Let soak for at least 4 hours or overnight. This presoaking step yields evenly cooked beans that are supposed to be easier on the digestive system (though not everyone agrees it makes a difference). If an overnight soak is not in the cards, you can also do the “quick soak” method: Place the beans in a large pot and cover generously with water. Bring the pot to a boil, turn off the heat, and let sit, uncovered, for about 1 hour. Once the beans are soaked, drain the beans, put them back in the pot, and add water to cover by 1 to 2 in [2.5 to 5 cm]. Place the pot over high heat and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a gentle simmer and cook, uncovered, for 11/2 to 2 hours, or until tender. (It might be necessary to add more water to keep the beans covered as they cook.) Turn off the heat, stir in 1 tsp of salt, and let the beans cool in their cooking water for 20 minutes. Drain, saving the cooking water to add to soups.
While Americans can go to a butcher’s shop and ask for a rib-eye steak without any awareness of what part of the cow it comes from, Armenians describe cuts of meat based on an animal’s anatomy. The best example of this is with Tjvjik (page 210), a dish of offal and onions so beloved that preparing it inspired a movie by the same name. Replicating the same cuts in America took a little detective work, but we found that lean cuts of meat, such as eye of round, work well for finely minced preparations, such as Chikufta (page 126), while more expensive cuts, like chops and loins, are the best for khorovats (Armenian grilling). Also, keep your eyes out for calves’ feet to make Khash (page 156), a rich bone broth.
APPLE CIDER VINEGAR Many of the sour and tangy flavors in Armenian cuisine come from tart herbs, such as sorrel, salt-brined pickles, or sour dried fruit, so vinegar is used sparingly. When it is used, it’s most often apple cider vinegar. Choose unfiltered apple cider vinegar for a rounder, less acidic flavor.
A NOTE ON SALT: Armenians are not shy about seasoning with salt, which may have evolved from centuries of using salt as a way to preserve food before refrigeration. The mineral represented life, and for this reason was stored in ceramic containers shaped like a pregnant woman. Still, everyone has a different idea of what tastes salty to them. All of the salt measurements used in this book were made with Diamond Crystal kosher salt because it is widely available in the United States. Feel free to use other salts, but be aware that some are saltier than others. Morton kosher salt and fine sea salts are about one-and-a-half times as salty as Diamond Crystal by volume. Meanwhile, table salt is about twice as salty. If you are using a different kind of salt and are worried about making a dish too salty, reduce the salt by a quarter to a half. For everything but baking recipes, you can always add more at the end.
SPICES Syrian Armenians—many of whom came from Aleppo, a city famous for its eponymous dried peppers—are upping the quality and selection of spices in Yerevan. At Zeituna, a Western Armenian restaurant started by the Rastkelenians, a Syrian-Armenian family, cumin, ground dried peppers, and sumac (a tart ground red berry) season nearly everything. Yet to many Yerevantsis, these spices still taste exotic, and most home kitchens take a modest approach with seasoning. In Armenian home kitchens, black pepper and paprika season everything from vegetables to fish and meat. The paprika is mild and unsmoked; look for “sweet paprika” on the label. Smoked paprika is not a perfect substitute, especially in subtler recipes like Green Salad with Radishes (page 98). Other common spices in Armenia include juniper berries and bay leaves, which are used in pickling brines. Bay leaves play a minor role in stews.
If you like heat or generally are used to cooking with a lot of spices, consider adding a few pinches of ground or crushed dried peppers, such as Aleppo pepper, to the recipes in this book or offer some at the table. It’s an especially good way to perk up stews such as Khashlama (page 208) and Chanakh (page 204). As of writing this book, the supply of Aleppo pepper is not actually coming from Aleppo, but pepper plant cultivars from the region are being grown elsewhere (mainly Turkey) and are still labeled as Aleppo. Marash pepper is similar, and both ground peppers are imported by companies such as Kalustyan’s.
