Eating my way through Europe

Issegeac

Baked figs in Issegeac France market

 

Sausages in Issegeac Market

I am away in Europe eating through every market and pekarina. Enjoy the daily picture postings here on Pauline’s Cookbook on Facebook.

 

 

 

The Secrets of a Great Tomato Sauce

Carl's Tomatoes at his roadside stand in Leamington, Seacliff Drive

Living in Leamington her whole adult life, Pauline knew a thing or two about cooking with tomatoes. Leamington is the tomato capital of Canada with the Heinz Ketchup plant dominating the center of town, and miles of field tomatoes grown up and down Seacliff Drive along the lake.  Pauline stuffed her tomatoes with rice and ground meat,  flavored with ruddy paprika.  Or she stuffed peppers and cabbage rolls with a meaty tomato sauce.

Carl's Tomatoes - red and yellow. You can also find black, green and orange tomatoes.

I’ve been attempting to make her rich tomato sauce ever since, and I thought I would share some of the secrets I’ve learned, not necessarily from Pauline, but from the Italian tomato farmers in Leamington, my tomato crazy family and from famous chefs.

Farmer's Market Roma Tomatoes, firm to the touch

The Tomato.  The type of tomato you use will dictate the type of  sauce you will end up with.  Carl in Leamington recommends Roma, and I have to agree. The oblong tomatoes are meaty with few seeds, a thin skin, and impart their liquid only once in the pan.  At Le Cordon Bleu in Paris we used regular tomatoes, and we briefly boiled them to easily remove the skins. We then seeded and quartered them – far too much work, in my opinion, and too much loss of nutrients. Take the Romas and simply quarter them, removing the small core at the one end if you like.  The large chunks will cook down into a thick sauce.  Use only tomatoes ripened on the vine. Did you know that the uniform tomatoes you buy at the grocer’s are sprayed with a chemical to turn green tomatoes red?!

Roughly chopped romas with base of onion, garlic and celery

The Base.  The French and Pauline used chopped onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil until translucent.  Giada De Laurentiis  uses diced onion, celery and carrots. I actually prefer Giada’s, as it provides a deeper flavor to the sauce, and is healthier. Use home grown or farmer’s market celery and you will notice a tremendous difference in the flavor. The celery is darker than the anemic, flavorless sticks you buy at the store, with a much more peppery, lemongrass flavor that will make the sauce velvety and rich.  I also add chopped celery leaves, a part of the stalk rarely used in cooking (it’s also great to use when making your own stock).

Neutralizing the Acidity.  Sea salt usually does the trick – a teaspoonful of salt mid way through the cooking will balance out the flavor and make the sauce less bitter. Giada uses a spoonful of sugar which I’ve also tried, but the kids noticed that the sauce tasted sweeter.  I’ve also used a couple of tablespoons of butter added near the end to smooth out the flavor of the tomatoes. You need to add one of these ingredients though, or the sauce will be too tart.

Tomato sauce with celery leaves added.

Flavor.  As I mentioned earlier, the right celery will do wonders to the flavor.  I also add a bay leaf to the simmering pot, and about 3 minutes before I serve it, I add a handful of freshly chopped herbs – parsley, basil, thyme, and/or oregano.  Salt and pepper too, and sometimes I’ll add a few dashes of balsamic vinegar which makes a nice syrupy addition to the sauce.  Another way to enrich the sauce flavor is by adding some roasted tomatoes or red peppers. Rachel Ray throws the butt ends of leftover Parmesan cheese wedges into her sauce, letting it melt in. Also good.

Texture.  Pauline and Slovak relatives in Petrovec and Stara Pazova cook the sauce over low heat for hours, constantly stirring until the sauce is smooth in consistency. The result is a silky, smooth sauce but I am too impatient to replicate their method.  Giada cooks the sauce for less than 1/2 hour, then blends the sauce in a food processor before serving; at the Le Cordon Bleu we left the sauce chunky.  The French cook the sauce at fairly high heat until the tomatoes impart their liquid and the tomatoes break down and start to carmelize, then simmer it for another hour or two, stirring frequently.

If you really want a tomato'y tomato sauce, try roasting some tomatoes first in the oven, with a little olive oil. Out of this world good.

Easiest.  The easiest home made tomato sauce I’ve ever made is Marcella Hazan’s, the 87 year old queen of Italian cookery.  Dump a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes in a sauce pan, flavor with salt and pepper and add a stick of butter and a peeled onion cut in half. Let it cook away for 45 minutes, then remove the onion, stir and serve. You’ll have a rich, silky sauce.

