Easter brings back many memories from my childhood in Beit Sahour; church memories of holy week services, family gatherings, good food and pastry baking.
I have mentioned before that families in Beit Sahour are very big. Whom you and I might consider extended family members or distant relatives , are part of the family in Beit Sahour, and they all gather and visit for holidays.
On Easter day, families gather at the house of the "head of the family", who is by definition the oldest guy in the paternal side of family. For example, our family gathered at my grandpa's house. And by our family, I mean my grandpa's brothers and their sons and families, my uncles with their kids and families, and other cousins. It used to be a total of about forty adults, and twenty kids. Imagine that!And all having Easter fun!
The week to follow Easter is also busy, since everyone in the family visits everyone else's house after Easter day gatherings. I always wondered why that was, and my grandma used to tell me that Easter blessings travel with people exchanging Easter greetings, and everyone wanted the Easter spirit to enter their houses.Hence, everyone visits everyone to say "Happy Easter" and declare "He is Risen".
At every house we visited during Easter, we were served colored eggs, candy, coffee for adults, juice for kids and mamoul.
What is mamoul?
It is a middle eastern pastry(pictured above), made from semolina flour and filled with dates or nuts such as walnuts, pecans or pistachios. In Beit Sahour, it is an Easter pastry only made for Easter, but other countries,and maybe even other parts of Palestine, it can be found all the time.
Some of my fondest memories of Easter in Beit Sahour involve baking mamoul pastries. It was not like baking Christmas cookies with your mom, but more like working in an assembly line at a bakery. My mother, her sisters, sisters-in-law, my grandmas, and girls in the family gather everyday during holy week at different houses to make mamoul pastries. We actually did two shifts, the morning before attending church, and in the evenings after coming back from church.
Every household had to make enough mamoul for the whole family, remember the family visitations? Yep, every house serves the same mamoul;same recipe and same people making it. (I always thought that was weird,why go visit aunt Mary just to get the mamoul we made with her two days ago? After all, we have the same mamoul at home.)And since mamoul was everywhere, or I should say the same mamoul was everywhere, we never ate much mamoul during Easter, rather, my mom would freeze a good portion for when it is not readily available, and we would have some mamoul to eat few months later. Aha, my mom is smart.Actually, many people did that.
The process of making mamoul is very involved, and when you are trying to feed an army, and you are making pounds of mamoul, it is almost impossible for one or two persons to finish the task.So women in the family gathered around a big table and formed an assembly line for the steps involved in making the mamoul. The hostess would have the dough and fillings ready for her helpers to start working on it when they come in. Then there would be few women tearing the dough into small balls, few would manage the filling stations, and the majority would do the decorations of mamoul.
Mamoul decoration in Beit Sahour is done by hand, using tiny tongs to mark ridges. I learned recently that there are molds for making the mamoul. Molds are used in Syria and Lebanon, and it would eliminate the need for a person to do the decoration. I asked my mom why we never used molds in our assembly line, and she simply looked at me like she can't believe what she was hearing. I guess a tradition is a tradition, and mamoul decorations need to be accomplished little by little with tiny tongs.
In the assembly line, I almost always held a position at the decorating station. I actually enjoyed it a lot, although my interest would start fading after the 7th time I held the tiny tongs in my hands.
Until today, I was always a helper, and never the mastermind. This year, I decided I wanted to make my own mamoul.Okay, I don't have an assembly line, and it is just me managing all the stations, but I am only using 1 lbs of semolina flour, about one twentieth or less of what my mom used to make.
I got the recipe from my mom, tuned in to my favorite radio station and enjoyed making my first mamoul batch independently. They turned out quite good, and I enjoyed the work. After all, it is only done once a year.
Tomorrow, I will post my mom's recipe for making mamoul and my experience making it.
Comments (10)
Candi, I really enjoyed reading this post about your memories and the traditions of your family. I had to chuckle about going from house to house to eat the same mamoul!
They look delicious and I'm curious to see the recipe. Are they fried or baked?
Posted by Annie | April 16, 2009 9:58 AM
Posted on April 16, 2009 09:58
Annie, I will be posting the recipe sometime today, but they are baked.
Posted by candi | April 16, 2009 12:25 PM
Posted on April 16, 2009 12:25
So great to read about your experiences growing up, it is fascinating and I love reading about the tight knit families in your little town.
Forgot to say in my other comment that I am extremely impressed with the beautiful decorations you made with those tiny little tools!
Posted by Chiocciola | April 16, 2009 7:43 PM
Posted on April 16, 2009 19:43
Hi Candi, Like Annie I also enjoyed reading about the traditions in your family. What a wonderful childhood memory to have. I had to giggle when you said that you held the same position in the assembly line for 7 years! :) I think it is cool that you decided to make your own mamoul. I'm back tracking your post and will now read about your the mamoul that you prepared.
Thanks so much for sharing your childhood stories and your family traditions.
Posted by Kathy (Trekcapri) | April 16, 2009 8:55 PM
Posted on April 16, 2009 20:55
Candi,
The mamoul pastries look delicious! Thank you for posting about them.
Posted by nancyhol | April 16, 2009 9:15 PM
Posted on April 16, 2009 21:15
How lucky to have this wonderful tradition for Easter. Yum!!!
Posted by girasoli | April 17, 2009 7:57 AM
Posted on April 17, 2009 07:57
These look delicious, Candi. So many great family memories centre on food and celebrations.
Assembly-line cooking can be so much fun, and such a good time for the women in the family (because let's face it; it's almost always the women!) to chat and catch up and just be together.
Posted by sandrac | April 17, 2009 8:17 AM
Posted on April 17, 2009 08:17
Chiocciola, people in Beit Sahour are very tight knit, I have some great memories of that.
Kathy, actually, I think I held the same position for all my life until this year. But when we were in Beit Sahour, we would end up setting up the assembly line about 10 times in one season, and normally by the seventh time, I am loosing interest and getting impatient:)
Nancy, thanks for reading about them.
girasoli, my favorite traditions are the ones associated with delicious food:)
Sandra, you are right. We used to chat and chit chat all day while we were working on the pastries, and no subject was off limit, I remember that.
Posted by candi | April 17, 2009 12:48 PM
Posted on April 17, 2009 12:48
The mamouls look very yummy. I'm curious to know if the final product is moist. My experience with semolina is that it produces a dry dough but the mamouls look deliciously moist.
Posted by María I. | April 18, 2009 12:40 PM
Posted on April 18, 2009 12:40
Yep, Maria, they are moist because of the oil.
Posted by candi | April 20, 2009 1:21 AM
Posted on April 20, 2009 01:21