THE LOVES OF LEBANON: COUPLE BUILDS NEW LIFE, CUISINE BUSINESS HERE

Pittsburgh Post Gazette, PA
Aug 3, 2006

By Virginia Phillips

For Henry and Najat Nazarian, who run a Lebanese food business here,
the recent air strikes that have erupted in the past three weeks in
their home country have brought back harsh memories. The Mt. Lebanon
couple immigrated to the United States during the 1975-1991 civil
war that laid their country in ruins.

"This war is worse," Henry says. "That was civil war. You could get
in touch with the other side. No one can do that now.

"We hear there have been almost no air strikes north of Beirut. But
there is no safe place south of Beirut. Our cousins have gone at
least for a couple of months to Egypt and to Armenia. They left
businesses behind. For two weeks we haven’t been able to reach an
aunt and uncle in Bint Jbeil, the place talked about so much on CNN,
close to the border with Israel. They are 80 and 87. They have no
car. We just hope someone gave them a ride out. Everyone is calling
the Red Cross and the Red Crescent to find out.

"Najat’s sister says in a 25-mile swath north of the border people
have lost homes and are living in the schools.

"Frankly, Najat and I have been avoiding the whole subject. Maybe
talking about it this way will make it easier for us to face the
realities."

Meantime, there is the discipline of cooking every day.

"It tastes like they made it half an hour ago."

Amy Rosenfield, proprietor of Mon Aimee Chocolat in the Strip, has
slipped away from her shop this Saturday morning and down the street
to the Farmers@TheFirehouse farm market to the Najat’s Cuisine stand.
She is scoping out Lebanese food for a party.

"It’s lighter."

Lebanese-born Henry Nazarian, 48, and his wife Najat, 42, affirm that
their country’s approach is lighter. For one thing, Lebanese tradition
calls for less olive oil than in neighboring nations’ food ways. This
restraint is reflected in the recipes that Henry and Najat have
translated — literally — from their own mothers and grandmothers.

Not that the oil itself is lightweight.

"Would you like to taste this olive oil?" Henry hails the Mediterra
Bread table next door for a baguette to dip. "Be careful," he says,
pointing to his gullet. This organic Lebanese olive oil, green-gold
in color, has a tiny peppery catch in the throat.

Full-flavored Lebanese oil figures across the board in the Najat’s
Cuisine repertoire. It is a qualifying element in Najat’s strictly
traditional hummus, made with long-simmered dried chickpeas and
Lebanese tahini. Henry unscrews a jar of the sesame nut paste and
offers a sniff. The flavor and fragrance are startlingly fresh and
powerful — another reason the hummus you make at home may not be as
distinctive. But both the tahini and oil are for sale (see "Where to
find Najat’s Cuisine" above).

Hummus is the top seller, followed by baba ghannouj, a roasted eggplant
dip. Third is plaki, a spicy white-bean spread, flavored with tomato
and onions. Gathering fans is muhammara, a peppy spread of sweet
and hot red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate syrup. Other staples
are spinach pies (three versions), sleek (an earthy dish of bulgur,
black-eyed peas and browned onions), tabbouleh (a lemony parsley salad
with bulgur) and grape leaves (you may be surprised that the only
‘meat’ in the filling, Henry’s mother’s recipe, is roasted hazelnuts).

Henry touts a bracing citrus cilantro/mint pesto for roast or grilled
chicken. The green sauce does double duty as a dip for pita chips
and carrots.

Jewels to cuisine

An ad in the national edition of The New York Times read: "Pittsburgh
jewelry designer wants platinum smith with extreme knowledge of all
specialized facets of traditional/contemporary platinum work, must
pass test."

The jeweler reading the ad in New Jersey three years ago — who then
picked up the phone and said, "We should talk" — was Henry Nazarian.
He and Najat had wearied of East Coast commutes; Najat longed for the
fresh air she’d known growing up in a little mountain town outside
Beirut. When Henry successfully completed the "test," a set of diamond
and pearl earrings, the couple drove to Pittsburgh.

They did a whirlwind tour of the city, found an apartment in Mt.
Lebanon in an hour on a Sunday ("God’s will") and left a rental
deposit with Henry’s new employer, Bob Levine of Mt. Lebanon, the
owner of Robert T. Levine and Co., Downtown.

"Henry was trained by masters in Paris and New York," Mr. Levine
says. "He was adept at so many aspects of jewelry making. He could
fabricate from scratch and could set pave, tiny close-set diamonds,
better than anyone — skills unusual in Pittsburgh. He also had such
refinement of language and disposition."

Like most Lebanese, Henry and Najat speak flawless French.

Henry and Mr. Levine did eventually agree to disagree — "on
respectful, affectionate terms" — over the fact that the design work
had to be done to punctilious specs and Henry preferred a "Tell me
where we are going, not how to get there" approach.

So the Nazarians launched Najat’s Cuisine two years ago — an idea they
had been incubating for years. Mr. Levine believes he "was probably
fed better by Henry and Najat than by his own mother." The Levines
received the couple’s first sample food basket.

Mr. Levine takes pleasure in being the force that brought Henry,
"who has an extremely worldly palate and the most determined,
perfectionist ways, and Najat, an unbelievably capable and organized
chef," to Pittsburgh.

Business ties, marriage

A Eurasian goldfinch, weighing 20 grams, the equivalent of five
teaspoons of sugar, sings and bounces around a cage near the windows
of Najat’s Cuisine’s bright storefront kitchen in North Braddock. An
employee patiently trims a case of parsley that will be hand-chopped
for tabbouleh.

Lebanese hospitality demands a tiny cup of cardamom-scented Lebanese
coffee, which Najat prepares, and serves with her feathery baklava.
There is much to taste, and the backward progression from pastry to
appetizers works fine.

A map of Lebanon spread out on the table shows Najat’s hometown,
Bhrsaf, half an hour from the northern Christian suburb of Beirut where
Henry’s family lived. Business brought the two families together when
Najat was a toddler. Warm ties evolved that weathered Lebanon’s years
of civil war. Henry, 15, and his sister were sent to Paris in 1975,
months after the war began. The Nazarian parents followed.

"Citizen ID cards indicated your religion," Henry says. "It had become
too risky to show them. Thousands of people were disappearing." Najat’s
family managed to visit Paris twice.

Henry immigrated to New Jersey in 1981 and sent for his parents. He
went back to Lebanon as a U.S. citizen, and asked Najat’s father
"if she had anybody." They were married with the parents’ blessing
in 1992 in Najat’s Maronite church, a sixth-century branch of
Christianity. Henry is Armenian Orthodox.

At the time, the United States had no embassy in Lebanon, so Najat’s
visa required arduous overnight trips to the American embassy in
Damascus, Syria, waiting in long outdoor lines that formed at 2 a.m.

Henry refolds the map to make room for a demo of Najat’s father’s
favorite summer refresher. In Lebanon it would be made with a
high-shouldered tomato with a concave top that we don’t have here.

Najat is using a supermarket tomato, just to show how it works. She
scoops out the stem, makes slashes all around the interior, drizzles
in a mix of salt, allspice and olive oil, and replaces the top. After
a while she cuts the tomato into wedges. We sprinkle on more salt
and lime juice. Henry’s habit of spritzing lime on everything is
contagious. This treatment makes something edible of a denatured
winter tomato. Henry anticipates using his own Cherokee tomatoes,
warm from his Pinewood Drive garden. If Henry’s mother can take
credit for most of Najat’s Cuisine’s savory recipes, Najat’s mom is
the guiding spirit for a line of sweets that only begins with baklava.

New to Pittsburgh are mamool, pale semolina dough cookies, formed
in hand-carved wooden molds. "I learned from my mother," says Najat,
the oldest of four siblings who started helping at age 8.

In fact, the rosewater-scented, nut-filled confections, as
labor-intensive as Christmas cookies, are a high point of Easter.
They are served and given as hostess gifts in Middle Eastern countries,
where each family takes pride in its own refinements to the recipe. The
wooden molds are handed down for generations. Najat’s hand-me-downs,
placed next to her new molds, are visibly darkened by years of
buttery hands.