Freezing.  You can freeze the tomato sauce once its made for up to 6 months. In the summer when you are overloaded with tomatoes and can’t make the sauce fast enough, try freezing them so that you can make the sauce in the winter. You’ll get the same fresh tomato taste and avoid the out of season winter imitators (which are grown in Florida by immigrants in slave-like conditions anyway. Read Barry Estabrook’s new book called  Tomatoland for a shocking lesson in the truth about what it takes to grow those store varieties).

Freezing fresh tomatoes is easy. Wash them and then pop them into a freezer bag, and that’s it. You can try boiling them first for 15 seconds and coring them too. But why bother?  When you are ready to use the frozen tomatoes, run them under hot water for a few seconds and the skins will pop right off.  As they cook you can chop them up with a wooden spoon, and I pull out the blackened core pieces as the sauce cooks.

Opile Kusky

Opile Kusky

Opile Kusky is an alcohol based puff pastry that translates to Drunken Pieces.  The finger sized pastry bits are both savory and sweet at the same time, and are probably best served as an amuse-bouche before dinner with a glass of rakia.

Miro Suster's bottle of home made Rakia with hand stitched bottle "dress". Miro's wife, Suska, made this pear rakia in Backy Petrovac, in the heart of Vojvodina where the fruit is best.

In most Slovak families you are welcomed into their homes with a small glass of rakia, a clear homemade alcoholic beverage made from distilled fruit with a whopping 60% alcohol content.  Rakia is usually made from plums (slivovica), apples, quince or pears. Most Slovaks will enjoy a shot of rakia before lunch, dinner and with appetizers.  A few sips are also fed to children when they complain of stomach aches. Really.

Future sadlo. I just happened to meet these three little pigs the day I found sadlo for sale.

The delicate kusky pastry rises in the oven in folds and then tumbles over, like drunks in public.  I’ve come across slight variations of this recipe in other Pivnice families (only Pauline’s included the rum) but the steps are always the same ; Obile Kusky pastry is made in a similar way to the dough for krempita.

If I had to beg for money, this is how I think I would do it. Beach at Santa Barbara, CA 2011.

The key ingredient is the use of sadlo, which is the fat stuck to the sides of the pig and is covered in a membrane. In English it’s called suet, and you can get it at the butcher if you ask. You will see it also in thick slabs of bacon in Central Europe.  I stumbled upon sadlo this past spring at a pig farm, and I  froze it for future use in this recipe.

Sadlo, or suet in English

Ingredients

• 4 cups flour
• 2 cups sadlo/suet
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 4 eggs (1 whole, 3 egg yolks), beaten slightly
• 1 whole lemon, squeezed
• a splash or three of rum
• pinch of salt
• 4 tbsp cream
• approx. 1-2 tbsp white wine – as much as the dough will absorb

For decorating:

• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 package vanilla sugar

Steps:

First Dough:

1. Mix 1/2 the flour with 1/2 the lard into a soft pastry
2. Let it rest in fridge, wrapped in plastic

Second Dough:

1. Mix all remaining ingredients together, except the wine
2. Splash in the wine, and gently work in as much as possible into the dough
3. Roll into a ball and wrap in plastic, and let it rest in the refridgerator for at least 15 minutes

Assembly:

1. Roll out the first dough onto the counter about 8×10 inches
2. roll out the second dough slightly smaller, and place it on top of the first piece
3. Fold the dough over onto itself with the left side meeting the right side in the middle
4. Fold the top and the bottom towards the middle and meet in the center
5. Wrap the dough and let it rest in the refridgerator for 15 minutes
6. Roll out the dough again, 8×10, being careful not to roll the layers into each other
7. Repeat steps 3 through 6 again 2 more times
8. Roll out the dough one more time to a thickness of 1/4 inch or so
9. Cut the dough into rectangular pieces the size of your finger
10. Bake the slices on an ungreased cookie sheet in a preheated oven at 375 degree for 20-30 minutes until they fall over in the oven
11. When out of the oven, sprinkle the dough with sifted, powdered sugar and vanilla sugar and serve immediately

This guy was more honest. Santa Barbara, CA 2011.

Searching for Stefanik

Gen. Stefanikova's plane crash in Czecho-Slovakia, May1919. The sky is grey and overcast, and judging by the clothes, it must have been cold. I am not sure if this picture was taken by my great grandfather or not, but it is the Shuster family photo collection.

