Apple Cranberry Strudel: My First Time

Strudel is one of a handful of classic Slovenian desserts.   Slovenians certainly can’t claim it as unique. If anything, the dish is more closely associated with two neighboring countries, Austria and Hungary.  Many food writers suggest the ultimate origins are in Turkey, where there is a long tradition of pastries made with paper-thin dough.

It is also one of the few ethnic dishes with a family connection. I used to watch my Slovenian American grandmother roll and stretch the dough for apple strudel on the wooden kitchen table in her bungalow in Cleveland. My own mother used to make strudel, she reminds me.  But I had never made it myself.

Growing up, I was never a fan.  As a child, I always preferred cakes to pies and pastries, especially if they contained fruit.  It’s a texture thing, I always explain, when I get funny looks about my still-lingering fruit aversion.

I began to appreciate strudel on our trip to Eastern Europe six years ago.  My husband and I sampled it all along the way: in Vienna, throughout the former Yugoslavia, and finally in Budapest.  It was as common as apple pie in America.  And it was all good.

Then, last Christmas, I made contact with a first cousin I hadn’t seen—or spoken to—in forty years. She turned out to have a part time job in her best friend’s family bakery in Cleveland, where the specialty is Hungarian strudel.  We reminisced about our grandmother’s baking.  My strudel-making cousin confessed that she had never made potica, the famed Slovenian nut roll that is a holiday tradition in my family.  I was touched when she sent me some strudel as a Christmas gift.  I sent her a potica in return.  

Once I embarked on my year of Slovenian cooking, it seemed clear: strudel was in my future.  Every time I made a savoury dish with store-bought phyllo, like burek or meat pita, I felt a twinge of guilt.   The homemade dough was a challenge that any self-respecting Slovenian cook should take on, at least once.

I just needed to find the right moment.  Like a big  potluck or party, where I could contribute one of the desserts. That way, if it didn’t work out, it wouldn’t have much impact.  And if it did, I would be sharing an elaborate dessert with a big enough audience to make it worthwhile.

The opportunity came in early September, at the neighborhood Labor Day picnic and potluck. Once again, we were hosting the event.  What better time to make a labor-intensive dessert?

My vintage cookbooks all had multiple recipes for strudel.  They offered minimal details, with the unspoken assumption that the reader already had a pretty good idea of how to make strudel.  I found more help in several of my Jewish cookbooks.  The best was In My Mother’s Kitchen, a memoir by noted food writer Mimi Sheraton.  She made the tricky part—the stretching, rolling and shaping—much clearer.

In the end, I struck closely to the apple strudel recipe in my first Slovenian cookbook, Woman’s Glory: The Kitchen.  My one creative touch was to add a sprinkle of cranberries, instead of the option of a handful of raisins or nuts they suggested.

The recipe seemed straightforward.  Or at least the ingredients themselves did.  The filling was simple and elemental, with each component layered separately, an approach that parallels my family potica recipe.  No cooking, or even much mixing, beforehand.  It sounded almost too simple.

The challenge, I assumed, would be in stretching the dough.  I hadn’t quite realized until I did some research that the kneading itself requires a special touch.

The key to kneading is this: strudel dough needs to be worked hard, in order to develop the gluten.  Otherwise, the dough won’t be strong and stretchy enough.  It’s the complete opposite of the usual advice for pastries.  Long kneading is essential.  At least 15 minutes, although Mimi Sheraton suggests a half hour.  She also uses bread flour, because of the higher gluten content.

Then there is a tradition I had never heard of before: Slamming the dough into the counter, sometimes from a height of a few feet. A number of sources allude to this.  Mimi Sheration is quite specific: Slam it 110 times.  Or, as Woman's Glory suggests: Don't be afraid to treat it rough.

I was surprised at the relative ease of stretching the dough.  Yes, there were a few small tears.  But I tried not to worry about them—or about the uneven shape of the finished product. I would be cutting off the edges anyway.

I checked the final dimensions of the rectangle against a detailed blog I found online, which started with a similar quantity of dough.  Oh-oh.  My final rectangle of dough was almost a third smaller (and therefore thicker) than the online version.

But for a first timer, I had done pretty well, I thought.  My strudel looked quite presentable. The proof would be in the eating, of course.

For the outcome, as well as the recipe and step-by-step photos, read on!

Apple Cranberry Strudel

Dough

1-1/2 c. bread flour
1/4 t. salt
1 T. oil
5-8 T. warm water

Sift flour and salt.  Make a well in the center and add oil and 5-6 T. water to start.  Mix with a fork and then with hands to make a soft, sticky dough, adding more water of necessary.   Knead on floured board for 15 to 30 minutes.  You might want to consider slamming it onto the kitchen table a few dozen times, in between bouts of kneading.  Or wait until the end, and do it all at once.  At the end of all that kneading and slamming, you should have a nice firm piece of dough.  Form it into a ball, coat with oil, cover and let sit for 30 minutes while you prepare the filling.