"The deep, round mold is walnut. The shallow round one is for dates.
The oval is pistachio — always. But for kids, my mom would make the
big round ones with no dates."

How has Pittsburgh taken to the rosewater?

Najat: "One man was excited, ‘These are cookies with rosewater? I
want them, I want them!’"

Henry: "But we find people don’t like too much of it!"

Word of mouth

One artisan knows another in Pittsburgh. The Nazarians wanted to take
a trunkful of Mediterra’s five-pound loaves of Mt. Athos bread to
New Jersey. They went to the bakery, taking along samples from their
newly launched Najat’s Cuisine. Baker Nick Ambeliotis liked the food
and invited them to do a tasting for a cafe he was planning.

The Nazarians’ next sales call happened to be to the East End Food
Co-op. The Co-op’s prepared foods buyer Fran Bertonaschi said, "I
know you, and I know your food. I tasted it last week at Mediterra."
He signed them on and recommended them to Today’s Market, a health
food store in Verona.

Another vote of confidence came at the Forest Hills farm market when
they arrived in a downpour for opening day of their second season
there. "People were waiting under umbrellas," Najat says. They said,
"We are glad to see you.’"

Frozen entrees in the Najat’s Cuisine line do not go to market. Items
including baked kibbeh, several versions using chicken or beef, and
Henry’s mother’s sublimely simple pasta and cheese — egg noodles,
mozzarella and milk, topped with an unusual flat pastry crust —
are available frozen at the store and for catered events.

Three pots of grapevines tagged Cabernet Sauvignon have pride of place
on the file cabinet. They are not for sale. They are for Henry’s mom
in New Jersey. He has already planted his own and built an arbor for
them at home. The couple will soon have fresh grape leaves to stuff
and shade to eat them under.

NAJAT’S TRADITIONAL HUMMUS

PG TESTED

If you use dried chickpeas, Lebanese olive oil and particularly the
Lebanese tahini, your hummus will taste like Najat’s. "You must taste,"
she cautions. "It comes out differently each time."

1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight (in a pinch, use one 15-ounce
can chickpeas)

Lebanese olive oil

2 tablespoons Lebanese tahini

Salt

Juice of one lemon

2 small cloves of garlic, crushed To soak, put 1 cup chickpeas in
a bowl, cover generously with cold water and soak overnight. Drain
before cooking. Put beans with pinch of salt in a heavy saucepan,
and add 2 cups water, or enough to generously cover.

Bring to a boil and add salt.

Cover and simmer over low heat until tender, about 2 hours, adding
hot water as needed to keep them covered. If cooking chickpeas ahead,
refrigerate them in their cooking liquid. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking
liquid. Makes about 2 cups cooked chickpeas.

Place cooked chickpeas and 2 or 3 tablespoons of the cooking liquid
into food processor. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil, the tahini, 1/2
teaspoon salt, lemon juice and garlic. Process for 2 minutes, taste.
Correct for salt, lemon juice and tahini. You may prefer a bit more
of any of these. Drizzle more oil on top and serve with pita chips.

CILANTRO/MINT PESTO

PG TESTED

This lively green pesto is recommended for roast chicken. It may also
be used as a dip with raw vegetables and will brighten a vinaigrette
salad dressing or a white bean chili.

1 large clove garlic, chopped

1 cup olive oil, divided

1 large bunch cilantro, rinsed and trimmed; discard roots

1 sprig parsley

1 sprig fresh mint

Juice of 1 lime

1/4 teaspoon salt In heavy saucepan, saute garlic in 1/4 cup olive oil
until light golden. Add 3/4 cup olive oil, cilantro, sprig of parsley,
two or three leaves of mint and lime juice. Cook at low heat a few
minutes until cilantro begins to turn a grayish color. Remove from
heat and allow to cool. Add salt.

Place in processor and whirl until smooth. Keeps two weeks
refrigerated.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress