Slovenian Dinner Week 29: Ričet, A Tasty Barley-Bean Soup

Menu 
Ričet (Slovenian Barley Soup)
Red Cabbage and Beet Slaw
Green Salad with Feta and Croutons


By Week 29 of my ethnic cooking project,  I had made and enjoyed most of the classic Slovenian soups.  All except for one.  Ričet. (Reach-ett.) Slovenian barley-bean soup.

From what I read, ričet is considered a humble dish, but it is still a favorite in Slovenia today.  It is something like minestrone, with a fair amount of latitude with the ingredients.

But I balked.  It was all because of the barley.  I had never cooked with it.  I had unfortunate memories of a canned barley soup from my childhood, called (I think) Campbell's Scotch Broth.  Those pale, soft, slimy globules of barley made me feel squeamish. And I hadn't actually seen a soup called ričet in my trio of Slovenian American cookbooks.  So maybe I was off the hook.

But then I spotted a  recipe for "Barley Soup Dinner" in The American Slovene Club's Our Favorite Recipes.  No doubt about it.  It was ričet.  So I gave in.

I used that recipe as a foundation.   I did add a few additional touches, like parsley root (another new ingredient for me) from the ričet recipe in the 1988 Yugoslav Cookbook.  

I was not optimistic.

1/2 c. pearled barley
1 c. Roman (borlotti) beans
water to cover barley and beans
1 lb. smoked pork chop, cut in pieces (or use another smoked meat or sausage)
2 c. carrots, sliced
1 c. celery, sliced
1 onion, chopped
4 small parsley roots, with leaves, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 c. fresh tomatoes, chopped
fresh parsley, minced, to taste
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste


First, prepare the barley and beans together.  If you plan ahead, you can soak them overnight.  I used the quick soak method:  Rinse and drain the uncooked barley and beans.   Place them in a large pot or Dutch oven.  Add water to cover, bring to a boil, then cover and let sit for 1 hour.  Then drain again, cover in fresh water, and simmer for 1 hour.  This time, do not drain.

Next, add the remaining ingredients to the pot of barley and beans. Simmer for 1 more hour or so.  Adjust the seasonings.  Garnish with parsley and serve.

The verdict:  Mild but flavorful. Easy to prepare.  And the barley wasn't slimy at all.   It tasted very much like a white bean with bacon soup I had enjoyed in the past.  Nothing like the Campbell's variety.

So I mentioned it to my mother, figuring she would be surprised.

"So Mom, I made this Slovenian barley soup.  I thought it would be slimy.  But it was pretty good. Grandma never cooked with barley, did she?"

"Sure."  Then a pause.

"But her barley was NEVER slimy."

____
Here is an amazing 1950s commercial for Campbell's Scotch Broth, my barley turn-off from childhood!

Slovenian DInner Week 18: Meat Pita and the Politics of Burek

Menu

Meat Pita

Ajvar

Red Cabbage Slaw

Broccoli

It was a happy surprise to come across a dish called Meat Pita, or meat pie, in the American Slovene Club's cookbook Our Favorite Recipes.

This was no American-style beef pot pie.  The foundation was a plain dough, stretched until it was tissue thin,  then layered and buttered.   In other words, homemade phyllo, encasing a savory filling.

This sure sounded like burek, or something close to it. It reminded me of a Serbian dish, cheese gibanica or pita, I'd made the previous December.

In recent times, burek has become a popular street food in Slovenia.  But the dish is usually associated with Balkan communities to the south and east, lands that were once part of the Ottoman Empire.  So I was a little surprised to find it in a Slovenian American cookbook from the 1950s.

In the previous week, I'd had a hankering for burek, maybe because I'd been working on my article for Kosovo 2.0.  But I wasn't sure it qualified as sufficiently Slovenian for my cooking project.

Recently, scholars in Slovenia seem to have been grappling with a similar question.

Some Slovenian academics have argued that "authentic" Slovenian cookbooks shouldn't include burek recipes.  Others point to traditional Slovenian foods, like strudel and gibanica, that also use a paper-thin stretched dough.  So why should burek be considered an "outsider" food, as though there is something inherently un-Slovenian about it?

In some Slovenian circles, the burek has become part of an ugly ethnic stereotype of  "undesirable" immigrant populations from Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania.   One scholar has has even coined a new term for this narrow attitude: Burekalism, modeled on Edward Said's notion of Orientalism.  It refers to an insular Slovenian view of the alien Balkan Other, who comes from the more "primitive" lands to the south and east.

Is this a serious argument, or is it tongue-in-cheek?  I'm not entirely sure.

But I'm not trying to be a food purist.  Politics aside, it seems clear that a burek-like dish was already known to Slovenian American home cooks in the early 1950s.  So that's enough for me!

1 lb. ground meat  (I used half pork and half beef, rather than the original pork/veal mix)
1 large onion, chopped
4 T. fresh parsley, chopped (I increased the amount)
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg, beaten with
3 T. Greek yogurt (my choice) or sour cream

1 package commercially made phyllo dough (my shortcut)
2 T. melted butter
2 T. olive oil


For filling: Brown onion in oil.  Add ground meat and parsley.  Brown, stir and chop to avoid clumping. Cook until browned.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Remove from heat. Add egg and yogurt, beaten together. Cook briefly on heat until egg is cooked.  Cool.

For dough:  Buy a package of commercially prepared phyllo dough and follow package directions to defrost, if frozen.

Or, if you are feeling adventurous (I wasn't!) make your own dough:  Mix 2 c. flour, 1/2 t. salt, 2 T. oil, and  4 T. warm water.  Make dough, knead, let  rest 15 minutes.  Roll out on floured cloth, then brush with butter and "stretch slowly until tissue thin."

To assemble:  Oil a round pan or rectangular pan.  One by one, layer 4 sheets of phyllo, brushing each one with some of the butter/oil mixture.  Arrange layers as in photo below, so sheets are evenly arranged with edges draped over edge of dish.  Add filling.  Add 4 more layers, brushing each with butter/oil mixture and arranging as before.  Tuck in edges.  Brush top layer with butter/oil.

Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour, or until firm and top is browned.

The verdict:  Delicious, no matter where it came from!

Slovenian Dinner Week 15: Zlikrofi, a Wonton by Any Other Name

As a special treat, my mother used to make a tasty dish she called wonton dumplings. They were large, meat-filled triangles made of noodle dough, boiled and then served in soup or topped with browned bread crumbs.  Sometimes she called them kreplach, like our Jewish friends.

But she never suggested they were Slovenian.  I wasn't sure she even knew what I had just discovered:  Filled, boiled dumplings are considered a Slovenian specialty, highly touted on all the tourist websites.

"So Mom," I asked her, "did Grandma ever make something like wontons?  Called, maybe, zlin-krow-fee?"

I hesitated over the pronunciation, since I'd seen a few different variants of the Slovenian name in my cookbooks: zlinkrofi, zlikrofi, zinkrofi.

But my mother didn't hesitate at all.

"Oh, sure.  Only we called them zhleee'-kro-feh."

Amazing.  Not only did she know all about them, but she had come up with the proper Slovenian pronunciation, right down to that tricky little ž!

Now I was determined to make them, whatever they were called.

Both spellings, žlikrofi and žlinkrofi, are used in Slovenia.  The Professor, my translator-linguist friend in Ljubljana, tells me the proper way is the first one, without the "n" in the middle.   According to him, it is probably derived from a German term that means "slippery dumpling."

In Slovenia, you can find zlikrofi in many fanciful shapes that are filled with meat, potato, cottage cheese, millet, and even dried fruit.  The most famous seems to be the potato/bacon version made in Idrija, with the name and the recipe protected by law.  It also seems to be the fashion, at least in these English language translations, to describe žlikrofi as ravioli or pasta.

But my vintage Slovenian American cookbooks were more down-to-earth.  Zlikrofi were dumplings or noodles, filled with meat.  The meat combinations, unfortunately, left me a little cold.  Liver or cooked lungs, put through a meat chopper? Veal pluck?  Ham and sausage?

I decided to come up with a version that would be close to what I recalled of my mother's:  a fairly plain meat filling, probably beef with onion and a little parsley.

As a child, I used to love helping her turn the crank on our old-fashioned cast iron meat grinder.  It was such a mysterious alchemy, to watch those leftover chunks of roast beef emerge as a fluffy bowl of shredded meat.  I had inherited that old grinder from her, some years back.  Sadly,  I no longer had it. It had been the casualty of one too many moves.  I wish I had it now.

I figured cooked ground beef would be a reasonable alternative.  And I did spot a recipe for a meat pie ("Meat Pita") in the American Slovene Club's cookbook, with a filling that looked like it might work.

I also had in mind a traditional Jewish recipe from my husband's side of the family.  We had just been visiting my father-in-law in Florida.  He had proudly shared with me his special recipe, Murray's Kreplach, learned from his Polish-born mother.  It had even been published in a cookbook a friend of his had written.

The secret, my father-in-law had told me, was to use lots of browned onion.  And none of this ground meat business. His very elaborate recipe used poached chicken cutlets and a smaller amount of sauteed beef chuck, cooked separately and then chopped in a food processor.

Well, I still wasn't prepared to cook whole chunks of meat from scratch.  But I agreed with him about the onion.  And I took one important seasoning addition from his recipe: Paprika.  I also used matzo meal instead of the bread crumbs called for in my Slovenian cookbook.

So maybe I had made my family's new version of an old favorite,  a marriage of Slovenian zlikrofi and Jewish kreplach.  That would be fitting!

Recipe follows here.

Slovenian Dinner Week 10: Buckwheat Struklji, Dumpling for the Bold

Menu
Buckwheat Štruklji with Cheese Filling (Ajdovi Štruklji)
Ajvar and Greek Yogurt
Green Salad
Coleslaw

It took time to build up my courage to tackle the most unusual dish so far:  Štruklji.