Filling

1/2 c. sugar
1 t. cinnamon
8 tart apples (I used Granny Smith)
1 T. lemon juice
5 T. bread crumbs
4 T. butter
1/3 c. dried cranberries (optional)

Peel and slice apples thinly. Mix with lemon juice.  Set aside.
Mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.
Brown bread crumbs in butter in a small skillet.

For assembly:  5 additional T. melted butter, divided

Stretching the dough:

Cover table with a floured tablecloth or sheet.  Roll dough into a 9 x 9 inch rectangle, rolling from the center outward.  Spread with 1 T. melted butter.  Then begin to stretch the dough, using the backs of your hands, walking round and round the table.  If there are small tears or uneven edges, don’t worry too much.  Just do your best to stretch dough as thinly as possible, pulling from the center out to the edges.  Ideally, you should be able to read a newspaper through it.  (I never managed that!)  Aim for a 24 x 36 inch rectangle.  (Mine was more like 18 x 24.) Cut off thick or uneven edges.

To Assemble:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

You will be rolling up the strudel from the short end of the rectangle.
Cover half the dough with the filling ingredients, in the following order.  Leave a  2 inch border on the edges.
—Apples
—Browned bread crumbs
—Sugar-cinnamon mixture
—Cranberries

Fold the dough border at the short end over the bottom edge of the filling.  Carefully roll up the dough, using the floured cloth to nudge it along.  When the dough is rolled half way, so the the filling has been completely encased, spread remaining half of uncovered dough with 4 T. melted butter. Fold in the side edges, then roll up the remainder.
Place the strudel roll, seam side down, into a large rectangular pan that has been lined with parchment paper.  Curve into a horseshoe shape.  Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.  Brush with butter and let cool.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.


The verdict:  This turned me into a strudel lover!  It was delicious.  Far beyond what I expected. The apple filling was perfect. Not too sweet and full of flavor. The tangy red cranberries provided a lovely  counterpoint to the apples.  The crust, while not quite like store-bought phyllo, was still thin and crisp.

I can't wait to try this again.

Dough

Filling Ingredients

Rolled Out

Stretching the Dough; Ghost Hand

Dough, Stretched

Filling, Ready to Roll

Before Baking

After Baking

Ready to Eat

Slovenian Dinner Week 34: Leftover Sausage Hot Dish, Saved by a Beer

Menu
Leftover Sausage Hot Dish
with Galuska
Coleslaw

Before he left for work, my husband dropped me a hint.  We had three leftover sausages in the refrigerator, along with a nice jar of organic sauerkraut in the cupboard.

Normally, I would have rejected the idea of basing my weekly Slovenian dinner on leftovers.  But I was emerging from an intensive two-week marathon of ethnic cooking. Yesterday, it had culminated in my first-ever attempt at apple strudel, for the neighborhood Labor Day party.

So I was open to something simple, as long as it was Slovenian.

I found the perfect starting point on the English language version of Kulinarika, a Slovenian cooking site: Leftover Sausage Hot Dish.  The recipe had been submitted by an American reader, who said it was traditional Slovenian.

The ingredients were simple: Leftover sausage, cabbage, apples, onions, and spices. And one more thing: leftover galuska. Hungarian dumplings.

The recipe noted that sauerkraut could be substituted for cabbage. I decided to use my own well-seasoned roast sauerkraut recipe. I had everything else on hand except for the galuska, a dish I had never made before. I thought they were drop noodles, similar to German spaetzle. Woman's Glory, one of my vintage cookbooks, had a recipe.

It did seem a little odd to try a new recipe for dumplings, for the sole purpose of serving them as cut-up leftovers. On the other hand, I was glad that this week's dinner would involve at least a little real cooking.  Besides, those galuska would be easy, right?

Wrong.  That preliminary step in this "easy dish" was almost my undoing.  Read on.

Hungarian Galuska

Hungarian Galuska

1 c. flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 egg
1/2 c. milk
1 t. oil

Mix flour with baking powder and salt. In a smaller bowl, beat egg, milk, and oil together. Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients.  Stir with fork until dough is stiff enough to drop from a spoon.  Drop spoons of dough into boiling salted water, cover, and simmer for 12-15 minutes.  Drain.

I assumed this recipe would be easy.  But the galuska were a disaster. They were gummy on the outside and barely held their shape.  At least half of them disintegrated in the colander.   When I cut one open, I discovered a hard lump of uncooked flour at the core!

(After the fact, I  have some idea of what went wrong.  I had added additional flour, under the assumption that the dough should be fairly stiff. In fact, as one set of instructions explained, the dough ought to be a "gooey mess."  Another problem:  I made the dumplings too big.  I should have dropped half-teaspoonfuls, at most, instead of the generous tablespoon I used.  This batch made 12 dumplings, instead of a bowl of little spaetzle-like squiggles.)

I salvaged about half the dumplings.  They looked like soggy anemic cauliflower florets. But  I pressed on.

Leftover Sausage Hot Dish

Leftover Sausage Hot Dish

2 c. sauerkraut
1 small onion, chopped
1 large apple, chopped
1 t. caraway seed
1/2 t. juniper berries
salt and pepper to taste
oil for browning
3 cooked sausages, sliced
1 c. cooked galuska, cut up (or use noodles!)
1/2-1 c. beer, white wine, or stock

Mix sauerkraut, onion, apple, and spices.  Let sit for flavors to mix.

Heat oil in a skillet. Add sauerkraut mixture and brown. Remove to bowl. Brown sliced sausage in skillet. Add cut up galuska or noodles.  Add sauerkraut mixture. Finally, add the liquid.  Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes.

The sauerkraut-sausage mixture tasted good.  But my heart sank when I mixed in the galuska.  The original recipe had called for two cups, but I had just one cup left.  Already they were starting to fall apart.  Just like this crazy leftover dish.

The last straw came when I looked around for some liquid to add.  No chicken stock in the cupboard. No white wine in the refrigerator.  Beer was the final option.  I wasn't optimistic, since we aren't big beer drinkers.  But when we have a Cajun music jam, someone will usually bring a six-pack.

As I searched frantically in the refrigerator, I almost passed by the goofy-looking bottle with the yellow label and the smiley face.  But Union Smile turned out to be beer.  At this point, I wasn't inclined to be picky.  So I snatched it out of the refrigerator, popped off the cap, and dumped a generous half cup into the mess simmering on the stove.

Then I took a closer look at the label.   I read the small print at the bottom.

"Product of Slovenia."

I had a good laugh. It was like a message from the source. Or at least from the folks in Ljubljana who make Union Smile Beer.

"Don't Worry!  Be Happy! It's only dinner."

I needed to lighten up.

I took a sip.  Mild, but not bad.   I added more to the dish.  As it cooked, the galuska seemed to get smaller.  I imagined they must be dissolving into the sauce.  So it would turn into a cream sauce.  Oh well.  It was only dinner.  I kept smiling.

Until my husband got home and saw that half empty bottle of beer.  Oh no!  That beer had tasted terrible, he said. It had probably gone bad.

But when I protested that it tasted fine to me, he took a sip and agreed.   Mild, decent. Acceptable for cooking.

And when we sat down to dinner, the final verdict was a surprise.

That leftover sausage hot dish tasted good.  In fact, my husband loved it.

"The flavor is great. One of the best dishes you've made so far."

You never can tell.

Slovenian Dinner Week 32: Bograč, Goulash Soup to Revive a Weary Traveller

Menu

Bograč (Slovenian Goulash Soup)

Crostini

Green Salad (dandelion greens with cabbage, tomatoes, and zucchini)

Goulash soup was the very first thing I tasted on my trip to Eastern Europe.

My husband and I, along with my in-laws, had just arrived in Vienna, after seventeen hours of flying. Our guide pointed us in the direction of an airport café, where we had an hour to pass while she waited for a few more members of the tour group to arrive.

We had departed from San Francisco at seven in the morning, changed planes in New York and Paris, and arrived in Vienna at what felt like midnight. It was just past ten in the morning, local time. I was excited, disoriented, exhausted. And hungry. But what to eat?

The waiter was a young guy with a shaved head and a forbidding stare. He took one look at us, slapped an English language menu down on the table, and stalked off.

It turned out we were in a genuine little bistro, a sort of all-hours workingman's haunt that opened onto the street. There were plenty of traditional food choices.  Still, when I spotted the listing for goulash soup, I suspected it might be a tourist special. A sort of watered-down version of the real thing. But it did sound appealing, especially in my weakened state.

That goulash soup was delicious, with plenty of heat. Along with the apple strudel and coffee that followed, it was a perfect meal to revive a weary traveller.

Six years later, as I was planning my Tuesday night Slovenian dinner, I was anticipating the arrival of another traveller: our journalist son, coming home for a visit. He would be arriving at San Francisco's airport on Friday, late in the evening. So I wanted a dish that would do double duty, a meal for us and then, a few days later, a late night snack for him.

