A2 · Elementary
8 min
food and culturegeopoliticscultural heritage
Bread Older Than Most Countries
Lo que Armenia lleva en el pan
Russia has recalled its ambassador from Armenia over the country's growing ties with the European Union. Fletcher and Octavio use the diplomatic rupture as a doorway into Armenian cuisine: lavash, khorovats, and how food outlasts empires.
Rusia retira a su embajador de Armenia por el acercamiento del país al bloque europeo. Fletcher y Octavio usan este momento geopolítico para explorar la cocina armenia: el lavash, el khorovats y cómo la comida sobrevive cuando todo lo demás desaparece.
8 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| el pan | bread | El pan armenio se llama lavash. |
| la tradición | tradition | Es una tradición muy vieja en Armenia. |
| juntas / juntos | together (feminine / masculine or mixed group) | Las mujeres hacen el lavash juntas. |
| la memoria | memory | La comida es memoria para muchas familias. |
| la identidad | identity | La comida es parte de la identidad de un país. |
| la receta | recipe | Las familias llevan las recetas a otros países. |
| la parrilla | grill | El khorovats es carne a la parrilla. |
| plano / plana | flat | El lavash es un pan plano y delgado. |
There's a diplomatic cable sitting in Moscow right now that I keep turning over in my head.
Russia just pulled its ambassador from Armenia.
And the official reason is Armenia getting too cozy with the European Union.
Sí.
Yes.
Armenia quiere estar con Europa ahora.
Armenia wants to be with Europe now.
Right.
And I've been reading about this all week, and the thing that keeps pulling me in a different direction is the food.
Because Armenia has one of the oldest food cultures on earth, and I wanted to get into that today, if you're willing.
La comida armenia es muy antigua.
Armenian food is very old.
Muy importante.
Very important.
And I want to understand why.
What actually makes it significant beyond the taste, which, from what I've read, is extraordinary.
Mira, el pan armenio se llama lavash.
Look, the Armenian bread is called lavash.
Es muy famoso.
It's very famous.
Lavash.
UNESCO actually put it on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2014.
That's the same list as flamenco and the Mediterranean diet.
So tell me what it is exactly.
Es un pan plano.
It's a flatbread.
Las mujeres lo hacen juntas.
Women make it together.
They make it together, as in it's a communal thing, not just a recipe you follow alone in your kitchen.
Sí.
Yes.
Las mujeres trabajan en grupos.
Women work in groups.
Es una tradición muy vieja.
It's a very old tradition.
And the oven they use, the tonir, is built into the ground.
You stretch the dough over a cushion and slap it against the inside wall of this clay pit.
It's been done essentially the same way for at least three thousand years.
Tres mil años.
Three thousand years.
El pan es la historia de Armenia.
The bread is the history of Armenia.
That's actually a beautiful way to put it.
Because Armenia has had, to put it mildly, a turbulent history.
And the food has survived all of it.
Armenia tiene muchos vecinos difíciles.
Armenia has many difficult neighbors.
Siempre.
Always.
Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans, Soviets.
And now, apparently, a very unhappy Russia.
Armenia sits at this crossroads where every empire that ever moved through the region left a mark, including on the food.
Sí.
Yes.
La comida armenia tiene muchas influencias.
Armenian food has many influences.
Es muy rica.
It is very rich.
When you say rich, walk me through it.
What's on a typical Armenian table?
Hay khorovats.
There is khorovats.
Es carne a la parrilla.
It's grilled meat.
Es muy popular.
It's very popular.
Khorovats is basically the Armenian version of barbecue, from what I understand, and Armenians are extremely serious about this.
It's not a Sunday side activity.
It's practically a national institution.
Los hombres hacen el khorovats.
The men make the khorovats.
Las mujeres hacen el lavash.
The women make the lavash.
Es la tradición.
It's the tradition.
Very traditional division of labor there.
Though I suspect anyone who's actually been to Armenia would say the whole family is involved somehow.
Claro.
Of course.
La familia come junta.
The family eats together.
Es muy importante en Armenia.
It's very important in Armenia.
There's also the dairy tradition, which I found remarkable.
Matzoon, which is a fermented yogurt that predates Greek yogurt by about two thousand years, and the Armenians would like you to know that.
Sí, el yogur armenio es muy antiguo.
Yes, Armenian yogurt is very old.
Y muy bueno.
And very good.
Now here's what I keep coming back to.
Armenia lost approximately a third of its population in the genocide of 1915.
And the diaspora that scattered from that catastrophe, to France, to Lebanon, to the United States, carried this food with them.
The recipes became a form of memory.
La comida es memoria.
Food is memory.
Sí.
Yes.
Las familias llevan las recetas.
Families carry the recipes.
No llevan muchas cosas, pero llevan las recetas.
They don't carry many things, but they carry the recipes.
I covered the Lebanese civil war, years ago, and one of the things that stayed with me was how many Lebanese families of Armenian descent were still making manti, these tiny dumplings, and dolma, stuffed grape leaves, exactly the way their grandmothers had in Anatolia before 1915.
The food was this unbroken thread.
El dolma es muy especial.
The dolma is very special.
Hay dolma en muchos países.
There is dolma in many countries.
Pero el armenio es diferente.
But the Armenian one is different.
Different how?
Because I know Turkey has its dolma, Greece has its version, Lebanon, Syria.
This is genuinely contested culinary territory.
El dolma armenio usa hoja de parra.
The Armenian dolma uses grape leaf.
Y usa frutas también.
And it uses fruits too.
Es dulce y salado.
It is sweet and savory.
Sweet and savory at the same time.
The combination of dried fruits, apricots, sometimes prunes, with the lamb and the rice inside the grape leaf.
That's the Silk Road influence.
You're sitting right on that trade route and the flavors reflect it.
Sí.
Yes.
Armenia está entre Asia y Europa.
Armenia is between Asia and Europe.
La comida también está entre los dos.
The food is also between the two.
And now Armenia is making a hard political turn toward Europe.
Pulling away from Russia, applying for EU candidacy.
So the question that kept coming up for me this week is: does that move change the food?
Does it change anything about how Armenians see their own culinary identity?
No creo.
I don't think so.
La comida no cambia con la política.
Food doesn't change with politics.
El lavash es el lavash siempre.
Lavash is always lavash.
That's a real point.
Though I'd push back slightly, because the Soviet period did affect Armenian food.
Access to ingredients changed, the collective farm system standardized things that had been regional and varied.
Some of that flavor diversity got flattened.
Bueno, sí.
Well, yes.
Con los soviéticos, la comida era más simple.
With the Soviets, the food was simpler.
Menos variedad.
Less variety.
And since independence in 1991, there's been a genuine culinary revival.
The old regional recipes, the mountain herb combinations, the wild greens like purslane and tarragon that grow in the Caucasus, those are coming back.
Young chefs in Yerevan are digging into pre-Soviet cookbooks.
Es interesante.
It's interesting.
En España también pasa eso.
That also happens in Spain.
Los cocineros jóvenes buscan recetas antiguas.
Young cooks look for old recipes.
Right, that same instinct you see in Spain, in Mexico, in Japan.
A generation that wants to recover what modernization nearly erased.
And in Armenia's case, what Soviet standardization nearly erased.
La comida es parte de la identidad.
Food is part of identity.
No puedes perder eso.
You can't lose that.
That brings me back to Russia pulling its ambassador.
Because Armenia's move toward the EU, whatever it means geopolitically, is also a cultural statement.
And food is always wrapped up in those cultural statements, whether anyone says so out loud or not.
Sí.
Yes.
La comida dice quién eres.
Food says who you are.
Sin palabras.
Without words.
Without words.
Octavio, you used a phrase earlier that I want to go back to.
You said "las mujeres lo hacen juntas" when you were talking about lavash.
And that construction, the reflexive, caught my ear.
I've been tripping over those in my Spanish.
A ver.
Let's see.
'Juntas' significa 'together'.
'Juntas' means 'together'.
Para mujeres.
For women.
Para hombres es 'juntos'.
For men it's 'juntos'.
So the word actually changes ending depending on who you're talking about.
If it's a group of women, it's juntas.
If it's men, or a mixed group, it's juntos.
English just has 'together' and calls it a day.
Claro.
Of course.
En español, los adjetivos cambian.
In Spanish, adjectives change.
'Juntas', 'juntos'.
'Juntas', 'juntos'.
Es básico pero importante.
It's basic but important.
Basic but important.
That's basically the story of Armenian food too, when you think about it.
The simplest ingredients, flour and water and fire, carrying an entire civilization.
Lavash isn't fancy.
But it's held something together for three thousand years.
Como el pan en España.
Like bread in Spain.
El pan es la base de todo.
Bread is the base of everything.
Siempre.
Always.
You know, I almost said that, and then I thought, no, let Octavio say it.
He'll say it better.
And sure enough.
Claro que sí.
Of course.
Soy periodista, Fletcher.
I'm a journalist, Fletcher.