San Diego resident hosts Armenian cooking classes in Normal Heights

Por Cynthia Robertson | Reportero SDUN

Ani Lanuza arrives early morning at the St. John Garabed Armenian Church in Normal Heights. Balancing boxes of phyllo dough, walnuts, cheeses and other ingredients for her Armenian cooking, she opens the door and heads toward the cavernous kitchen in back of the sanctuary.

Before she gets busy making batches of baklava, she opens the door for a minute, looking up at the blue sky. She smells the fresh air and listens to the birds singing.

During my time with her, Lanuza recalled for a moment where she came from, grateful for the way her life has unfolded, giving her a chance to share her love of Armenian cooking and some of her own heritage.

Then she tells her story as she gets to work making her Heavenly Baklava.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, as a young girl Lanuza witnessed first hand the war breaking out when the British military pulled out of Israel in 1948. Seeking shelter from the bombing, her parents took refuge in the Armenian Monastery.

“Our lives evolved around the church and the church services, ongoing from sunrise to sunset,” she said.

The church gave her family a 500-square-foot room where the seven of them lived comfortably, she said. There was no electricity, just an oil lamp, nor running water either. They used a big tin can with a spout, with no indoor plumbing.

“Everything was makeshift. To this day my ex doesn’t understand why I never wanted to go camping with him. To me, vacation is a place where you go to get away from the harsh realities of life, not a place where you go to relive your childhood poverty,” Lanuza said.

When Lanuza and her five sisters were teenagers, their father moved his family to the United States in search of a better life. They settled in Watertown, Mass., with a community of other Armenians. She said there was an Armenian “mom-and-pop” grocery store on practically every street corner.

“Eventually, my father bought one of those mom-and-pop grocery stores where I helped out, and let’s say we ate most of the profits. Those Twinkies and Ring Dings with a real bottle of Coke were yummy,” she said, laughing.

After Lanuza married, she and her parents together bought a two-story house in Belmont, Mass. With her sisters living downstairs, Lanuza never needed a babysitter, and with her mother living in the house, neither did she need to learn how to cook.

Lanuza said she did not particularly like to cook, but she did like baking. She would try out new recipes and take her mistakes to work to share.

“Baklava was my biggest challenge. I would make it over and over until I got it right. My coworkers got spoiled,” she said. “Every so often they would say, ‘Hey Ani, you got any mistakes we can taste?’ For some reason, as my baking skills got better my coworkers began to like me even more.”

Her mother was a great cook and a passionate baker, Lanuza said.

“I would follow her around the kitchen, measuring, rolling, chopping and washing dishes. Whatever she needed me to do,” Lanuza said, joking that she was practically tied to her mother’s apron strings.

To Lanuza’s future dismay, she said she never jotted down any of her mother’s recipes, and when her mother passed away, Lanuza craved the taste of her Armenian cooking but realized that she had no clue how to continue the tradition.

She began to try her own hand with traditional Armenian dishes, making something over and over again – much like the baklava tests of the past – until she got it to taste just like she remembered.

“I’d feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. Now that I have perfected most of the traditional Armenian dishes to my liking, I want to pass it on to others,” Lanuza said.

About a year ago, Lanuza started holding Armenian cooking classes at the Normal Heights church, located at 4473 30th St., where she is a member. She said the response has been tremendous.

“The people who are interested in the classes are young to middle age men and women,” she said, adding that she has even had students as young as six years old who wanted to learn how to make “pull and twist” string cheese.

The cooking classes bring together the community to learn something, socialize and make new friends. Among the classes she offers is one called “Get Over Your Fear of Working with Phyllo Dough,” a culinary task that can be challenging, she said.

For twenty years now, Lanuza has done all the cooking and baking for her church’s festivals and bake sales. Now living near Seaport Village, Lanuza said she takes comfort in how far she has come, knowing that she is carrying on the tradition of Armenian cooking to the next generation.