Armenian cook spices recipes with history
By Susan O’Neill CORRESPONDENT
Sunday, April 3, 2005
Worcester Telegram
For Barbara Ghazarian, writing her cookbook was originally a way to help
satisfy her husband’s desire for meals from his Armenian heritage.
Instead, “Simply Armenian” became filled with her collection of family
recipes, and also looked at the rich Armenian history of immigrants who made their
way to Whitinsville. Mrs. Ghazarian calls it “a culinary memoir.”
“The reason I did it was because I was trying to feed my husband, who is 100
percent Armenian, and second, I consider myself a storyteller, and so I was
looking back into my heritage and the Armenians who have been in Whitinsville
for more than 100 years,” Mrs. Ghazarian said.
Nominated for the Julia Child Award by the International Association of
Culinary Professionals, Mrs. Ghazarian took 10 years to complete the cookbook as
she gathered the stories and tested the recipes. Detailing the early history of
her maternal great-grandfather from the village of Pazmashen in the Ottoman
Empire during the late 19th century, to his arrival in Whitinsville to work at
the Whitin Machine Works foundry, Mrs. Ghazarian discusses many of the
recipes’ origins.
“It’s important to say this is village food, and Whitinsville is a village
too, so it is from one village to another,” she said. “All through the book,
there are recipes from the many families, my family, my husband’s family, rooted
back to Armenia,” she said.
Immigrants had few utensils, so over time, recipes also evolved. Mrs.
Ghazarian said early in the 1920s, many families gathered and held picnics cooking
meats and vegetables on skewers over an open fire, known as shish kebab. She
said she took her scientific background as a molecular biologist and kept each
recipe in the tradition of the family, while making it fit modern kitchens.
“I thought that I had a way, as someone who was half Armenian, to give a
voice to each recipe,” she said.
Mrs. Ghazarian said it took a long time to finish the book because she took
great care to make a smooth translation, since many of her family’s recipes wer
e not made using modern kitchen utensils.
While some recipes might get lost in the translation, others are impractical
in the age of convenience.
“My grandmother made bastegh, which is grape roll-up. It is simple to make,
if you have the ability to clear out a room in your house, lay down a white
sheet, pour the fruit mixture on the sheet and let dry for 10 days,” Mrs.
Ghazarian said. “I have no idea how my grandmother made this.”
She didn’t give up too many of the traditional recipes in the book. One she
describes as the most popular takes two days to prepare and a month before it
is ready to consume. Soujouk is the Armenian version of beef jerky and made in
early fall in order for it to dry out.
“I was in a bookstore in Beverly Hills and a woman came up to me and asked,
â~@~XHow long do you think it will take to dry in Beverly Hills?’ which was funny
because I didn’t consider that weather,” Mrs. Ghazarian said. She now lives in
northern California.
The Armenian culture also embraces the Christian religion and more than half
of the recipes are considered vegan, made without animal products because of
the fasting required at Lent.
Mrs. Ghazarian said she wrote each recipe with the step-by-step instructions
for those who wanted to attempt ethnic cooking or are somewhat intimidated
with complex processes.
Ingredients are available at some international markets, such as Reliable
Market on Chandler Street in Worcester. She wanted to encourage cooks to take
one of the recipes and make it their own.
“This captures the soul of Armenian cooking. You can find out about culture
and enjoy cooking,” she said.
The book is available on Amazon.com and from Enfield Books, PO Box 699,
Enfield, NH, 03748, 603-632-7377.
–Boundary_(ID_Z/3XF114PN4oQAp4b3rHvA)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress