Or in the native parlance "Kolachi" and not those Czech abominations that go by the same name. It is a production to make these holiday treats. I started at ten this morning and finished at 5 in the afternoon. I've tried to make poppy seed rolls for the last three years now with varying degrees of success. This year I'm using my friend David's recipe.
The dough runs as follows.
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1/2 stick of butter, 3/4 c. milk. 2 eggs (reserve part for egg wash on top), 1/2 c. sugar, 1 pkg. yeast, pinch of salt, flour until it makes a good dough
i think i usually melt the butter in the milk, add the yeast and sugar once the butter-milk mixture is cooled enough, then add the eggs and the rest...
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So melt the butter in the milk.
add sugar (I multiplied the recipes by six and used a cup of honey and a cup and a half of sugar)
Toss the mixture into a wide bowl to cool more swiftly.
Add the eggs and the yeast which you ought to have proofed by now but only when the milk/butter has cooled to luke warm. Cooking the eggs or the yeast is a bad idea.
Then keep adding flour (using a sifter) until the dough is workable.
Let the whole thing rise for three hours kneading at an hour and a half.
The rising time will give you plenty of time to make the filling.
First grind a cup of poppy seeds per roll. I used my little mortar and pestle. The idea is to break up the outer shell not to make dust. The seeds won't cook properly if they are not roughed up a bit.
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1 cup of poppyseeds, before grinding
1 tbs butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 mushy banana
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You squish the banana and milk together. I used honey instead of sugar and reduced the whole mixture in a pot for about an hour on medium.
Now after the filling is ready and the dough has risen roll out the dough very thinly. It's a tough dough to work with so work those arms : ) .
Spread about a cup and a half of filling on the dough and roll it up putting the "Seam" underneath and tucking in both ends. Finally cut four or 5ive slits equitably across the top of each roll to let the pastry breath and not explode. If you want the nice golden brown crust brush the outside of the roll with some egg white.
It gets tossed in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.
My first three had one disaster (which we will happily eat) making it a five out of six success rate. Maybe next year I'll avert all disasters. These five will be frozen for the holidays as gifts for select wonderful people in my life.
~Eikon
~Eikon
Maia is Flopper's nice here is a picture of her and Eli in Iowa pilfered from Flopper's blog.
Today after he took me to dinner (I love Pho) he gifted me with one of his coffee grinders which I had been lusting after for the last year. Maxwell House and Folgers never really infiltrated the Scandinavian bastions of the Upper Midwest so these little beauties are common but rather expensive and I certainly didn't have the 80 dollars that the antiques dealers wanted. Judging by the construction and ornamentation I'd say its from the 20's or early 30's.
The top is made of cast iron and is fairly hefty (if these guys get wet they rust). Just looka t those precious daisies :)
You toss the beans into the top.
Then grind away for a few minutes and pull out this little drawer (and its dovetailed ; well grooved)
I even like the handle and grind shaft as well. This is one of the reasons I love old kitchen gadgets they were built to last forever. Seriously barring fire this thing will be around for another hundred years. The grind is course and suitable for a percolator or my preferred variety of coffee a French press. Flopper is getting the one we have though so it seems I'll have to buy a new one. It can be an adventure in Minneapolis.
This hat is an exercise in self love and my Christmas present to myself.
My pet experiment at the moment is to figure out how to make a sponge that will ferment through the day (ostensibly while I'm at work or overnight) and then a dough that will rise after one kneading in a similar amount of time. So eight to ten hours each.
First the scarf; I'd been meaning to do the shifting Sands pattern for some time and now don't have to. I heart Malabrigo worsted weight.
Flopper had a melt down when he saw the Fanny May chocolate. Apparently this is a Chicago thing; they were all so very tasty and have disappeared in the past 24 hours.
I had a meltdown when I saw this lovely sock yarn. It s Mountain colors in the Red Willow color way. More socks !
Here is a close up of the scarf.
And a slightly less grumpy looking Eli modeling it.
It comes with distressingly long ear flaps/scarves?
Gay ninja powers.
The ability to really confuse Elias.
Or really torment him.
So melt the butter in the milk.
add sugar (I multiplied the recipes by six and used a cup of honey and a cup and a half of sugar)
Then keep adding flour (using a sifter) until the dough is workable.
Let the whole thing rise for three hours kneading at an hour and a half.
First grind a cup of poppy seeds per roll. I used my little mortar and pestle. The idea is to break up the outer shell not to make dust. The seeds won't cook properly if they are not roughed up a bit.
Spread about a cup and a half of filling on the dough and roll it up putting the "Seam" underneath and tucking in both ends. Finally cut four or 5ive slits equitably across the top of each roll to let the pastry breath and not explode. If you want the nice golden brown crust brush the outside of the roll with some egg white.
It gets tossed in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.
My first three had one disaster (which we will happily eat) making it a five out of six success rate. Maybe next year I'll avert all disasters. These five will be frozen for the holidays as gifts for select wonderful people in my life.
~Eikon
My latest kitchen toy courtesy of Lehman's (aka the House of Satan).
Apparently in Nepal there was once a lowland forest in the foothills of the Himalayas where in several groups of nomadic people lived. With advent of DDT and the subsequent removal of malaria from the swampy forests people have cleared these jungles and built farms. The last vestiges of the traditional Rajji culture hang on with there being roughly 3000 Raji left.
They shimmy up these very large trees carrying smoking torches to collect honey.
This is a glorious book with some amazing photography of people in trees festooned with bee hives; ten or twenty hives to a tree. It seems they just sort of hang there. The largest tree in the book had 500 hives. My Apologies for the flash pictures.
Like all indigenous communities they are coping with extremely high levels of mortality, alcoholism, and being dispossessed of their ancestral homelands. Giving nomads farmland is not compensation or as one of the elders in the book put it "The earth used to give us what we needed now we are told we need to fight with the earth to get what we need to feed our children when before one days work fed us for four days time". Its a culture that will probably go extinct inside a generation or two.