SUNFLOWER OIL On the grounds of Tatev Monastery in southern Armenia sits a small room with an enormous stone mill once used to grind sesame seeds into oil. In Armenia today, seed oils still prevail, though these days sunflower seed oil is the most common, as it is in other former Soviet republics. The best-quality sunflower seed oils are made by brands such as Spectrum and La Tourangelle, though a good alternative is grapeseed oil. Olive oil sold in Armenia tends to be expensive and of mixed quality, and therefore isn’t used often. If you choose to use it while cooking from this book, select a mild olive oil that won’t impart too many herbal or grassy flavors to the finished dish. Olive oil is especially good to use on Chikufta (page 126) and Eech (page 129).
EXTRAS Red pepper paste is most often used in Western Armenian–style dishes, like lahmajo, but you can also add red pepper paste in recipes that use tomato paste if you desire a bit of pepper flavor. Look for red pepper paste at Middle Eastern and Russian markets, and taste it before adding it to your food to check its salt and spice levels. Pomegranate molasses (doshab means any kind of fruit molasses, including pomegranate) is used sparingly, though a drop mixed into a salad dressing or meat marinade can do wonders for rounding out flavors as well as increasing caramelization. In this book, grape molasses is used in Sweet Soujuk (page 229); it is made by dipping strands of walnuts in thickened grape juice. Molasses is also made from mulberries in Armenia, though it is hard to find in America.
Cooking in Armenia relies more on the eye than the measuring cup. To re-create the recipes in the United States, however, we needed to be more precise. The recipes in this book include both American measurements and metric equivalents. In many cases, the metric equivalent is rounded up or down to make it easier to follow, as when describing the size of a pot or pan. If you don’t have the exact-size pan called for when making a stew or soup, work with what you typically use for similar recipes.
When we visited the lavash bakery in Argel, Ara’s eyes lit up when he thought he had spotted a large jar of pickled ramps in front of a neighbor’s house. They sold him the jar, he dug in, and that’s when confusion set in. What were those bitter things? Later we found out the so-called ramp was sindrick, which is picked in the spring and pickled or served boiled with vinegar. This was not the first time we encountered a green that was completely new to us, with good reason: More than a quarter of the plants that grow in Armenia are only grown in Armenia. The country’s rich biodiversity is one of the reasons that a range of wild herbs, such as purslane, goosefoot, and several kinds of sorrel, plays such a role in its cooking. If you happen upon a trove of edible wild greens, make use of them in recipes such as Jingalov Hats (page 58), Greens with Eggs (page 122), or any of the soups.
Armenian cooks go light on spice but generous on fresh herbs, so unless dried herbs are called for in this book, assume all herbs in recipes are fresh. Markets sell bouquets of mixed herbs—khar’ kanachi—containing flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, dill, and opal basil, and sometimes even chervil and tarragon. When cooking from this book, go with bright- looking herbs with tender stems whenever possible. If herbs like opal (purple) basil are hard to find, stick with cilantro, parsley, and dill. (Some grocery stores will order opal basil if you call in advance.) Cilantro and parsley can be washed, dried with a salad spinner, and then stored in zip-top plastic bags for up to 1 week. Dill, chervil, tarragon, and basil are best eaten a day or two after being washed. If the herbs look a bit tired, snip off 1 in [2.5 cm] of their stems and set them in a glass of water to perk them up. For a deeper dive into Armenian herbs, see Jingalov Hats Herbs and Greens (page 63).
CHOPPING HERBS Unless the stems are quite tough, which can be the case for tarragon, parsley, and dill, use the stems and leaves when cooking with herbs. Armenians have an efficient technique for chopping bunches of herbs that yields a perfect mix of stems and leaves: Gather a bunch of herbs in one hand. Slice the bunch in half so the ends are separated from the tops. Next, put the two cut ends together to form a bundle with one neat edge and slice through them finely.
