Pączki: a Polish Fat Tuesday Treat

Happy Mardi Gras, everybody!

Despite the fact that I am both Polish and live in a city renowned for it's celebration of Fat Tuesday, I had never heard of pączki until some Northern and Midwestern living friends of mine in an online forum started discussing them a few years ago.  I realized instantly that I needed to have these!  I found some last year at one of the local supermarkets and they were like powdered jelly doughnuts.  Nice, but nothing special. Turns out, true pączki "are *not* large jelly doughnuts, but small, delicate, rose-petal or plum-preserve filled balls of goodness. Possibly Avocat-cream, but that's dangerous territory for a filling. The only possible addition is icing (again, a shimmer of semi-translucent sweetness, not big blobs of white icing) and maybe a few (3-4) tiny squares of candied orange peel.", says my Polish friend Anna, from Ann Arbor, MI.  Even more intriguing!  But where to get them?

My friend Melinda, from Seattle, had the same dilemma and solved it by making them herself. She also volunteered to guest blog them for us, so we could try them ourselves. You may remember her from previous guest posts about Fig Butter and Vegetarian Pigs In A Blanket (Cabbage Rolls).   Hooray Melinda!

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Fat Tuesday always fills me with nostalgia and longing for home. Not because I'm from New Orleans and I'm excited about Mardi Gras, but because I'm from Michigan, and I'm excited about Paczki Day. Paczki (pronounced punch-key) are traditional Polish pastries, something akin to jelly doughnuts. In Michigan, you can find them with a wide variety of fillings, but they traditionally come with red plum jam inside - it's not too sweet, so the whole thing isn't overpowering.

A few weeks ago, I asked my Polish friend, Ania, whether she knew where to find paczki here in Seattle. Her answer was "no, but we should make some". I certainly couldn't turn that down, so I invited her and a few other folks over for the occasion. We found a recipe, and using Google Translate and some help from Ania and her mother, we were set to go.

After confirming that I did, in fact, have to separate 8 eggs, I did so. Can you spot the free-range organic one?

I followed the instructions in the recipe and let the dough rise for a couple of hours while we all hung out and drank beer. After that, I kneaded the dough, adding plenty of flour and completely forgetting to put in the butter. Oops. Then I rolled it out. It's a little darker than you might expect because I used whole wheat pastry flour, on account of being a dirty hippie:

We formed an assembly line. I cut out circles of dough using a glass, Kevin put teaspoonfuls of plum jam in them, and Ania made little dough-and-jam sandwiches and rolled them in her hands to seal the jam inside.

It made a lot of paczki. Or at least, it made more paczki than any of us felt that we had a right to eat.

We let the paczki rise again while we ate dinner. My husband was kind enough to make some spelt kasha with mushrooms so that we didn't also all die of paczki overload. It was a very good idea. After dinner, we made the glaze with powdered sugar, water, and bits of orange peel. We fried the paczki in a cast iron skillet, and that worked perfectly, because it was just the right depth. Here I am frying while Kevin glazes.

It was glorious.

I ate two.

I highly recommend this exercise. The only thing I would do differently is invite more people over, because we still have a bunch of paczki hanging around.

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Breakfast in Holland

My friend Lisa, in Amsterdam, has been telling me about how different Dutch breakfasts are from American ones.  Even better, she wrote a post for us about them!

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In my travels, I have had breakfast at dozens and dozens of hotel breakfast buffets.  In America, the spread is pretty typical: breads (toast, muffins), cereal, scrambled eggs in a big chafing dish, some sausage and bacon, maybe some hash browns.  Standard breakfast food.  Order from the menu instead and you get pancakes and waffles, an assortment of egg dishes, maybe some sausage gravy.  In the South, we always had grits on the buffet (I love buttered grits).  Still, it is recognizably what we Americans consider breakfast food.

The only place in the US where I have run into a more international breakfast was during an extended stay at the Kyoto Grand Hotel in Los Angeles, right in the middle of Little Tokyo.  The vast majority of the guests were Japanese tourists, so waffles and home fries were in short supply on the buffet table.  Instead, we could get steamed rice, soy sauce, smoked fish and various vegetables to go with our scrambled eggs and toast.  Worked well for me, since I am a big fan of savory breakfast fare – rice and veggies made for a pleasant change.

Breakfast here in the Netherlands is really unusual.  I was surprised to find on my first trip that our hotel did not offer any hot breakfast food (other than coffee).  The only eggs available were hard-boiled.  There was yogurt and granola, and sometimes oatmeal, usually with fresh fruit and also fresh vegetables, which you don’t often see on American breakfast tables.

My favorite thing about breakfast here?  Chocolate sprinkles!  It’s weird, but it’s a common Dutch thing – I have seen a lot of our execs having them for breakfast.  We’re talking about the kind of chocolate sprinkles that you put on cupcakes here in the US.  On the buffet, they come in little boxes and you spread them on your bread, no butter or any other topping, press them into the bread and eat it.  It’s like a Dutch poptart or something!

I don’t actually eat the chocolate sprinkles, I am just heartily amused by their existence.

Other features on Dutch buffets are meat and cheese – as in typical lunchmeat style meat and cheese.  Every morning, there are also large dishes of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.  My hotel also has hot croissants – plates and plates and plates of them – and they are especially good with hazelnut spread. Oh, Nutella!  One of the joys of being in Europe is that little tubs of Nutella are on the table, the way we have grape jam in the US.  I usually have a hard-boiled egg, a croissant with hazelnut spread, some cheese or maybe some corn flakes.  We have a choice of orange juice or “tropic” juice (which tastes like mango) and coffee or tea.  It’s much lighter than most American breakfasts, and much less sweet.

Until you add the chocolate sprinkles!

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Lisa Eats In Amsterdam

Guest posting from Amsterdam has got to be among the more glamorous things I can think of.  Lisa is a good friend who frequently travels from her hometown, in Ohio, to Amsterdam for work.  While there, she eats well and leaves me salivating at the descriptions of her meals.  Very kindly, she agreed to guest post for me about the types of food she encounters in the Netherlands.  Lisa is an avid reader and writer of a great book review blog, which is full of excellent ideas for a good read.  

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Greetings from Amsterdam!  My name is Lisa and I first met Julie when she played tour guide for me in New Orleans.  She’s very lucky to live in such a terrific food city – there is so much good food in New Orleans!  I work for a Dutch company with facilities all over the world.  I have been lucky enough to visit all of our labs in the US, and they are in great food cities like Los Angeles (had the best ramen there) and Houston (burgers at Beaver’s and oysters at Gilhooley’s) and Philadelphia (sushi at Morimoto’s).  But lately, I’ve been in Amsterdam and one of the things I love about this city is the food…but not the Dutch food.


On my first visit here, my boss told me that the Dutch National Cuisine consisted of bar snacks, and I did fall in love with bitterballen, little meat or mushroom croquettes that you dip in mustard and wash down with good Belgian beer.  One of our favorite ways to dine here is to walk from plein to plein, stopping for beer and bitterballen at any outdoor café with an empty seat.  It’s a lovely way to spend the evening.

The thing I really love about dining out in Amsterdam is the variety – you can find cuisine from all over the world, all right at the end of your fork.  Within just a short walk of our hotel there is terrific Indonesian, Italian, Japanese and North African food.  There’s an Irish pub, an Argentine steakhouse and a Hard Rock café with good old American burgers.  We’ve passed places serving falafel, sushi and baby back ribs, all along the same street.  There are Greek, Catalan, Chinese, Morrocan, Peruvian, Malayan and Indian restaurants; I’m trying to talk my boss into taking us to FLO Amsterdam for French food, because I don’t want this place on my expense report!  Later this week, I’m planning to try a Surinamese restaurant, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one back in the states and I am really curious.