Digging through an old shoebox of family photos one day, I came across a faded picture of a plane crash.  In the picture men are milling around, poking through the remnants of the small plane that lies crumpled on the ground. On the back of the picture was handwritten, Gen Stefanikova Rosbiti Lietadlo -4-5-1919. Who, I wondered, was General Stefanikova, and why did my great grandparents have a picture of this man’s untimely death in a flying accident?

Milan Stefanik as a young student in Prague where he studied astronomy at Charles University. Štefánik's personal motto was: To Believe, To Love and To Work (Veriť, milovať, pracovať). TF Simon web site.

After some research, I learned that the General was the revered Slovak Milan Stefanik, and that he had tragically crashed his plane in bad weather near Bratislava on May 4, 1919. The dashing young Stefanik had died at 39, just months after seeing his lifelong dream of an independent country for Czechs and Slovaks come true.  He was known as one of the founding fathers of Czecho-Slovakia, established in October, 1918.

Stefanik loved art, and filled his Paris apartment with it. He had many artist friends, including Czech artist Hugo Boettinger who drew this sketch of 25r old Stefanik in 1905. From TF Simon web site.

Stefanik, like my great grandparents and several generations before them, had grown up Slovak in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The son of a Lutheran pastor, Stefanik was fiercely proud of his heritage and took offense at the strong anti-Slovak sentiments in the empire.  Speaking Slovak in public was forbidden, as was teaching of the language, culture and history of the Slav people.

Once on a train ride  to visit his family Stefanik was speaking Slovak in a private rail car with his friends. When the train conductor came to collect the tickets, he overheard the Slovak language being spoken and spit in Stefanik’s face.  Stefanik, by then a well known astronomer and diplomat, was furious, and fired off an angry letter to the editor of the national newspaper that caused quite a sensation at the time.

Hugo Boettinger sketch, "At the Station", from TF Simon's web site.

While a student in Prague at the turn of the century (where he was forced to speak Hungarian), Stefanik would travel to Pressburg (now Bratislava) to stay with the family of  the distinguished lawyer Vendelín “Vendko” Kutlík and his wife Bozena. Vendko, known as the “Second Stur” and his wife had been clandestinely teaching students Slovak history from their home, quietly continuing what Ludovit Stur had begun in the “Slovak uprising” of 1848/49.   When Hungarian authorities got wind of Vendko’s teachings he was investigated and authorities claimed he was “the most dangerous Pan-Slav incendiary” in the country,  “poaching Slovak students to Pan-Slavism, leading them to anti-Hungarianism, pulling students into his family circle and even in pubs…“

Vendelin "Vendko" Kutlik, 1890's. Born in 1834 in Stara Pazova. His father's family ran a butcher shop; his mother Catherine walked into the shop and was mesmerized by way John prepared her meat - they soon married. Photo from the Kutlik web site below.

Vendko was found guilty of treason, dis-barred, his law firm shut down, and his children were forced to leave school, flee the country or go underground where they continued to secretly teach Slovak.  After a long illness Vendko died in 1904, destitute.

After Vendko’s death, Stefanik moved to Paris and charmed his way into a job at the Observatory in Meudon.  He traveled the world setting up observatories and spent a year in Tahiti where he watched Halley’s Comet and was called Taata Hio Fetia by the natives, the “man who watches stars.” An avid photographer, Stefanik’s stunning photos caused many to visit the island after him.

Stefanik lived in a small Paris apartment on the corner of Rue Le Clerc. Stefanik often brought back objects that laid about his apartment as if in a museum. He liked to hang out in the Cafe Viennois with his artist friends. After an extensive search, Stefanik brought back several pieces by Paul Gauguin from Tahiti that were thought to have been destroyed. Photo from a book on Stefanik dated 1929.

When WWI started, he joined the French Army and flew airplanes over Serbia, a gunner in the back seat shooting down at the invading Austro Hungarians. His plane crashed in 1915, and critically injured, he was airlifted to hospital by fellow pilot Louis Paulhan in the first medivac rescue in history.

General Milan Stefanik, the dashing young man in the French Army uniform in the middle, visited the United States in 1917 to drum up support for his crazy idea of an independent country for Czechs and Slovaks. Here he meets with politicians in Washington DC. He also raised money, awareness and rallied fellow Slovaks to join him in fighting against the Austro-Hungarian Army in WWI. He also traveled to Russia and successfully lobbied to release 100,000 Czech and Slovak POWs and created the Czech0-Slovak Legion. This photo is from the US archives in DC.

On a recent visit to a cemetery in Slovakia where my relatives were buried, I found engraved on a tombstone the maiden name of my great, great grandmother, Maria Andel – it was Kutlik. Maria, Vendko’s family and other “Kutlyks” came from Srance, a small village of a few hundred people nestled in the foothills of the Tatra mountains, a 10 minute walk from Dolny Kubin.   They had arrived there in the 1600′s from Poland; Vendko, it turns out, was Maria’s uncle.

Stefanik’s fantastic achievement of an independent country for his fellow Slovaks was more than the realization of his own dream; it was the culmination of the dreams of many before him, including Stur, Vendko, my family and countless other Slovaks who had quietly fought for the rights of Slovaks and who had suffered under the injustice of Hungarian oppression for a millennium.

Statues and tributes to Stefanik can be found around the world, including Tahiti, France, Slovakia and the United States. A couple of weeks ago I drove to Cleveland, Ohio to find Stefanik as I had read that a a statue had been built in his honor in 1924. The statue stands in the middle of a round-about on the outskirts of picturesque Wade Park on a busy road in eastern Cleveland.

Script engraved in the side of Stefanik's statue in Cleveland. His death must have deeply shocked and saddened Slovaks, including my family who held on to the photo of his plane crash for over 90 years.

A footnote to this story: I learned from a reader after publishing this that Stefanik’s brother, Igor Branislav Štefánik, married Zuzana Suster from Pivnice. Both Zuzana and I descend from the same Stefan Suster who immigrated to Vojvodina in the 1780′s.

An introduction to Vendelin Kutlik - http://www.nasaadvokacia.sk/v_kutlik.html

An essay written in 1937 by T.F. Simon about Stefanik and Paul Gauguin:  http://www.tfsimon.com/Gauguin.html

More photos of Stefanik’s life and of Bettinger’s art

A timeline of Stefanik’s incredible life - http://en.valka.cz/viewtopic.php/t/13202

An excellent overview of Stefanik’s life: http://www.tfsimon.com/stefanik-note.htm

Milan Stefanik: “There is no such thing as the impossible.“

Lancaster Central Market

Sunflowers at Central Market

“I grew up in an all female household,” Vasso told me.

“My mother worked to support the family, and my grandmother raised me. She taught me everything about the cooking she grew up with in Greece.”

“I started this little business as a part time venture, something for fun to do on the side. But I’m working 7 days a week, baking or selling. It’s a true labor of love.”

I can taste that love. Vasso is the sole proprietor of Yasou, selling authentic Greek pastries in a tiny stall at the Central Market in  Lancaster, PA.

The most enjoyable food you can put in your mouth is made with fresh, local ingredients, and in small quantities by people who put their heart and soul into what they do.  And with the discovery of Vasso and others here in Lancaster, I think I have found the epicenter of the locavore movement here in the United States.

Two hours from Washington, DC is the country’s oldest continuously running farmer’s market, the Lancaster Central Market in operation since 1730.   The market is open Tuesdays and Fridays from 6am-4pm and Saturdays from 6am until 2pm.  The current market is operated in a beautiful Romanesque Revival building built in 1889.

You will find a wide variety of small shops selling everything from flowers and organic produce to European pastries, hand made candies, grass fed free range chickens, creamy milk and unpasteurized cheeses. The owners include people of Greek, German, Italian, Amish, Thai, African and Middle Eastern descent, and the market stalls overflow with their diverse flavors and languages.

Greek pastries by Yasou

My favorites include Yasou, the Greek pastry stall. Vasso makes all the pastries daily, and there is no web site, no ability to ship or pre-order. You simply have to go and sample her cookies and Greek pastries – they are the most delicate morsels you will ever eat.  Her  Finkia and the Almond Kourambiedes cookies (Pauline used to make these) dissolve in a buttery sweetness when they touch your tongue.

Cookies are about $1.7o each, and a box of pastries ranges from $18 to $36.

Linden Dale Farm cheese artisan doles out samples and describes the cheese making process

For cheese I head to the Linden Dale Farm stall at the front of the market.  On this morning I was late to try the popular mozzarella cheese curds, tiny crumbly balls with a fresher, tangier taste than more mature mozzarella balls.

Instead I indulged in a small disk of Laughing Lindy goat cheese, with a soft puckered rind and a smooth, bold taste of cheese in the middle. Each disk is made by hand, is aged three weeks and varies in size and price.

