High Dining

I tried to get some homework done yesterday, but it just wasn’t to be.

My grandma was over, and holding her newest treasure, straight from Michigan. A DVD called Hye Dining. This is funny because “Hye” (pronounced high) means Armenian. They were waiting for me to come home because neither my mom or grandma can work the DVD player.

I was expecting the worst, but I was very impressed. The thing about small ethnic populations like mine, is that the church is much more the cultural center than it has any right to be. And let’s just say that churches in general are not known for technology. And as a fundraiser for a church, you can’t expect much. But, I’ve seen much worse. It’s definitely PBS quality. If the whole thing wasn’t produced by some lame wedding videographer with a broken website, they could sell tons to the community, when word got out.

So, I popped the DVD into the player and we all sat transfixed. Even my dad got into it. As with most traditional cuisine from any country, most of the stuff is a lot of work. And the only way to really learn was to watch your grandmother/ great grandmother/ crazy lady down the street etc. And you always hear stories about a handful of this and some of that, women who don’t really know how to explain what they’re doing. They just do what has been done for centuries… This was totally not the case. These ladies knew what they were doing, cleanly measured things, and most surprisingly, actually knew why they were doing what they were doing. The librarian in me loves that these recipes are preserved, organized and presented. Currently we’re using some ratty old book made in the late 1940s that keeps threatening to fall apart. One day I should find some initiative and photocopy the whole thing.

The DVD was inspiring. Some of the stuff wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought. And some of it looked much harder, and well worth the price to buy it made. I just about started to make my favorite cookies (ingredients: butter, sugar, flour) when I was warned by the nice lady in my TV that they’ll crumble if you make them when it’s hot and humid. And she even showed us a simpler way to shape them, for lazy people like me.

But my next project will definitely be Kadayif which is impossible to explain, but it tastes like heaven. And, apparently it’s super easy to make. Anyone want an adventure in Armenian Cooking?