We also lucked into some great fine dining.  Last week was a special week for the restaurants in Amsterdam, according to the hostess at Elkaar.  The restaurants put together special tasting menus and there is a website where you can sign up for discounts and make reservations.  We were fortunate that they had an empty spot, because it was the best meal I’ve had in Amsterdam.  They brought us amuse bouche of cream of courgette (zucchini) soup topped with a bell pepper foam, along with a roll of beef tenderloin and duck liver, topped with a soy cream sauce. My starter was wine-roasted veal with caper mayonnaise and a veal tartare topped with a baked quail egg. My main course was a bone-in farmhouse chicken with haricots verts, a green bean mousse, confit of chicken and a dutch-style whipped potato topped with tiny mushrooms. For dessert I had a mille feuille filled with a vanilla yogurt cream sauce and red fruit, champagne sabayon and dotted with intensely-flavored dollops of sauce - green apple and black raspberry.  Absolutely fabulous food!

For someone who loves to try new things, this city is restaurant heaven.  You can really find just about anything you’d like to try…as long as you aren’t looking for Dutch food.

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Fig Butter

Melinda, who guest posted about Vegetarian Cabbage Rolls recently, was gifted with a bounty of very ripe figs last week.  What better to do than make jam?  I am particularly happy to hear how her jam making went, since I am still hoping that my half of the fig tree that straddles mine and my neighbor's backyards will some day render me enough fruit (before the birds eat it all) that I too can make jam.  Her thoughts on the addition of ingredients like ginger, cardamom and orange make the whole idea so very seductive to me.  Can't wait 'til my tree produces again.  Thank you, Melinda!

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At work one day, I happened to mention that I like figs a lot. My manager was interested to hear this, because it just so happens that he has a fig tree himself, and nobody in his family likes figs. I was stunned to hear this, as I previously didn't think it was possible to grow figs in the Pacific Northwest or to dislike them.

I forgot about this conversation entirely, until I came to work one day to find a bag full of figs at my desk. They were easily the largest figs I have ever seen- about the size of avocados- and they were green and purple, with a lovely creamy texture on the inside, and a delicate flavor. I ate one with a spoon right there and then, but what was I to do with the other four and a half pounds of them?

The answer, I decided, was jam. After they sat on the counter for a couple of days and turned a little more mushy, I removed their stems and threw them in a pot, peels and all, with a little water, white sugar, lemon juice, ginger and cardamom. I brought them to a boil, simmered them until they congealed a bit, and blended the whole thing up with my hand blender.

It didn't turn out much like jam at all - it had a consistency more like apple butter, which I love, so I was happy with that. Next time, though, I think I'd rather use brown sugar, orange juice and a little orange rind, and more cardamom, with less ginger.  I think that those ingredients would do a better job of highlighting the fig flavor rather than overpowering it. What I made has a very satisfying gingery bite, though, and it would go very well with some smelly cheese or on a burger with caramelized onions.

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Culinary Adventures in Cleveland

My friend, Melissa, describes herself as "wife, writer/editor, petmom and with 20 years in newspapers as a homes writer, sportswriter, news reporter, features writer and entertainment writer. I'm a native of Connecticut, a New Englander at heart, living in the Cleveland suburbs with my husband, cat, iguana, and turtle."

I describe her as a sweetheart.  She was kind enough to take time from her own busy life and blog to share with us a Guest Post about restaurants in her area, and a family dinner recently shared at Bar Symon in Cleveland.

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One of the things I love about reading blogs like Julie's is discovering the everyday food of a region, the stuff people grab for lunch and the places people go for date night. She brings New Orleans and its food to life in a way no tourist brochure can.

When my husband went to Boston recently, he felt he had to try Union Oyster House since it was a local institution. While the seafood was fine, the experience was a bit disappointing as he realized the place has become a bit of a tourist trap. He was happier at places recommended either by locals or by family and friends who went there frequently.

When my New England family comes out to visit me where I live now, Cleveland, we don't go to the high-end restaurants. We find the good neighborhood places, and hit the markets to find delicious local treats for cooking and enjoying at my house.

Many people would be surprised at how much good eating there is in a city with a lunch-pail, meat-and-potatoes reputation. But local chefs are taking our prosaic comfort foods, our ethnic treasures and our All-American classics and turning them into fine dining.

One of the people leading that movement has become a celebrity chef. Michael Symon has been straddling the worlds of the Food Network and his Cleveland roots since he worked on "Melting Pot."  He's now one of the network's vaunted Iron Chefs.

The foundation for his business remains in Cleveland. While high-end Lola satisfies those seeking a white-tablecloth Dining Experience amid the twinkling lights and bustle of downtown, he keeps his other restaurants accessible and affordable. The east side's B Spot is a burger joint where the beers are cold, the condiments are homemade, and the juices drip down your arm. Lolita, located in the grit-meets-gentrification neighborhood of Tremont, is a neighborhood spot that serves up bistro-style dishes with the flavors of Symon's Mediterranean heritage.

Bar Symon opened in Avon Lake in 2009. The name says it all. Its Symon's take on bar food and pub grub. John and I took my parents and my sister there when they visited last week.

Appetizers are a lot of classic bar/pub snacks kicked up several notches. House-made potato chips come with whipped avocado, bacon and blue cheese. Sliders are a recent culinary trend. Symon does duck confit sliders, with peppery radish and bright cilantro. The duck is so rich and velvety, that one makes a perfect starter. Succulent wings come in either a sriracha hot sauce, or a citrus-cilantro sauce.

Symon puts some quintessential Cleveland foods together for an entree called a Cleveland Classic. It's got all the goodies that my Kowiako ancestors in Cleveland's Warszawa/Slavic Village neighborhood loved: pierogi, kielbasa, cabbage braised in hard cider and some Stadium Mustard on the side.

Fried chicken is a bar food staple. And you can't throw a stone in Northeast Ohio without hitting a perch fry, especially during Lent. Bar Symon has both. The fried chicken is drizzled with honey for a savory-sweet punch. The fish fry, featuring Lake Erie perch in a batter made with Dortmunder Gold beer from Great Lakes Brewing, is an upscale take on fish 'n chips.

Need comfort? Mac and cheese is one of the ultimate comfort foods. Symon's features goat cheese and rosemary.

Symon is known for his love of pork. The man has a pig tattoo. I don't know where he found the pork shanks he braises with beer and apples, then serves with spaetzle and Brussels sprouts, but mine was the most flavorful pork I've tasted since pork unfortunately became "the other white meat."

Sometimes, you just can't beat a good burger. My mother fell in love with the savory lamb burger, with a sauce featuring feta, dill and cucumber.

As fans of "Iron Chef America" know, host Alton Brown always gets excited when someone fires up the ice cream makers in Kitchen Stadium. Symon used his imagination to fashion a dessert out of a classic bar combination. The beer and pretzel sundae features homemade Guinness ice cream, caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, and crumbled pretzels. The slightly chocolatey, slightly bitter ice cream blends with the sweet chocolate and caramel, and the salty crunch of the pretzels to wow the tongue.

Hope you've enjoyed this culinary trip up north!

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We Long For Oysters!

Next up in the Guest Blogger line-up is my good friend Tim who truly, truly knows how to indulge his senses.  He has an excellent blog that covers wine, beer, organic gardening, cooking and so much more.  He contributed this post, not realizing that our oyster season hasn't started yet and may not be quite right for a while (thanks a lot BP!) but we won't hold it against him.  We'll just have to have him ship us a few cases of those Kumamotos if the longing gets to strong.  Some of that stout too, while he's at it!  Mmm, oysters...   

Hey everybody. I’m Tim, guest blogging here today. I’m a writer/blogger living near Vancouver Canada. I work in the wine industry and spend a lot of time travelling, eating, drinking, cooking and above all, making/producing my own comestibles, including making most stuff from scratch, curing my own meats, making cheese, and growing an organic garden. I most especially focus on anything that will ferment, including making wine, beer, sauerkraut, Kim chi, pickles et al. If you ferment it, they will come, and ask for a serving.

I’ve only been to New Orleans once (so far), so I’m not qualified to talk about local cuisine (although if you want to know how to get in trouble in the French Quarter at 3 am, I’m your man). In fact, most Canadians lack proper context to talk about US Southern food—with a straight face, most of us will call grilled meat ‘barbecue’ (I know, I know) tea is drank hot with milk and sugar, where I live ‘the Gulf’ is a strait between Vancouver Island and the Pacific coast of British Columbia and if you have white powder under your nose nobody thinks ‘beignet’.

But food is the universal language. In New Orleans, like every other place I’ve visited, I felt most welcome and at peace when I was elbow-to-elbow with other hungry strangers at a counter that served well prepared and well respected food that reflected the sensibility and character of the city and its people. I once heard of New Orleans that for the natives, the major topics of conversation when you go out to eat are restaurant meals that you have had in the past and restaurant meals that you plan to have in the future. Now that’s a place where I feel at home!

I’ve actually been meaning to contribute to NOJuju for quite a while. One of the early blogs asked ‘What are the oysters like in your neck of the woods and how do you like to eat them?’ I’m the Glutton King of oysters. My all-time favourite birthday meal is six or seven dozen oysters and a half-keg of Stout, and I’ve never said no to a bivalve mollusc.

But oysters are different around here. The gulf oysters I’ve had were big, soft and very sweet. I enjoyed them raw, but saw more potential in them cooked. At home I’ve almost never eaten them anything but raw. I generally get my oysters from the Lobsterman in the Granville Island Market . Visiting Vancouver means you have to go to the market. To miss it would be to go to New Orleans and skip the French Quarter. It’s one of those places with gorgeous, exotic, intensely desirable and tasty stuff, from a soup joint that could make you cry with the happy, to a cheese monger who can not only spell Époisses, but also can sell it. It’s a wonderful place.

The Lobsterman specialises in crabs, lobsters, clams, mussels, bits of fish, but mainly (for me) Pacific Northwest oysters. Local oysters are all from very cold, deep water. This gives many of them a much firmer, dense meat. They also tend to be quite briny—not so much salty, as having a resonant note of minerals that can make the right wine (or beer) sing out like a chorus line all on its own. Some are named after the bays and inlets where they’re gathered from: Fanny Bay, Mary Point, and others the species, like Royal Miyagi,Kumamoto, and Kusshi.

The flavours of each variety vary widely, partly from the terroir (hmm. Oceanoir?) of where they’re harvested from, partly from species character. Fanny Bay are very mild with just a hint of creaminess in with the brine. Mary Points are quite small, have a creamy texture, sometimes almost like clotted cream and are delicately salty. Kumamoto are buttery, and have the most amazing aftertaste of melon. Some folks say watermelon, but I’ve never gotten beyond, ‘Holy Hannah! It tastes like melon!’ Miyagis are less buttery and more firm—not rubbery, but definitely with more tooth—and have the most amazing note of cucumber to them. Kusshis are sweet and buttery and mild.

My favourite way to eat ersters is the simplest: squeeze of fresh lemon and a dot or two of hot sauce. I favour habanero-based sauces because along with the heat, which I adore, they bring a lovely fruitiness that seems to work so well with a great oyster: Melina’s brand is excellent for most purposes, but I also make my own, for fresh and really hot-hot sauce.

The most important condiment to my taste is the beverage that goes with it. With a briny oyster I like good old stout: Guinness or similar does a great job. With more delicate versions like Kusshis or Miyagis, I like sparkling wine. Bollinger when I can get it, Gloria Ferrer when I can’t, and to cover all my bases I often make Black Velvet cocktails—a mixture of Guinness and sparkling wine that has the charms of both.

Hmm. Looks like I’m stopping at the Lobsterman on my way home, never mind that it’s twenty kilometres in the wrong direction. There’s a scent of brine in the air and a bottle of Bollinger in the cellar with my name on it.

