I'm a food and travel writer from the shores of Lake Erie, now based in Berlin. I attempt to send out weekly essays on my latest mishaps and travels around the globe and in the kitchen. If you would like to support my work, please consider sharing this newsletter with a friend or acquaintance (I’m not picky).
The more I dig into my family history, the more I’ll have to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never collect all of the stories, recipes, and memories. I’ve been fortunate to pick up on a number of memories, particularly from my father and aunt. But I’ll never reclaim everything.
It sounds like a depressing admission. On the contrary, it makes rediscoveries all the more exciting. The other day, I was thinking about the kolacky my grandmother used to make. Kolacky is a Hungarian cookie with a cream cheese dough and apricot filling.
I didn’t like them much as a kid. Something about the apricot, I think.
My aunt is the only one in the family with any access to family recipes. So, I sent over a text asking if she happened to have a recipe.
“I don’t have any idea what kolacky is,” she wrote. I sent a picture. Turns out, Grandma called them apricot fold-ups.
“I should have that recipe,” she wrote back. “I’ll look for it.”
A few minutes later, she sent a few photos of recipe cards with the ingredients typed up. I smiled, knowing I had another family recipe on my hands. But I tried to downplay my excitement.
“Must be from a cookbook since they’re not in her handwriting,” I responded. That’s when the real shocker came in.
“I typed it from her recipe,” she said. “which was actually Grandma Stern’s recipe.”
Grandma Stern’s recipe? You mean I’m looking at my great-grandmother’s freakin’ kolacky recipe!?
This is the kind of stuff I’m constantly begging my family for––any and all recipes and memories of ancestors I never got to meet. So I couldn’t help but masochistically laugh when my aunt casually dropped a great-grandma recipe on me despite my years of pleading for this exact kind of thing. I wish it were as easy as asking and receiving, like some sort of genealogical customer support. But it isn’t and never will be. The memories and recipes will come out as long as I keep mining for them.
Melanie and I took a stab at Grandma Stern’s kolacky recipe. It was my first time making a cookie with a flaky exterior, which you get from cutting in cold butter and room-temperature cream cheese with the flour. The result was a bit sloppy looking, almost certainly because I didn’t 100 percent follow the instructions.
We started making them around 5 p.m. only to realize that the instructions called for leaving the dough in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours. But we didn’t want to wait that long, so I looked around for other kolacky recipes on the internet until I found one that called for refrigerating them for “at least one hour.”
The dough was a bit sticky and definitely could’ve used more time. But we made it work. Kolacky were made, baked, and eaten––Grandma Stern style.
There’s the tendency to want to find and attribute some unique story to these recipes. Why Grandma Stern made these is unfortunately lost to time. It comes up on the internet as a popular Hungarian Christmas cookie, ironically. My best guess is that it’s something she was exposed to growing up in the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Whatever the reason, I’m beyond grateful to have it now and make my own memories with her recipe.
The chefs reclaiming Lithuania's cuisine
War and Soviet occupation robbed Lithuania of its unique culinary history. Fortunately, there is a growing number of chefs and cooks committed to remembering it. More at BBC.com/travel.
Celery Root Schnitzel
A Vilna Vegetarian-inspired schnitzel recipe with homemade jam at Aish.com.
Riga’s Central Market and Ukrainian Solidarity
A few days in Riga with stops at different restaurants, the central market, and a show of Ukrainian solidarity.
Next Week: Searching for THE WORLD’S BEST CANNOLI
On Wednesday, follow me to Palermo where I search for the world’s best cannoli.