Goulash immediately came to mind. Perhaps I was even thinking of my own first meal in Vienna.

I had already made a couple of successful versions of goulash with sauerkraut, but I wanted to try something different. As a starting point, I found a recipe in Woman's Glory, one my vintage cookbooks. It was a simple beef/pork goulash with tomatoes, onions, and potatoes, along with paprika.

I continued to search. That's how I discovered that goulash soup is actually a distinctive dish called bograč. And there is nothing mild about it.

Bograč (“boh-gratch”) is named for the special Hungarian cooking pot in which it is traditionally prepared, a cast iron kettle that is suspended over an outdoor fire. The origins of this dish may be Hungarian, but the Slovenians have raised it to an art form. It is especially popular in Prekmurje, the northeast part of the country that borders Hungary, where there is an annual Bograč Festival, complete with cooking teams who compete.  (Here is a nice report of the festival, by a British traveller.)

Recipes vary. It is common for two or three types of meat to be combined, including game. The distinctive elements seem to be large quantities of onions, potatoes (but no sauerkraut), and the addition of hot chili peppers along with paprika. So bograč is both hotter and more soupy than the typical goulash.

To come up with the recipe below, I drew on a few sources, starting with the simple Slovenian goulash recipe in Woman's Glory.  My mid-1980s find, The Yugoslav Cookbook, also had a recipe for Bograč, or Goulash Soup.

Then I found a quirky but charming blog called Food for Hunters, by a young California couple. They had a long, funny entry about their attempts to make a dish they called Slovenian Stew: Prekmurksi Bograč. I wasn't about to shoot my own game, but I liked their seasoning choices. And it was nice to have someone else do the metric conversions!

Bograč (Slovenian Goulash Soup)

¾ lb. beef stew meat, cubed

¾ lb. pork stew meat, cubed

1 large onion, sliced

2 large cloves garlic, chopped

1 green pepper, sliced

1 t. caraway seed

1 T. paprika (half hot, half smoked)

½ t. marjoram

salt and pepper to taste

½ c. crushed tomatoes

1 lb. potatoes, cut in chunks

water to cover

olive oil

(other options: rosemary; red or white wine)

Brown onion in olive oil, using a large pot or Dutch oven. Add garlic and continue to brown. Remove to another bowl. Add meats to oil left in pot and brown. Add green pepper and spices and continue to brown. Return onion and garlic to the pot. Add crushed tomatoes and enough water to cover. Simmer until meat is tender and almost done. Add potatoes and simmer another hour. Taste and adjust seasonings. Serve garnished with parsley.

The verdict: This was delicious, even though I forgot to add a couple of seasoning options, rosemary and wine, that might have enhanced the dish. As I had hoped, the bograč improved with re-heating. The following night, my husband and I thought the meat was more tender and the flavor was even better.

And by Friday, it was a welcome midnight dinner for our son, who is something of a foodie. In college, he spent a semester studying in Hungary and travelled all over the Balkans. He currently lives and works in Kosovo. Slovenian food, in his view, is a little bland, compared to his usual fare.  So it was most gratifying to see him surprised by the assertive flavor of my bograč!

Update:  A month later, I made bograč again.  This time it was all beef, and I remembered to add the rosemary and a little wine!  There were a few other additions, too.  To take a look at Bograc II,  go here.

Slovenian-Jewish Fusion Dinner Week 26: Chicken Paprikash and Potato Latkes, Fit for Company

Menu 
Chicken Paprikash II
Latkes (Jewish Potato Pancakes)
Applesauce and Sour Cream
Green Salad


My husband had invited a co-worker and her spouse to join us for dinner.  The date happened to fall on a Tuesday. 

“Don't worry, “ he assured me, “I already told them to expect a Slovenian dinner.”  In his mind, it wasn't even a question.  If it was Tuesday, it had to be Slovenian.

There was just one stipulation. His young colleague had a food request: Potato pancakes—or latkes, in the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition she and my husband share.  He had mentioned preparing them, a few months back, and she had been impressed, or maybe just nostalgic. 

So all I had to figure out was a main course that would go well with potato pancakes.  It shouldn't be too difficult.  I had come to realize that Slovenian and Ashkenazi Jewish cooking styles have a lot in common.  

So this would be my first official attempt at a Slovenian-Jewish fusion dinner.*

I wanted to make a reliable entree that was tasty but not too unusual. Something that would naturally pair with a starchy side dish like potato pancakes. Then it came to me.  

Chicken paprikash.

Four months earlier, I had made a nice simple version, from the 1950s cookbook published by the Progressive Slovene Women of America.  (The homemade egg noodles were the bigger challenge!)

