(birds chirping) (gentle string music) - Beautiful spring day in Fresno.

Hi, I'm Julianne, but you can call me Jul.

And this is "Jul's Armenian Kitchen."

The recipes of my childhood are beginning to fade with time, so I'm on a mission to learn the secrets and stories behind great Armenian home cooking, the way it's always been passed down in family kitchens right here in the Central Valley.

I'll learn how these proud Armenian families built their version of the American Dream in ways you won't find written down anywhere else.

And I'll be stepping right into their kitchens to see how it's really done.

There'll be great food and a few unexpected moments along the way.

We are gonna have a delicious time.

Production funding for "Jul's Armenian Kitchen" is provided by Fowler Packing Company, three generations of family farming in California Central Valley, bringing Peelz citrus and Samsons grapes to families nationwide.

More information at fowlerpacking.com.

Ohanyan's at Fresno.

For more than 40 years, Ohanyan's has preserved Armenian culinary traditions through handcrafted products rooted in heritage, quality, and craftsmanship.

What began in the Central Valley is now shared nationwide.

For more information, visit ohanyans.com.

(gentle string music) (paper rustles) Sometimes life just gives you a gift, and you have to savor it.

Today, I'm savoring lamb tri-tip, grilled eggplant, and a conversation with one of my favorite writers, Mark Arax.

That's right.

I got to wine and dine with the award-winning literary powerhouse himself.

And let me assure you, there's plenty here to sink your teeth into.

Mark is a proud Fresno-born Armenian and also a bit of a foodie.

Would you believe Mark's recipe, he's teaching us today, was written up for The New York Times Cooking website by legendary food columnist Mark Bittman?

It's true.

Only today we're getting Mark Arax's original recipe for marinated lamb tri-tip.

We'll also be firing up some delicious eggplant right here in Mark's beautiful backyard, inspired by his mentor, the late great playwright and storyteller, William Saroyan himself.

And when you have someone as unconventional as Mark as a guest on your show, the overall structure of your show might get a little unconventional too.

But before I meet up with Mark, someone's gotta marinade this lamb.

So the night before I saw him, I got right to it.

And here I am in the Valley PBS studio, and I'm gonna show you how to make the marinade for that lamb.

And I'm gonna tell you really quick how to order this from your butcher, okay?

What you wanna get is the lamb tri-tip sirloin.

It's called tri-tip 'cause it has three points.

One, two, three.

So we have two tri-tip steaks here of lamb.

And you wanna order it untrimmed.

This is really important.

If they trim it, you'd lose this flap here and you'd also lose all of this fantastic goodness right here.

And this is really important for collecting all of the juices and just kind of extending the flavors, and a lot more rich.

And, I mean, let's be honest, if you're gonna have it, you might as well go all the way.

So the first thing we're gonna do is a little rub on the tri-tip.

I'm gonna use half a teaspoon of salt, of kosher salt.

I'm also gonna use an equivalent amount of freshly ground pepper.

And this is my really cool pepper tool.

And you can really use as much as you want.

Again, these things are matters of personal taste.

The next thing we're gonna do is add an equivalent amount of garlic powder.

Now I'm just gonna rub it in.

I'm gonna go under the flaps, over the flaps.

So now we're gonna take half a cup of balsamic, whole cup of olive oil.

Again, these ratios are what matter.

You can deal with the quantities yourself, depending on how much meat you use.

I'm gonna whisk it together to emulsify it real quick, and then I'm gonna add a lot of rosemary.

And I've just taken it off of the stems, but it's whole.

That's how Mark did it.

I'm just gonna mix that all together.

And I'm literally just gonna pour this right on.

(gentle music) Oh, look at that.

Will you look at that?

Oh.

Oh my gosh, this is gonna be so good.

Okay, there it is.

It's ready to go.

This needs to sit overnight, at least.

With the lamb marinated overnight, it's time to go meet the man of the hour with a house built with memorabilia that can tell as many stories as he can.

And today, as much as I'm hoping for a delicious meal, I also want to understand the man whose writing I so admire.

As I join Mark in his lovely backyard, it's time to get this grill started.

Grab a glass of wine and say... Okay, cheers.

- Cheers.

(glasses clink) - Thank you for having me.

- Oh, yeah.

No, it's a pleasure.

- How do you know all that you know?

I mean, did you do some research?

Did you do some Armenian cultural studies?

