Here are some pics to use along with the recipes so you can see what each stage looks like. Click at right for the recipes.
Armenian Itch
Fine grain bulgur wheat:
After you stir in the wheat, you cover the pot off the heat and the wheat soaks up the delicious liquid.
After it sits for a while, it turns into a thick paste, like this:
People scoop up bites with fresh lettuce, cabbage or grape leaves. The leaves pictured below Ali plucked right off a concord grape vine in his back yard.
Baklava
She takes two sheets at a time of phyllo dough. Butters the top layer, and then adds another two pieces on top of that, then butters again. Then she lays down the nut filling in a row.
Butter the top of each roll before slicing into bite-sized pieces.
Here is the rose water that she adds to her simple syrup, which she pours over the baklava right when it comes out of the oven. It sizzles and the baklava sucks up all the sweet syrup. It's awesome. For some reason that sizzle is so satisfying!
Burek
Her cheese filling is a mixture of garden parsley, crumbled feta, and shredded Muenster.
Again, she uses two sheets at a time (right on top of each other). Then she cuts it into long rectangles.
She just butters the edges because when the cheese melts it adds fat then, too.
Put filling in the bottom, fold the phyllo over to make a triangle shape, and then fold the triangle shape like flag over and over up the rectangle until you can't fold any more.
Butter the tops and sprinkle sesame seeds on.
What a lovely day! Thank you Maggie and Ali!
This is Ali playing the oud, an ancestor of the guitar. He played an arabic song form called a samai that was in mostly 10/8 time. New to my ears! Lovely, Ali!
