Albanian pies are made of crisp, thin layers of pastry and fillings of all sorts…Onion and tomato, spinach, chicken, yogurt… Pumpkin (yack) …
It takes time, effort and space to make one. Especially when you have a big family and grandma likes to make her own pastry. And she makes enough pie to feed the neighbourhood…
Today I get to help, together with granddad, mum and Annie. They don’t seem as excited as me. I love it when grandma makes pies, especially when she makes the pastry. All the furniture on the first floor gets all wrapped in cellophane and then with some white thin sheets over which Annie pours flour until it looks like it’s snowed inside. A little winter wonderland…
Once grandma has made enough pastry dough, and my obsessive compulsive granddad is reassured that we have washed our hands over and over again the right way, with that skin-peeling, white, brick-like Duru soap; we all take bits of the sticky, soft dough and roll it into our hands until it becomes a bun, the size and shape of a tennis ball. We make lots of them. Thousands even. Then grandma shows me how to open the buns into big, round, thin pastry sheets. I try, but while I’m making my first attempt my mother has finished opening her third.
Annie laughs. Meanwhile, grandma spreads all these perfect pastry sheets all over the furniture so they can dry. At this point no one else is allowed to touch them. They’re so thin, they can break.
I manage to touch one a little bit. It’s soft, and smooth, and pretty.
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