Danish Puff, Comfort Food from the Vault

I wish I could claim that Danish Puff, a homey but elegant childhood favorite, has Slovenian roots. But perhaps it is enough to say that it was inspired by memories of my mother.

This is another recipe that turned up in the green metal recipe box my mother passed along to me about six months ago. Even though I had a copy in my own card file, I hadn't thought about it in years. I had never considered resurrecting it. Concoctions like Danish Puff belonged in the category of laughable culinary faux-elegance from the 1950s, or so I thought. At best, it was nostalgic comfort food.

But back in the I fall, I was feeling nostalgic--and in need of some comfort. My mother's health was declining and we were helping her downsize and move into a smaller place, where she would receive more help. The upcoming elections didn't help. So I made Danish Puff for the first time in at least thirty years. I even shared some with my mother--on moving day. She seemed to enjoy it.

Setting aside my culinary snobbery, I was forced to admit the truth: Danish Puff is a simple pastry that tastes wonderful. Perhaps it no longer seems quite so exotic and vaguely European, but it is well worth making.

Perhaps you remember it from your own childhood.

It is a simple but elegant affair. Two contrasting pastry layers, the bottom one a standard shortcrust pastry and the top one a cream puff dough. Or, to be fancy and French, paté brisée topped by paté choux. Shaped into long double decker loaves, baked and sliced. The only sweetness comes from the drizzle of confectioners' sugar icing, topped by almonds. The haunting flavor of almond runs through every mouthful.

The source of my mother's handwritten recipe is hard to determine. In fact, the card I discovered in her file was a hybrid--a yellowing card in two sets of handwriting, hers and mine:

There are virtually identical recipes for Danish Puff in two of my vintage Slovenian American cookbooks--including my favorite one (from both the culinary and political standpoint), compiled by the Progressive Slovene Women of America. Their version is just like my mother's, with the no-frills icing that is nothing more than confectioners' sugar mixed with a little water or milk, plus a touch of almond extract:

But that doesn't make a strong case for its Slovenian origins, since the same recipe can be found in so many other places. Including the blogosphere, where it seems to have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. Everyone's mother or grandmother seems to have made it. Many sources attribute the recipe to a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 1960s (but I know it is older than that) or perhaps the 1950s.

Did Betty Crocker, America's favorite invented home cook, create this recipe?

That seems doubtful.

I am more inclined to trust the opinion of Beatrice Ojakangas, a noted cooking authority (and prolific cookbook author) from Minnesota, whose own background is Finnish. She includes a recipe for Danish Puff in Great Old-Fashioned American Desserts (U. Press of Minnesota, 2004). She describes it as a traditional coffee-and-dessert favorite of Scandinavian Americans, although, as she drily notes, it is "unknown in Denmark."

The recipe follows below. It is so similar to all the other recipes for Danish Puff (except for a few non-almond variations) that I do wonder whether there might have been a single source. Perhaps it first made the rounds when it was printed on bags of General Mills flour.

But why worry about the source? Try it and enjoy it for yourself!

Danish Puff

Bottom Layer:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons water

Top Layer:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1 cup flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract

Icing:

confectioners' sugar, 1/2 to 1 cup
a little water or milk to thin
almond extract to taste
chopped or slivered almonds

Note: Some recipes suggest vanilla extract and walnuts as alternatives. But that's not how my mother made it--and I believe it changes the character of the pastry.


Bottom Layer: Cut butter into flour as for pie crust. Sprinkle with water and mix lightly. Form into a ball and divide in two. Pat each half into a 3 x 12 inch strip on an ungreased baking sheet.

Top Layer: Combine butter and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Add flour and mix in quickly to keep mixture from clumping. (Some recipes suggest cooking the mixture briefly over the heat.) Add eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. Add flavoring and beat until smooth. Divide mixture in half and spread on each pastry strip.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 to 60 minutes or until lightly browned. Let cool. Frost with a simple confectioners' sugar icing. Sprinkle with nuts. Slice and serve. Tastes best shortly after baking. If there is any left over, refrigerate uncovered.

Buckwheat Palačinke--and Cheese Blintzes, too!

One morning last spring, I had an urge for buckwheat crèpes. Was this part of the Slovenian cooking tradition? I had no idea.

