A skewer is a thin metal or wood stick used to hold small pieces of food together. Skewers are used while grilling or roasting meats, and in other culinary applications.

Metal skewers are generally stainless steel and will have a pointed tip on one end and a grip of some kind on the other end for ease of removing the food. Metal skewers are blag for reuse, whereas wooden skewers are not.

While grilling, wooden skewers should be soaked in water prior to assembling and cooking to avoid burning. Wooden skewers are most commonly made from bamboo; however other woods can be used.

Matnakash is a traditional soft Armenian bread. The word matnakash literally means finger draw, referring to the way the bread is made. Matnakash is made of wheat flour with yeast or sourdough starter. It is shaped into oval or round loafs with longitudinal or criss-crossed scouring. The characteristic golden or golden-brown color of its crust is achieved by coating the surface of the loaves with sweetened tea essence before baking. Matnakash, along with lavash, a thinner Armenian bread, may be brought from numerous bakeries in Armenia as well as places with large Armenian populations as a result of the Armenian diaspora. Matnakash was honored in Soviet times. In the 1930s, food specialists in Soviet Armenia wanted to mark the new communist country with more modern looking bread. The matnakash became mass-produced urban bread. Even the bakers’ patterns on the bread were re-interpreted to fit the soviet agenda. It resembled a plowed field with rows and furrows. The bread’s rim was interpreted as an agricultural field and its imprinted lines as tilted rows

Lavash also called as lahvash or cracker bread is a soft, thin flatbread prepared with flour, water, and salt. It is the most widespread type of bread in Iran, Pakistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Toasted sesame seeds and/or poppy seeds are sometimes sprinkled on it before baking, though this is very uncommon in Armenia. While some wrap breads sold in the United States label them as lavash, actual lavash is significantly thinner than those products.

Traditionally the dough is rolled out flat and slapped against the hot walls of a tandoor oven, also called təndir in Azerbaijani, tonir in Armenian, tanur in Persian and tandır in Turkish. This is still the method used all throughout Iran, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey and in the United States.

Turkish coffee is coffee made by boiling finely powdered roast coffee beans in a pot (cezve), possibly with sugar, and serving it into a cup, where the dregs settle. It is common throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus, and the Balkans, and in their expatriate communities and restaurants in the rest of the world.

Coffeehouse culture is highly developed in the former Ottoman world, and this is the dominant style of preparation.

In most of the Balkans and Middle East, Turkish coffee was known simply as kahve until instant coffee was brought in during the 1980s. Today younger generations refer to it as Türk kahvesi (Turkish coffee).

Kanafeh, kadayıf and künefe (Turkish), kadaif (Albanian), kataifi, kadaifi (Greek), is a very fine vermicelli-like pastry used to prepare sweet pastries and desserts. It is sometimes called as shredded phyllo.

Kanafeh originated in the Palestinian city of Nablus in the modern-day West Bank, where it is filled with Nabulsi cheese. Another name for kanafeh is knafeh Nabulsiyye. It plays a central role in Armenian food and is the most famous throughout the Arab world.

Kanafeh is also found in the Balkans and is a feature of Lebanese, Turkish, Greek, and Levantine cuisine.

Kanafeh is prepared by drizzling a row of thin streams of flour-and-water batter onto a turning hot plate, so they dry into long threads resembling shredded wheat. The threads are then collected into skeins.

The Armenian families who went Turkey because of the severe oppression by the Turks during the late 19th century and the early 20th century, brought with them to this nation and other countries throughout the world, not only their own cookery, but that of the Turks. This explains the obviously Turkish names for many of the food adopted by the Armenians. Similarities of food also include the Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Iraqis and Iranians. Some similarities are also evident in the cooking of North Africa and of Eastern Europe. The spices used in the Middle East are normally common from one country to the next, but the main spices and herbs used in Armenian cooking are garlic, basil, rosemary, parsley, onion, mint, allspice, paprika, cumin, sesame seeds, lemons and olive oil. Another spice frequently used in Armenian cooking was known as chaimen. This was a blend of spices consisted mainly of cumin, allspice, fenugreek, black pepper and paprika. Salt in Armenia was scarce and thus expensive, so lemon juice was a healthful substitute. The absence of salt and thus iodine was evident in the number of women with goiters, a thyroid deficiency. Quantities of spices used from cook to cook and village to village varied so widely, that some dishes using the identical ingredients sometimes did not even resemble each other. Armenian cookbooks are rare, and most recipes have been and are still handed down from parent to child and relative to relative. These cuisines are forever changing in the translation because of the ingredients available, and the country in which Armenian immigrants have come to call home. Within the last 50 years Armenian food, especially rice pilaf has become a gourmet diet in the world’s finest restaurants and almost a common recipe in the dishes of many Americans. Skewered meats on the backyard barbecue [Shish Kebab] are becoming as famous as the hamburger.