Laughing Lindy

Laughing Lindy reminds me of a favorite Cabecou cheese that I buy at the farmer’s markets in Southwest France.  Another excellent choice is Tome, a wedge of unpasteurized goat cheese aged 9 months. It’s dry like parmesan, and has a strong,  nutty taste.  Prices for cheese ranged from $2.50 to $5.50.

I sampled wonderful hand made pretzels, Greek chickpea patties, took home a pack of thinly rolled frozen spanikopita for $10, a dozen eggs from free range chickens for $2.50 and a grass fed, free range chicken for $3.59 a lb.

If you enjoy high quality food at a reasonable price, spend a weekend in Lancaster. Leave early on Saturday morning in order to get to Central Market as early as possible. Spend the afternoon strolling through the many artistic shops in town, and the night across the street from the market at the Marriott Hotel, and have dinner at the Pressroom, in the old Steinman hardware store. Sundays, I’ll warn you, most businesses are closed, but there is still plenty to see with Amish farms nearby and many historical sites.

For more pictures of Central Market, click here.

Market Street Produce in Central Market

Korbáčiky

Korbáčiky

We’ve had relatives visiting from Slovakia this summer, and they came laden with gifts.  Above, smuggled through airport security was korbáčiky, my favorite salty sheep’s cheese that comes in long rolls of string.  There are two varieties – smoked and un-smoked; this is the latter.  The cheese is still sold today by shepherds along the roadside.

300 sheep live at Chalet Krajinka. You can see the shepherd's hut, watch traditional cheese making and eat in the restaurant.

There is a Slovak joke about how this cheese is made: first, you dunk the ball of freshly made sheep cheese in hot water, and then pull it apart into two pieces.  Then you spit into your hands, and roll each piece on your thighs, into thin strings (this is supposed to gross people out, which it usually does).  It’s funnier told in person with hand animations, and I’m told even funnier in Slovak.

Fresh sheep cheese soaked in hot water, spun into string cheese

I was lucky enough to see this cheese made the traditional way at the Chalet Krajinka near Ruzomberok in the Lower Liptov region of Slovakia, and you do indeed dip the sheep’s milk in hot water before rolling it.

Braiding Korbáčiky

Korbáčiky is also often braided, and it was amazing to watch the women braid and twist at lightning speed.

The finished product

Some people find Korbáčiky too salty – soaking it in hot water before eating it helps cut the salt. And placing it in boiling water for 10 or 20 seconds melts it back into a ball.  Korbáčiky is best eaten fresh, but if you want to keep it a while and savor it slowly, like I must with my illicit gift, then freeze it and cut off chunks as needed.  Mailing it via postal service to yourself from Slovakia is not a good idea, as my travel partner discovered when the stinky package arrived a month later.

My relatives sampling the finished product

Most of these pictures were taken by Lily Shuster, my favorite travel partner, cheese mailer and aunt extraordinaire.  Aunt Lily, I didn’t even tell you Josef brought this cheese on his visit. But I’ve had my fill and your brother Jerry has the remains in his possession.

Törökméz

Hungarian treat - Törökméz

Recently I had  cheesecake with a sprinkling of sponge toffee topping, a fun play on the classic dessert Crème Brûlée, and it reminded me of  Törökméz.   Translated from Hungarian as “Turkish honey”, Törökméz is a spongy, fragile candy that quickly shatters as it hits your teeth, and then melts in your mouth when it lands on your tongue a second later.

The super sweet treat is usually homemade and as I ate the cheesecake I suddenly remembered making this Turkish honey  as a child; Pauline called it “capalov”.  The main ingredients are sugar and honey, and sometimes walnuts too, with a secret ingredient that causes it to bubble it up like a honeycomb.  Sponge toffee is similar, made with brown sugar and corn syrup.

When you can’t make it yourself, the next best thing is to buy it as a candy bar – the Crunchie bar in Canada and in the UK, or the Violet Crumble in Australia.

Törökméz Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1.5 tsp baking soda
• 1/3 cup crushed walnuts, optional

Steps

1. Prepare a lightly greased piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet
2. On the stove, melt the sugar and honey together and continue to stir until it is golden brown, about 10 minutes
3. Add the walnuts in, if you are using them
4. Toss in the baking soda, and it will start to fizz
5. Immediately pour the carmelized sugar onto the wax paper and allow it to cool, about an hour
6. Break into pieces