Around Easter, Movses Karoian asks the director of the orphanage, Hovhanness Aharonian, permission to set out on a lone journey to visit Beylan, his birthplace. He somehow gets to his native village Kerk-Khan. He looks for familiar faces, he wants to find the village baker, but no one is to be found. “Then I head towards our home. All of a sudden, before the last five-six steps, my sister appears and starts shouting, ‘Abou, it is my brother!’ She takes me by the hand and leads me to a house made of branches and fortified by mud. A while later she makes “Mech” with grape leaves. And it is a regal meal. She keeps saying, ‘Eat boy, this is Mech, you don’t get to eat much, eat, eat.’” The conditions at the orphanage must not have been that brilliant if a modest meal like eech is considered regal.
Twenty years later, the Armenian population of Cilicia, following the well known turn of events, is uprooted from their homes. In a copybook no larger than a matchbox, next to calculations, important dates and some notes, Movses writes, “July 18, 1939, at 2 in the afternoon we left Kerk-Khan leaving all our belongings to the Turkish government.”
Movses, with his three daughters, heads towards Aleppo, then Zahle, then Beirut. Two more daughters are born into the family. The untimely death of his wife leaves the burden of caring for the family, especially the responsibility of feeding the family, on Movses’ shoulders. The eech with tahini, which he had learned to make from his sister, becomes a staple thanks to four features - fast, easy, filling and tasty.
My mother says that if you were to ask for the recipe, here is how it is made from beginning to end:
- Place two cups of dark and fine bulgur in a bowl and soak it with chopped tomatoes.
- Finely chop an onion, add it to the bulgur and tomatoes, add salt and let the bulgur soften.
- Squeeze two lemons and add the juice, spread half a cup of tahini on the mix.
- Add water as needed to loosen up the mix if necessary.
- If you want, add spicy pepper paste and a spoonful of tomato paste.
- Add chopped parsley, mix well and enjoy.
Eech with tahini is eaten with lettuce leaves.
People are often surprised that you can also have eech with tahini because the version with oil is better known and you can find that one in restaurants.
My mother, who is a tireless advocate of tahinov eech, also gives out the recipe for eech made with oil, although with hesitation.
Fine, if you insist, here it is:
- Put a bit of oil in a pan
- Add a generous portion of chopped tomatoes and onions, wait for the tomato to cook a bit.
- Add two cups of bulgur
- Let it sit a bit then add lemon juice, pepper or tomato paste and olive oil
- Garnish with chopped parsley
- Mix well and serve
We make eech for ourselves and for our guests and it never tastes as good as it is unless I tell the story of my grandfather making his way home from the orphanage, finding his sister and having this regal meal. It is true, that there is usually a moment of heavy silence afterwards but it does not last long because soon enough the eech with its taste and smell quickly changes the atmosphere...