I couldn't find any mention of thin buckwheat pancakes or palačinke in my vintage Slovenian American cookbooks, although I found many white flour versions, along with a recipe for cheese blintzes. When I turned to Kulinarika, the online Slovenian language site, I did find some ajdove palačinke recipes. Most used a combination of white and buckwheat flours.

So I went back to my Slovenian American sources to find a good, basic recipe to adapt. Compared to my previous palačinke recipe (a variation on šmoren) these older versions all seemed heavy on flour and light on the eggs. I settled on a recipe from the Progressive Slovene Women of America, which they included in a recipe for blintzes ("sirovi ponvičniki.")

I made just a few changes, in addition to replacing half the white flour with buckwheat. I also skipped the salt and added a little cinnamon and vanilla.

This recipe worked like a charm! Nothing stuck, not even that always-tricky first pancake. Each one looked perfect. They seemed slightly more substantial than usual, perhaps because of the dark buckwheat flour. Or maybe it had something to do with the egg-flour-milk balance. After years of trying to duplicate my mother's beloved "jelly rolls" (the name she always used) I had finally found a reliable recipe--and with a buckwheat tang.

That first morning, my husband and I enjoyed them just as I had as a child, with a selection of toppings: Fresh apples. Greek yogurt. Organic preserves. Honey-tahini spread from Kosovo. If only we'd had some farmer cheese on hand, I might have made cheese blintzes.

My husband must have read my mind, because later that day he picked up some locally made Russian-style farmers' cheese. We still had half the recipe of crèpes left, so I was all set for the next day's breakfast.

I used the filling recipe suggested by the Progressive Slovene Women, with a few modifications. Since farmer cheese is more moist than the dry curd cottage cheese used in their recipe, I skipped the two tablespoons sweet or sour cream. I also omitted the salt and added a touch of sugar, cinnamon and vanilla. I followed the "envelope fold" method I'd learned from my mother, although in Slovenia a simple rolled-up tube shape might be more common.

The result? Delicious!

And I had a bonus: I still had a half recipe of cheese filling left over. A few days later, I used it as the foundation for a much-improved version of curd cheese pancakes, or syrniki. 

Buckwheat Palačinke or Crêpes

1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
2 eggs
1-1/4 cup milk
dash of cinnamon
1/2 t. vanilla



Cheese Filling (to make blintzes)


1 lb. farmer cheese
1 egg
2 T. sugar
1/2 t. vanilla
1/4 t. cinnamon


For the palačinke or crêpes: Mix all ingredients until smooth and refrigerate for an hour. Heat a small or medium skillet with butter or oil. When drops of water dance on the surface, add just enough batter to cover the bottom of the skillet when rotated.  When firm, flip over and cook until done. Store in a warm oven until all the pancakes are made.

Serve with fillings and toppings of your choice. Butter and brown sugar were my childhood favorites. Other good options: Greek yogurt, fresh fruit, jam or preserves, honey.

To make blintzes: Prepare the cheese filling by mixing all ingredients together until smooth. Refrigerate while you make the pancakes. When all the pancakes are cooked, place a generous spoonful of cheese filling in the lower middle of each one and fold up like an envelope. Brown in butter or oil. Or, if you prefer to avoid frying, they can be oven-baked. (Just remember that filling needed to be cooked because of the egg!) Serve with toppings as above.

Cheese Dumplings, Slovenian Style

I fell in love with Russian cheese pancakes at a farmers' market and later made a decent version of my own at home.

I was disappointed that Slovenians didn't seem to have their own version of this tasty dish.  The closest approximation was a boiled cheese dumpling, usually served with a topping of buttered breadcrumbs and a little sugar.  So I decided to give Slovenian cheese dumplings a try, to see how they compared.

I found three recipes in my vintage cookbooks.  They showed up under different names (cheese balls, cheese dumplings, sirovi knedeljni, skutovi cmoki) but used the same basic ingredients, in varying proportions. One recipe called for separating the eggs.  Two involved shaping the dough into individual pieces before boiling; one just used a spoon.

One element was common to all three recipes: dry curd cottage cheese. I figured my usual substitute, Russian-style farmer cheese, would do just fine.

I picked the easiest recipe, one from the Progressive Slovene Women.  It was a simple batter dropped from a spoon.  I cut their recipe in half and made one other adaptation: a little nutmeg instead of salt, for a LoSloSo dish.  (It turns out to be virtually the same as my recipe for Russian curd cheese pancakes.)

