World Wide Kitchen - A is for Armenian

Once upon a time, my wife Lauri and I were dining in Iowa City, and as we were eating, we discussed having a joint cooking night once a month where we would take a country, starting with the letter "A" and make a feast honoring that country's local cuisine. We spent the next hour going over all the "A" and "B" countries that we could experiment with and came up with Armenia for our first project. The next day, as we were killing time in a Barnes and Noble Book store, we happened across some International Cookbooks to give us some ideas and a head start.

The next few weeks were spent on Google looking up recipes that sounded good and were not unreasonably difficult. We found several websites dedicated to Armenian cooking and recipes and found that the food was similar to Mediterranean, Greek and a touch of Middle Eastern. So we landed on Armenian Chicken Pilaf, Red Lentil and Potato Kuftah, a Salad and Homemade Apricot candy. Sounds easy enough, right? NOT so fast my friend!

Shopping: This turned out to be an adventure as we were in search of items we never bought before. Dried currants, pine nuts, lentils to name a few. We went to one of the bigger grocery stores just to be on the safe side. The veggies and chicken were easy enough to find, however, we struck out on currants. We also came across pine nuts and noted that all the other nuts and seeds were $1.99, but a small bag of pine nuts cost $11.99... HUH? I then decided that perhaps we can substitute soy nuts for pine nuts and save us $10. We came across lentils in the dried bean section, but not the red kind. We finally made it over the organic food section and found red lentils in the bulk-help-yourself section, so we hid the other lentils behind some almond milk and grabbed the red ones. We also grabbed some dried cherries to substitute for the currants. Shopping = DONE!

Prep: This turned out to be quite the project as onions, tomatoes and potatoes had to be chopped, peeled, de-seeded, de-veined, de-iced and de-glazed. Honestly, our cutting board got quite the workout. The most physically challenging of the prep work had to be the dried apricot "destruction." We really needed a food processor for this task, but all we had was the As Seen ON TV "slap chop" device. Both of us hammered away at these chewy gooey fruits for 15 minutes until sweat was dripping down my forehead and my wife's eyeballs were rolled back in her head.

Then it was on to the veggies... Tomatoes--peel and de-seed. I skipped the peel part and went to the seed removal. I basically cut all the inside parts of the tomato out so it was just a tomato shell when I got done. Just didn't seem right to rip the skin off too--what would be left? Then I cut those into small chunks and did it four times. Then it was time to prepare the taters. The recipe called for both diced and mashed. I peeled the potatoes, cut them in small chunks and dropped them in water. I took another potato and peeled that one, then cut into tiny diced cubes--put aside in more water. And then the onions--both the meat and veggie dishes called for onions and thankfully, they could be prepared the same way... chopped into smithereens. Once again, the Slap Chop made an appearance and I smashed those unjuns into little bits.

In the meantime, Lauri was attempting to make the apricot candy and was having a hell of a time getting the stuff to set up firmly, so I suggested using a little corn starch and water. This was not helpful, of course, because corn starch only works on stuff you don't need it to work on.

At this point, we started drinking and taking breaks. I was contemplating taking a shower.

Cooking: With most of the food ready to be cooked, we still had to "sort" out the lentils. Have you seen a lentil? They look like tiny microscopic watermelon seeds. How does one sort things of such miniscule profile? We examined them with the help of a Hubbell space telescope and they looked clean and in good working order. By the way, a lentil is from the legume family, which produces beans primarily. We never cooked lentils before so had to GTS (google that sh*t) it to get tips. It seems you have to boil them for anywhere between 10 minutes and an hour. DOH!

So we put the lentils in water and set to boil them, then started to boil the potatoes for mashing. The smaller diced potatoes needed to be fried so I fried them up and set them aside. As the lentils cooked, they had an odd aroma of cream of wheat and they started puffing up. Even after 30 minutes and doubling in size, the husks on these little seedlings were still tough as toenails, so we kept cooking them. Then the onions finally went down and I sautéed them in butter, salt and pepper until they were soft and not quite caramelized. Finally the lentils were soft enough (in my opinion) after 45 minutes. So I then mashed the taters, threw in the lentils and a cup of flour to make a doughy mixture that were to be shaped into balls. These dough balls were to be stuffed with the diced taters, onions, cherries and soynuts and then fried. Piece of cake, right? WRONG.

The next 30 minutes were spent in a profanity-laced tirade as these doughy balls from hell would not form or solidify. So I then added a little more flour. Lo and behold, the problem worsened and I had a sticky mess of mashed potato and lentil mortar paste. This mixture pissed me off so thoroughly that I took a handful of it and threw it in sink as hard as I could. The dough explosion splashed everywhere and when it splattered Lauri, I thought she was going to kick me in the lentils. Thankfully, she remained calm and understanding, which in turn, made me settle down a bit. This was, after all, supposed to be a fun project...

The chicken and rice were a slam dunk, thanks to Lauri's patience and good directions. Brown the chicken, add the veggies and stock, throw in the rice and simmer. It all came together quite nicely.

As the chicken and rice was cooking, I was still trying to make those freaking mush balls and I had resorted to pouring oil on my hands to keep that sludge from sticking to my digits. That cement would still not cooperate, so instead of trying to stuff the filling in and wrap the dough around it, we just took the filling, mixed it with the dough and started dropping it in the oil.

Now that we had it all figured out, it was time to EAT!

Eating: Everything smelled great and looked pretty darn good. We started with the salad, which had a few lettuce types, mixed in with a Greek vinaigrette, garbanzo beans and tomatoes. So far, so good. Then it was time to dive into the chicken and rice pilaf, which looked delicious, but deep down, we just wanted it to be cooked all the way. Nothing worse than slaving over a meal, then finding out the chicken is still raw in the middle after serving it. I cut into the thigh and breathed a sigh of relief as the yardbird was cooked perfectly. The rice, which was actual rice, not that minute crap, was also cooked to perfection (who knew?).

Then those painful potato paste puffs, well, they actually tasted pretty damn good, despite the nightmarish prep. They were fried to a golden brown and the flavors of the onions, cherries and the salty diced taters were nicely sprinkled throughout. Everything was seasoned nicely. It's amazing the contributions that simple kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper make to a meal when done appropriately.

Unfortunately, the apricot candy never made it to our gullets. After freezing it, scalding it, baking it, it stayed the same sludgy consistency from the get-go. We even set it out overnight to see if it would solidify - zip, nada, bubkas! I suggested putting it all in a jar and calling it jam, but the old lady told me to jam it between my knees.

All in all, it was a great experience and a successful first project. From recipe research to shopping, prepping, cooking and eating, this endeavor was met with an appetite for adventure and a hunger for the unknown.

Next up is B is for Brazil!