“’No one knows for certain whether lahmacun’s roots lie in Armenia, Turkey, or elsewhere in the Middle East. The race to find where these ancient foods originated is not fruitful territory,’ cautioned Naomi Duguid, author of Taste of Persia: A Cook’s Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan. After all, meat-enhanced flatbreads are ubiquitous throughout the region (we’re looking at you, Georgian kubdari and Turkish kiymali pide).”
“George Mardikian, the beloved restaurateur, chef, philanthropist, and author of Dinner at Omar Khayyam’s and Song of America, wrote that lahmacun (spellings vary) was first prepared by the wives of wealthy traders along the Silk Road who cooked the dish over open flames in roadside inns or caravanserais. A far cry from today’s low-budget lahmacun culture, he claims the dish was historically a ‘food of the elite,’ since it called for meat, a luxury the poor couldn’t frequently afford.” Greg Keraghosian at SFGATE says, “Mardikian’s Omar Khayyam’s — an Armenian restaurant with elegant Middle Eastern decor named after an epicurean Persian poet — was destination dining for San Franciscans for more than 40 years at its underground location near the corner of Powell and O’Farrell streets. Celebrities and professionals paid upscale prices while armed service members and refugees ate for free. Its shish kebab and bulgur pilaf were the main draw for a largely white clientele unfamiliar with such food. But the restaurant drew its life force from, as William Saroyan called him, ‘the big man with the bright face coming over to your table.’”
According to chef, food writer, and author Barbara Ghazarian, who wrote Simply Armenian, an indispensable Armenian cookbook, the meat used in this dish goes a long way. One pound of lamb, she explained, makes 12 lahmejun, enough to “feed a small army, Armenian or otherwise.” That small army is quickly becoming an ever-growing horde of international lahmejun fans. “Lahmejun is a story of culinary assimilation,” Ghazarian said, “of how one simple dish invented in or around Armenia has won over diners around the globe, from Yerevan to Beirut, to Los Angeles and Fresno, to Paterson, New Jersey.”
Here is Ghazarian’s fail-safe recipe from Simply Armenian:
Dough:
