Bulgur, a Staple of Middle Eastern Food, is Actually a "Processed" Wheat Product. That Process of Water, Sun and Stone-Grinding Unchanged Since Pre-historic Times.
Bulgur is one of the building blocks of cuisines throughout the Middle East, although it it most popular in Turkey - where it most probably originated - and among Armenian communities the world over.
The small golden kernels of cracked wheat fill the same niche that cereals fill the world over. Easy to carry, easy to store, nutritious, and with an almost indefinite shelf life, bulgur is made by a process that dates back to pre-history.
While bulgur is readily available today in nearly any health food store, Middle Eastern market, or even well-stored supermarket, my dad remembers how the community he grew up in would make it each year, as the wheat was harvested.
In my father's memory, the wheat harvest and the subsequent bulgur-making was a deeply important activity. His family had been caught up in the Armenian Genocide of the early 1900s and, while both his mother and father - and much of their respective families - had eventually found safe refuge in an encampment that American missionaries had set up near Athens, with the cooperation of the Greek government. What began as a refugee camp evolved into a permanent Armenian community on the Greek seacoast. It was there my father was born and lived until World Ward II, when they emigrated to America. In the years between the two world wars, life in that bit of transplanted Anatolia continued much as it had for thousands of years in their ancient Turkish homeland.
"The first thing that would happen is that everyone would bring their wheat in from the fields and put it on big sheets," he explained. "Then - on a windy day...it had to be windy...the men would take up the corners of the sheets and sort of toss it all up into the wind. The wind would blow the chaff part f the wheat away and the wheat berries would fall back into the sheets."
The cracked wheat would then be boiled in big copper pots, until it was a kind of mush, or abour, in Armenian.
"That mush was very delicious to eat, with a little sugar and some milk," he remembered. "That was when it was in my favorite state."
But the process was not yet completed. The cooked mush was spread out again on those big white sheets and left to dry and get hard in the sun. After that, the sheets were gathered in and the hardened wheat mush was taken to the miller for rough grinding - or "cracking."
"It would all go together, and afterward, each family would get back the same share they had out in," he noted.
The "cracked" wheat was then recognizable as bulgur and stored in either burlap sacks or pottery jars to be used in various Pilafs and abours or cold salads, like Tabbouleh throughout the year.
"What we get today tastes only a little bit like what we used to make," he said wistfully.
