Nanna's recipe for Piragi...

Marija, my mother's mother, was known in Sydney Latvian circles for the remarkable quality of her piragi. I have tried this recipe and what I made was terrible. But it's all we have, besides pictures.

I know that one secret (besides about 65 years practice) was that she always used the best ingredients. The best bakers flour, real yeast, high quality bacon. Anyone who tried to help by donating ingredients probably never found out that their second-rate bacon went straight to the dogs.

Piragi, some other type of bun, and Lativan Easter eggs.

About Latvian Easter Eggs:

These are another favourite Nanna thing. They are boiled eggs with beautiful designs white-on-brown, like tie-die, or ray-o-grams where onions are the light.

To make one, go into the garden and pick things with small detailed leaves and flowers, not too hard or stiff. herbs are good. Then sit around the kitchen table with your grandmother and assorted cousins, needle and thread and old stockings/ pantyhose, or if this is impossible, soft permeable cloth or netting. Wrap the leaves around the egg, and sew it into a case of stocking. Don't make the case too thick, or you'll just get the pattern of that. Or nothing. Then lower your egg gently into the brew... a big saucepan filled with onion shells (the crispy outside bit), and i think a bit of salt and vinegar, or one or the other, I forget. (For fixing). Simmer them for some time, maybe 10 minutes. They should be very hard boiled. Then the really cool bit. Take them out and snip the cases off... See what worked. Sometimes purple flowers leave purple flower prints, etc. And it's all exciting, like the first time you process b/w film in a cannister. Polish them with a soft cloth.

The final destination of the eggs is in a competition usually between children and uncles, one holds their egg still, wrapped in the hand, the other hits hers/his down, point to point. The winner smashes, the loser's egg is smashed. It goes on and on, in the search of the champion egg. It's all about curves. And smashing.

Marija Cipens, Marija Graudins, Marija Vilmanis.

Piragi

Ingredients

Plain mild bread dough

4 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
60 gr. Butter
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup milk (300ml)
1 egg

30 gr. compressed yeast
1 tblspn sugar
few spoons warm water

Filling

1/2 kg bacon, chopped fine
1 onion, chopped very fine
Pepper

+beaten egg for glazing

Method

Put yeast mixture in a cup (follow the instructions, wait till it froths).

Melt butter in a saucepan, add milk, oil, salt and egg.

Put flour in a bowl.

Warm milk to body temperature. Pour warm milk and butter mixture onto flour, add yeast mixture.

Knead by hand (or beat with wooden spoon). Sprinkle with flour, cover with a tea towel, leave in a warm place to rise. (Put rising bowl in sink with warm water.)

When double, put the dough on a floured pastry sheet. Cut walnut sized pieces, flatten with fingers, put 1 tablespoon of bacon mix in the centre, press edges together.

Put on a greased baking tray, the seam side down. Leave to rise.

Prick twice with a fork. Glaze with egg. Bake in a 200 deg C oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

And Beetroot. Knowing I really like beetroot, my grandmother and my uncle Richard made sure to grow it in the the garden, so I would have to visit. Then we took produce-portraits. There are a lot of produce portraits in the history of Windsor.

Mini-History of Windsor:

Marija Graudins, with her three small children, Richard, Imants and Austra, escaped Latvia and arrest by Russians, across Poland, to Germany in around June 1944.(Eduards Graudins, my grandfather, who was in the Lativan Army, died (shot by German Army, long variable story) at some point. Not sure exactly when. Marija and co were in a refugee camp in Germany - Lubeck and somewhere else, until they migrated to Aus in 1950, where they were in Greta refugee camp near Newcastle, until Nov 1951 (ish), then they moved to a property in Windsor, with Janis Cipens, whom Marija married at some point (they were busy), on the Northern Road, built a house, had a fabulous garden. Janis died in 1975ish, Marija in 1999, Richard in 2001. Austra and Imants had moved out when they were teenagers and went to Uni in Sydney. It's a very nice family altogether, with a lot of good stories. The house is still there, Imants kind of looks after the garden, but of course it's not the same.