Mark Bittman Visits Adana in Glendale for an Armenian Feast

Located in Glendale, on the border of Burbank, Adana is a great introduction to the cuisine of the Armenian community. Mark Bittman was in town last fall. He asked me for a list of my favorite restaurants. Adana was at the top of the list.

Adana has many great qualities. The interior is unexpectedly elegant. The portions are large. Most dishes are priced under $10.00. The waitstaff is friendly and helpful. Chef-owner Edward Khechemyan treats his customers like they are guests in his home. 

A family business, Khechemyan and fellow chef Sonik Nazaryan work in a New York sized kitchen, the size of a large closet. With an added area for his gigantic gas powered grill, Khechemyan and Nazaryan turn out a varied menu with more than two dozen dishes.

The food is eclectic, with classic dishes from America (hamburger), Armenia (kabobs and salads) and Russia (salads and soups). For a description of the menu, here's a link to my review: "For An Armenian Feast, Try Adana Restaurant in Glendale."

When friends join me for a meal, I happily share my short list of favorites: the Armenian coffee, chicken thigh kabobs with the Persian salad, humus and basmati rice, pork rib kabobs, lamb chop kabobs and the tabouli salad.

Mark Bittman's profile of the restaurant is in today's New York Times Magazine: "This Armenian Life."

In the Fall, I'm leading a field trip to Adana with a group of fellow food bloggers. As much as I love the food, I love sharing Adana with friends. It's that much fun.

Adana Restaurant, 6918 San Fernando Road, Glendale, California 91201 (818-843-6237). Mon-Sat: 10:00 am-9:00 pm; Sun 10:00 am-6:30pm

Sautéed Kale Satisfies as a Side Dish or an Entree

The idea to sauté kale came accidentally. For a dinner party we had been given a massively large platter with grapes, blueberries, strawberries, and half a dozen assorted cheeses on top of a layer of kale leaves. Wanting to make the cheeses and fruit more presentable, we moved them onto nice plates. That left the kale and the plastic platter.

The first impulse was to chuck both. Since kale leaves are large and sturdy, they are frequently used to disguise the awfulness of disposable plastic deli platters. Discarding the kale is the culinary equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Sautéing kale with other vegetables makes a delicious side dish that goes equally well with tofu, meat, poultry, or fish.

But don't stop there. Turn the side dish into an entree by adding pasta or rice. Keep it vegetarian or add cooked chicken, beef or pork or uncooked shrimp or pieces of skinned, deboned fish.

Sautéed Kale with Farm Fresh Vegetables

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 20-30 minutes

Ingredients

One bunch farmers' market fresh kale, washed
1 medium onion, washed, peeled, roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled, mashed, roughly chopped
6 shiitake or brown mushrooms, washed, dried, thinly sliced
1 large carrot, washed, trimmed, peeled, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
1 tablespoon sweet butter (optional)
1 cup chicken stock or water (optional)
1 cup firm tofu, cut into small cubes (optional)
2 cups cooked meat, poultry, or uncooked seafood (optional)
3 cups cooked rice or 4 cups cooked pasta (optional)

Method

Trim off the ends off the kale, then roughly chop into dime-sized pieces. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a chef's pan, add all the vegetables. Season with sea salt and pepper. Sauté until lightly browned. Finish with the sweet butter (optional).

If you want to continue on and use the kale-saute with pasta or rice, keep the dish vegetarian by deglazing the pan with water, add cubes of tofu, rice or pasta and let simmer for 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning with sea salt and pepper.

For a meat entree, use stock to deglaze, then add either meat, poultry or seafood, the cooked rice or pasta and simmer 5-10 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning with sea salt and pepper.

Variations

Add other vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower florets

Add peppers, hot or sweet

Add 1/4 teaspoon each ground cumin, coriander, and turmeric to the saute

Easy-to-Make Rotisserie Chicken and Roasted Vegetables

I haven't been home for the last three weekends and I'll be traveling the next two as well, but I'm not complaining. It's been good to get out of Los Angeles and break my routine. But traveling means eating out and even if the food is great, I miss home-cooking.

When I got home I wanted to make a meal but I needed to cook something that didn't take too much effort. A rotisserie chicken definitely fit the bill. With only a couple of minutes of prep, I could walk away and let the chicken cook itself. The skin seals in the meat's delicious juices while it crisps on the outside. You get the best of both worlds: moist and crisp.

Whenever I've seen rotisserie masters like Thomas Odermatt of RoliRoti, they always put potatoes and onions in the drip pan at the bottom of the rotisserie. The vegetables soak up the drippings and fry crisp-on-the-outside from the indirect heat. I correctly assumed that a lot of other vegetables could be added to the drip pan and gain a flavor advantage.