For the result, read on.

Cheese dumplings (Skutovi Cmoki)

1/2 lb. Russian-style farmer cheese (or dry curd cottage cheese, if you can find it)
4 heaping T. flour (or more if needed)
2 eggs, beaten
1 T. melted butter
2 pinches nutmeg (or 1/4 t. salt, like the original recipe)

Stir or crumble the cheese.  Add eggs, melted butter, and nutmeg or salt.  Mix well.  Add flour, a tablespoon at a time, to make a thick batter/soft dough.

Bring large pot of water to boil.  Drop in batter by spoonfuls.  Cook for 20 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon.   The traditional topping is buttered bread crumbs, along with some sugar for a sweeter dish.  Dumplings can also be left plain, as I did, to accompany a savory main dish.

The result?  Well, it was mixed.  The batter was almost too loose to hold together in the boiling water.  The finished dumplings seemed puffy and a little waterlogged.  The flavor was definitely bland without the salt.  The next day, the chilled dumplings had deflated and had a better texture, similar to cheese pancakes.

There is no getting around it: I prefer the pancake version, although I do see the advantages of making a fat-free version by boiling.  On the other hand, a non-stick skillet can be used to make the pancakes.

The problem, I suspect, was my substitution of Russian-style farmer cheese for the dry curd cottage cheese.  There are two solutions: drain the cheese first and/or add a little more flour.  That's what I'll do if I try this again.

Meanwhile, I'm sticking to pancakes!


   

Slovenian Dinner Week 46: Polenta Meatball Makeover

Menu
Meat Polenta II: Polenta Meatballs with Tomato Mushroom Sauce
Whole Wheat Spaghetti
Green Salad

The last Tuesday in November was shaping up to be a busy day.  An appointment in the morning, volunteer tutoring in the afternoon.  And I was in the final stretch of a month-long writing project.

So I needed to find a dinner entree that was easy and, if possible, make-ahead. Once again, I figured that the best solution was a makeover of a dish I had tried earlier in the year.

Meatballs seemed like the perfect choice.

I had three candidates.  The most successful were the caraway meatballs I had made back in June.  In July, I had tried an odd one, called uštipci, from The Yugoslav Cookbook, that I didn't feel like repeating.  Those solid, fatty squares of uncooked bacon mixed in with the ground beef never did cook properly.

Then there was an intriguing dish called meat polenta, from the Progressive Slovene Women, one of my most trustworthy sources.  They were made from a paprika-spiced mixture of beef and cornmeal.   Quite a lot of cornmeal: a full cup added to a pound of meat. The finished product turned out dry and granular, because the uncooked cornmeal didn't soften.

Only afterward did it occur to me: Maybe "cornmeal" meant cooked polenta. If I made this dish again, I resolved to try it that way.

So perhaps this was the time.

I did some Internet research to see if I could find any other meatballs made with cooked cornmeal.  Mostly, I found Mexican meatballs, with small quantities of dry cornmeal added.  So maybe this meat polenta recipe wasn't even Slovenian.

But then I found something: A Slovenian meatball called mavželj. It sounded like one of those traditional novelties that isn’t made much anymore.  For good reason, since it starts with a pig's head.

To make mavželj, you start out by boiling the pig’s head and scraping off the meat. A few other organ meats are added, like the brains and lungs.  Then the meat is chopped, seasoned, and mixed with polenta. Seasonings can include onion and garlic, salt and pepper, cinnamon and bay leaf, according to the modern Slovenian master chef Janez Bogataj.  (His recipe seems to be mostly polenta.)  The mixture is shaped into balls and wrapped in pig’s caul, then baked.

So this dish wasn’t the product of some Slovenian American cook’s imagination.   It was simplified and sanitized, perhaps, but the chopped meat-polenta combination, heavy on the polenta, seemed to be well grounded in Slovenian tradition.

Well, I wasn't about to go shopping for a pig's head, much less a pig's caul!

I decided to stick closely to my original meat polenta recipe, but with cooked cornmeal, rather than dry.  Much as I was tempted to do a meat makeover, this was not the time for more turkey leftovers.  I would stick with a beef-pork mix, with a little more onion. The simple tomato sauce had been good the first time, but since we had some fresh mushrooms I decided to add those.  And this time I would bake rather than simmer the meatballs.