For this week's  “company” dinner, I devised a slightly more elaborate version.  I combined two recipes:  Chicken paprikash from Woman's Glory, another one of my vintage Slovenian American cookbooks, and a chicken pepper stew with potato dumplings from the 1985 Yugoslav Cookbook, the newest addition to my library.  

The version below has more vegetables than the first one, and it includes bacon and tomato puree. And there is an added step at the end: the chicken is removed and the sauce is finished separately and then poured on top.


3 slices bacon 
2 ½ to 3 lbs of chicken breasts, cut up
1 onion 
2 stalks celery
1 green pepper
1 carrot
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
fresh parsley
1 T. paprika (mix mild, sweet, and smoked)
1-2 T. red wine vinegar
chicken stock to cover 
1 T. tomato puree
1 T. flour
2 T. sour cream

Cut the vegetables into small dice and brown in olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven. Add diced bacon. Sprinkle with paprika, salt,  and pepper and cook for a few minutes. Add cut up chicken and brown. Add parsley, vinegar, tomato puree, and enough stock to cover chicken. Cover and simmer for about an hour.

To make sauce: Remove chicken pieces and arrange on serving platter. Mix 1 T. flour in a little broth and add to the drippings and vegetables that remain in the pan. Cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens.  Remove from heat and stir in sour cream.  Pour sauce over chicken and garnish with additional fresh parsley.

My husband's latkes were wonderful, as always.  He doesn't use recipes and he likes to experiment. (I think these included some zucchini.)   Maybe I'll watch him closely next time and see if I can write down an approximation.  

As for the chicken paprikash: It was a success.  Even better than the first time around. But I have to admit that a flour-thickened sauce, though traditional, can be a little too heavy for today's sensibilities.  Next time, I might skip it. The sour cream probably adds enough richness. 

*An important note: If you were following Jewish dietary laws, you would not serve bacon. You could substitute turkey bacon or simply leave it out.  And the sour cream would be omitted, since dairy cannot be combined with meat.

Slovenian Dinner Week 13 : Cevapcici Encore, Fit for Company

Menu
Cevapcici Encore (a spicy beef-lamb version)
Pita Bread
Ajvar
Cucumber, Zucchini and Yogurt Salad
Coleslaw

It was a busy Tuesday in early April.  I was finishing up the final edits on my Slovenian cooking article for Kosovo 2.0.   And this week I had a special cooking challenge. A few days earlier, we'd learned about a couple of out-of-town visitors, who were due to arrive sometime tonight.

In other words: Dinner guests, on my Slovenian cooking day.  For the first time.

So far, my ethnic cooking had been a private experiment.  I didn't want to miss a week, but  I wasn't sure I was ready to share it with outsiders.

I thought back to a little pep talk I'd read in my vintage copy of Woman's Glory: The Kitchen, at the beginning of the "potica" chapter.

"If  your potica is made correctly in every respect," the authors wrote, "you should not hesitate to offer it to your American friends."  In their own experience, they added, potica had "always been well received."

Last year, when I first read those words, I laughed.  I felt sorry for those insecure cookbook authors, afraid that their ethnic heritage might be dismissed by "real" Americans.  How sad that the leaders of the Slovenian Women's Union even sounded anxious about Slovenia's most delectable dish.

But now I wasn't laughing.

Three months into my cooking project, something had changed.  Now I felt an unexpected kinship to those 1950s homemakers.  Just like them, I felt protective (and a little insecure) when I thought about sharing our Slovenian food with outsiders.

I had developed a feeling of pride and ownership for this culture that I barely knew before.

What to make? The recipe had to be reliable, tasty, a bit unusual, but not too odd.  I wanted to make something that would please our guests, an old friend and his teenage daughter, who were considering a college admission offer she had just received from UC-Berkeley.

Yesterday, I  had figured it out: Cevapcici.  It had been a real success, when I made it the first time, a month ago.

My husband was surprised.  "Are you allowed to repeat the same dish?"

At first, I thought he was teasing me.  But he was serious.

I assured him that it would be all right.  I would just change the ingredients a little.  I had already planned on experimenting with the meat mixture and the seasonings.  And a Facebook friend from Slovenia, when he viewed the photo I had posted, suggested that the shape needed to be a little longer and skinnier.

So that's what I did.    I mixed lamb with beef instead of pork, this time around.  And I increased the spices.

For more background about cevapcici and my first version of the dish, go to my earlier post, here.


Here is the new "fit for company" encore version:

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb ground lamb
3 cloves garlic
1 T. parsley, chopped
2 T. paprika
2 t. salt
1 t. black pepper
1 t. baking soda, dissolved in 1/4 c. hot water

Mix all the ingredients together.  Let rest in refrigerator for 2-3 hours.  Shape into skinny fingers, like a digit.   Let sit in refrigerator, if you have time.

