A Feast from Fire
Any occasion will do for an Armenian barbecue
Bronwyn Dunne
Saveur Magazine, no. 87 (October)
“Fare,” p. 28
My introduction to the Urartu fire god occurred last year while my husband
and I were living in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia. A new friend,
Yulia, announced one day that we were going on a picnic to experience the
national food and outdoor event known as khorovats. The word is Armenian
for barbecue–typically a spread of grilled skewers of lamb or pork served
with vegetables, lavash (flat bread), and ample helpings of vodka–but it is
also Armenian for birthday party, wedding anniversary, or any other
celebration you have in mind. If the weather is beautiful or your cousin
has just bought a new car or your two-year-old has just lost a tooth, then
you have an excuse for a khorovats.
Khorovats also celebrates something far more ancient: fire. Looking up at
Mount Ararat, a peak looming nearly 17,000 feet over Yerevan, you can
imagine the importance of fire when the winter winds blew down the
mountain’s lofty flanks and swept over the shepherds guarding their flocks
below–so it’s no wonder that a principal deity of the Urartu, an ancient
Armenian civilization dating to the 13th century B.C., was the one concerned
with flame. It was an Urartu tradition that the men would build a fire
after they’d returned from the hunt and pray to the gods for another day of
good luck.
The first stop on the morning of our picnic was at the apartment of one of
Yulia’s friends, Armen. He was to be the chef and manager at our event. We
watched with a mixture of alarm and admiration as Armen packed his
Soviet-era Lada with all thenecessities for our meal–blankets, trays of
marinating pork, a heavy iron coffeepot, skewers as long as swords, bottles
of vodka and water, and plastic bags full of peppers, eggplants, tomatoes,
and potatoes–along with his wife, twin daughters, and young son. Then our
little band caravaned off to the highlands north of Yerevan. We forded a
stream almost too deep for our cars to cross and drove through the rural
countryside on challenging wagon roads until the ideal site was found.
Armen, his friend Tigran, and the other men–men are always responsible for
the cooking at a khorovats–built a fire in the grill and then gathered
around, beers in hand, looking a lot like their suburban American
counterparts. Our food was cooked in a specific order: first the skewers
threaded with the whole vegetables, then the skewers of seasoned ground pork
and of alternating chunks of pork and potato. The lavash bread, which we
would use in place of utensils, was baked in a tonir, an oven dug in the
ground.
Peeling the cooked vegetables was a ritual overseen by the women. We
stripped the skins with our fingers and then sliced them into a bowl filled
with onions, salt, and pepper. Our fingers became so black from the charred
skins that there was much laughter over the mess that we were making.
Once everything was ready, the vodka was poured, and, with raised paper
cups, we made a toast to our Armenian friends. They wished us good health
in return, and then we broke bread in the shadow of Mount Ararat, just like
the shepherds of old.