Fresno Bee (California)
August 31, 2005, Wednesday FINAL EDITION
One special deli that’s a cut above To many of Armenian descent from
across the country, Fresno is best known for Ohanyan’s.
by Joan Obra The Fresno Bee
Fresno’s Armenians know Ohanyan’s. So do local Greeks, Lebanese
and Egyptians.
But the influence of this Fresno deli and factory stretches
nationwide. Armenians who love bastirma and soujouk — the cured
pastrami-like beef and sausage popular in the Middle East and Middle
Asia — trek to Ohanyan’s for these old-fashioned delicacies.
Last week, Manas Sherenian, an Oriental rug importer from Dallas,
visited Ohanyan’s Deli at Shields and West avenues to buy about 25
pounds of bastirma for his family.
“We’ve been buying [Ohanyan’s] products for a long time,” says
Sherenian, who went to the store to ask for direct shipping to
his home. In smaller Armenian communities like the one in Dallas,
Ohanyan’s meat isn’t readily available.
Not so in cities with larger Armenian populations.
“If I lived in New York or Boston,” Sherenian says, “it would be easy
to find it.”
Fresno residents, of course, have an ample supply of delicacies from
Ohanyan’s, which is the central San Joaquin Valley’s only manufacturer
of bastirma and soujouk.
In Nina’s Bakery at Shaw and West avenues, Nina Tashchian sells
Ohanyan’s soujouk and bastirma along with her Armenian pastries and
handmade meals. Most of her customers buy packaged Ohanyan’s products
to take home, but some also order the sliced meats in sandwiches with
pocket bread.
“They have the best bastirma and soujouk,” Tashchian says of
Ohanyan’s. “They’re famous. And the people like it so much.”
At MGA Liquor and Deli at Bullard Avenue and Figarden Drive, co-owners
Armen Pogosyan and Marine Gevorgyan started offering Ohanyan’s products
after customers began asking for them.
And other ethnic stores, such as Fresno Deli at Fresno Street and
Gettysburg Avenue, Hagopian International Deli in Visalia and Hye
Deli at Bullard and Marks avenues sell Ohanyan’s products.
It isn’t just Armenians who buy Ohanyan’s products, says Sevan
Havatian, owner of Fresno Deli. “Everybody likes it,” she says.
Together, bastirma and soujouk make up the base of Ohanyan’s business,
which is led by Jerry Hancer and his brother-in-law, Markos Garabetyan,
Armenians who grew up in Turkey.
The two were working at a belt-manufacturing company in Toledo, Ohio,
when a relative told them that Ohanyan’s, an Armenian deli at Shields
and West avenues, was up for sale.
Hancer and Garabetyan jumped at the chance to buy it, and they moved
their families to Fresno.
“We weren’t thinking about this,” Hancer says. “But the opportunity
came up suddenly.”
The two took over Ohanyan’s in 1981 and started tinkering with
soujouk and bastirma recipes. They wanted to improve the traditional,
Turkish-Armenian bastirma and soujouk made by Hancer’s grandparents,
who originated from Kastamonu, a central Turkish city near the
Black Sea.
They started out by making 400-500 pounds of bastirma and soujouk
a week. By the mid-1990s, they’d bought a factory on Sussex Way,
increasing their production to 15,000 pounds a week.
About five years ago, they added another Armenian specialty called
manti — tortellinilike pasta stuffed with ground meat and parsley,
typically served with a garlic-yogurt sauce and buttery tomato sauce.
The manti “was a very popular dish with the Greeks and Armenians,”
Hancer says. “We decided, ‘Why can’t we make this here?’ ”
“It’s so time-consuming,” he adds, “and not everybody is making it.”
These are foods with a lot of history. Legend has it that Turk
horsemen in central Asia created bastirma by squeezing cured meat
between their legs and saddles. In the Kayseri province of central
Turkey, bastirma and soujouk became culinary specialties.
The blend of spices reminiscent of Kayseri — fenugreek, cumin,
paprika and garlic — attracts customers such as Sherenian, who grew
up in that region of Turkey.
“My grandmother used to work in the bastirma and soujouk business in
Kayseri,” he says.
Sherenian says he loves the quality of the bastirma, which is made of
New York strip steak. “But it’s not just the beef,” Sherenian says.
“It’s that paste, those ingredients that [Ohanyan’s] uses.”
A tour through the factory on Sussex Way reveals the pungent odor
of various spices. Workers cut New York strip steak, throwing the
gristle in the trash and saving the trimmings in a separate bin to
make soujouk.
The slices of strip steak are then cured with salt and spices in the
first step of making bastirma. The meat then is cured with a wet
marinade to flavor its interior. Afterward, it’s dried again with
another spice paste.
The trimmings for soujouk are similarly spiced with garlic and cumin,
stuffed into sausage casings, then dried.
At Ohanyan’s Deli, Hayik Garabetyan, Markos’ son, thinly slices both
meats. Both are heavily spiced with garlic, but the bastirma has more
of a spicy flavor, especially when heated.
Currently, the factory is producing all the bastirma, soujouk and
manti it can. Ohanyan’s owners would like to expand — they already
have blueprints in hand and extra land to build on, but they say
they’re held back by their meat suppliers.
“We’re using New York strip steaks only, and it’s hard to find it as
lean as we want,” Hancer says.
They also hope to add new products, such as European sausages.
“I lived for 15 years in Germany,” says Markos Garabetyan, “I believe
we can do the same for those sausages as we did for bastirma and
soujouk. We have a better chance than someone new.”
The reporter can be reached at [email protected] or (559) 441-6365.
INFOBOX
Ideas for serving soujouk and bastirma
Soujouk and bastirma are traditional Armenian meats that are eaten
in a number of simple ways:
As an appetizer, serve slices of soujouk with Armenian string cheese.
For breakfast, fry thin slices of bastirma as you would bacon. Serve
them with fried eggs. (Or mix the slices of bastirma with eggs in
an omelet.)
For a soujouk or bastirma wrap, layer slices of soujouk or bastirma
with Armenian string cheese on softened lahvosh, the Armenian cracker
bread. Roll the lahvosh around the meat.
Chop soujouk or bastirma into small pieces, and brown them in oil.
Add the browned meat to bulgur pilaf.
Instead of adding pepperoni to pizza, try using soujouk instead.
Cook pieces of bastirma with spinach, green beans or white beans to
flavor the vegetables.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress