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Paklava BY SCOTT BRADSHAW
IRENE OF THE NORTH
Scott Bradshaw is the owner of SevenRavensBakeHouse.com, an entertaining blog which strives to get people to look at food and recipes in a twisted way…as twisted as an old phone cord. Scott grew up in Texas, and has lived in Arizona, Nevada, and Missouri. He makes Plainville, MA, his home these days with his saintly husband and a bossy little Pomeranian. sevenravensbakehouse.com tiktok.com/@goosecaboose70
“I had spread the rumor for weeks that I’d hired a stripper for Joe’s birthday party, so when the stripper music started, all eyes turned to the stairs where I made my entrance wearing a bikini…over a full gorilla suit.” Meet my friend Irene, who grew up the daughter of Armenian immigrants in the mob-run Federal Hill area of Providence, RI. Nobody tells better stories than Irene, who belts out laughter for emphasis and weaves in Armenian words as punctuation. In my opinion, Irene is the salt of the earth and would give anyone the shirt off her back if they needed it. She is world-famous for her food, especially her paklava, which she learned to make from her grandmother, “Nicki” Yeranik. Her family immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s during
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the Armenian genocide of World War I, settling in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I jumped at the chance to learn how to make paklava when Irene offered. Irene’s grandmother made the paklava “lasagna” style, while her mother started making it “cigar style” by rolling it up. Irene started the tradition of putting it into cupcake liners to help contain the sticky syrup when serving. Irene still remembers Yeranik’s rules for paklava: Bring it out of the oven when it just begins to blush and use cooled syrup on cooled paklava or else it turns to mush. I broke both rules, much to what would have been Yeranik’s disapproval. I put cooled syrup on straight-from-the-oven paklava because I liked hearing it sizzle and I browned mine quite a bit. I also added apples and Fireball whisky. I wonder if Yeranik would approve. I know Irene does!