Once again, my husband did a beautiful job with the his Le Creuset stovetop griddle:

We served the cevapcici with the store-bought pita, ajvar, coleslaw, and a nice salad of cucumber, zucchini, sour cream, and yogurt.

This verdict? Delicious!  I liked the increased spices.  The cevapcici did seem a little drier this time, maybe because I used lean ground beef instead of pork.  Or perhaps they cooked faster, because of the thinner shape.   Overall, my second attempt at cevapcici seemed closer to the dish's Serbian-Bosnian origins.

Our guests didn't arrive until late at night.  They were very happy to have such tasty and exotic leftovers!

Caraway Cheese Tart

This was the centerpiece of my Week Five dinner.  It closely follows the recipe for Caraway Cheese Wedges in Woman's Glory: The Kitchen.  

I thought this would be just another quiche recipe, slipped into that vintage ethnic cookbook as a concession to American tastes.  But it's not.  It is a dense, savory tart that carries the flavor of Central Europe.  My guess is that it's an example of the Austrian strain in traditional Slovenian cooking.

You can certainly substitute sour cream, the original choice, for the yogurt.  The original recipe suggested using smaller tart pans,  6 inch or individual molds, instead of the 10 inch pan I used.

3 slices bacon, chopped

4 T. minced onion

6 eggs (5 if you use extra large)
6 T. yogurt or sour cream

1/2 t. salt

pepper to taste

1 t. caraway seed, divided
1 1/2 c. gruyere cheese, grated

Crust for a 10 inch tart pan


Line tart pan with crust.

For the filling:  Cook bacon and onion together, let cool.  (I used the microwave.)  Beat eggs, yogurt, and seasonings, using half the caraway seed.  Stir in the cheese and bacon-onion mixture.  Spread filling in tart pan. Sprinkle with rest of caraway seeds.  Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until firm.

My choice for the crust:  I like the press-in oil crust from Joy of Cooking, because it is quick, easy and healthy.  (The traditional choice would undoubtedly be richer!) These quantities will make a very thin crust for a 10 inch pan:  Mix 1 1/3 c. flour and 1/2 t. salt. With a fork, beat 1/3 c. plus 1 T. oil and 1/4 c. milk.  Stir into the flour.  Mix with fingers into crumbs.  Press into pan.

Slovenian Dinner Week 5: Caraway Cheese Tart + Rutabagas

Caraway cheese tart, with mashed rutabagas and dandelion greens salad

Menu

Caraway Cheese Tart

Mashed Rutabagas

Salad with Dandelion Greens, Romaine and Tomatoes

It was the last day in January, the first month of my new Slovenian roots project. I had actually produced four weekly meals, all of them from my vintage cookbooks.

Since this was a bonus month with five Tuesdays, I figured it might be okay to take a little break and make a dinner that was lighter on the meat and maybe not even strictly ethnic, as long as I found the recipes in my Slovenian cookbook collection.

I'd had my eye on one recipe for awhile: Caraway Cheese Wedges, from Woman's Glory: The Kitchen. It  looked so easy.  Eggs, cheese, sour cream, a little bacon, mixed and then baked together in a pie shell.  Just a variation on quiche, I figured. Probably one of those "modern" American dishes the Slovenian Women's Union decided to include in their mid-1950's cookbook.  A surprising choice, in some ways, since it predated the American quiche craze by at least ten years.

Making such a familiar American entree did feel close to cheating.  I would make up for it with the side dishes.   My mother had told me stories of her immigrant father picking dandelion greens for salad.  I browsed my cookbooks for ideas about a hot vegetable dish and discovered a couple of unusual choices: kohlrabi and rutabaga, otherwise known as yellow turnips.

Rutabagas and kohlrabi?  I had never cooked with either one and probably couldn't have picked them out of a crowd. The big produce market around the corner offered an education in knobby root vegetables. Potatoes of all shapes and sizes, beets of many hues, turnips. Then, the less familiar ones: parsnips, kohlrabi and rutabaga.  I wandered the aisles like a tourist, studying the labels and admiring the dazzling displays of fruits and vegetables.  I felt that I was seeing it all with new eyes--and appreciating it with all my senses.

I finally settled on a small bunch of rutabagas for tonight and a few kohlrabi for the next day, along with some organic dandelion greens for the salad.

There was more than met the eye to that recipe for Caraway Cheese Wedges!  I figured the tart would turn out denser than a conventional quiche.  The filling called for very little liquid, relative to the proportions of cheese and egg.  And my adaptation of the recipe, which I planned to double,  pushed it even farther in that direction.  My only substitution was to replace the liquid, sour cream, with nonfat Greek yogurt, which is basically pure protein.  And I ended up using one fewer egg than I should have.  (Along with doubling the recipe, I was trying to adjust for using extra-large size eggs.)