DRIED HERBS Used more often for tea than for seasoning food, dried herbs are nevertheless an important part of the Armenian pantry. The two most notable are aveluk, a wild, sour herb often called sorrel (though it is a much longer leaf than French sorrel), and urtz, a kind of thyme. Urtz is the word for both dried thyme and the tea made with it, yet urtz as a tea also often contains summer savory.
Alongside a basket of bread, every single meal in Armenia—whether it’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner—includes a plate of herbs and cheese. You help yourself to lavash and then wrap sprigs of herbs and greens, such as radish greens or skinny green onions, and salty cheese—or whatever you want—inside it. Replicate the experience by selecting at least two fresh herbs and a salty cheese, such as feta, and then some green onions and radishes with their leaves, if you have them. For more variety, add sliced Persian cucumbers, sliced tomatoes, and Salt-Brined Mixed Pickles (page 134). The same mixed herbs left over from an herb and cheese plate can be chopped and sprinkled on top of just about all the soups and stews in this book.
Traditional Armenian baking is based on simple techniques using tools that are readily available. To stay true to their spirit, our baking recipes are low-tech and meant to look like they were made by hand. Like many types of baking, mastery comes with repetition, and the second or third batch of lavash or matnakash is bound to be a little easier than the first. The descriptions that follow explain why we use a certain tool, what we mean when we say “lukewarm water,” and how we prefer to measure flour. Before baking any of the flatbreads, be sure to review Heat Sources (page 40).
KITCHEN SCALE This is the most accurate and easiest way to portion flour and other ingredients, allowing you to weigh everything in one bowl. If you prefer measuring cups, portion by the “scoop and level” method, dipping the cup into the flour, dragging it through until full, and then leveling it off. One cup of flour will be about 140 g.
OTHER MEASURING DEVICES For smaller quantities, teaspoons and tablespoons are usually more accurate than kitchen scales. A small liquid measuring cup that ranges from 1 Tbsp [15 ml] to 1/4 cup [60 ml] is handy for measuring oils and other liquid ingredients in small amounts.
PLASTIC DOUGH SCRAPER This inexpensive, flexible tool makes it easy to remove dough from a bowl, scrape sticky dough off the counter, and cut and portion dough. It’s also handy when mixing dough for pastries, such as Gata (page 235).
ROLLING PIN A sturdy American (with handles) or French (no handles, with either straight or tapered ends) rolling pin works well for rolling out doughs in this book. Usually the heavier the rolling pin, the better. To cut the noodles for Arishta (page 76), some like to use a special grooved, heavy rolling pin.
STAND MIXER For the most hands-off bread-making experience, use a stand mixer with the paddle and dough hook attachments to make easy work of mixing and kneading. (Its whisk attachment comes in handy when making desserts, like Goris Baklava, page 239.) It’s not essential to own a stand mixer to bake from this book because recipes also have instructions for kneading by hand.
HALF-SHEET PANS Rimmed 13 by 18 in [23 by 33 cm] baking pans are easily one of the most useful pans to have in any kitchen. Line them with towels for drying herbs, flip them over to make a makeshift pizza peel, turn them into a baking surface in place of a baking stone, and use them right-side up for roasting or baking just about anything.
PIZZA PEEL A pizza peel resembles an oversize ping-pong paddle, and the shape makes it easy to move flatbread in and out of the oven when baking on a pizza stone. You can create the same effect using a rimless cutting board, an overturned half-sheet pan, or anything that will help you slide dough onto a hot oven surface in one quick motion.
PARCHMENT PAPER Flatbreads with toppings, such as Lahmajo (page 64), are easier to transfer to the oven if you shape and bake them directly on parchment paper. Shape the dough on a sheet of parchment paper, add the toppings, and then slide the parchment paper directly onto the pizza stone in the oven. The paper will turn brown with the oven’s heat, but the cooking process is over before the paper burns.
Buying parchment paper precut to fit inside a half-sheet pan makes using it so much easier. Look for precut parchment paper at restaurant supply stores or online at King Arthur (kingarthurflour.com).
