Welcome back to Delicious Horror: Silk & Sinew edition! Today, we’re chatting with Robert Nazar Arjoyan!

Also, remember you can pre-order Silk & Sinew with a signed bookplate!

Let’s learn more about the author and the story.

Robert Nazar Arjoyan was born into the Armenian diaspora of Los Angeles. Aside from an arguably ill-advised foray into rock n roll bandery during his late teens, literature and movies were the vying forces of his life. Naz graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and now works as an author and filmmaker. When he isn’t writing, Naz is likely couchbound with a good book, jamming with his fantastic son, gutbust laughing with his wife/best friend, or farting around in the garden with his purple clippers. You can read his stories in Maudlin House, Bullshit Lit, Ghoulish Tales, Cleaver Magazine, Hobart, Roi Fainéant, Apocalypse Confidential, JMWW, The Deadlands, Gone Lawn, The Hooghly Review, and River Styx, with more besides and on the way. Find him at www.arjoyan.com and on socials @RobertArjoyan

Title of story in Silk and Sinew:

“New Ancestors”

Tell us briefly about your story and/or the inspiration behind it:

“New Ancestors” is about half-Armenian twins visiting the motherland for the first time and getting embroiled with a very desperate group of pagans willing to try anything for Armenia’s long overlooked agency. 

What did you decide to make to pair with the story, and what from the story inspired your delicious food or drink?

I am by no means a gourmet or a cook, so I asked my friend and fellow writer Taleen Voskuni what I could try. She rightly suggested soorj. Soorj is Armenian coffee, but is commonly known as Turkish coffee. This small appropriation was a perfect parallel to the central gripe of my story’s angry pagans — that so much of Armenian history, invention, craft, has become — and is still becoming — othered, whether by Turkish or Azeri manipulation. Of course, coffee itself came to Armenia from Ethiopia way back when, and acknowledging this is important. Armenians made it their own by grinding the beans to so much fine powder and boiling it in a coffee pot called a jezve. If you Google jezve, it will be described as a Turkish coffee pot, while the picture features a jezve with ARMENIA etched on its surface. Go figure! Armenian coffee first came to Europe in the 1600s, during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, and so like many exports out of empires, it quickly became known as Turkish coffee due to its bordered origin, and not its cultural roots. Soorj is a perfect encapsulation of my story, and truly, the theft of Armenia’s contributions to the world.

Can you share the recipe or a link to the recipe?

My grandma taught me how to make soorj when I was about 10 years old. She (and I today) bought the coffee ground from her local Armenian market. I realize not everyone will have access to a local Armenian market, so please find a link here to Kavat Coffee, Serj Tankian’s coffee company specializing in soorj. The number of people drinking dictates how much water and coffee is needed. So if I’m making soorj for me and my wife, I’ll fill two soorj cups (also available from Kavat) with water and pour them into the jezve. Then, I’ll get two liberal scoops of the ground coffee and plunk them into the jezve. Mix the concoction with a long spoon and then set it atop the stove, medium flame. Then you just watch it. Soon, it’ll boil and bubble, hissing upwards to the rim of the jezve. You lift it off the flame just before it spills, blow the steam, and you got yourself some delicious Armenian coffee. Normally, I don’t add sugar, but if you like sugar in your coffee, add your desired amount before setting the jezve on the stove.