June 23, 2009
Chaimen, Armenian Spice
Chaimen is a unique spice blend that gives Armenian meats, vegetable dishes and casseroles their unmistakable flavor. It’s a simple mix to prepare and can be stored, tightly sealed, for months in your spice cupboard.
The basic dry mix consists of :
* 1 part Allspice
* 1 part Cayenne Pepper
* 1 part Fenugreek
* 1 part Cumin
* 2 parts Paprika
* 1 part cinnamon (optional)
When preparing Armenian meat dishes, the dry spice mix is added to crushed garlic cloves, parsley, and tomato paste and then thinned to the consistency of a thick cream, either with olive oil or plain yoghurt.
The mixture to then rubbed on lamb or chicken and allowed to marinate for at least an hour before grilling or roasting.
For vegetable dishes or casseroles, (often using eggplant or green beans), add the spice mix (to taste – but remember, it’s strongly flavored), along with chopped garlic, parsley and tomato paste and stew, covered, on top of the stove. Onions added to such dishes prior to the cooking process is also very traditional.
June 10, 2009
Armenian Hummus
Hummus (a transliteration of the Arabic also spelled hamos,
houmous, hommos, hommus, hummos, hummous or humus; see romanization of
Arabic) is a Levantine dip or spread made from cooked, mashed
chickpeas, blended with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and
garlic. It is a popular food in various local forms throughout the
Middle Eastern world and elsewhere.
The word comes from Arabic hummus ‘chickpeas’. Like other Arabic
loanwords, its spelling in English is unstable. The earliest known use
of the word hummus in English, noted by the Oxford English Dictionary
(OED), was in 1955. Among the common spellings for this word as
transliterated into English are hummus, hommos and hoummos. The
spelling humus is avoided in English due to its having the same
spelling as another English word humus, though this is the most common
Turkish spelling and the OED indicates the word entered the English
language from Turkish. The full Arabic name of the prepared spread is
(hummus bi tahīna) which means chickpeas with tahina.
Many cuisine-related sources carry forward a folklore which describes
hummus as one of the oldest known prepared foods with a long history
in the Middle East which stretches back to antiquity, but its
historical origins are unknown. The historical enigma is such that the
origins of hummus-bi-tahini could be much more recent than is widely
believed. One of the earliest verifiable descriptions of hummus comes
from 18th-century Damascus and the same source claims it was unknown
elsewhere.
Meanwhile some cookbooks repeat the legend that hummus was first
prepared in the 12th century by Saladin. Sources such as Cooking in
Ancient Civilizations by Cathy K. Kaufman carry speculative recipes
for an ancient Egyptian hummus, substituting vinegar for lemon juice,
but acknowledge we do not know how the Egyptians ate their chick-peas.
Similarly, no recipe for hummus has been identified among the many
books on cooking surviving from ancient Rome.
Charles Perry, co-author of Medieval Arab Cookery notes that owing to
hummus bi tahina being an everyday staple, and because of the lack of
Arab recipe books published between the 14th and 20th centuries, no
recipes documenting this food’s early ingredients have been found. He
says the nearest medieval example recorded in a 13th century Arab
cookbook, Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada is Hummus kasa, which
substitutes vinegar for lemon, includes extra herbs and adds walnuts,
hazelnuts, almonds and pistachios.