A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT PLASTIC WRAP As dough rises, it needs to be covered to avoid drying out. Plastic wrap is one option, but there are others to consider. In Armenia, where people still work in the waste-not-want-not ethos of Soviet times, we saw bakers cover dough with kitchen towels and home cooks cut plastic bags into squares to reuse. All this is to say that it is possible to reduce plastic wrap use and bake great bread. Here are a few options:
FLOUR After working with a variety of combinations, we discovered that you can be flexible with flour choice when baking flatbreads, as long as you’re using wheat flours and not gluten-free varieties. To keep things simple, you can also stick with all-purpose flour when baking from this book.
HERITAGE FLOURS If you are interested in locally milled grains, mix some into the recipe in place of a portion of the all-purpose flour. If it’s a deeper-colored, hearty whole wheat flour, like Turkey Red, start by substituting it for a quarter of the all-purpose flour and monitor the results. If it’s a lighter style of wheat, like Sonora or Red Fife, you can use it interchangeably with the all-purpose flour for the flatbreads in this book. You can also experiment with substituting up to a quarter of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour in sweeter recipes, such as Gata (page 235).
Heritage grain expert Ellen King of Hewn Bakery in Evanston, Illinois, says moisture levels of heritage flours change with the season. If a dough feels dry, she dips her hands into water and gently kneads the dough. She then lets it rest for several minutes to absorb the water.
Buy whole wheat flours in smaller quantities and freeze them if not using right away to prevent them from going rancid.
WATER “Lukewarm” in these recipes indicates water that is comfortable to touch, feeling slightly warmer than your fingers but not hot. If it is hot in the kitchen, opt for cooler water, about 75ºF [24ºC]. If your kitchen is cold, use warmer water, but no hotter than 100ºF [38ºC].
YEAST For the recipes in this book that use yeast, choose instant yeast; it is more concentrated and has a longer shelf life than active dry yeast. Depending on the brand, it is also called fast-rising yeast, quick-rising yeast, bread machine yeast, or RapidRise (but it doesn’t make dough rise faster). Store opened packets of yeast for up to 4 months in the refrigerator or 6 months in the freezer to keep them fresh.
SALT Like the other recipes in this book, the salt used to develop the bread recipes is Diamond Crystal kosher salt. If you prefer baking with fine sea salt, reduce the quantity by 25 percent. (See page 33 for more on salt.)
SUGAR The sugar used in Armenia most closely resembles organic cane sugar in that it looks slightly less refined than granulated sugar in the United States. Still, the difference between the two is negligible for the recipes in this book, and either can be used.
Most breads require these main steps: making the dough, letting it rest after kneading (the primary fermentation), portioning the dough and letting it rest again (the secondary fermentation, or proofing stage), and then baking the dough, or, in the case of some flatbreads, griddling it. While most of the steps are explained in the recipes, here are a few more pointers.
OLD DOUGH In baker terminology, this is called a “preferment”: a mix of flour, water, and yeast that is made before the main dough and can boost the flavor and structure of bread. In this book, we use old dough to make Lavash (page 48) and Matnakash (page 68) to give the dough more flavor and make it easier to shape. When making lavash dough, you can save one ball from a batch and use it next time in place of the old dough. Covered and refrigerated, old dough keeps for about 3 days. An oiled 2 cup [480 ml] resealable container is a good storage vessel.
KNEADING AND RESTING A key step in mixing and kneading bread dough is letting the dough rest right after combining the flour, water, and old dough. The technical term for this step is autolyse, a brief pause that allows the flour to absorb the water and for gluten strands to begin forming. Resting the dough for 20 minutes in between kneading shortens the amount of time you need to spend actively kneading the dough.
PORTIONING AND SHAPING A kitchen scale is handy for dividing dough into equalsize pieces, but you can come close by first dividing the dough in half with a dough scraper, then in half again and again until you have the number of pieces needed. For the next step, shape the portions into balls by cupping your hand over each piece on the counter and moving it in a circle. If there is too much flour on the counter and there isn’t enough friction between your hand and the dough to turn it into a ball, sprinkle a little water over the counter and try again.
