Pop-Up #2: A taste of Armenia
as told by Sangita Vasikaran (with photos by Yoshihiro Saito, Sangita Vasikaran, Sophia Wang)
How do you cook the cuisine of a country you’ve never tasted? That too, for 60 people, where a sizable number are Armenian?
MINCE did it!
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I spent IAP 2022 (MIT’s January term) in Russia as part of Global Teaching Labs, a program where MIT students teach kids in different countries STEM subjects, run by MISTI (MIT International Science and Teaching Initiatives). Ekaterina Zabrovski, whom we call Katya, directs this program for the Eurasian region. When she interviewed me, and asked me why I wanted to come to this country, despite not yet speaking Russian or having taken a class on its culture, I told her the truth: I saw the cover photo she chose of the Christmas markets, filled to the brim with sundry, vibrant dried fruits and a thousand other beautiful treats whose identities I had no idea of. And I simply could not stop wondering what everything was; I had to learn about this part of the world I quite honestly knew very little about. It looked something like this:
https://armeniadiscovery.com/en/national-cuisine
That experience in January took the group of us to a region filled with so unbelievably rich and complexly interwoven cultural traditions. I remember searching up what these colorful eye candies were, and many treats had Armenian origin: rojik, sojuk--grape-candied walnuts, “sweet sausages” hanging on long strings; basturma: spiced and dried meat; pastegh, sumac: dried gemstones of fruits in forms I had never seen before. We later got the chance to visit an Armenian restaurant, and the comforting dzash & spas (soups), Zhingyalov hats (herb-filled pastries), and khorovats (grilled meat), as well as Armenian-style khachapuri (cheese-filled bread, shaped like a boat) stuck with us memorably.
In high school, my impression of former USSR countries had been lumped as culturally quite similar to Russia. We never fully recognized the diverse traditions its member countries had identity in, instead solely focusing on the conflicts they engaged in with each other. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine less than a month after we were there, I left this experience with a deeper sense of why and how some of the politics were the way they were in this sphere of the world, things that even came down to the food these people ate everyday. In the footsteps of many before us, I wanted MINCE to learn more and showcase these nationalities that are often not as properly celebrated in American restaurants. Moreover, Armenia itself has been in an ethnic and territorial conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions for some decades; the daughter of our event’s donor would later tell us she felt touched that we put on this event during this devastating time specifically.
[If you would like to learn more about supporting Armenian heritage, check out armeniafund.org.
If you would like to learn more about supporting the Ukrainians at this time, check out Mriya, a humanitarian aid nonprofit led by student leaders in the Boston area, including MIT’s own Sasha Horokh and Ukrainians @ MIT].
When MINCE was looking for funding support this past summer, Alex and I were walking along a beach in the Netherlands in yet another MISTI program, while calling Andrea in California. He suggested we reach out to MISTI, and I volunteered to reach back out to Katya and the Eurasia program. We were a bit nervous as a student group with little history, essentially asking for a direct deposit to our bank accounts in a feeble promise that we would deliver something great for the community. But the email went out.
And Katya was excited. She was so excited, and she was willing to trust us. She came back with multiple ideas of how to support countries with our initiative, including Ukraine and underrepresented cuisines from other MISTI regions (she loved this idea so much that she connected us with the entire MISTI team!), which we hope to implement in the coming future. For now, we decided to focus on the buildout of the new MISTI program in Armenia, supported financially and methodically by MIT-associated Armenian and Armenian-American entrepreneurs. We got in contact with the donor’s daughter, Taleen Afeyan, and Natalie Muradyan, the President of MIT Armenian Society, who agreed to help us consult on our choices for this event.
A few of us thought about past meals and talked to friends with heritage and put together brief ideas of super traditional Armenian dishes.
We got a green light from our consultants. But MINCE strived to be something different than traditional. We did not think we could accurately capture hometown flavors with the experience we had. We not only wanted and needed to learn about tradition, but we also wanted and needed to experiment a bit with the dishes many of us were seeing for the first time. And we wanted our guests to know that, pique their interest, and entice them to learn more about this beautiful country (especially if firsthand through MISTI :) ).
So, we had family meal: a time to plan our menu and cooking teams. I put together a crash course called “Armenia in 5 Minutes” where I ran through some of the major agricultural produce, spices, flavors, cooking techniques, and popular dishes.
It was so interesting, learning details about spices like mahlab--the ground pits of cherry kernels; techniques like khorovats--barbecue; dishes like ghapama--a showstopping stuffed pumpkin. But many of us still did not know what these ultimately would taste like. Moreover, we learned that there was a culturally Armenian neighborhood about 20 mins’ drive from us! Complete with the legacy of a famous Armenian yogurt maker acquired by General Mills, an elementary school, and a complex of grocery stores.
We did some brainstorming, and ultimately came up with our menu (featuring spectacular illuminated-manuscript inspired watercolor designs by Angela, of course):
Our menu supplement card above explains some of the unique twists MINCE provided to each dish.
Then came a huge amount of groceries. This was our first time cooking a plated, sit-down, three course meal for 60 people. We decided to serve it family style, meaning a platter would be shared at each table of 4. So we also bought platters, pitchers, and more for the first time. Thanks to Alex’s great bookkeeping system, we were able to get the majority of kitchen staples through Instacart more painlessly than in the past. Alexis and I set up a time to drive to the Armenian neighborhood in Watertown to find Arax Market and Roksana’s Persian and Armenian Market. It was insane to suddenly see (and smell!) the things we had only read about online to come to life: mahlab (which we initially misread as Matlab, oh, MIT.), rojik, and more.
Then came prep cooking and RnD. We had to also scale down many of our fruit-based ingredients into molasses, paste, and canned forms instead of fresh forms due to cost and time constraints. But the cooking team rocked what they got, making the mediocre great.
Andrea and Melissa led the business team to tidy up the Porter Room in BC; Sophia and Angela collected eucalyptus and dried fruits from Haymarket to dress it up, and we did a few Spotify searches off of Taleen’s sister’s Armenian music favorites to put together a chill vibe playlist. The people integral to the development of the new MISTI program in Armenia got to enjoy the meal as well, including Katya, and our youngest MINCE diner yet:
And service! A rush, both in time and in our veins :) Everyone helped out, not just the dishes’ leads. Bits of three delicious sauces from the appetizer flung and were being wiped up everywhere. A little fire briefly started as we pan-seared 75 beef kebabs we marinated overnight. Drink team gracefully engineered a new place to pour their drinks (a small coffee table pulled from storage) when it was apparent that we had no extra table space to prep. We made last minute touches to the dessert presentation due to on-site washing of our platters/plates from the appetizer taking longer than we anticipated. But in the end, it all worked out.
Shoutout to all of our cook, service, and business team members for their support in this! And thank you again to MISTI Eurasia for their trust and support, especially in ensuring that this experience would be free to guests.What I love about MINCE is that pretty much everyone here has come together because they’re interested not only in food, but the connections between people that we can share over it. This meal was a fantastic time getting to know students and community members, and for many of them, to meet Armenian flavors for the first time. Some of our feedback:
"I have never tasted anything like this, what is it???"
"I loved how the food was authentic and experimental at the same time" -- from an Armenian diner
in response to a fire alarm later that night, “It's ok if this is real, because I just had one of the best experiences of my life".
