Vegan Panrkhash

A longer and more detailed description

There are two stages to the instructions here, and they are entirely dependent on your local flatbread availability, and how confident a baker you are. Personally, I am not a confident bread baker in the slightest, but I also did not find lavash at my local market, nor did I think it would be fair to make this without at least trying to make my own lavash. I don’t know what it is about breads, but I’m pretty miserable at making them, so even though I think this recipe should work in theory, you may be better off trying to buy lavash, or letting me know all the ways in which I fail as a baker. I’m open to both.

Start by mixing your flour, yeast, and salt in a mixing bowl (this is the easy part). Slowly add the milk (I used oat), water, and honey, stirring as you do so. Personally, I could not figure out a good angle to do this without the bowl flopping everywhere, or the liquid pouring too fast, so I ended up propping the bowl up under my boobs, squeezing it between my forearms, and stirring with my fingertips. A simpler solution might be to have a better bowl, or even - if you’re spoiling yourself - a friend to hold the bowl. If you have none of those things, though, it is possible to slowly pour while holding the bowl and stirring, but I would like to once again point you to the idea that they sell lavash in stores.

Continue mixing your dough, then kneading when using the spoon proves too arduous. You want your dough to be sticky, but not too sticky. If it’s too sticky, add more flour. If you have run out of flour over the course of trying to make your dough less sticky, and still have sticky dough, don’t worry. I got you. We’ll still make something that would make any Armenian granny cry.

Once your dough is either kneaded or given up on, cover it with a towel and set it aside to rise for at least forty-five minutes. I let mine rise for an hour because I was scared to look at it. Personally, though, I think bread doughs feast on our fears, and that that is perhaps why mine, even though it looked all beautifully risen, immediately deflated when I went to check on it.

Have you ever had a moment where you stared at a food, knowing things have gone wrong, but having no real idea of why? I have that every single time I try to make bread. I was one of those who tried to make bread during the pandemic, and never got anywhere. Last week’s fugazza was not a beautiful foccacia, but a hefty chonker of a crust. I do not understand how to make bread, and it scares me.

This is where I found myself as I tried to make my own lavash. Where I should have had a nice dough, I instead had something closer to batter, with no idea why, and no way to recover it. Here’s the thing about cooking, though. What matters is less the journey than the destination. Many great and glorious foods are the results of happy little accidents, of foods that didn’t work for what they were supposed to be, and instead became something else as a way to still get something out of the ingredients. As I stood there, staring at my obviously failed lavash, there were mutterings in my head. Many were repeated swears at my inability to make bread and mocking my foolishness for trying, but some looked at the failed dough and noticed it looked like pancake batter.

Anyway, so now we’re making lavash pancakes. Scoop out your batter dough one tablespoon at a time. Flatten it, if you can, and if you can’t, turn it into pancakes. Everyone loves pancakes, and they’re sort of flat.

Make all your batter dough into whatever it’s going to be by frying it in olive oil until it bubbles and turns brown. Set the flattest, happiest little accidents aside. They’re still going to cover the top of the bowl. Slice the remaining bready things into small squares.

While your bread is frying, set your onions stewing. Melt your butter in a pan over medium heat. Once melted, add the diced onion and ignore it until it’s soft.

We are then going to resolutely assemble our panrkhash. To our friends just joining us who bought store-bought lavash, welcome! Everything is fine with the home-baking crowd! We’re dandy!

A panrkhash is sort of analogous to a lasagna, except instead of pasta, there’s bread, and instead of sauce and vegetables, there’s butter and cheese. Start by buttering the inside of your bowl, because there is an insufficient amount of butter in this dish already. Add a layer of lavash to the bottom of the bowl, then cover it with cheese. Alternate your lavash and cheese until the bowl is nearly full. Once you near the top, remember your onions. Pour your onion and butter mixture into each bowl, then pour in your hot water. Top it with your most salvageable and presentable lavashes, and top those with more butter. Set these in the oven to bake for ten to fifteen minutes, or until you feel like you’ve gotten sufficient revenge on yet another failed bread experiment. Remove your bowls from the oven and serve. Բարի’ ախորժակ!