Despite the extra denseness, it turned out to be a delicious savory tart.  The caraway seasoning, along with the bacon and gruyere cheese, gave it a decided Central European flair.  In the recipe to follow, I've added that extra egg back in.  But if you care to leave it out, go right ahead.  The tart will be extra-dense and chewy.

The rutabagas were good, too.  A nice, light, slightly sweet alternative to mashed potatoes.  I deputized my husband, who followed the basic instructions in Woman's Glory.  Pare and cut into cubes.  Cook in boiling salted water (he tossed in a little onion, too) for twenty minutes or until tender.  Season with salt, pepper, parsley, and butter.   Mash and serve.

It was a tasty and successful end to my first month as a born-again Slovenian American cook.  To my surprise,  I still hadn't run out of recipes to try!

rutabaga and onions, boiled and unmashed

                                                                          

Mashed Rutabagas

Žganci: Mysteries of Buckwheat

Žganci is one of a handful of quintessentially Slovenian dishes.  There is an entire page devoted to it on a government website:  Žganci, Always and Forever. 

But it's hard to classify.

The Progessive Slovene Women of America call it buckwheat mush (ajdovi žganci) and include it in the "Bread-Biscuits-Mush" section of Treasured Slovenian and International Recipes.  The American Slovene Club, in Our Favorite Recipes, classifies it as a potato substitute, and refer to it as buckwheat crumbles.  Woman's Glory puts it in the catch-all "Varieties" category.

The recipes left me feeling even more confused.  The ingredients were simple, just buckwheat flour and salt water, in a 1:2 ratio. My three vintage cookbooks, as well as the many recipes on the web, all offered virtually identical (and peculiar) instructions.

To make žganci, you boil the salted water and then add the buckwheat flour. Some say you add it gradually, while you slowly stir.  Others suggest you just dump it in all it once.  But they all agree on one key point:  Once the flour is added, you stop stirring.  The Progressive Slovene women shout it out: DO NOT MIX.

You let the mix boil while the flour magically turns into a giant lump.  Then you make a hole in the center of the cake of flour with the handle of a wooden spoon so the water can cook it from the inside.  The water should bubble up over the lump.  Then you cover the pan and let it cook for 15 minutes (or maybe 45?)   Finally, you pour off half the water and stir in the rest.   Pour melted butter on top.  Cover and let sit.

Most sources suggest that you pick up spoonfuls of the big buckwheat cake  and use a fork to flake off crumbles, which should be "piled fluffily"  into a bowl.

I made a small recipe: 


2 c. water 
pinch of salt
1 c. buckwheat flour


I brought the salted water to a brisk boil and slowly poured in the flour.  Then I watched and waited.  To my great surprise, the flour did start to cohere into a large brown lump: 

Boiling Buckwheat Flour

After about 5 minutes, I nudged the lump with a spoon.  It seemed fairly solid.  So I poked a hole in the center of the mass with the handle of a wooden spoon.  Now it looked like this: 

Buckwheat Volcano

As I continued to watch, I began to worry.  There wasn't enough water to cover the top of the lump.  So I added more water.  Oh-oh.  Now it stopped boiling.  I started to worry that the lump was beginning to dissolve.  What if I was left with a pot of boiling mush?

The lump still felt firm.  I gently stuck in a knife, to see if the inside was cooked.  To my horror, I discovered that the firm exterior encased a ball of raw, uncooked flour!

At that point, I panicked.  Something had gone terribly wrong.  I figured the only way to salvage this mess was to turn it into a polenta. I took a fork and beat it into submission.

To my amazement, the brown soup and the raw flour mass was easily transformed into a nice, smooth polenta!

I poured it into a dish, which my husband had greased with olive oil.  I stuck it into the oven to firm up.  topped it off with two nice thick slices of bacon, cooked to a crisp in the microwave.  It looked like this:

The Final Version: Žganci with Bacon

The verdict:  Delicious!  A dark, tangy polenta that provided a fine accompaniment to the chicken ajmoht in my third week dinner.   An added plus:  Buckwheat is high protein and gluten-free!


And when I checked back, I discovered that I had done exactly what the Progressive Slovene Women had intended.  None of those little crumbles for them.  The goal was just a nice smooth mush.
Evidently,  I had simply made a regional variation, in what's called the softer Styrian style.

As they say on that government website: "Any day is right for žganci!  You know, to keep you strong." 

