- Kate Leahy

November 8, 2017

I'm writing this from the JFK Airport while waiting to board a flight to Moscow. The trip is not about Russia, though the country has had an impact on where I'm going. And that's Armenia. (Flights: SFO > JFK > MOSCOW > YEREVAN -- yeah, it's a journey as they say.)

John Lee, the photographer for the Burma Superstar cookbook, Ara Zada, an Armenian-American chef from Los Angeles, and I are working on a new cookbook about lavash and the dishes you eat with this endlessly versatile flatbread. Lavash is so important to Armenia that Unesco recognized it as a key component of the country's heritage. Lavash (the book) will come out Fall 2019 with Chronicle Books.

To truly understand lavash, we're heading to the source, Armenia. We also will delve a little deeper to the food and wine traditions of this corner of the Caucasus, a part of the world that has been a crossroads between the East and West for thousands of years.

I'll be writing more about the backstory of how we came to write this book and how we're planning to complete it. But for now, I'll leave it at this : at its core, lavash is a celebration of a simple bread eaten with simple food, which in itself is a true reflection of this resilient, beautiful country. For more, follow along on our trip on instagram @lavashthebook.