For the result, read on.

Meat Polenta II: Polenta Meatballs

Meatballs:

1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground pork
1 cup cooked polenta
2 eggs
2 t. salt
1-2 t. pepper
1 t. paprika
4-5 T. minced onion, browned in olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced

Sauce:

26 oz. organic diced tomatoes
1 small onion, browned in olive oil
2 c. sliced fresh mushrooms, white and crimini mixed
1 clove garlic, minced
1 t. paprika
1 t. marjoram
salt and pepper
pinch of sugar
4 T. parsley, chopped
splash of wine or mosto


For sauce:  Brown diced onion well in olive oil. Add sliced mushrooms and garlic clove.  Add remaining ingredients and simmer for thirty minutes.

For the cooked polenta, prepare according to package directions.  I used the quick-cooking variety, which called for 4 tablespoons polenta stirred into 1 cup of boiling salted water, then cooked and stirred for about three minutes until thick. Let cool slightly.

To make the meatballs: Combine cooked, cooled polenta with remaining filling ingredients.  Knead until well combined. Form into 12 small balls. Mixture may be loose.

To bake: Put a little sauce in bottom of medium rectangular dish.  Place meatballs in dish.  Add more sauce.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 1 hour.

Serve over spaghetti or noodles.  Sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.

My heart sank when I saw yellow polenta oozing out of the meatballs, after they had been in the oven for awhile. But I poured more sauce on top.

The verdict: Amazingly, it all worked out.  The meatballs were tasty, even if the fat and some of the polenta did leach into the sauce. And there were none of those hard cornmeal granules, this time around.

As we were eating, my husband and I got into a long discussion about caul.   I had seen photos of caul-wrapped foods in a couple of my  European cookbooks. It looks liked a spidery white net. But what was it, exactly?

I thought it was similar to a traditional sausage casing. Part of the intestine. My husband thought it was related to the placenta, a sort of film or veil than can cover a baby mammal at birth. He'd heard about this from watching Jacques Pépin on television.

Turns out out we were both right.  Not the most pleasant of dinner conversations!

Still, the dinner was a success.

“There is something about the flavor,” my husband said. “I could smell it when I was up on the roof, cleaning the gutters.”  (We'd had heavy rains that night.)

What is that elusive flavor?  No cabbage in the dish tonight.  Was it simply tomatoes and paprika? Tomatoes without oregano and basil?

Central European umami or Slovenian soul, I guess.  Whatever it is, the smell and flavor are unmistakable. I had found it once again.

Slovenian Dinner Week 21: Rižota with Mlinci and Coleslaw

Menu
Rižota (Risotto)
Mlinci (Baked Noodles)
Coleslaw

It was early June, almost half way into my year of Slovenian cooking.  I had started to worry that I might be running out of new recipes to try, at least if I confined myself to my three vintage cookbooks.

At first, I overlooked the recipes for Slovenian-style risotto, or rižota.  Each one of the cookbooks had a version.  Sometimes the meat mixture varied, but otherwise they were all fairly similar.  Not too exciting, I thought.  They seemed like simplified, less rich versions of the classic Italian dish.  None of that slow stirring so that the rice gradually absorbed the liquid.

But I decided to give rižota a try.  I stuck pretty closely to the version offered by the Progressive Slovene Women of America.  I substituted beef for veal and used a little less pork.  I upped the tomatoes slightly and, as usual, substituted olive oil for fat or lard. Naturally, I used frozen peas instead of canned.  (Maybe I'll try fresh next time.)  When it came to the rice, I used the long grain variety we had on hand.  Short grain, like arborio, is usually recommended for risotto.


1 lb. beef stew meat
1/2 lb. pork stew meat
2 large onions, diced (1 red, 1 white)
olive oil, about 2 T.
1 c. canned diced tomatoes and juice
8 oz fresh mushrooms, white and crimini, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
water as needed
3/4 c. raw rice
1 c. green peas, frozen
parmesan cheese, grated, if desired

In large skillet, brown onions in oil. Add meats, brown about 20 minutes.  Add seasonings and tomatoes, simmer 20 minutes, adding water as needed.  Add sliced mushrooms and simmer until meat is  tender, 20-40 minutes, stirring.  When meat is tender, sprinkle with rice and add 1 c. water.  Cover and from this point on do not stir.  Check periodically, adding water as needed, and shaking pan to prevent sticking.  Top with frozen peas for the last 10 minutes of cooking.  Rice will take 15-20 minutes in all to cook.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese, if desired.

