Cooking in the Absence of an Armenian Women's Guild

The day I decided to devote myself completely to the filo, to accept its fragility, and submit myself to working for it—and not necessarily with it—I could hear their voices. I covered the delicate dough with a damp cloth, and listened to them talk. I melted and clarified the butter, and cooked the spinach filling. I methodically folded each sheet into a little triangle, the same way you would fold a flag, and overheard a bit of gossip. I brushed the triangles with more butter, sprinkled black sesame seeds on top, and caught echoes of their laughter in the room just as my filo turned to a golden brown crisp. 

Pictured above, community members of St. John Armenian Church in Southfield, Michigan, cooking together in pre-pandemic times.

I needed to hear voices, or at least tell myself that I could, because making this food alone, and then having to eat it alone, goes against cultural instinct. So during my shift at the imagined filo factory I created in my kitchen, I remembered the sounds that would normally accompany this type of cooking in a pre-pandemic world.

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