Did you- - Well, I was just a stupid valley boy.

Didn't even know much about the valley.

And when I was 15, you know, my father went off to work one night and he was killed, murdered.

And obviously I was the oldest in the family, and it was devastating.

He was my hero, my baseball coach, my football coach, larger-than-life guy.

And when you get a hole ripped outta your narrative like that, what do you do?

Well, what I did was I took a little Sony tape recorder and I started gathering the story of our family.

You know, I had these grandfathers and I figured if I wait 5, 10 years, I'm gonna lose them and their stories, and the grandmothers.

I went to interview them as a young, young kid, and they had never told their story, their journey of genocide out of Anatolia, Turkey to California.

And so I recorded it, and I think that's where I began to be a writer.

As a kid, I went to the church across the street from, you know, Valley Bakery, and my grandfather, in the '60s, was the priest there.

This is odd to say, his name was Yeretz Nekatarian.

- [Jul] Yeretz is Der Hayr?

- [Mark] Right, right.

- [Jul] Okay.

- Name was actually Hmayak Nekatarian.

He was my mother's father.

He was a fierce Dashnak, which was a political party.

I think what got conveyed to me was not religion from him necessarily, but culture.

It was the culture.

When I went to interview him, I said, "Tell me about the genocide."

And he started chanting these, I don't know what it was, it sounded like a chant, some kind of chant.

And about halfway through it, I understood that what he was chanting were the names of everyone in his family who had been killed in the massacres.

40, I think it was 45 family members, and he chanted each of their names.

And the names were old-fashioned Armenian names so I didn't recognize what he was doing at first.

And about halfway to two-thirds through, I thought, "Oh my goodness, before he is going to speak to me about this, he is going to," in memoriam, "remember each one."

And he remembered all 45.

And he turned to me, and he looked up and he said, "Only me.

Only me.

I was the only one to survive.

Why?"

And that's how it started.

So that was my journey.

And here I am, many years later, still recording the stories of people in California and still writing those stories.

- Wow.

- Moving beyond our Armenian story, our own backyard to all of California.

And I've interviewed hours and hours of the workers in the fields, and Latinos from all the places in California.

I've interviewed Blacks who came from the South and the Southwest following the cotton trail here.

They were locked out of the houses by racism.

And I related to them because Armenians were among the five groups that were not allowed to live in certain parts of town, and we were part of the people that were banished.

(paper rustles) - Should we check on that fire?

- The fire's about five, six minutes away, so... - Should I start the bulgur?

- Start the bulgur.

- Okay, I'm gonna start the bulgur pilaf.

Okay.

- She's starting the bulgur pilaf.

- [Jul] I'll be right back.

(laughs) Back at his stove, I'm preparing a lovely side dish of bulgur pilaf, a favorite of my late mother, which you can find the recipe for at julsarmeniankitchen.com.

As some of you may know, Mark wrote for The Baltimore Sun and The LA Times before devoting himself to more literary pursuits of writing.

In his storytelling, Mark always plays the role of interviewer.

I decided to take advantage of my time with him to turn him into the interviewee.

I'm kind of curious as to what made you say yes to me.

- [Mark] Well, you're persistent.

- Oh.

(laughs) I kind of am, aren't I?

- No, no.

You're a dynamo, man.

You got all this energy, and thinking, "This girl's half crazy."

(Jul laughs) - Were you really?

(Jul laughs) I am half crazy.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- With the bulgur simmering and the grill still heating up, it's time to discuss the main course and the story behind it.

Now, I understand that you know Mark Bittman.

- Mark Bittman, I knew him as a columnist for The New York Times as a reader and then I knew, you know, he wrote a lot of cookbooks that were very popular.

- [Jul] Yes.

- And then I got a call from him one day saying, "Hey, I'm coming out to California, and I decided, 'Well, we should have dinner,'" which is kind of a- - Armenian thing.

- Well, yeah, but it's kind of a bold move to be serving food to Mark Bittman.

- True.

No, that is true.

- [Mark] You know, he's not the type of guy that throws out, you know, easy compliments.

And he loved the lamb tri-tip because he'd never had a lamb tri-tip.

You know- - I've never had one.

- Yeah, tri-tip is beef.

But there is one cut, and I just played with it for a year or two and decided to do a certain marinate, it turned out pretty good.

And that night, it turned out very good.

And, you know, so we had a nice evening.