Substitutions and suggestions

For the honey: Don’t think I don’t see you out there, people who saw that I used honey and immediately went to the comments to fight me. I see you, and I acknowledge there is a difference in opinion here between vegans. There is the obvious point that honey is inherently an animal product, and eating it is always going to be taking something made by animals for animals, and instead exploiting it for human consumption. There is also the reality that industrialised honey farming is stressful for bees, and that colonies that are part of industrialised farms have shorter lifespans than those in the wild, or on small scale farms. The arguments against industrialised farming of any animal are as valid for bees as they are for any other creature. However, bees are also massively important to global plant pollination, and have seen huge declines in their populations. Part of this is due to industrial agriculture practices and the loss of native plant life. Part of this is due to parasites, diseases, invasive bee species, and of course, climate change. The reality of modern agriculture is that it is still heavily reliant on bees, but that the same systems that rely on them are also killing them. Bees are creatures that, while not endangered, ought to be protected and provided with environments that as closely mimic their natural habitat as possible. In a place like the Netherlands, that is most often found on small, family farms with bee boxes next to flower beds. The economic reality for these beekeepers is that the sale of honey offsets the cost of maintaining a bee-friendly habitat. I buy the most sustainable and bee-friendly honey possible, recognising that in so doing, I continue to provide an economic incentive for families to provide bee habitats, and thus, continue to create a more bee-friendly world. Individual bees may suffer as a result of honey production, but bees as a whole benefit. That benefit as a whole feels worth the slight suffering a sustainable honey harvest may cause, given that the alternative is mass starvation and extinction. The balance of suffering comes out in favour of bees. In some ways, that feels like the most bee-esque way of viewing the problems of honey. However, for those that do not want to use honey, I absolutely see you, and feel your views are valid. You can use agave nectar or syrup instead.

For the non-dairy milk: I used oat milk, but you are welcome to use whatever you like.

For the cheese: Traditionally, this would be made with Armenian string cheese called chechil. There is - shockingly - not a vegan version of this, so I used a combination of shredded mozzarella and shredded gouda. Do be sure to pick out a brand of cheese that melts, as that’s key to the dish.

A brief context for this dish

Armenia is one of the world’s most mountainous countries. This has, in combination with Armenia’s shifting occupation by one empire or another, an impact on Armenian cuisine.

Armenian cuisine heavily centres bread, dairy, herbs, and fruit, though how these are prepared can vary. Much like with our Algerian and Afghan dishes, there is an Ottoman influence in Armenian cuisine, manifesting primarily in desserts, but in a variety of unexpected ways throughout the cuisine. However, Armenia’s existence on the fringes of other empires also means it has a deeply unique and ancient culinary tradition.

At the centre of Armenian cuisine, however, lies bread. Bread is so central to Armenian life that it undergirds most traditions. The book “Lavash” by Kate Leahy, Ara Zada, and John Lee explains some of these, including the tradition of draping lavash over a bride’s shoulder, the idea that an ungrateful person “lacks bread and salt,” and that a good person can be described as “bready.” Lavash itself is inscribed as part of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and archaeological evidence supports it having been made in Armenia since neolithic times.

The combination of bread and cheese, then, is a fundamental part of Armenian cuisine, and has been since before the concept of “Armenia” existed. Panrkhash, however, is a specifically northern Armenian dish, meant to be made with the nearly stale scraps of leftover lavash and cheese. Panrkhash is the dish made by Armenian grandmothers for their grandchildren on cold mountain days, simple, tasty, and filling.

While my incarnation of panrkhash is a far cry from the original, it still evokes those cozy cottages and warm memories. It brings the wholesome hearths at the centre of Armenian life into my own home and kitchen. It is a little spark of tradition, blazing brightly, however malformed my incarnation may be. Panrkhash is a delight.