Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Hard to find: Turkish versions of Armenian cuisine aren't aswidespre

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Hard to find: Turkish versions of Armenian cuisine aren't aswidespre

    Hard to find

    Turkish versions of Armenian cuisine aren't as widespread as they once were.

    By Joan Obra / The Fresno Bee
    (Updated Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 6:50 AM)

    In a small deli, Richard and Gerry Hagopian cling to a fading cuisine.

    Gerry Hagopian stands over a bubbling pot of tomato broth to stir
    kufta, meatballs of spiced, ground lamb encased in a crust of bulgur
    and beef. She then mixes the toorshi, plunging her hands and arms
    into a large vat of cabbage and carrots pickled in vinegar.

    And she shows off a package in the dining-room freezer. It's sou
    bourag, a dish with 12 to 15 layers of thin noodles, butter, cheese
    and parsley. Making the noodles is so time- consuming that hardly
    anyone cooks them from scratch anymore. But Gerry Hagopian still does.

    This is Turkish-Armenian cuisine, made from the recipes of those
    who survived the Armenian genocide and fled to the United States. A
    handful of central San Joaquin Valley shops still offer this type
    of food, including Hagopian's International Deli in Visalia, Uncle
    Harry's restaurant in Reedley and Valley Lahvosh Baking Co. in Fresno.

    For these old-timers - direct descendants of genocide survivors
    - cooking their parents' meals defies the Turks' destruction of
    Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Though Turks still deny the genocide
    ever happened, Armenians say the ruthless campaign started 90 years
    ago, on April 24, 1915. These Valley cooks also have another reason
    to preserve their versions of Turkish- Armenian food: Their cuisine
    is different from the food of genocide survivors who settled in the
    Middle East, says Barbara Ghazarian, the Monterey author of "Simply
    Armenian: Naturally Healthy Ethnic Cooking Made Easy."

    In the Middle East, foods such as hummus, a chickpea dip, and baba
    ghannouj, a spread of roasted eggplant and sesame-seed paste, crept
    onto Armenian tables.

    The regional cuisines stayed separate until the 1970s, when civil
    war erupted in Lebanon. Once again, Armenians escaped to the United
    States, bringing the tastes of Middle Eastern-Armenian dishes.

    And as this Middle Eastern influence grows in the Valley and elsewhere,
    Turkish- Armenian food from the time of the genocide becomes more
    rare. The survivors' children, now in their 60s, 70s and 80s,
    are aging.

    "We're really limited in Armenian restaurants with recipes from the
    old days, recipes from people at the turn of the century," says Harry
    Horasanian, owner of Uncle Harry's. "Since the massacres, a lot of
    Armenians were living with a large Arabic influence and seasoning
    food differently."

    Wars change a cuisine

    It's not the first time a war has transformed the food of
    Armenians. Said to be descendants of Noah, Armenians populated the
    area between the Black, Caspian and Mediterranean seas - the trade
    route between East and West. Conquerors in Europe, Asia and the
    Middle East constantly fought over this territory, subjecting Armenian
    kingdoms to their rule.

    Amid this turmoil, Armenian food changed again and again. In A.D. 301,
    Armenians became the first people to adopt Christianity as their
    official religion. Decades later, when Armenian church leaders
    were centered at Constantinople, the flavors of the Byzantine Empire
    colored their cooking.

    "The combination of rice, currants, onions and pine nuts is a
    legacy from that era, a legacy which, in fact, belongs to those of
    the Orthodox faith, be it Armenian, Greek or Eastern," writes Tess
    Mallos in "The Complete Middle East Cookbook."

    In the 13th century, the Mongols invaded India, Afghanistan, Persia,
    Armenia and Russia, introducing pasta and noodles, Mallos adds. As a
    result, mante - an Armenian dish of small pasta pockets filled with
    spiced meat - has Russian and Turkish variations.

    By the 16th century, the Ottoman Turks had conquered most of Asia Minor
    and Armenia. In the late 1800s, economic and religious differences
    between Turks and Armenians led to mass murders, then the genocide.

    Valley Armenians share terse stories of this time.

    Horasanian talks about the years just before the genocide, when
    his paternal grandparents gradually helped their children leave the
    Ottoman Empire - before the Turks killed them.

    Richard Hagopian's father was a third-grader when the Turks shot his
    father and brother. They pushed the young boy on a death march into
    the Syrian desert. Of his family, only three people survived.

    Even after years of living in the United States, genocide survivors
    didn't reveal many more details of the murders.

    They "didn't like to talk about it much," Richard Hagopian says.

    Lamb, vegetables and more

    Wars aren't the only factors that shape Armenian cuisine.

    For these deeply Christian people, vegetarian dishes are a must. The
    Armenian Orthodox Church requires its followers to fast for 180 days
    every year.

    "When they broke the fast at sundown," author Ghazarian says, "they
    were not allowed to eat any animal product."

    The fast days are one reason Armenians in the Middle East adopted
    the vegetarian dishes of their new countries, she adds.

    The mountainous, landlocked terrain of Armenian lands also influenced
    the food.

    "Even today, you can be completely cut off due to blizzards," Ghazarian
    says of rural Armenian towns. Foods that kept well became staples,
    including bulgur, the flat cracker bread called lahvosh and spicy
    meat jerky called bastirma and soujouk.

    "Basically, you're living off the land," Ghazarian says. "So the
    canning, the pickles, all that stuff â~@¦ that's about surviving
    the winter."

    Lamb, the traditional meat, also figures prominently in the
    cuisine. In addition to shish kebab, lamb appears in kheyma, a dish
    of finely-ground, raw meat kneaded with spices and bulgur. Ground,
    spiced lamb also tops lahmajoon, a thin Armenian pizza. It forms the
    filling, and at times the crust, of the stuffed meatball called kufta.

    Yet despite tradition, Armenians born in the Middle East are more
    likely to eat beef.

    "Beef is the meat of preference for most Armenians born in the
    Middle East because they say the lamb available there 'smelled' odd,"
    Ghazarian writes in "Simply Armenian."

    Similar, yet different

    These tenets of Armenian cuisine play into the food prepared by the
    Valley's old-time cooks.

    Vegetarian dishes such as yalanchi sarma â~@" grape leaves rolled
    around a filling of rice, onions and tomato â~@" are popular at
    Hagopian's International Deli.

    At Uncle Harry's, customers clamor for Horasanian's fried eggplant
    slices or his roasted-eggplant spread flavored with liberal amounts
    of red-wine vinegar and olive oil. It's similar to the Middle Eastern
    baba ghannouj but doesn't contain the sesame-seed paste in that dish.

    Indeed, many of the Turkish-Armenian dishes from the early 1900s
    also appear in other cuisines. The variations lie in flavorings
    and spices. And even among different regions of the Ottoman Empire,
    foods can taste different.

    For example, when Horasanian mixes his version of kheyma, he flavors
    it with tomato sauce, black pepper and paprika. But when Ghazarian
    makes it, she reaches for cayenne, cumin and cinnamon.

    Ghazarian's family was from the Harpout region, which is now in the
    Elazig province in central-eastern Turkey. By contrast, the dominant
    culinary influence in Horasanian's food comes from his father's
    family, who hailed from Tomarza, a city in a mountainous region west
    of Harpout.

    The differences continue at Hagopian International Deli. There, the
    kufta is made by Gerry Hagopian, whose family lived in Chomaklou, a
    village in the Kayseri province of central Turkey and known to Turks
    as Comaklu. Her kufta filling of spiced, ground lamb is different
    from the pomegranates and nuts used in Erzurum, the city in Eastern
    Turkey that was home to Richard Hagopian's family until the genocide.

    Over the years, these cooks have introduced other changes. Beef is
    widely used now, partly because lamb is expensive and partly because
    Americans prefer beef to lamb.

    At Uncle Harry's, the kheyma is made with ground beef, as is the
    lahmajoon topping. And at Hagopian's International Deli, beef forms
    the crust of the kufta.

    But these differences are slight. For the most part, Valley cooks
    stay true to their parents' food.

    "It's been 90 years since my father came from the old country,"
    Horasanian says. "These recipes haven't been changed in about 100
    years."

    The more things change

    The food may remain the same, but the rise and fall of Fresno's
    Armenian Town shows how much has changed since the genocide.

    The neighborhood started in the early 1900s, with Armenians who
    escaped the Ottoman Empire before the genocide. In 1914, these new
    Fresno immigrants built the existing Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic
    Church at M Street and Ventura Avenue. And in 1922, Gazair Saghatelian
    opened the California Baking Co. at M and Santa Clara streets.

    "You had the church and the bakery," says Janet Saghatelian, Gazair's
    daughter. "Those were the two most sacred things in Armenian culture."

    The neighborhood grew, eventually filling the area between Inyo,
    O and Los Angeles streets and Broadway. From the late 1920s to the
    early 1940s, this neighborhood was the hub of Armenian life in Fresno,
    Janet Saghatelian says.

    "Then all the boys went to war," she adds, "and families started
    moving out."

    The bakery lived on. Janet Saghatelian took it over, and now her
    daughter, Agnes Saghatelian, handles day-to-day operations.

    Time brought other changes. The bakery expanded to become the Valley
    Lahvosh Baking Co. The Saghatelians now sell their lahvosh throughout
    the United States and Canada. Also, the lahvosh no longer is made by
    hand. Machines shape and bake it into a variety of sizes and shapes.

    But some things didn't change. Older Armenians still prefer the
    traditional 15-inch-wide lahvosh to the smaller rounds of cracker
    bread.

    "Her generation doesn't want to mess with these small crackers,"
    Agnes Saghatelian says, pointing to her mother.

    It's these large rounds of lahvosh that inspired the term "breaking
    bread together," Janet Saghatelian says. At dinner, Armenian families
    would pass around the large lahvosh, and everyone would break off
    a piece.

    These old-time Armenians also soften cracker bread the traditional
    way: They place water-soaked lahvosh between two damp kitchen towels
    for 45 minutes or until the cracker bread is pliable enough to roll.

    There always was a supply of this softened lahvosh on Armenian
    tables, called dahnhatz, or "bread of the house," Janet Saghatelian
    says. Family and friends would tear off a piece and eat it with
    parsley, basil and homemade Armenian cheese.

    Another of the company's traditional products is peda, a soft bread
    with a milk wash and sesame seeds sprinkled on top. It's still made
    from Gazair Saghatelian's recipe, which came from Moush, his hometown
    in Eastern Turkey that is called Mus by the Turks.

    For Janet Saghatelian, one of the best ways to enjoy peda is with
    shish kebab, skewered lamb roasted over burning grape vines.

    "A wedge of fresh peda would be used to pull the meat off the skewers,"
    she says, "and that wonderful juice-laden piece of bread would be
    handed to our honored guest or fought over by children in the family."

    It's a complex bread that takes eight hours to make, from mixing
    to hand-shaping to baking. And it's available only at the company's
    original bakery.

    "You don't rush that peda," Janet Saghatelian says. "It's pretty
    complex."

    She admits that she loses money on the bread, but she doesn't care.

    Like other cooks of her generation, she has only one reason to continue
    making her father's dishes: "We do it because it's my heritage."

    The reporter can be reached at [email protected] or (559) 441-6365.

    --Boundary_(ID_ljo38oDkBn4RdZZKZt22wg)--

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Working...
X