We topped the rižota with freshly grated parmesan cheese and served it with coleslaw and some crunchy mlinci saved from last week's dinner.

The verdict:  A winner.  This dish was rich and flavorful.  Nothing I would have guessed from reading the simple, mildly seasoned recipe.  My inclusion of brown crimini mushrooms probably offered a flavor boost.

Overall, this was one more reminder that there is more than meets the eye, where Slovenian cooking is concerned.

Slovenian Dinner Week 20: Roast Duck and Mlinci

Menu
Mlinci (Baked Noodles)
Roast Duck
Red Cabbage with Apples
Red Pepper and Tomato Salad

This was another dinner where the side dish became the main event.

Mlinci (m'LEEN-tsee), also known as baked noodles, seemed like an intriguing but improbable dish.  I had to give it a try.

I first heard about mlinci when The Professor, a Facebook friend who lives in Slovenia, posted a photo of a festive St. Martin's Day dinner he'd just prepared: A roast duck, accompanied by a strange sort of dumpling or noodle called mlinci.

Months later, I came across a recipe for mlinci/baked noodles in the Progressive Slovene Women's cookbook.  I found a few other recipes through an Internet search.  It's a simple dish.  A noodle dough, rolled into thin rounds and baked, then cooled and broken into bits.

To serve, the bits are moistened with boiling water or dropped into soup. Presto! Instant noodles.  Or dumplings.  Or something.  Often mixed or fried with the drippings from roast poultry or meat.  I couldn't quite picture it.  An unleavened flatbread or cracker, soaked in liquid.  What was the point?

Suddenly, I realized this wasn't so odd.  It reminded me of the way they serve matzo for breakfast in my husband's family.  Moistened and salted, then wrapped in a napkin, to make it a little more bread-like. Or like matzo farfel, nothing more than bits of broken matzo, another staple in Jewish cooking, especially for Passover.  Or, for that matter, those little oyster crackers we used to drop into soup when I was a child.

Some recipes, like the Progressive Slovene Women's, use yeast.  But most don't.  So I followed the unleavened approach:

Mlinci

2 eggs
1/2 t. salt
1 c. flour
Milk, if needed (but I didn't need any)


Mix the above ingredients, as though making standard egg noodles.  (With my finger still in a splint, I used a food processor.)   Since the eggs were extra large, I didn't need any milk.  In fact, I had to add some extra flour.

Let dough rest 30 minutes, covered.  Divide into four pieces.  Roll each one into a thin disk. (Note: thinner than what photos here suggest!  See update at the end of this post.) Prick.  Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees.  Turn over when dough begins to brown.  The finished product should look brown and blistered, like a giant cracker.  It will be much firmer that matzo. Remove from oven and cool on rack.

Meanwhile, I had roasted a nice duck.  Nothing fancy, but I've posted the recipe here.

To prepare the mlinci:

Break rounds into pieces.  (I used two rounds.)   Put in glass or ceramic bowl.  Cover with boiling salted water.  Let sit until soft, 5-15 minutes, depending on thickness of mlinci. Drain. Add to drippings left in pan from the roast duck and stir to mix. Put back in bowl. You can put bowl back in oven to keep warm, while someone carves the duck.

The verdict?  This unlikely dish was luscious!  Sinfully rich, of course, with the duck fat and crackly bits mixed in.  Something like stuffing, something like Yorkshire pudding.  But better.  A perfect special occasion accompaniment to roast fowl or meat.

Oh, and those unused rounds of mlinci kept well.  They made a nice replacement for croutons in salad and served as a crunchy bread substitute in next week's dinner.


Update:  In July of 2014, I purchased ready-made mlinci at the source: a vendor in the Ljubljana Farmers' Market!  Having seen (and cooked with) the real thing, I now know that mlinci should be much thinner than my photos here suggest.  I have also developed a delicious sweet mlinci dish for breakfast or brunch.  To read about it, go here.