EXPLORING MODERN ARMENIAN COOKING
Salty, unleavened bread is a symbolic food that’s ‘the centre of everything’
Providing the basis of virtually every meal, lavash extends far past staple-food status in Armenia.
Commonly crafted by a small group of women, the flatbread cannot merely be defined by its ingredients — flour, water and salt — or subterranean baking method. Lavash belongs to a special category of symbolic foods permeating all aspects of life.
“You dance around with it at weddings and wrap babies in lavash,” says Los Angeles-based chef Ara Zada. “It’s the centre of everything.”
The unleavened bread, popular throughout the South Caucasus and Western Asia, is recognized as being so essential to Armenian cuisine it earned a place on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list in 2014. Just one year later, the seed of a unique cookbook was sown.
Lavash (Chronicle Books, 2019) — written by Zada, food writer Kate Leahy and photojournalist John Lee — started with an encounter with “earth-shattering lavash” in the Armenian village of Zovk.
While teaching a food photography workshop to teenagers in the capital city of Yerevan in 2015, Lee got to watch his student Inessa Karapetyan’s grandmother making lavash the traditional way, in a tonir (underground clay oven). He was hooked.
“It was this magical process of the way that she spins the dough super thin, puts it on this pillow-like thing (batat) and then plops it into this oven buried in the ground,” recalls Lee.
Inspired by Lee’s tale of life-changing lavash, the authors united over their shared interest in Armenian cuisine and set out to research the dishes being made there today. Offering an overview of its history, including the differences between Eastern and Western Armenian cooking, the book is an exploration of flatbreads, wholegrain stews, soups, salads, pickles, feasting dishes and sweets.
Zada says they didn’t aim to write a book of traditional Armenian cookery, but a collection of dishes they happened upon during their travels.
The authors present a portrait of a country in transition. Lee underscores the relatively recent influx of Syrian-armenians, who have transformed the Yerevan restaurant scene with Middle Eastern flavours.
On their final research trip for the book, which they planned for April and May in order to mark Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day on April 24, they unexpectedly witnessed political change.
Lee, who is a former Chicago Tribune staff photographer, was shooting a march in Yerevan when he was hit by the first flash grenade police tossed at a crowd of protesters. His leg needed “a lot of stitches,” so shooting the cookbook was more challenging, not that you would guess it from the resulting photography, which is a highlight.
“This cookbook was so unusual in so many different ways. Not only was it three authors from different backgrounds — a photojournalist, an Armenian-egyptian chef, a food writer — we (experienced) a political revolution and we were going into a country and asking for recipes from people we didn’t know,” says Leahy. “It could have been a complete disaster but instead I feel like we formed a community behind this book. It’s not our personal story. It’s the story of a broader perspective — of the people who helped us, of a country at a really pivotal moment in history.” Recipes excerpted from Lavash: The bread that launched 1,000 meals, plus salads, stews, and other recipes from Armenia by Kate Leahy, John Lee and Ara Zada (Chronicle Books).