Gluten Free Serbian Kolac

When my friend Gigi was coming over to celebrate Serbian Christmas with us, I wanted to develop a gluten-free version of my treasured family recipe for Božićni kolač (pronounced bo-zheech-nee KO-lach) so that I could share this delicious tradition with her. It took several iterations, and I finally got something that comes close, very close. I hope you'll enjoy this moist, chewy, mildly sweet creation.

The big discovery was including whey protein. I found a couple of sites, including Gluten-Free on a Shoestring, that recommended whey protein isolate, which is really pricey. Instead, I ordered a container of my favorite whey concentrate brand, Jarrow unflavored whey protein. It has a little more non-protein content than whey protein isolate, but it still magically transformed my loaves into something much, much more like regular wheat bread. The crust, crumb, and rise are all better. The stretchy, tough characteristic of wheat gluten is the missing link that whey protein provides.

Another innovation here is the use of corn flour. Corn flour is absolutely not traditional in any holiday kolach recipe I can imagine. But in this recipe, it adds a robust quality to the flavor and texture of this brioche-like bread that was otherwise missing from these rice-flour based loaves.

This recipe is for the mini-loaf that I made. I image that you can multiply it as desired for a bigger round of kolac (kolach) as you desire. However, I haven't tried it. If you do, please let me know your results.

I used Namaste brand all-purpose gluten-free flour mix. I have no idea if this recipe will work with other mixes. I haven't done much gluten-free baking.

I can vouch for the success of the metric weight measures. I provide here cup equivalents of the measures, but such equivalents are notoriously unreliable, so I can't vouch for them.

From Gluten-Free on a Shoestring's book Gluten-Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread, I also learned that it's safe to heat your yeast-liquid solution much higher than everyone else tells you. Nicole, the author/blogger at that site, reports that the thermal death of  yeast occurs at 140º F. Warming milk or water closer to this temperature is far more effective than the tepid 100º to 110º F that is recommended practically everywhere else.

If you use salted butter, use less salt.

Note that you want corn flour and not corn meal.

1/2 cup whole milk, warmed to 120º F to 135º F
1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
1 Tbs. sugar
1 egg, separated
1 Tbs. unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for greasing the pan
2 g (1/4 tsp.) salt
80 g (1/2 cup + 2 Tbs.) Namaste brand all-purpose gluten-free baking mix
15 g ((1/4 cup + 1 tsp.) Jarrow unflavored whey concentrate
20 g (3 Tbs.) Bob's Red Mill gluten-free corn flour

Sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the warm milk. Add the sugar. Stir together until completely dissolved. Place the mixture someplace warm for about 15 minutes for the yeast to activate. I turn on my oven to its lowest temperature and place the mixture inside. I turn off the oven when it reaches temperature, and let the inner warmth just coast.

Stir together the gluten-free baking mix, whey powder, corn flour and salt.

Add the dry mix to the yeast-sugar-milk mix.

Add the egg yolk and stir the mixture vigorously. You'll have a silky, stretchy, soft mass.

Reserve a teaspoon or so of the egg white for brushing the top of the loaf later. Place it in a teacup or similar vessel.

Beat the egg white until it forms stiff peaks. Do not overbeat, or it will break down into liquid and won't form bubbles anymore. Stir the beaten white into the dough. You'll have a softer, still silky and stretchy mass.

Grease a small loaf pan. Mine is a stoneware pan with a capacity of 1 1/2 cups.

Pour the batter into the pan. Let rise an hour or so in a warm location. I use the inside of the oven, set to 150º F and turned off to coast at warmth, as before.

When the bread is nicely risen, remove it from the oven (if it's in there) and turn the oven to 400º F.

Brush the top of the dough all over with the reserved egg white. This will bake into a beautiful gloss.

Make an aluminum foil tent for the bread pan that leaves lots of room for it to rise more. You want to protect the top from over-browning, create a little steam chamber for nice baking, and also be sure that the rising dough doesn't stick to the inside of the foil. Cover the pan with the tent.

Place the loaf pan in the 400º F oven. Immediately turn the temperature down to 350º F.

Bake 1 hour. Remove and check with a toothpick. When it's done, it'll make a hollow sound when you thump it, and a toothpick will come out mostly clean but with a few moist crumbs clinging to it.

Remove from the pan and cool on a rack.

Slice and enjoy! Prijatno!

Cellular Peptide Cake -- with Mint Frosting

Data: "What kind of cake is that?"

Worf: "It is a cellular peptide cake. With mmmint frosting."

This exchange takes place in Act 1 of Phantasms (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 7). Data has discovered that, although he's an android, he can dream. In Phantasms he discovers how disturbing dreams can be, when he wanders into Ten-Forward and finds Counselor Troi as a giant cake with a slice taken out of her, no less.

No worries, Troi assures Data in the closing scene: "Sometimes a cake is just a cake." She presents him with a cake in the shape of Data.

Ethan Phillips's, in The Star Trek Cookbook, provides a sponge cake recipe for you to make your own cellular peptide cake. However, his is made with 10, count 'em, 10 yolks. No whites. First of all, this will yield a deep yellow cake with a relatively dense crumb, not like the ethereally pale and loosely bubbled cake Mr. Worf is forking in. Second: 10 yolks! Not when I'm paying four bucks a dozen for fantastic, farm-direct, organic eggs. And what am I going to do with 10 whites, eat egg white omelettes? Make angel food cakes? Say, what is it about angel food cake that gives it that bone-white paleness and exceedingly open crumb? Hmm, could it be ... egg whites?

The sponge cake found in Mark Bittman's sweeping How to Cook Everything is made with an equal measure of yolks and whites. It gave me just the right spongey consistency. Because I made a half recipe, using small 6" cake pans, and because the Keene Organic's eggs are so big, I only needed to use two. (I weighed them out to find two Keene eggs that equalled three standard large ones.) A very simple recipe. Basically, beat yolks and whites separately with a little sugar, fold them together and stir in flour and a pinch of salt. It was really delicious, not least because those eggs are SO good. "You made this with a sponge!" Ulysses proclaimed.

The Star Trek Cookbook's frosting is chocolate mint, which makes no sense to me at all, because the only color you can make it after adding cocoa powder is going to be -- brown. Besides, did you hear Mr. Worf say, "Chocolate mint frosting?" Of course not. I got mine Starfleet-uniform blue by using Wilton's Sky Blue color and adding just enough No-Taste Red to shift the hue just right. I used my favorite buttercream recipe, which is from the C&H powdered sugar bag (1 pound sugar, 2/3 stick of butter, 1/4 cup milk, 1/8 teaspoon salt), plus a little cream and glycerin to get it really creamy and really smooth. Plus about 3/4 teaspoon mint extract which in retrospect was probably three tmes more than was needed.

I traced the insignia from the Star Fleet Technical Manual. Don't you have one?

I used the tracing paper stencil to outline with black royal icing, and then filled white buttercream using a star tip, appropriately enough. I sprinkled gold and silver shimmer dust, also by Wilton. over the white. Sparkly!

Purists will note that the angular bar behind the insignia is closer to the design of a comm badge circa 2370, as in the STNG movies, while Counselor Troi wore a badge with an oval shape behind the arrowhead at the time of Phantasms, which takes place in the 2360s. So sue me.

Just a tree

"Put the ornaments in storage so our birthdays can come," Ulysses said.

Last night I finally dived into the daunting project of separating out all the little toys and wrapping bits that had gotten mixed up with the Christmas village and HO gauge (get it?) train set under the tree, putting away the holiday glassware and replacing it with the everyday mugs, taking down the cards -- and that reminds me, I still haven't made a holiday e-card to send friends and family.

U had protested whenever the subject of putting the Xmas stuff away came up. It wasn't really much of a conflict, because I was nowhere near actually doing it -- always something pressing to take care of, no good time window for it -- until last night, anyway. Meantime, plenty of good toys from Santa were going unplayed with, as the tree and the expanding unorganizable pile around it took up valuable play space.

Donald and I pointed out that, with the tree up, there was no space to celebrate the household birthdays coming up, mine in a week and U's in mid-Feb.

As I picked and packed, I was reassured to hear U encouraging me. Good, he got the message about making space for the next life event. Then:

"Just leave the Christmas tree up. That way it's still Christmas."

Well, maybe it's a gradual letting go.

* * *

The evening progressed without incident, if you don't count having your head and back made into a human slide for Backyardigans figurines several times over as an incident. Ulysses was proud to figure out how to open the complicated train storage box "all by myself," with only minor breakage of the styrofoam inner casing -- "Oops," said U -- fixable with a tape gun.

No complaints as the ornaments came down and got put away in the little individual plastic cups of their original packaging.

"That box is still missing an ornament," U pointed out.

"That was the ornament that broke the day we put the tree up, when you crawled behind the tree to follow the train and the tree fell over and everything came off," I reminded, matter-of-factly.

"Oh, right," he said. "And then we fixed it?" he added, apparently hoping against hope.

"No, it was one of those things that can't be fixed. It got smashed to smithereens."

"Smithereens, right!" he said. It's one of his favorite words.

Knickknacks and garlands, the set of 12 figurines representing historical Santas around the world, the matching poinsettia apron and tablecloth from Donald's grandmother, the pair of wooden camels from a 2008 yard sale, all disappeared into boxes.

"Don't forget the lights," said Ulysses. They were the only thing left on the tree, and I disentagled them from the branches. As I stuffed them into their box, I noticed it was printed with a copyright date of 2003. That meant we had got them for the Christmas I was carrying Ulysses, just before he was born.

Ulysses looked up at the tree. "Now it's a tree," he said. "It was a Christmas tree. Now it's just a tree."

He was smiling.

Dan i Noć (Day and Night Serbian bar cookies)

I've always loved the name of these cookies – "Dan i Noć" (pro nounced "DAHN ee NOCH,") translates as "Day and Night." They show their sense in such a forthright way. Day and night: a light layer and a dark layer. What could be more sensible? The layer of apricot jam between the day and the night makes sense, too: a shimmering sunset – or perhaps a sunrise – of transluscent orange.

These cookies – or little cakes, as you might consider them – are generous and rich. The recipe includes a pound of butter, a dozen eggs, darn close to a half pound of chocolate, a whole jar of apricot preserves. Speaking of which, I recommend spending the extra couple of bucks to get really good apricot preserves. Look for apricots as the first ingredient, and real sugar as opposed to high-fructose corn syrup or other sweeteners. (Fruit-only sweetened is good, too.) If you buy more than one jar and do a side-by-side taste test at home, you will see how big a difference it really makes.

I remember having these at the home of my aunt and uncle when we would visit around Christmastime. it was one of the sitni kolaći (little cookies) specialties of my Grandaunt Naka (b. 1913), whom I shared more about here. Like Naka's Vanil Grancle, these feature apricots, that grow so well around her native town of Kikinda.

My cousin tells me Naka got the the recipe from her best friend, also from Kikinda. The best friend's family helped Naka's family in some way during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, but I don't know the story beyond that.

Here's Ulysses in January 2008 (nearly four years old in this picture) enjoying a piece of Dan i Noć.

Shortly after this photo was taken, that laptop stopped working. Turned out it was plugged up with cookie crumbs.

I'm posting this today as a hat tip to my niece, Anne (she is the daughter of my cousin, and by the Serbian way of looking at family relations, that makes her more of a niece to me than anything else), 7. She loves Dan i Noć, and was sad to discover there wasn't any at the family get-together in Baltimore this year. My cousin wrote, "She was really, really bummed when she heard that no one made dan i noc. I remembered telling her to choose either gitar [another exceptional sitni kolacic in the family, I'll post that recipe too] or dan i noc as her favorite and she chose gitar so that's what i made but it seems i may have forgotten to tell her why i was asking. she got tears in her eyes, made me so sad!

"so this weekend we're making dan i noc. that works because i wouldn't have had time to make it with her before Bozic [Serbian Christmas] this time and making it together is just as important as having it for Bozic!"

Here's Anne last year (she was Annie then) enjoying the Dan i Noć she made with her mother for Božić 2008.

Recipe: Dan i Noć

Filling
1 jar apricot preserves

Noć (Night)
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
6 medium eggs (or 5 large)
6 squares (or 6 ounces chips) semisweet baking chocolate (each square is one ounce)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Dan (Day)
Same ingredients as the Noć, but without the chocolate:
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
6 medium eggs (or 5 large)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

1. Melt chocolate
Melt the chocolate. Use low heat and stir often, so the chocolate won't seize or scorch. Use a heavy-bottomed pan, a flame tamer, or a double boiler if you have one. By the time you add the chocolate to other ingredients, it should be liquidy, but cool enough that it won't cause the eggs to cook on contact.

2. Soft-bake the Noć
Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in the chocolate and vanilla.

Whisk together flour and baking powder. Mix these dry ingredients into the wet mixture. This will make a soupy batter.

Line a rectangular baking pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. No greasing is needed. Pour in the batter. Shake sideways, or rap the pan sharply against your counter, to knock out extra air bubbles. You can see in my photos that I missed this step – see what happen?

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. It needs to be firm enough that you can spread jam over it, but not baked through, That is, at this point a toothpick inserted in it will not come out anywhere near clean.

3. Prep the Dan
While the Noć is in the oven, prepare the batter for the Dan. Cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs one at a time, beat in vanilla, whisk together flour and baking powder, stir dry mix into wet mix.

4. Apply the jam layer
Remove from oven. Spread the apricot preserves evenly over the dark Noć layer while still warm.

5. Add the Dan layer
Carefully pour the light batter evenly overtop the contents of the pan.

6. Final bake
Put the pan back in the oven for another 30 minutes, or until a knife (or cake pick) inserted in the center comes out clean. The instructions I received say to check the Dan, but I found that the Noć took longer to bake through, so make sure your Dan and your Noć are baked throughout.

The Dan will be beautifully golden brown on top. If the Dan is as browned as it needs to be, but the cake inside still needs more baking, cover the pan tightly with foil (or place a cookie sheet over it) so the top won't overbake.

7. Cool and cut
Let cool. Carefully lift the whole cake from the pan and transfer to a large cutting surface. Slice into rectangular pieces about the width and length of your index finger. Cut carefully and methodically so that your pieces are evenly sized, with straight sides and square corners. I used the patterns on my wooden cutting board as my guides.







The finger-sized pieces are lovely and make hearty portions of this rich dessert. However, after a while I cut some of them into thirds, and found this size makes a wonderful bite-sized treat.

Bozic - Serbian Christmas 2009

It was great taking a couple of days of work to putter in the kitchen and make these heritage meals. After work our friend Gigi came over, hooray, our Serbian holiday co-celebrant as I've said before. Especially great to have her here because we've missed her on the last couple of occasions.

Corba od Patlidzan - otherwise known as tomato soup

I pulled off the Badnje Vece meal more smoothly than ever this year! Not like the years that I would finally get everything (that I hadn't forgotten) on the table by 11 pm. I got eight courses set out before 7 pm, and I only spent the last hour working full throttle. I even made the kidney bean salad from a deeper scratch – dried beans that I soaked overnight, rather than a can. My testimonial: it's different, and it's even better. It has an ineffable homemade quality. The beans are a little grainier in texture, very nice.

Donald gave me props on the tomato soup. Since I threw it together without a recipe, just putting everything into the pot that I thought would be good to find in tomato soup, I figured I'd better write it down fast while I remember what I did.

Remember, it has to be animal-product free. So I had to stop myself from reaching for the butter and the homemade chicken stock!

Corba od patlidzan
(CHOR-ba od paht-LEE-jahn, with the "j" as in "Jack")

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 clove garlic, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
2 tablespoons AP flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
several fresh grindings black pepper
2 bay leaves
1-2 shakes red pepper flakes
4 tablespoons (approx) fresh or frozen fresh parsley
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes, juice and all

In a deep, heavy pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil. Add the onions and cook over medium heat until cleared and beginning to brown. Add the garlic and celery partway through this onion cooking process.

Add the flour and stir well. Let the flour cook in for a few minutes. Add salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, bay leaves, parsley and tomatoes. Fill the tomato can with water and add it to the pot.

Simmer, covered, about a half hour. Stir occasionally, making sure it doesn't stick and scorch on the bottom.

If you like, you can blend this smooth when you're done, or strain it. But I don't care so much for perfectly smooth soups, myself. I like it rustic.

Badnje Vece – Serbian Christmas Eve – Menu

Tomorrow, January 6, will be Serbian Christmas Eve. Technically, it's called Badnji Dan during the day, and in the evening Badnje Vece. If you guess that "Dan" means day and "Vece" evening from this, you'd be correct. But as I remember, we always just called it Badnje Vece, all day long, in my household growing up.

The photo shows my Badnje Vece table from 2005. Here's my blog post from that year.

I wrote a bunch about Serbian Christmas (Bozic) customs in an article several years ago. Here's a link to it on my online article archive:
http://vesnaswriting.blogspot.com/2009/01/serbian-christmas.html

Badnje Vece is a day of fasting from meat, fowl, dairy and egg products. But it's not a vegan day! The main course of the Badnje Vece dinner is fish.

The traditional menu for this meal is extensive. And, meat and dairy or no, it is as filling a repast as any I've experienced. In the early 1990s, my mother, who was born in 1920 in Ruma, a town in Srem, near Belgrade, described the Badne Vece meals she remembered from her youth. I wrote it down in my recipe notebook. Here's what she told me.

Badnje Vece menu

• Kolac on the table, but not eaten until Bozic proper
• Fruit – cooked prunes
• Posna pogaca (flatbread)
• Corba od patlidjan (tomato soup)
• Pasulj (kidney bean and onion salad)
• Rezanci c makom (noodles with ground poppy seed)
• Rezanci c badem (noodles with almonds)
• Riba (fish)

In addition, a friend told me that apples with nuts and honey are also traditional. Just slice the apples and put out a little bowl of ground walnuts and a little bowl of honey. These are put together on the fly, one at a time, by the eater – like chips and salsa. You pick up an apple slice and dip the end into the honey. Then you dip the honeyed, sticky end into the walnuts. Presto: you've prepared yourself one lovely bite of apple with nuts and honey.

The beans are delicious, and so easy to make. Here's the recipe my mother gave me. I doubt her household had canned beans in the 1920s, but it's possible, as her grandparents owned a general store. If there were commercial canned beans at that time, that's where they would be, after all.

Pasulj
(Kidney bean salad)

one can light red kidney beans, including the liquid
one small onion, diced (about 1/3 cup)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
several grindings of pepper
1/2 tablespoon white vinegar
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

Mix all in a bowl.

Chill at least a few hours, or overnight.

Christmas Eve evening 2008: Santa burnout

In the evening, I pulled out some sugar-cookie dough I'd made a month ago and defrosted today. The Cook's Country recipe using yolks only, no whites. They tout that it can be rerolled a zillion times without toughening, thanks to leaving out the tough protein of the egg whites. They're right.

"Ulysses, I'm going to make some cookies for Santa. Do you want to make cookies with me?"

"Yes!" He jumped off the couch, where he was watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, or maybe it was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by that point. He found his miniature rolling pin in his toy kitchen and ran to the kitchen. He ran to the dough on the counter and held up the pin. I invited him to pick out some cookie cutters from the pile on the kitchen table. He went to the table and looked at them.

Then I saw something in his eyes retreat, disengage.

"I gotta watch Cars," he said.

I stopped myself from saying that Cars is not a Christmas movie. I put it in the player, but by the time the menu had come up, he was playing a video game at his computer. "Do you want to make cookies with me?"

"No," he said.

He never did watch Cars that evening, but neither did he respond again, after that, when we reminded him that Santa was coming tonight. All day, he'd bounced and bounded at the mention of it. By now, it seemed, his emotions had been so thoroughly stimulated, they had just gone into overload.

He was withdrawing, for emotional safety, I thought. The obvious corollary of that, I realized later that night, was that his emotions were vulnerable and raw. They could now be readily abraded, inflamed.

* * *

I made sugar cookies in holiday shapes and colors: green wreaths and trees with little balls of many colors and with royal icing bows and garlands; red Santas with icing for the fur at his wrists, cap and ankles; reindeer with red noses; stars with turbinado sugar sparkles. I assembled a plate, including one of the trees, for Santa's visit later that night, and set it on the dining table.

Ulysses plucked a green Christmas tree from the cooling rack. "I'm eating Santa's cookie," he said, happily. How cute, I thought.

Several minutes later, he came over from his video play again and took another tree cookie.

Several minutes after that, I noticed that Ulysses had picked up the fourth and final tree. Earlier, I had asked Don if he had any requests for cookie shapes. He had told me, "I want a Christmas tree."

"Oops! Sorry," I told Ulysses. "You can't have that one. That's Tata's tree." I plucked it from his hand. "Sorry, we need to leave that one for him. Here are the other cookies. Which one would you like?"

"No! No! I want the tree!" he cried, making a grab for the cookie in my hand.

Uh-oh.

"How about this flower?"

"No! Not a blue cookie."

"A heart?"

"Not a red one!"

"All right. How about this wreath? It's green."

"No! It's broken!" It had a scalloped center cut out of it. Much like the blown glass ornaments that had offended his aesthetic sensibilities earlier that day. "I want a tree!"

"I'm sorry, this is the last one. It's for Tata. He'll be said if it's gone." I couldn't back off now. I'd established a cookie ownership and I had to follow through. The ownership of this item had to stand. The person whose cookie it was had to be respected.

"Where are the another tree cookies?"

"You ate yours. You ate mine, too," I added dryly, and only for my own amusement. "But that's OK, I let you have mine," I said, to soften the last remark, before continuing with my lesson: "This last one is for Tata and we need to leave it for him."

Don came out of the back computer room. "What's going on?" I filled him in. He said, "It's OK, Ulysses, you can have my tree cookie. I'm giving you my tree cookie." Don tried to hand it to him.

"No, no!" said Ulysses, in tears. "It's your cookie. I can't eat it, I can't. And I ate Mama's cookie!" He collapsed into sobs, falling onto the floor.

I suddenly realized that he grasped the situation far more deeply than I had imagined.

"Ulysses," I said, "Would you like me to make some more tree cookies?"

He fell silent. He looked up at me.

"Would you like me to make more tree cookies for everyone?"

"Yes!" he said, and sprang up.

"You can help me if you like," I said. "You don't have to, though."

He ran to his computer and plunged back into his game.

Fortunately, I still had some dough. Half an hour later, there were six perfect, bedecked Christmas trees on the cooling rack. "Ulysses!" I called.

Ulysses walked over, quietly, and surveyed the little green trees. He picked up three of them.

He ran to the bedroom, where Don was watching TV.

"Here, Tata, this is for you."

He ran back to me and handed me a tree. "This is for you, Mama."

With the third cookie in his hand, he sat down at his video game.

* * *

It wasn't until much later that I considered the tree cookie that had been on Santa's plate all through the conflict.

I could have let Ulysses have the tree cookie that he picked up from the cooling rack, without ever saying a word about whose cookie was whose. There would have been no issue if the trees were simply gone the next time he came grazing. Meantime, I could have taken the tree cookie off Santa's plate and put it out of sight for Don, for later.

I didn't.

I didn't even dream of disturbing the plate I'd prepared for Santa. Because ... because those were Santa's cookies. It wouldn't be right to take away his tree. I had made four trees. One for each of us.

I'd hypnotized myself into respecting the rights of a fictional character.

Koljivo (Zito/Zhito)

Koljivo, or Zito (pronounced ZHEE-toe, meaning "wheat"), is one of the most important dishes a Serbian can make. Loaded with the symbolism of life, death, harvest and renewal, it's presented at only a few special occasions: Slava, Bozic (BOH-zheech, or Christmas), and at funerals and memorials for the dead. More about koljivo on this blog here.

But if you don't happen to be Serbian, I suppose you could just make this as a delicious dessert.

To the American sensibility, it's extremely unusual, to say the least – a bowl of cooked, ground wheat fortified with ground nuts and sugar. Even the cooking instructions seem odd: Seven waters? Pillows and blankets?

The flavors, though, are straightforward, clean, accessible to the American palate, and easy to love.


Koljivo (Zito)

1 cup wheat berries (preferably white wheat, or psenica (pshenitsa) bela)
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 cups walnuts or pecans, or a combination of the two
2 cups powdered sugar
About 1/16 teaspoon grated fresh nutmeg, or 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg powder
[Nutmeg added 11/18/2012, per comments from Drago Babic and two anonymous posters.]

Garnish:
slivered almonds
whipped cream

Start this recipe the night before. There's an overnight step involved.

1. Seven waters
Place the wheat berries in a small pot or a large saucepan. Cover with water, about two inches above the level of the berries. The exact amount is unimportant. Bring to a rolling boil and let boil for a few seconds. Drain the water through a sieve and discard, keeping the berries in the pot.

Add new water to the wheat, the same amount as before. (I keep a kettle full of water brewing on another burner during the whole process to save time; I add the partially heated water from it and then refill the kettle from the tap.) Bring to a rolling boil. Drain.

Repeat until you've brought wheat and water to a boil seven times.

On the seventh water, add the salt. Don't drain the water.

2. Overnight soak
Place the pot of wheat on a blanket on your biggest, softest armchair or couch. I kid you not. Pack it all around with blankets and pillows. Leave overnight. Really. If you're watching Top Chef 5: New York, you'll know, from the very first episode, what happens when you try to cook wheat berries quickly. Imagine chewing on erasers. I'm telling you here what it takes to make wheat berries tender. And now you now why wheat is usually crushed into something else (flour, bulgar), and not served whole like rice.

Be sure your padded pot will be secure from wayward children or pets knocking it over.

3. Grinding
The next day, drain any water that hasn't been absorbed overnight.

Grind the wheat berries thoroughly in a food processor or a meat grinder. A blender could be problematic, but it could be done in small batches. Remove the wheat from the food processor bowl. Grind the nuts in the bowl. Add the sugar and nutmeg to the nuts and process together. Add the wheat back into the bowl and process together. Stir together the wheat and the sugar-nutmeg-nut mixture in a mixing bowl.
[Nutmeg added 11/18/2012, per comments from Drago Babic and two anonymous posters. Also, no need to process anymore; stirring works just fine at this point.]

Spoon koljivo into a serving dish, preferably a clear glass one with straight sides.

Garnish by sticking slivered almonds all over the top, like a porcupine. I've been told that if and only if the koljivo is to commemorate the dead, the almond spikes should be placed in the shape of a cross. However, I've come upon photos on the Internet of Christmas koljivo decorated with a cross of almonds.

Serve by tablespoons in very small bowls, like custard cups, topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

Notes:
To find whole wheat berries, try the bulk section of a natural foods store.

I used a pressure cooker this year. I didn't bring the wheat to pressure; I just made use of the tight-fitting lid to boil the water faster and to ensure a secure lid overnight.

[Added 1/5/9, in response to Mia's comment.] This is not a recipe I got from my family. It's my own version of the one given it by a friend, a woman who lives here in Madison who moved to the U.S. in, I believe, the 1960s or 1970s. She described the method to me over the phone and I took notes.

Salt is my own addition. My friend did not mention salt. I find that grains, when prepared without salt, taste like ... like they need salt. So I added that eensy bit, 1/8th teaspoon. The end result tasted like it tasted just right, if you know what I mean. If you have good results with no salt at all, let me know.

The quantities I give above are not quite the way she gave them. She specified one cup of wheat berries. However, instead of specifying a quantity for the nuts and sugar, she just said to use equal volumes of wheat, nuts and sugar. That is (she said when I asked for clarification), equal to the volume of wheat after it's been cooked and ground. I figured it would be most useful to readers (and to me in the future) to know what that volume is, so that we know how much nuts and sugar to have on hand in order to make the recipe.

The wheat made 3 1/2 cups, so I used 3 1/2 cups of nuts. However, I remembered that, in the past, when I made her recipe using equal volumes of wheat, nuts and sugar, the final product was chokingly, achingly sweet. So sweet it interfered with enjoying the dish, for me. (And besides, who needs more sugar if less will work just as well?) So this time, I started with a cup of sugar and mixed it up, then added until it tasted just right to me. Very sweet, very nutty, very rich. But not cloying.

One more note on cooking the wheat this way. I've tried cooking whole wheat berries many times before, including under pressure and for several hours (I think I got up to four), and it always retained an unpleasantly springy chewiness. Even after grinding! This method, with the waters and the pillows and the overnight rest is the only method I know of that results in a pleasant, tender berry.

Badnje Vece: Serbian Christmas Eve

It was Serbian Christmas Eve in 2002 when we first decided, "We should have a baby. Why not?" Two years later, we got to spend a Serbian Christmas Eve with our little one for the first time.

The Serbian Orthodox holy days calendar is calculated according to the Julian calendar The Gregorian calendar used on the West came later, with Pope Gregory. It is more accurate, astronomically. Orthodox = no pope, so no calendar change.

As the centuries passed, the calendars drifted apart. By the early 20th century, Julian Dec. 25 fell on Gregorian Jan. 6. Today it falls on Gregorian Jan. 7.

This all has nothing directly to do with Epiphany or the three kings, although you will read explanations that say it does, some quite. authoritative-looking. The Epiphany thing is a coincidence, in the strict sense of the word.

Serb Xmas entails a fasting, or "posno" menu. No meat, poultry, eggs, dairy. Don and I call it "The Dinner of the Little Dishes," because (at least the way we have it) everything is served on little plates or little bowls. It's an incredibly filling meal. Fish is de riguer. This year, we had shrimp with avocado oil, garlic, mushrooms.

Rezantsi c makom: A little bowl of ground poppy seed heaped over noodles, then drizzled with honey.

Chorba od patligian, or tomato soup. This year, for the first time, I made it from scratch. Used a recipe from the Joy of Cooking. "Quick Tomato Soup." The meaning of quick has shifted over the years, apparently. The soup is well beyond what today's typical American would consider quick, I think. Really delicious. It involves a butter roux. I used it by accident -- forgot to substitute olive oil because of the posno thing. Oops. It sure was delicious.

Kidney bean salad. My mother's recipe. One can light red in their juice, 2 T olive oil, 1/2 T vinegar, 1/2 T lemon juice, 1/8 t salt, grindngs of pepper.Chill at least 3 hours before serving. Wonderful.

Suvo voce. Dried fruit. Stew prunes, raisins, and what have you for at least 45 min. in water or juice. You never knew sweet could be this sweet. The single most filling item of the meal, per cubic inch. Over the years I've learned to scale the serving size way back. Just three or four prunes and maybe 10 raisins a person is plenty. It's easy to eat more, because it's so sweet and good. But eat more and you can't finish the rest of the meal.

Once, back in my Baltimore days, I ate a lot of dried fruit right out of the bag on an empty stomach. How much? My fill, I guess. Maybe 1/2 cup or 3/4 cup. Then the fruit filled with liquid inside me. I thought I might die.

Posno pogacha, or lenten flatbread. A yeast-raised quickbread. Heavenly dipped in tomato soup.

This pic is the most Serbian-looking I've ever seen Ulysses.