ROLLING AND STRETCHING Once the dough has rested and relaxed after portioning, it’s ready to be rolled out. The way to reach the right thinness is to first roll it using a rolling pin and then stretch it with your hands. Use only a small amount of flour on the counter for rolling; the dough is not sticky and a little friction can help it stretch. If the dough resists stretching, let it rest and start on another piece of dough.
You can make flatbread recipes work for your schedule by refrigerating dough for a few days. Here are some options:
Here are a few options for achieving blistered, delicious flatbreads at home. For Lavash (page 48) and Jingalov Hats (page 58), using a hot surface on the stove allows the dough to puff and brown before it turns into a cracker. For other recipes, such as Lahmajo (page 64), Matnakash (page 68), and Tonir Hats (page 73), the oven works better because it evenly distributes heat. Still, everyone’s kitchen is different; we’ve outlined the following options so you can choose what works best for you.
WOK An overturned carbon-steel wok resembles a makeshift saj, the type of griddle used for flatbreads throughout the Middle East, and it consistently made the best lavash in our tests. The wok works best with a gas burner, so skip this option if you have an electric stove. Be sure to use a seasoned carbon-steel wok—for instructions on how to season a wok, look to expert online advice, such as that from The Wok Shop in San Francisco (wokshop.com). Do not use a nonstick wok. If the wok has a metal handle, keep the counter and your hands safe by wrapping the handle with a towel.
To griddle, drape the stretched (or shaped) dough over the hot wok. If it folds over itself, pull it apart. You can drape lavash dough over a rolling pin to transfer it to the wok if it’s easier.
CAST-IRON GRIDDLE Close to the wok in lavash-cooking performance, a cast-iron griddle runs 20 in [50 cm] long and covers two burners. If you don’t have a griddle, you can also use a round cast-iron skillet: Follow the instructions for the cast-iron griddle, but instead of rolling out a full portion of lavash dough, divide the dough in half and roll it into a round to make smaller lavash. If you have an electric griddle, you can also use it for griddling flatbreads. It may not get quite as hot as the versions on a stove and will likely take longer to cook. In this case, use the visual cues in the recipes to tell when the flatbread is done.
GRILL Grilling lavash produces beautiful blisters on the bread. If you’re using the grill for other things, you may want to grill lavash as well. (The lavash only takes seconds to cook, so it isn’t practical to fire up a charcoal grill solely for the purpose of lavash.) Unlike Armenian-style barbecue setups (see page 162), you will need a standard grill with grates. Be sure to clean the grates well with a grill brush and oil them before you start grilling to prevent the dough from sticking. Have a half-sheet pan lightly coated in oil handy for transporting rolled-out dough from the counter to the grill and a pair of tongs to pick up the lavash off the grill.
BAKING STONE OR BAKING STEEL
Baking flatbreads in an oven with a preheated stone or steel allows the bread to achieve a crisp crust. While it tends to dry out lavash, it is great for lavash dough with toppings, like lahmajo, and thicker kinds of flatbread, like matnakash and tonir hats. If you don’t have a baking stone, you can create a makeshift one out of an overturned half-sheet pan. Just place the pan in the oven upside down 5 minutes before baking.
When buying lavash, look for very thin bread that comes folded in bundles at Armenian or Middle Eastern stores. It should be no thicker than a crepe and have a few blisters, with a texture that is pliable and easy to fold. To keep it from drying out, store the lavash in sealed plastic bags. Purchased lavash is perfect for making Lavash-Wrapped Trout (page 183), Lavash-Wrapped Etchmiadzin Kufta (page 189), or Bean Lavash Triangles (page 117). In general, purchased lavash sheets will be longer and wider than homemade lavash; one purchased sheet is the equivalent of two or three homemade sheets.
The Year of The Sword
