In My Father’s Kitchen: Part 2

A tomato "salad" recipe you’ve probably never heard of

We've settled into a mild-ish summer in LA. The extreme heat of early July has given way to cooler, breezy early mornings and slightly more bearable afternoons. But you wouldn't be able to tell once you step foot into my dad's house, because my dad doesn't believe in air conditioning. 

"Doesn't believe" is a stretch, I guess – he does believe in air conditioning, even uses it on occasion, but only when the temperature is insufferable. And 87 degrees is not insufferable, at least not to him, which is why when we arrive at around 11 AM on Friday morning, it is… stuffy. The music is blaring, as it always is – a mix of Armenian and Arabic songs interspersed with the occasional Italian tune, broadcasted live from Bourj Hammoud in Beirut, Lebanon, where it is 9 PM and the rapid tempo of the music reflects this. I open a window on my way to the kitchen. Lunch is bubbling away on the stove. On today's menu: Eech. 

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Friday lunch at Baba's is Sasha and my new tradition. We drive the 15 minutes to the city I grew up in and head first to the library. Here, we exchange last week's books for new ones, and I follow her around the children's room, dutifully reshelving every title she pulls off the shelf, flips through, and abandons. After about an hour of this song and dance – interspersed only by the occasional "Mommy, look!" when there's a particularly interesting illustration or the sterner "Mommy, read," when I'm distracted by my phone – we drive the ten or so minutes to Medzbaba's for lunch. 

This started a few weeks ago when, I gather, my dad realized our Friday visits to his house were often cut short by Sasha's inevitable pre-lunch crankiness. A relatively uneventful conversation would end abruptly and into the car we'd go, promises of chicken nuggets and dip placating Sasha as we drove away, my dad's offers to make lunch lost in the chaos that surrounds a two-year-old that's about to absolutely fucking lose it. The next time we visited, my dad was putting a dish of spaghetti into the oven as we arrived. I couldn't help but smile and laugh to myself. It was the cooking equivalent of I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. "Next week, let's make Eech," I say in Armenian. "I want to learn how to make that." He agrees.

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Eech is a bulgur and tomato salad that, like most dishes made with tomatoes, tastes best in the summer. Some people say it's kind of like tabbouleh without all the parsley, which is true in theory, but the two have never reminded me of each other. Growing up, we'd eat it all year long, always for lunch and always wrapped in romaine lettuce leaves. It's simple in its ingredients, easy in its preparation, and absolutely delicious. 

Baba had already started the first part of cooking this dish, which is making the tomato sauce. Most of a chopped onion and a full chopped green bell pepper are sautéed in olive oil until they're soft before meeting with chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, red pepper paste, and lemon. This stews and simmers until everything is soft and indiscernible. The peppers have become one with the tomatoes, the onions have all but disappeared. The mixture is a deep red the color of blood, and the air smells the way you imagine kitchens in Nancy Meyers films smell, thick and heady and rich.

My dad adds the tomato mixture to some fine bulgur along with the reserved chopped raw onion, gives it a quick mix with a spoon, and then lets it rest. Once everything is cool enough to touch, he uses his hand to knead the mixture, adding a few drops of cold water here and there to continue to soften the bulgur and emulsify everything. He tastes a bit, adds more salt, and then Sasha reaches in her fingers and takes a taste, too. "Spicy," she says, scrunching up her eyes and opening up her mouth, waiting for the air to cool down her tongue. Baba sighs and admits he probably added a little (or, more likely, a lot) of cayenne pepper

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Now all that's left to do is decorate. If there's anything that these cooking experiences with my dad have taught me, it's that we're more alike than I had realized. He demonstrates to Sasha how to decorate the edges of the dish with thinly sliced green onions, only to quickly pull her hand away when she starts artistically flinging them across the whole thing. I watch as he changes gears, encouraging her to put more green onions on. "Oor vor goozes," he says. Wherever you want. The internal struggle between letting her figure something out on her own and wanting to do something just so is a very familiar one. He gently guides her small, soft hands as they garnish with some parsley. Once she loses interest, he rearranges the onions to his liking. Definitely related. 

We sit down to eat, heaping spoonfuls of Eech onto cold, crisp lettuce leaves. It's a meal I've eaten in this dining room, in this house I grew up in, in this exact same spot at this exact same table, many times and in many different stages of my life. "Do you know how to make Eech now?" my dad asks. Truth is I knew how to make Eech. As you can see, it's very simple. I just wanted to make it with him.