And about a month or two later, he called me up and says, "I'm gonna put this recipe in The New York Times."

- I cannot, I cannot.

- [Mark] He said, "I'll call it Arax's lamb recipe."

- [Jul] And it's there.

- [Mark] Is it there?

- [Jul] It's there.

- [Mark] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it is.

It was.

- [Jul] I saw it.

Unfortunately, it seems that when Bittman put this recipe online, he wasn't able to find the lamb tri-tip on the East Coast, which led to it being not the exact recipe Mark made for him that night.

I don't blame him as tri-tip is really a phenomenon out West.

So since we have that cut with us today, we'll be able to cook Mark's original lamb tri-tip dinner.

- So here we are with the original recipe, and we're gonna try to, I don't know if we can get it as good as we did that day with Bittman, 'cause, you know, as Mark Bittman, you gotta be inspired.

- You do.

You do.

(paper rustles) I'm excited to try it.

What's the story on that?

How long do you heat it up for?

- We'll cook it.

And if it's hot, you'll get a real sear on the outside.

- [Jul] Okay.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Jul] All right.

- [Mark] And if it's got enough fat, which the Armenians call yugh, then it'll sear up.

And you'll have to be careful 'cause it could get outta control.

So you're constantly moving it around.

And I think what I'll do is I'll do the eggplants first.

- [Jul] Okay.

- [Mark] So I barbecue eggplants and use a marinade that's olive oil, lemon, garlic, and salt, of course, pepper, and basil.

And then the trick is you cook it slow enough to where it turns creamy.

So what we should be able to do after this is scoop that out, those eggplants, put 'em on a piece of lavash bread- - [Jul] Mm-hmm.

- Cracker bread, and it'll be a nice little, you know?

- Do you know I used to ship these to myself, to my dorm room on the East Coast?

- [Mark] Did everybody love 'em over there?

- [Jul] Oh yeah, of course.

- [Mark] Oh yeah.

No, they're somethin' else.

Simple, simple.

- And delish.

(paper rustles) So when I read your writing, I'm often surprised by how you're able to put so many ideas in one space so eloquently.

Like, you really fit them in well, economically.

- When you're sitting in front of that typewriter, or no longer a typewriter, it's brutal.

It could be a very brutal process.

I got a lesson from Saroyan as a young kid.

My grandfather and Saroyan were friends.

And he would come over for dinner, and I would go.

And I didn't know yet that I was gonna be a writer.

And then later on when I was at Fresno State, I'd go visit him.

He was a very cheap man, and he loved recording sounds of nature.

- Really?

- And so he said, "Do you have any tapes," 'cause I was the editor of The Collegian at Fresno State.

I said, "Yeah, I have tapes."

He goes, "Bring me some."

So I'd bring him free tapes.

And then we'd sit and he'd talk, and he says, "What are you doing right now?"

I said, "Well, I'm learning the vocabulary.

I'm learning new words."

And he says, "What are the new words you're learning?"

And I think I said something like ubiquitous.

- Oh.

Oh, nice.

- Ubiquitous.

And he looked at me, and he got kind of a screwed up face, and he said, "Ubiquitous.

Well, where in the hell would you ever use that?"

He says, "I want you to go back to my stories, and I want you to count the words I use in those stories.

I use 300 words, maybe 350.

That's all.

It's not the words, the fancy words you wield, it's the way you put the words together."

And- - [Jul] Interesting.

- What a lesson.

And then, you know, he told me that writing is lonely, but it's not abject loneliness.

Because as you're writing, you're connecting yourselves to all the world here, you know?

This backyard, I think, would make Saroyan proud.

When I would go visit him on Griffith Way, his weeds were five, six feet tall.

- [Jul] Oh, really?

- [Mark] Oh, yeah.

And in there he had certain weeds he would use in the salad, you know, dandelions.

- [Jul] Yeah.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Jul] Yeah, yeah.

- And then he had mint in there and fruit trees.

And while I didn't consciously do this, I've kind of replicated a little bit of Saroyan's backyard.

The weeds will go soon, but, yeah.

And then when he ended up dying, no one was watering his fruit trees.

And so I ended up going every day and watering his fruit trees and keeping them alive until that house was sold to someone else.

(paper rustles) And my grandfather was a poet.

My grandfather, Aram Arax, who was a tremendous influence, you know, my father's father, poet, a lefty- - Leftist or lefty like me?