Stuffed Cabbage, Slovenian-style: Bound for Glory

This was not the first time I made stuffed cabbage.  But it was my first attempt at doing it Slovenian-style, from a vintage ethnic cookbook called Woman's Glory: The Kitchen.

I came up with a combination of three recipes I found in that yellowing book: Sarma, Sarmi, Cabbage Bundles.  Variations on a theme, but my own adaptation, for my first Slovenian Dinner in my back-to-my-roots cooking project. 

My mother really liked it.  Just like her mother's, she said.  And it was amazing, the way my Berkeley kitchen was suddenly transformed into my grandma's.  There it was: the smell of  Cleveland's East Side in the 1950s. The scent of Central Europe.  Such a mysterious alchemy, from a recipe that seemed so familiar, so unremarkable.  Maybe it was the paprika.

I liked those cabbage rolls.  So did my husband.  (It's a good thing, since we were eating them for days!)

But the recipe is not quite there yet.  It needs more onion.  More seasonings.  Next time, I may adopt the suggestion of one of those recipes, to cook the cabbage rolls on a bed of sauerkraut.  

Yes, the recipe needs some tweaking.  But it's on the way.  Bound for Glory.

Stuffed Cabbage, Slovenian Style (Sarma)

1/2 red onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

2 T olive oil

3/4  cup rice, rinsed and drained

1 1/2 t. salt

1 t. pepper

1 t. paprika

1 t. fresh mint, chopped

1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped

2 T. crushed tomatoes

1/2 lb. each of ground beef, pork and turkey (1 1/2 lb. total)

1 egg, beaten

1 large head green cabbage

Extra green and red cabbage leaves (next time: sauerkraut!)

Equal parts of beef broth and crushed tomatoes, mixed, to equal about 3 cups of liquid

Salt and pepper to taste

For filling:  Brown onion and garlic in oil.  Add rice and brown, then add seasonings, parsley, tomatoes, and mix.  Let cool.  Mix in meat and egg.

For cabbage: Cut out core of cabbage.  Cover in hot water and boil for about 5 minutes.  Drain and separate leaves.

To make the rolls:  Cut out the tough rib of each cabbage leaf.  Place a portion of meat on the leaf.  Roll up securely, envelope style.  Secure with toothpicks. 

Put extra cabbage leaves in bottom of large greased frying pan or Dutch oven.  Put cabbage rolls on top, packing tightly.  Add liquid, almost to cover.  Cover and simmer until done, about 1 hour.

Dober Tek!

Update:  In December, I made another version of stuffed cabbage. All beef, cauliflower instead of rice in the filling,  and baked on a bed of sauerkraut.  Go here for the recipe!

2022 10th Anniversary Update: I decided to try a different recipe from one of my newer community cookbooks: Kuharice iz Willarda, published in 1974 by a Slovenian language class in Willard, Wisconsin. This recipe was much like the one above, but the filling was more highly seasoned (a tablespoon each of salt and paprika, a whole onion), it called for a whole cup of rice, and it included an egg.  I tried a few other suggestions I'd heard about: using a savoy cabbage, freezing the whole cabbage first instead of boiling it, and using tomato juice as the liquid. And I continued with what has became my regular practice, adding a bed of sauerkraut. The result? This dish had a great flavor, but the meat filling seemed dense and dry. My conclusion:  I would follow the original recipe for the filling, although I would continue to increase the onion and spices. I liked the plain tomato juice, as well as the  savoy cabbage, which seemed softer and easier to work with. Freezing the cabbage instead of boiling it does work, but it seemed to require more care in peeling off the leaves. Happy experimenting!  

Woman's Glory: The Kitchen (New Year's Resolution)

I bought this classic mid-century Slovenian American cookbook last year, as a Christmas gift for myself. But I've just realized what a gem it is. In fact, it has given me a whole new direction in my Slovenian roots quest.


Woman's Glory was first published in the early 1950's in Chicago, by the Slovenian Women's Union of America. This well-used 1958 edition, which I discovered for sale online, was edited by Albina Novak. It's a charming mix of traditional Slovenian recipes and classic 50's American cuisine like jello molds and casseroles made with canned soup. 


I have in mind a sort of ethnic version of "Julie and Julia." I doubt
that I'll cook every recipe in Woman's Glory. In fact, I won't even limit myself to this book, because I've just added two more vintage cookbooks to my collection.

Here's my resolution for the New Year: Once a week, I'll make an all-Slovenian dinner. I'll try to stick to recipes from my trio of Slovenian American cookbooks from the 1940's and 1950's. Maybe I'll call it "Josephine and Jožefa: My Year of Cooking Ethnically."  That was the first name, in English and Slovenian, of my immigrant great-grandmother.  In fact, I've already started. I made my very first dinner last week!