How to khorovats

A few weeks ago we hosted a khorovats, or an Armenian-style barbecue. Which is really just like an American-style barbecue. Except that instead of a gas grill, you cook over a wood fire built in a pit.

And instead of slimy hot dogs and bland white bread buns, you grill up hunks of lamb and pork that have been marinating for hours and serve it with generous slices of a flat bread known as lavash.

And instead of potato salad, coleslaw, and baked beans, you have sides of Armenian cheese (like feta but better), josh (a melange of vegetables that have been roasted over the open fire), and hand-made dolma (stuffed grape leaves).

And instead of beer, you drink vodka shots and Fanta. (The Fanta part I totally don't get, but I'm told it's the only way to go if it's authenticity you're after.)

Come to think of it, a khorovats doesn't really resemble an American barbecue at all, except that they both take place outside during the summer, and so you're going to need some bug spray and sunscreen either way. Anyway, although the planning, prep work, and cooking involved is not for the faint of heart (this ain't no last-minute barbecue), you too can put together your own khorovats if you're so inclined. Here's how to do it.

First, make sure you invite lots of people, because, if you're going to go to this much trouble to cook, you may as well make a lot of food. Plus, cooking a khorovats is a communal affair, and you're going to need some extra hands to put it all together.

A few days before, make room in your fridge and go grocery shopping. J-P and Sarah took care of all the shopping and prep work for our khorovats, making the dolma, marinating the meat, and baking some delicious date cookies for dessert. J-P also dug a little rectangular pit in our backyard to cook over.

On the day of, start off early in the afternoon by building a good wood fire in the pit. That's J-P working on the fire with our friend Artur, who is Armenian-from-Armenia, and gleefully handled the role of chef de cuisine and overseer of the fire pit.


Once the fire is good and blazing, throw skewers of vegetables -- whole tomatoes, whole green pepper, and those skinny eggplants -- right into the flames. This is what you're going to use to make the josh. Ideally, we would have used skewers that are flat to prevent the vegetables from rotating, like these, but we didn't have time to order them and so used pairs of wire coat hangers instead, which worked just fine.


Right after the vegetables go on, have the first of many toasts over a shot of vodka of unknown provenance that very well might make you go blind quality imported vodka. Make sure you don't omit this crucial step.


Oh, and when I said that the vegetables should be in the fire, I wasn't kidding.


When they come off, they'll be good and charred.


But char doesn't taste good, so peel it off in a big bowl of water in the sink. This goes for the eggplant, tomatoes, and green peppers. Once the vegetables have been peeled, chop them finely and mix them in a big bowl with some chopped parsley, chopped green onion, and salt. This is the josh. (You'll get see a picture of it in the final plate.)


Meanwhile, if the smell of roasting vegetables is making you hungry, munch on a plate of ganachi (which literally means "greens"). Our plate featured parsley, cilantro, scallions, and two kinds of Armenian cheese, the string cheese seen here, and another, more feta-like cheese. Snack on it all separately, or take a little piece of cheese, a few leaves of green, and a shard of scallion, and roll it in a little piece of lavash.


By now, the fire should be settling down and coals forming, perfect for the second phase of cooking: meat. A few days earlier, we bought a hunk o' pork and a hunk o' lamb, which we chopped into smaller fist-sized hunks and marinated in a mixture of red onion, parsley, salt, pepper, and paprika. These hunks were skewered, and the skewers placed over the coals, held aloft by a few bricks on either side of the pit. We kept a bottle of water nearby to douse any flames that popped up because, unlike the vegetables, the meat should be cooked low and slow. (Note on quantity: the amount of meat you see here was probably a third of the meat we cooked. I think we overdid it a little, but it all got eaten eventually.)


As each skewer of meat is cooked through, take it off the fire and use a piece of lavash to slide the meat off the skewer into a large bowl or pot that is lined with more lavash. This lavash will turn deliciously soggy with meat juices and may later become the subject of some dinner-table scuffles.


Once the meat is done and the table set, you're ready to eat. Here you have the meat in the middle and, clockwise from the top, dolma, josh, tomato and cucumber salad, meat-juicy lavash, cheese, tabbouli, and yogurt. Pour yourself another shot of vodka and a glass of Fanta, and enjoy.