- No, no, no, no, no.

He was a leftist.

That's right, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, the FBI followed him for 40 years.

And I ended up getting his FBI file when I wrote my first book.

- [Jul] Oh, really?

- Yeah.

So he was the friend of Saroyan.

His journey to Fresno was an accident.

He was 14, 15 hiding in an attic in Istanbul.

There were 20,000 Armenian kids hiding in the attics.

It was called the Army of the Attics.

And he stayed up there with his books for about a year and a half, came down, dressed like a girl just so he could evade the draft, and then went to a bookstore, this was after the genocide now, where all these great Armenian writers were there, and they took him on.

And he was going to go to The Sorbonne in Paris to study literature.

He was there.

One of the wealthy railroad Armenian magnates decided they were gonna fund him and everything else, and then these letters came from his uncle, sole survivor, from Fresno, California, telling him, "You must come here."

And he sold the California dream, the California myth.

You know, the- - This is the grapes like jade.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The grapes, they're so big, they hang from the vines like jade eggs.

And he told them that the watermelons are so large that when you scoop out the meat, you could ride down the irrigation canals.

(Jul laughing) You know, in the thing, in it.

So my grandfather, in 1920, had, you know, this choice, existential choice, which was Paris, France or Fresno, California.

Anyhow, I wonder if that choice had been different.

- Yeah.

- You know, what would've come with us all.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But that's bakht, that's fate.

- [Jul] Oh, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Even back then, people were trying to distinguish, you know, who's real from not, or who's really dedicated or who's really legitimate or authentic.

But why do we need to draw such distinctions?

- Well, we're small people, and what we ended up doing was making ourselves smaller.

And it always perplexed me that, my God, we're a small nation, we're a small diaspora, and here we are making ourselves smaller and dividing ourselves up into these even more tribal units.

- [Jul] Interesting.

- And it was silly.

- So you speak Armenian.

You have a lot of words.

- No, no, I spoke Armenian before I could spoke English.

And then at school, there was no Armenians.

So I came home one day and told my parents, "I'm not speaking that language anymore."

And they were so busy trying to assimilate- - [Jul] Yeah.

- They said, "Fine."

- Really?

- Yeah.

Big mistake.

- Yeah.

- Big mistake they made.

- Did you know I'm in remedial class?

- Are you really?

(Jul laughs) - Armenian school dropout.

- No, there's something deep in my recesses that language is there.

I swear, sometimes I dream in Armenian.

- Really?

- Yeah, but I don't think so.

- Interesting.

- I think it's just a desire.

- The grill is hot and ready to go.

Now, it's a real tradition for the men to stand around and visit while grilling.

Usually I'm stuck inside prepping the sides, so it was a real treat to partake in the ritual.

I really like fire.

- I do, too.

(Jul laughs) - And this is all your recipes?

- You know, I can't, I mean, we're a 3,000, 4,000-year-old people, I don't know that any of this is original.

(Jul chuckles) - [Jul] Quick tip for the eggplant.

You can't have enough marinade, so feel free to apply more while grilling.

So you use your finger too, huh?

- [Mark] Oh, yeah.

- My husband uses his finger.

What's the art to it?

- [Mark] Well, if it's too much give, it means it's kinda raw in the middle.

- [Jul] Okay.

- So you want it to be, but then you also don't want it to be burned, so... Now that one's firmin' up.

- Can I feel it?

- Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Feel that one.

- Uh-huh.

- Feel that one.

Give it a little more push.

- Oh, I see.

- Yeah.

- Interesting.

Mm, and then you gotta lick your finger.

(chuckles) - Yeah.

The eggplant, it's starting to bubble, which means it's starting to cream up.

- [Jul] Oh yeah, okay.

- [Mark] See how it's bubblin'?

- [Jul] Yeah.

Whoa!

(laughs) - Oh.

- Tell me about those bubbles.

(Jul laughs) - You had too much wine.

- Okay.

(Jul clears throat) - You told me that was gonna happen to you.

♪ Baubles, baubles ♪ ♪ Bangles and bees ♪ (Jul clears throat) Yeah, no, I'll slow down on it.

- Okay, good.

- Okay.

(grill sizzling) Okay, this is one that's the most done.

Let's just try one and see what happens.

Now this is a real Armenian custom here where it's usually men barbecuing, and they end up coming to the table half full because they've sampled all the meat.

