My Yugoslav or Serbian Heritage Food Memories, KIFLI

I grew up with the know-how that my Dad’s buy kashmir saffron online mother and father came to the U.S. From Yugoslavia within the very early 1900s. I recognize now that Yugoslavia was a union of nations at the time, but the location wherein my grandparents came from was Kucur, Backa, in the province of Vojvodina, in what’s Serbia, these days. My Yugoslav, or Serbian, grandparents lived on a farm in rural Ohio. They had chickens, so eggs had been abundant. They grew vegetation. They lived a long way otherwise than my Mom’s town folk at some stage in the Depression and World Wars. My Mom recalled that early in her engagement with my Dad, she went over to his parents’ residence after church one Sunday, for breakfast. She become appalled that Grandma had greater than 13 eggs in a bowl, to make scrambled eggs. She felt it became almost obscene to have that many eggs for a own family of five. That added domestic to me the huge differences between metropolis and us of a in those instances.

I simply by no means knew my grandpa as he handed on earlier than I turned into 2 years antique, but I do not forget my Yugoslav Grandma maximum for her desserts. There changed into nobody higher. It became her one interest, for lack of higher phrase. She made strudel from exceptional flaky dough much like phyllo and packed with poppy seed, nuts or cheese. She made Kifli, flaky little pastries that were rolled out into squares and filled with things like Prune Lekvar, ground poppy seed filling and apricot filling. Here is the Kifli recipe I use.

KIFLI

1 half tsp immediately dry yeast, approximately 1/2 a packet

three cups flour

1/four pound lard

1/4 pound unsalted butter

1 egg, whisked

1/four cup whipping cream, or heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup evaporated milk

half of cup poppyseed filling, prune Lekvar or apricot filling

confectioner’s sugar, for rolling and sprinkling

Crumble cake yeast or immediate dried yeast into flour. Work in the lard and butter as for pie dough. Add egg and cream and work with hands till the dough pulls from facets of the bowl. Do not over blend.

Sprinkle your work place with powdered sugar and roll out a part of the dough. Using confectioners’ sugar to roll the dough is vital as including extra flour would support the dough. Cut rolled dough into three-inch squares.

Fill those small squares by using putting a scant teaspoon of filling of your preference within the middle. Bring up opposing corners, hose down the rims with milk or cream and pinch together, then fold the pinched piece over. Bake on parchment lined cookie sheets for 15 to 18 mins at 375 levels. Bottoms may be golden and tops will simply start to end up golden color. Remove from oven, vicinity on a rack to cool and sprinkle with more confectioners’ sugar.

Makes about a hundred

Grandma made such a lot of pastry types, and alas the Kifli is one of the few to survive as a recipe in our circle of relatives. I never learned to make the strudel dough, though I consider as a child, looking Grandma speedy control a small ball of dough right into a paper skinny piece that covered the whole tablecloth blanketed kitchen table and hung down over the edges for as a minimum some other eight – 10 inches. This turned into an wonderful feat I can recollect to at the present time. She might sprinkle on the poppy seed mixture or apple aggregate after which coax the dough up and into a very long, unfastened roll. Placed on a cookie sheet in a big coil, she baked this confection, and sprinkled it with powdered sugar. Grandma cooked and baked returned whilst cooking with lard was an everyday prevalence. And now, over again, lard has come into trend.

Grandma additionally made many one of a kind ingredients for Easter or Christmas. Beets with Horseradish for Easter, and a cheese like ball made with eggs and milk, she called Siretz. She made Bobalky at Christmas, and fortunately that recipe turned into handed right down to us. She made the most fairly flavorful soup, from time to time with red meat, sometimes fowl and occasionally with each collectively. She made her very own noodles to apply in the soup. She made a tomato sauce she referred to as Machanka to eat over the meats from the soup. What made the soup so very memorable to me become the saffron. The odor, the colour, the manner the odor of the saffron in the soup permeated the residence whilst we walked in. The love of saffron is a legacy from my Grandma, to at the moment. I am so thankful to her for the great flavors and recollections of foods handed down from her Yugoslav, Serbian historical past.

Thank you for taking the time to examine my article. I desire it turned into informative and helped you along your personal culinary adventure. You will find many extra recipes and useful recommendations on my internet website online. I am on Facebook at A Harmony of Flavors and share a recipe or tip each day to the enthusiasts which have liked my web site. I wish to look you there quickly.