All three of my vintage cookbooks included recipes for štruklji.  The dish certainly sounded odd.  A giant boiled dumpling? I had never tasted it, or even heard of such a thing.

But a Slovenian government tourist website proudly proclaims struklji as a unique national dish, rivaling potica in importance.  In fact, a common Slovenian surname, Štrukelj, is derived from it.

That gave me pause.  This oddball dish had a connection to my own family's immigration story.  My great-grandmother's maiden name had been Josephine Strukel, at least in America. But my genealogy research had turned up something else.  She was Jožefa Štrukelj when she left her small Slovenian village in 1899 to join her brother Janez in Ely, Minnesota.
  

Struklji ("shtroo-klee") really is a giant filled dumpling.  It begins with a thin sheet of dough, usually  pasta or noodle dough, although some versions are leavened with yeast.  The dough is rolled around a filling, either savory or sweet. The štruklji is wrapped in cheesecloth and trussed up with twine.  Then the long roll is dropped into a large pot of boiling water.  After cooking, it is sliced and served.

Definitely labor intensive.

I started assembling supplies a few weeks ahead of time.  Cheesecloth and cooking twine turned out not to be so easy to find, at least in my immediate neighborhood.

Since I wanted this to be an entrée, rather than a side dish or a dessert, I settled on a savory cheese filling, one of the most common variants.  The American Slovene Club's cookbook had a recipe that I adopted as a model.

I decided on the unleavened pasta style dough, with a twist.   I’d read about a variant of struklji that uses all buckwheat flour.  I still had plenty of buckwheat flour left over from my adventures with žganci and šmoren.  So I substituted buckwheat for part of the wheat flour in the recipe.  I also made good use of that leftover homemade bread from the previous week's dinner, when I made the filling.

Štruklji  (Rolled Cheese Dumpling)

Dough:

1 ½ c. white flour

½ c. buckwheat flour

1 t. salt

2 T olive oil

1 egg

½ cup hot water, plus 2 T more if needed

Filling:

3 slices bread, cubed

2 T. butter

1 lb. farmer cheese or ricotta

3 extra large eggs, beaten

1 t. salt

½ t. pepper

1 T. fresh chives, chopped

1 T. fresh parsley, chopped

Cheesecloth and cooking twine

For the dough:  Sift the flours and the salt into a bowl.  Beat the egg and oil together and stir into the flour.  Add enough hot water to make a stiff dough.  Knead dough until smooth and elastic, adding a little more flour if necessary.  Form into a ball and let rest, covered, for 30 minutes.

For the filling:  Beat eggs with salt and pepper and set aside.  Brown the bread cubes in butter.  Remove from heat and stir in egg mixture until the eggs are cooked.  Add the cheese, chives, and parsley and stir together.  Adjust seasoning.  (Note: filling can be made in advance and refrigerated.)

To assemble:  Roll and stretch the dough on a floured cloth until you have a rectangle that is about 15” x 20”.  Spread the filling evenly.  Roll up from the long side.  Dampen ends and edges of the roll to seal.

Rinse and then wring out a large piece of cheesecloth.  Roll the long loaf of dough in the cheesecloth, so that it is wrapped in several layers.  Wrap the roll in twine: knot at one end, wrap it around the length of the roll, and knot at the other end.

Boil a large kettle of salted water.  Coil the roll so it will fit and carefully drop into the water.  Let boil for 30 minutes.

Remove the roll, let cool, and unwrap.  To serve, slice into rounds.

I did hold my breath when I sliced into that štruklji.  But it was perfect.  The concentric dark circles of buckwheat dough contrasted so beautifully with the creamy white cheese.  In photos, it looked like a fancy cake.  It tasted just as good as it looked.

Traditionally, štruklji is served with a topping of breadcrumbs cooked in butter.  But I opted for a healthier and, to my mind, a more flavorful choice: ajvar and thick, nonfat Greek yogurt.

Three months into my cooking project, I would have to pick štruklji as my most successful dish so far.  I never would have guessed that it would turn out to be so unusual and delicious.  I couldn't wait to tell my mother about it.

"So Mom, I made this giant boiled dumpling, filled with cheese.  It's called struklji.   Grandma never made anything like that,  did she?"

My mother didn't hesitate.

"Oh, sure she did.  But only for special occasions."

Amazing, all the Slovenian kitchen lore she is starting to remember!

#

Hard to picture this?  I felt the same way, even after I found some photos online to guide me.

So, for anyone who might be tempted to give it a try, here is my step-by-step record. Making štruklji as easy as one, two. . . ten!

1. Assemble the supplies:

2. Prepare the ricotta-egg-bread filling:

3.  Mix the pasta dough:

4. Roll out the dough:

5. Add the filling:

6. Roll it up:

7. Wrap it in cheesecloth and truss with twine:

8. Boil:

9.  Remove, cut the twine, and unwrap:

10. Slice and arrange prettily on a platter.  Voilà!