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Vegetarian Pigs in a Blanket (Cabbage Rolls)

I am intensely fortunate.  While I am still struggling with wrist and hand pain from my new Rheumatoid Arthritis diagnosis (about which I am still totally and completely all "WTF?!"), I have dear friends who will stand in the blog breach for me.  Today begins a series of guest posts from friends of mine, mostly located in places far from New Orleans, who love food and are generously willing to bare their kitchens, recipes and restaurants to our wondering eyes.  This post is from the lovely Melinda, who lives in the beautifully fair city of Seattle.  Please make her feel welcome, folks!  *warm round of applause*

Hi! I'm Melinda, and I'm excited to be guest-blogging here at NOJuju. At first I was hesitant to write for this blog - after all, I don't live in New Orleans, and I know next to nothing about the food culture there, other than the fact that everything I have ever eaten there was extremely delicious and made from crawfish. I live in Seattle, where it's easier to get good Eritrean food than anything that hails from Louisiana (which is a whole 'nother blog post), and where we can't even grow okra or peppers because it doesn't get hot enough. I live right in the city with my husband, who enjoys cooking as much as I do.

And after an introduction like that, I have to tell you that this post of mine isn't even about food specific to Seattle. It's about cabbage rolls. Except that I don't even call them cabbage rolls - everyone in my family has always called them 'pigs in a blanket', much to the confusion of almost everyone else I talk to here, who think of pigs in a blanket as being hot dogs stuffed inside croissants. If you're wondering why that is, Wikipedia has the answer, as usual: it turns out that "In regions heavily influenced by Slovak immigrants, such as northern Pennsylvania, the term usually refers instead to stuffed cabbage rolls, such as the Polish or Ukrainian Gołąbki." Seeing as how I'm originally from Michigan, which is full of people of Eastern European descent, there's no surprise there. In Michigan, people get excited about pastries that nobody has heard of outside of Poland and the Upper Midwest.

A few months ago, I went to visit my grandma, and she made pigs in a blanket for everyone who descended upon her house that day. When I stopped eating pork about ten years ago, I figured I'd be giving up pigs in a blanket along with my bacon, but grandma made some extra ones with a meat substitute too, and they were darned good. They inspired me to start making plans for the enormous cabbage that has been growing in my garden since last September.

Pigs in a blanket aren't normally the nicest thing in the middle of August - they involve the crockpot being on all day, and that's much nicer when it's cold out. Ordinarily, I'd want them in January, but the cabbage's day of reckoning has finally arrived, and drastic measures are needed to use it all. I could only fit about half of it in the crockpot today; luckily, my husband promises that he has plans for the other half. I, for one, am half-hoping that he doesn't, because I'd love to try my hand at making kimchi or sauerkraut.

I ended up leaving these in the pot for around 7 hours, and they were tender and delicious. I attribute some of the niceness of this recipe to the homegrown cabbage, but I'm excited about how well my first attempt at pigs in a blanket turned out! I could definitely see them becoming a winter staple. I'd like to experiment with stuffing them with mushrooms instead of sausage; lots of nice mushrooms grow in the Pacific Northwest, and there is a wonderful variety of them available here during the fall and winter.

This recipe is vegetarian. To make it with meat, omit the olive oil (it's there to give the fake meat enough fat), and use ground pork or pork sausage. You can also use rice instead of bulgur, if you're so inclined. Some people parboil the cabbage leaves first in order to make them easier to manipulate, but I didn't.

1 package of vegetarian sausage

¼ cup olive oil

2 cups of bulgur wheat

1 onion

3 green peppers

1 box strained tomatoes

salt, pepper and herbs to taste (I used oregano, since the sausage already had some sage in it)

1 ordinary sized head of cabbage

Dice the onion and green peppers, and put them in a big bowl, along with the olive oil, bulgur wheat, and sausage. Smash this all up with your hands like you're making meatloaf. Roll it up in cabbage leaves and place them in the crockpot. Mix the strained tomatoes (or tomato juice, or tomato paste with water, or ketchup, if you're really in a bind) with salt, pepper and herbs. Dump over the top of the cabbage leaves. Turn the crockpot on and wait.

Enjoy!

(Shown with a side salad that my husband made)

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