Okay, that's just not quite done enough but it gives me a good read.

But that's gonna be a delicious piece.

- [Jul] Yes, it will.

- We'll see.

I tell you, I don't think there's enough salt on here.

Let's just see.

- [Jul] You don't rush cutting a piece of meat like this, especially when it's good enough to make you start dancing.

- Oh, that's pretty done.

- Mm.

Mm, that's done.

That's ready.

- Yep, yep.

- Mm.

(Jul chuckles) (festive cultural music) With the food ready, the table set and festivities high, it's time to finally dig in and begin the meal.

And, hey, it isn't every day that one of your favorite authors serves you food at his dinner table.

- [Mark] Okay, you gotta have that.

- Oh, thank you.

Wow.

That definitely looks good.

That is good.

- It'll be messy, but it's all right.

- Mm.

(cracker crunches) Mm.

Mm, that's really good.

That's crazy good.

- Is that a little smoky to it?

- Yeah, I'm gonna start making that.

- Yeah.

Okay, if it's smoky, then- - It's perfection.

- I nailed it.

- You did.

- Cheers, bon appetit.

- Cheers, thank you.

Yum.

This is next level.

- Yeah, that's good.

- Because usually it's, you know, if you do it like that, then do you think they're gonna do baba ghanoush with it?

But I like how you didn't go within tahini direction.

It's got a brightness to it.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it's good.

- It's smoky, but it's bright.

- [Mark] Yeah, I hope- - It's herby.

It's lemony.

- Okay, dig in.

- All right, let's have some.

Okay.

(gentle guitar music) - Turned out pretty good.

- Are you happy?

- Yeah.

(gentle guitar music continues) - Mm.

- You could taste the rosemary.

- Yeah.

- And you could taste the balsamic too.

- You can.

And they work so nicely with it.

- Yeah.

And my kids, they all, you know, if I did a meal, they'd all wait for me to pronounce whatever it was.

(Jul chuckles) And it'd always be some criticism, and they'd just go, you know, so that's it, I'm just critical of my own stuff.

- [Jul] Yeah, surely.

You know artists, we're our biggest critics.

But he's underselling how good this food is.

Honestly, it might be the best lamb I've ever had.

But don't tell my dad.

Anyway, something I've tried to do on this show is get a perspective from each of my guests on what the American Dream means to them.

Since Mark is such an outspoken writer, of course I had to pose the question to him as well.

- So the American Dream has been a very mixed one for the Armenians.

And each one had a different experience because each one brought over a shaping from another country.

- [Jul] Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

We were Turkish Armenians.

- [Jul] Mm-hmm.

- [Mark] We were Armenians who came from Anatolia, which was our country, you know, a thousand years, if not more, before the Turks came.

- Right, right.

- And we were survivors of genocide, and we reinvented ourselves on a land that, California, which has been kind to a lot of reinventions.

And what you see today is that, and this is what kinda breaks my heart, is having endured that racism, the Armenians now has landed and successful, they're not always the most understanding when it comes to others.

So there's a lot of fear still of the others.

And here we are, the others who are now fearing the "others" of today.

So, you know, do you see hypocrisy in that?

Yes, but that's kinda... So the American Dream, it comes with an asterisk, a caveat.

And maybe it always did.

I'm thankful I could speak.

I am thankful I have a meal.

America has been a promised land for us in a lot of ways.

But I go back to Saroyan when he used to talk about Fresno.

"I love this place.

I hate this place."

- [Jul] Ah, well, I don't hate this place, not one bit.

I love it thoroughly.

And the reason I do is the people, people like Mark, like all of my guests, people who open their homes, people with family stories to tell and recipes to share, people whose hearts are so full and generous and open.

So to also quote Saroyan, "I love Armenia, and I love America, and I belong to both.

But I am only this, an inhabitant of the Earth, and so are you, whoever you are."

(warm guitar music) (warm guitar music fades) Production funding for "Jul's Armenian Kitchen" is provided by Fowler Packing Company, three generations of family farming in California Central Valley, bringing Peelz citrus and Samsons grapes to families nationwide.

More information at fowlerpacking.com.

Ohanyan's at Fresno.

For more than 40 years, Ohanyan's has preserved Armenian culinary traditions through handcrafted products rooted in heritage, quality, and craftsmanship.

What began in the Central Valley is now shared nationwide.

For more information, visit ohanyans.com.