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My mother Fortunae Yako Revy Dzhaldeti (1912-1981) was a humble and sensible woman. She was of medium height, with black hair, very agile and very laborious. She seemed very pretty to me and to my father, I guess, as he wanted to marry her so badly… She used to tell me off from time to time, she even slapped me because I wasn’t a very good child. I was pretty wild to be honest. My knees were always bruised. I used to fall all the time, or hit myself… I was playing together with the boys. As the Jewish School was in the lower parts of the town, and it was snowing, and there was a lot of snow at that time, mind you, I would put the bag on the ground, sit on it and slide down the hill. It was like a real slide. Mum would always warn me not to tear my clothes on that slide. One year the bag simply couldn’t take it any more. We used to also go on top of the Toundzha River because it was nearby and would invariably freeze in winter so we used to go there to slide. Mum was always telling me off, especially when she had got fidgets. She was very angry because she worked too much. Dad didn’t use to tell me off at all.
My mother was an excellent cook and from her I learned how to prepare very nice pastel. You sift half a kilo of flour with a packet of baking powder, a little salt and one egg. After that I make a little well in the middle of the flour heap. In it I pour half a cup of vegetable oil, even a bit more and half a cup of yogurt with half a spoonful of baking soda stirred in it. I knead soft dough. I separate it into two parts – one of them slightly bigger than the other, I knead it into a ball and with the bigger rolling pin or a bottle, if you don’t have a rolling pin, I roll out the dough to fit the baking dish. I use medium size baking dish. The bigger ball of dough I flat out and put on top – in that way I’m sure the filling will not drip out. I put the filling, roll out the other sheet of dough and put it on top. When I put the first sheet of dough in the baking dish I make some holes in it with a fork – so that the dough wouldn’t rise and the air wouldn’t go out.
My mother was an excellent cook and from her I learned how to prepare very nice pastel. You sift half a kilo of flour with a packet of baking powder, a little salt and one egg. After that I make a little well in the middle of the flour heap. In it I pour half a cup of vegetable oil, even a bit more and half a cup of yogurt with half a spoonful of baking soda stirred in it. I knead soft dough. I separate it into two parts – one of them slightly bigger than the other, I knead it into a ball and with the bigger rolling pin or a bottle, if you don’t have a rolling pin, I roll out the dough to fit the baking dish. I use medium size baking dish. The bigger ball of dough I flat out and put on top – in that way I’m sure the filling will not drip out. I put the filling, roll out the other sheet of dough and put it on top. When I put the first sheet of dough in the baking dish I make some holes in it with a fork – so that the dough wouldn’t rise and the air wouldn’t go out.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Berta Pando