If you don't have a rotisserie, no problem. You'll get a similar effect if you roast the chicken in the oven. Just turn the chicken every 30 minutes so it cooks evenly. About the vegetables, I used potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and Brussels sprouts but you can add just about any you like--eggplant, squash, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, turnips...

Chicken-Roasted Vegetable Soup

And there's a two-fer here: save the bones and make stock, then chop up the left over roasted vegetables or sauté new ones, and make a chicken-vegetable soup. Top with homemade croutons and you have a second easy-to-make home cooked meal.

Rotisserie Chicken and Roasted Vegetables

Yield: 4 servings

Time: 2 hours

Ingredients

1 farm fresh 3 1/2 – 4 pound chicken ( washed, pat dried, legs and wings trussed)

2 carrots (washed, ends trimmed, peeled, cut into 1/4" thick rounds)

1 yellow onion (washed, ends trimmed, peeled, roughly chopped)

1/2 pound Yukon (washed, cut into pieces 1/2" square) or fingerling potatoes (washed, cut in half, lengthwise)

1/2 pound mushrooms (washed, dried, quartered)

1/2 pound Brussels sprouts (washed, root end trimmed, quartered)

Olive oil

3 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves

Sea salt and pepper

Method

Rub olive oil on the trussed chicken, season with rosemary leaves, sea salt, and black pepper. Put onto the rotisserie spit being careful to tighten the wing nuts so the chicken doesn’t slip during cooking. If a rotisserie isn’t available, roasting the chicken in a 350 degree oven and turning every 30 minutes will have a similar result.

In either case, put the vegetables into a roasting pan, toss with olive oil and season with sea salt and pepper. If using an oven, put the chicken on a roasting rack over the pan. If using a rotisserie, position the chicken on the spit so its juices will drip onto the vegetables.

Every 30 minutes, toss the vegetables for uniform cooking.

Cook for 2 hours or until the legs move easily, remove, lay a piece of aluminum foil over the chicken to let it rest 5 minutes. Put the vegetables on a plate and either lay the whole chicken on top or, what I prefer for ease-of-serving, cut apart the chicken and slice the breast pieces.

Easy-to-Make Lavash "Pizza"

When we were packing for the trip, my job was to go through the refrigerator and bring everything with us that would go bad if we left it home: arugula, apples, parsley, lemons, bacon, eggs, sausages, hot dogs, hamburger meat...all that went into the car.

Way in the back of the refrigerator I found a Ziploc bag of lavash I'd bought from an Armenian market, The Golden Farm, in Glendale three weeks ago. The good news about lavash is you can eat it freshly baked and weeks later, at least if you grill it.

Fresh lavash comes in a plastic bag, with 2-4 sheets inside. The sheets of lavash are huge: 4 feet by 3 feet. Grilled the way I'm talking about, 1 sheet will feed 4 people. Usually a package costs between $1.00-$2.30 in Middle Eastern Markets.

At those prices, lavash is a bargain.

Grilled lavash for appetizers:

Drizzle 2 tablespoons of olive oil onto a flat plate. Season with some sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. To prep the lavash for grilling, cut the sheet into 2" squares and dredge each piece through the seasoned olive oil on both sides. Stack them on top of each other.

Put the heat on "low", then use tongs to place the seasoned pieces of lavash on the grill. They'll cook quickly, maybe 20 seconds on each side. Cover them with a kitchen towel to keep them warm.

Toppings:

Even though I'm calling this "pizza," I haven't tried tomato paste on lavash. I think it wouldn't be good because the wet sauce would take away the crispiness, which is what's great about grilled lavash.

I've stayed with meats, cheeses, and sauteed vegetables.

Cheese:

Any cheese you can grate will work. I've been using cheddar.

Take 1 cup of freshly grated cheddar (white Australian or Irish cheddar is good). After the lavash has been grilled on both sides, sprinkle a little of the grated cheese on each square and bake in a 350 degree oven for 5 minutes. Finish with a light drizzle of olive oil and serve warm.

Meat:

Thinly sliced, grilled Italian sausage is good, with a sprinkling of finely chopped Italian parsley and/or green onions (the green and white part mixed together).

Freshly sliced prosciutto goes well on top of the grilled lavash.

Sautéed vegetables:

We used a sautéed, finely chopped mustard green with garlic and shallots. Delicious. Sautéed spinach, broccoli leaves, beet greens--any of those would be great too.

In fact, if you put all of these together on the lavash it would be delicious. The only thing to keep in mind--the grilled lavash are fragile, so don't overload it with too many toppings.

Try sautéed tomato slices.

Drizzle olive oil into a hot pan, season with chopped garlic, then gently sauté thin slices of ripe tomatoes. Using two flat, dinner knives, flip the tomato slice over after 1 minute, letting the other side cook for another minute.

What you put on the grilled lavash pieces is infinitely variable. It's worth trying just about everything and anything.