Rolling Pyrohy Dough at 246 Montcalm

June 11, 2020

To say that food is on everyone’s mind would be an understatement. Trying to figure out how to get food, without coming into contact with COVID-19, is a real challenge. If we choose to refrain from entering a physical store, we must now wait in long, virtual lines to enter the websites of our favourite providers and hope, fingers crossed, that we can obtain a delivery time slot once our orders are placed. Some sites are no longer letting customers create new accounts while others can’t offer delivery for at least a week. Often, when long-awaited deliveries arrive, items are missing, unavailable given the lag between ordering and delivery. Everyone is overwhelmed, especially those on the frontlines doing the important work of ensuring we are fed. Some large retailers have increased wages, and here in Quebec these essential workers are now receiving a weekly hazard bonus of up to $100. The risks they face are real, made clear by their rates of infection.

Eating food is also a means through which we are trying to cope. Meal planning, which many of us rigorously adhere to in normal circumstances, is now lost to the anxiety of the moment. Meals that seemed like a good idea at breakfast are unappealing by the time dinner rolls around because we have stress-eaten our way through the day. During one of our daily provincial press conferences in the early weeks of this pandemic, reporters asked Quebec’s Public Health Director, Dr. Horacio Arruda, how citizens could cope with the mental and physical challenges of self-isolation. A man of humble beginnings with Portuguese roots, he turned to the camera and declared that we should learn new recipes that we otherwise would not have time to make. He himself planned to bake pastéis de nata, an intricate, time-consuming custard tart recipe that weekend. His comment put everyone at ease and within days, as he was catapulted to cult-like status (a position from which he has now fallen), Montreal sold out of one of the recipe’s main ingredients: eggs. Food has proven to be a soothing coping mechanism through these strange and worrying times.

On day nine of self-isolation, which now feels like years ago, I longed for comfort and sought to recreate my maternal Grandma Alice’s treasured cinnamon buns. I was certain I had the recipe and the yeast required, but as I tore through my kitchen, and ultimately realized I had neither, a folded, slightly tattered, yellowing newspaper article about my paternal great aunt Barbara’s Ukrainian recipes fell out of one of my cookbooks. My search came to a screeching halt as I sat down at my kitchen table reading through the piece and remembering the woman my family lost too soon.

Aunt Barb, my Chochi (short for Chiotka which means aunt in Polish), was my paternal grandmother’s, my Baba’s, whole world. The eldest of five, she was larger than life; a strong, dominant personality who was steady and surefooted in every conviction she made. When Baba moved out of her parent’s Sudbury home and married my grandfather, my Gigi, a man who had just arrived from Warsaw, Poland, they moved in with my aunt and her husband Tony. Together, they pooled their resources and purchased a house in 1953, just around the corner from their parents, on Adie Street, where they lived with boarders who filled every empty nook and cranny of that brown brick, two-story dwelling. According to Baba, making this purchase together was the only way to get ahead, to meet the mortgage payments and to insulate themselves against future strikes and layoffs at the International Nickel Company, where both my uncle and grandfather worked. They weren’t going to lose their shirt, so to speak, like their father had during the Depression.

Three years later, when my dad was born, an opportunity to purchase a nine-unit apartment block, up the hill at 246 Montcalm, came up. Although everyone knew this move would mean more sacrifices, they borrowed money from the bank and forged ahead. The couples lived together in Apartment No. 3 for the next six years with my dad, his little brother, and a couple of boarders, before moving upstairs to Apartment No. 7. It was cramped and the situation was not without its challenges, but when the 1958 strike started, and my uncle and grandfather lost their weekly pay cheques, they were not at risk of losing the roof over their heads.

Although my Chochi and Uncle Tony were unable to have children of their own, they were like second parents to my dad and his brother, giving my Baba and her husband much-needed breaks from parenting. Baba still says: “The boys were hers as much as they were mine. We raised them together.” Aunt Barb and Uncle Tony especially enjoyed taking the boys hunting, fishing, and camping. It takes a village.

By the time I came along in 1978, the apartment building had developed into a small community, which welcomed me with open arms. A handful of tenants stayed for nearly twenty years, forming a family of sorts. I suspect that the sound of tiny running feet and high pitched squeals breathed new light into the building as I ran through the halls between Baba’s, Chochi’s, and now my parent’s apartment, No. 9, which was right across the hall from my aunt’s place. I remember greeting the single bachelor who lived in the basement apartment as Baba and I made our way to the deep freeze for tiny chocolate chip cookies; how we would visit with Mrs. Trahan and her canaries across the hall; and the smell of the purple lilacs that lined the property in spring. I also remember the labour that went into maintaining that building. The constant and unrelenting sweeping, washing, and polishing of its shiny, dark, creaky hardwood floors; the cleaning of its sixty-five windows and the storm windows that had to be put up and taken down twice a year; and the painting of its apartments as they changed hands between renters.

Not to mention the regular, all-hours maintenance that went into this kind of business, shared between my dad and his father, uncle, and brother. When my aunt and uncle were killed in a head-on collision on their way to Arizona, where they spent their winters, in February 1985, our lives as we knew them changed forever, and the apartment block was put on the market and promptly sold. I remember running around the funeral home, which was filled to capacity. The two closed coffins. And Baba, standing stoically beside them. Thirty-two years of living together suddenly over in the blink of an eye. The tragedy still haunts us. It took years for my family to move forward. Some members never did. There were many losses in our varied attempts to heal. I still feel numb when I think about my Chochi, robbed of the future we were supposed to build together. My family lost a big part of what its story should have been on the highway that terrible day, and thinking about this remains painful.

When that article featuring my aunt fell out of the cookbook, I was immediately drawn back to her kitchen where the photograph was taken. To the hours I spent standing on a chair, pulled up to the counter, learning to crack eggs and roll pyrohy dough while game shows and soap operas played on the small black-and-white TV in the distance. To the hours I spent sitting on her lap, brushing against her polyester outfits while I watched her and my uncle play cards with dear family friends. To the hours I spent absorbing all of the light and love she showered on me.

When my three-year-old daughter woke up from her nap that day, I showed her the picture and introduced her to Chochi, telling her about how special this woman was to me and how memories of her live on in the beautiful patterned sweaters she knit for me, which I have since passed on to my daughter. She has always delighted in wearing them. A few days later, we sat at our table and rolled out my aunt’s pyrohy dough, deeply connecting to her once more, in this difficult and confusing time, through food. These memories, edible and otherwise, will continue to sustain me, and push me forward, as I face the losses that are sure to result from this moment.

Adapted from “Some Tasty Cabbage Rolls from Ukrainian Kitchen,” Sudbury Star, May 27, 1977.

Dough
3 cups flour
1 egg beaten
1 tsp oil
7/8 cup lukewarm water
Salt to taste

Filling
6-8 potatoes
⅓ lb mild grated cheddar Canadian cheese (I used a mix of Nafsika and Daiya vegan cheddar cheese)
2 onions (optional; I don’t add these)
¼ lb butter (I use vegan margarine/butter)
Salt to taste

Filling—If you choose to add onions to the filling, fry onions until brown and set aside. Boil potatoes until cooked. Drain. Add grated cheese, salt, and 1 tablespoon of the fried onions. Cover and let stand until cheese melts. Mash potatoes and cheese well.

Dough—Mix together egg, oil, salt, and water. Add to flour and knead until it becomes like pie dough. Add more flour if necessary. Let stand a couple of hours covered (I put mine in a plastic Ziploc, as per Baba’s instructions). Roll out to about 1/8 inch thickness. Cut with the rim of a glass or in squares. Put a heaping teaspoon of filling in each and seal. Be careful not to let dough dry out (Cut out only as many circles/squares as you can fill and place rest of dough in Ziploc until ready to roll and fill). If there are challenges sealing, use a bit of water to help.

Eating—Boil a few pyrohy at a time until they float and then about three minutes more. Lift out of water and garnish with some onions and butter. Flip a few times so they don’t stick.

*I only boil them until they float, then I fry them with some vegan margarine until they are crispy. We mix them with bacon and eat with a mix of vegan sour cream and salsa. My daughter eats them with ketchup but, come to think of it, she eats everything with ketchup.

Yield: 45 Pyrohy