Baked with love
Baking festive pastries at home for the post-Ramadan Eid Al-Fitr feast is an age-old tradition. Lina Mahmoud rolls up her sleeves and digs in
Early in the morning in a small apartment in a dilapidated building in the Al-Waraa' district of Giza, a very special event took place this week. Women of different ages gathered around Hanim to bake the festive pastries, kahk, which will be consumed in copious amounts on Eid Al-Fitr, the feast day following the fasting month of Ramadan.
Hanim wakes at 6am, mixes the dough and leaves it to rise. At around 10am she is ready to call on the help of her daughters Wafaa and Ola, and her daughters-in- law Hind and Wahiba. They gather around a tabliya (a low, round, wooden table) and start shaping the kahk. The work is accompanied by much laughter and talk, except from Wafaa, a student in her early 20s who seems thoroughly absorbed in the job of shaping the pastry. The women are interrupted more than once by the crying of Ibrahim, Ola's baby. Undeterred, however, the mother breast-feeds the child with one hand and continues to shape the kahk with the other. Wahiba also leaves to wake up her five-year-old daughter and four-year-old son who do not want to miss the party. "They love shaping kahk. They're very good at it," Wahiba says merrily. After greasing the baking-tins, the kahk cookies are carefully placed in the forms one by one, after which they are usually left to rise for two hours. "But today we're in a hurry so we'll bake them immediately," announces Hanim.
Now the scene moves to a small yard beside the neighbours' apartment. The tins of kahk, the tabliya and the dough are all taken into the yard in which stands an old clay oven. Hanim hurries to her neighbours' place to prepare the oven and throw on some gilla , or cow pats, the organic fuel used for firing the oven. Hanim takes up her position on the ground, facing the oven, a space she will occupy for more than three hours, stoking the oven, watching the coveted pastries bake, emptying the tins and refilling them with the help of her daughters, daughters-in-law and neighbours.
Fatemah and Sharbat are just two of the many neighbours who gather to watch Hanim bake the kahk. "Why is the kahk yellow? It should be white," they comment. "The pastry didn't rise, you should have left it for a while longer," they chip in. And finally, "which kind of butter did you use?" Hanim replies firmly that, "this is the way we do it and it always tastes great." Hanim is one of the few women who still bakes her kahk in a clay oven. "Some families use a gas oven nowadays, but I prefer this one. The taste is more authentic," she said.
A similar event is also taking place this week in a more rural setting, in Menoufiya. Eight women, all related and living in the same building, will meet each day during the last two weeks of Ramadan to prepare eight batches of festive pastries, one for each woman. In addition to kahk, the festive selection will include ghorayeba (butter cookies), biscuits and ara'iysh -- cookies stuffed with dates. The eight women, of different ages, have donned head coverings for the occasion, "to prevent our hair from falling into the mixture", explained Hamdya, a young woman in her late 20s.
The work here is organised differently. Everyone is sitting around a huge table while Hanaa and Mahasen shape the kahk. Taghrid, Nadya and Fatemah decorate the cookies using small round steel cutters and Warda and Kamla sit on the other side of the table preparing the baking tins. The group is joined by three children, who are eager to get in on the act of shaping and decorating the dough. After much bickering and haranguing, the mothers finally give in and the eager children are given the plastic and steel cutters. Amal, the matriarch of the group, is already positioned at the big clay oven, preparing it to receive the tins of pastries.
Despite the proliferation of ready-made kahk, many families still prefer to continue the age-old tradition and bake the festive pastries at home. One of the main reasons for this is the cost. "I bought all the ingredients for LE75, and I can bake enough cookies for myself, as well as the families of my children. If I bought the kahk from a patisserie, it would cost me a fortune," explained Hanim.
Another reason for not giving in to the temptation of purchasing the pastries is the tradition factor. The annual kahk bake-in is an event eagerly awaited by women and children alike. Laila laments the fact that she stopped making kahk at home a couple of years ago. "I've been making kahk at home for the last 20 years, but now I'm older and busier," said the 46-year-old banker. "My mother used to make huge amounts of kahk and we had servants who carried the baking tins to the local bakery to have them baked in their ovens. I'd fight with my sisters and brothers to go with the maid to the bakery and stay the whole night."
And like Laila, people all over the country await the dawn of the feast day for that first bite into the succulent, buttery pastry -- whether home-made or bought -- which has been baked with such care.
C a p t i o n : Eating cookies just out of the oven; decorating cookies to die for
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 20 - 26 November 2003 (Issue No. 665)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/665/li1.htm