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There is only one Old Country
Jan. 25th, 2009 12:40 pmSo I recently got The Czechoslovak Cookbook, which is just an English translation/adaptation of a rather popular basic cookbook in Czech Republic and Slovakia (it was probably originally published there when they were both the same country).
It's great. My mom's side of the family is Czech, and I'm happy that I can cook all sorts of things that I used to eat when I was little, either at the annual Czech Bazaars that I went to, or when visiting Prague (I used to go there with my family at least once every two years starting in 1990). Even though I didn't eat Czech food most of the time when I was little, whenever we got Czech food it was always treated like a big treat. But ever since I became vegetarian (fifteen or so years ago!), it's been hard to get traditional Czech food that I can eat even when I'm in Prague, other than pastries and some random things like fried cauliflower and fried cheese and Czech crepes. But now, I can make stuff myself, so I don't have to worry about what's got beef broth in it! It feels so good to eat this stuff, I can really get why Southerners refer to traditional Southern cooking as "soul food." It's good to eat what you grew up on.
Another interesting result: yesterday, I decided to make Czech knedliky (dumplings), but the kind that I know as real, authentic knedliky apparently included yeast. I didn't want to wait for my knedliky to rise so I picked an easier-seeming recipe that just called for some cooked farina (cream of wheat), mixed with an egg and some butter, and dunked in soup.
I ENDED UP WITH MATZO BALLS. Freakin' matzo balls! They weren't quite the same since the farina was cooked in milk and I imagine that actual matzo balls don't have dairy in them (since they usually go in chicken soup), not to mention the fact that, well, they weren't made out of matzo. But you could easily use this same recipe, I think, to make matzo balls by just using matzo and water instead of farina and milk.
Lessons learned:
1. Jewish food is really just Eastern European food, tweaked to be kosher, and
2. Cream of wheat is a pretty good replacement for matzo flour, apparently (however, not vice versa; I would NOT recommend microwaving matzo flour and water for a nice hot breakfast)
There are other recipes that I've tried from this book that people pointed out were analogous to Jewish food. I made some palačinky (Czech crepes) for Mike at some point and used cream cheese and/or jam to fill them instead of some of the more traditional Czech fillings because I had to make do with what was already in his parents' kitchen, and his parents pointed out that they were blintzes. I made some poppyseed koláč pastries (basically tarts with filling in them) and people pointed out that they were sort of like big, round hamentaschen (with a somewhat different type of crust).
This is further evidence for my theory that much of what we call "Jewish" culture in the US is really Eastern European culture. Which is how I explain why people who know I'm "half Jewish," and who hear me talk about my mother and grandmother, are constantly surprised that they're not the Jewish side (my grandmother talks about nothing but her poor health, WWII, and how nobody helps her, and complained throughout my childhood that my mother was starving me to death; my mother is a guilt expert, has exclusively Jewish friends as far as I can tell, and gets really excited when she meets a nice, single med student who's even vaguely my age- she tried to set me up with a friend of mine from pre-school once she ran into his mom and found out that he was in med school).
Now I want to drop out of law school and open a vegetarian, kosher-dairy Eastern European fusion restaurant. I would have NO COMPETITION! I would adapt the dishes to be moderately healthy! You could eat gluten goulash! Dumplings filled with textured vegetable protein, or maybe even VEGETABLES! I could sell pre-made Shabbat dinners every Friday afternoon! HIPSTERS would go there, because they would think that the concept was ironic, but it would be COMPLETELY SINCERE.
It's great. My mom's side of the family is Czech, and I'm happy that I can cook all sorts of things that I used to eat when I was little, either at the annual Czech Bazaars that I went to, or when visiting Prague (I used to go there with my family at least once every two years starting in 1990). Even though I didn't eat Czech food most of the time when I was little, whenever we got Czech food it was always treated like a big treat. But ever since I became vegetarian (fifteen or so years ago!), it's been hard to get traditional Czech food that I can eat even when I'm in Prague, other than pastries and some random things like fried cauliflower and fried cheese and Czech crepes. But now, I can make stuff myself, so I don't have to worry about what's got beef broth in it! It feels so good to eat this stuff, I can really get why Southerners refer to traditional Southern cooking as "soul food." It's good to eat what you grew up on.
Another interesting result: yesterday, I decided to make Czech knedliky (dumplings), but the kind that I know as real, authentic knedliky apparently included yeast. I didn't want to wait for my knedliky to rise so I picked an easier-seeming recipe that just called for some cooked farina (cream of wheat), mixed with an egg and some butter, and dunked in soup.
I ENDED UP WITH MATZO BALLS. Freakin' matzo balls! They weren't quite the same since the farina was cooked in milk and I imagine that actual matzo balls don't have dairy in them (since they usually go in chicken soup), not to mention the fact that, well, they weren't made out of matzo. But you could easily use this same recipe, I think, to make matzo balls by just using matzo and water instead of farina and milk.
Lessons learned:
1. Jewish food is really just Eastern European food, tweaked to be kosher, and
2. Cream of wheat is a pretty good replacement for matzo flour, apparently (however, not vice versa; I would NOT recommend microwaving matzo flour and water for a nice hot breakfast)
There are other recipes that I've tried from this book that people pointed out were analogous to Jewish food. I made some palačinky (Czech crepes) for Mike at some point and used cream cheese and/or jam to fill them instead of some of the more traditional Czech fillings because I had to make do with what was already in his parents' kitchen, and his parents pointed out that they were blintzes. I made some poppyseed koláč pastries (basically tarts with filling in them) and people pointed out that they were sort of like big, round hamentaschen (with a somewhat different type of crust).
This is further evidence for my theory that much of what we call "Jewish" culture in the US is really Eastern European culture. Which is how I explain why people who know I'm "half Jewish," and who hear me talk about my mother and grandmother, are constantly surprised that they're not the Jewish side (my grandmother talks about nothing but her poor health, WWII, and how nobody helps her, and complained throughout my childhood that my mother was starving me to death; my mother is a guilt expert, has exclusively Jewish friends as far as I can tell, and gets really excited when she meets a nice, single med student who's even vaguely my age- she tried to set me up with a friend of mine from pre-school once she ran into his mom and found out that he was in med school).
Now I want to drop out of law school and open a vegetarian, kosher-dairy Eastern European fusion restaurant. I would have NO COMPETITION! I would adapt the dishes to be moderately healthy! You could eat gluten goulash! Dumplings filled with textured vegetable protein, or maybe even VEGETABLES! I could sell pre-made Shabbat dinners every Friday afternoon! HIPSTERS would go there, because they would think that the concept was ironic, but it would be COMPLETELY SINCERE.
