An Easter Poem

Sirecz Song

In my mind there was a “d” in it

but that might be because it

dangled just like that

from a dowel stick as its whey

dripped dry.

Easter might have meant

resurrection, but in the basement

it was about farmer’s cheese,

part of the Sunday feast after

a fasting since Friday.

My mom would hang it there

and tell me to keep away,

but still I’d never

resist a poke or two

at its settling goo.

Something about Slovaks

always takes the delicious

and dials it down,

as if there’s danger

in that much pleasure.

So imagine milky scrambled eggs

hung to dry. That’s sirecz,

looking like a bland brain

sliced for Easter autopsy.

I’d risk trying to stomach

it again to have my mom

and Baba back, full knowing

the first thing they’d do

is chastise me for the faces

I’d make trying to get it down.

Dough Re: Me

Easter has long since come and gone, that Jessica Foster bunny with caramelized almonds and fleur de sel is just a distant delicious memory, and somehow I never wrote about trying to become my mother. For I did, with Chryss's help, of course (as she's way more a baker than I am and is a mother, so has that going for her too, as if she needs more), by resurrecting a family recipe, the Slovak version of kolache, a breakfast roll stuffed either with ground nuts and raisins or poppy seed filling. I've longed for it for years, lamenting its loss in the Indy even, since my mom's been gone since 2006. My sisters finally found the recipe in mom's stuff, which was hard as everything was alphabetized oddly, or so they told me. And then I just said this year's got to be the year.

There's a lot to risk, trying to make a food from your childhood. Perhaps your memory is sweeter than the food itself. Perhaps you can't do it, and that just pushes you even further adrift away from whatever connection that might have tethered you. The dead never get more dead, but they can get less living, if that makes any sense.

But I did it anyway. The pitfalls were numerous, as the recipe was bare-boned to the extreme--it even left out when to add the salt in its ingredient list (good catch, Chryss!). Since it's pastry, it's all about its dough, and the part I most remember is getting to hold the pot while my mom stirred away at what first seemed like cement, but eventually stretched into something magical. When I got older I'd get to stir, too, and we'd take turns hanging onto the pot as the dough would pull it this way and that if left unheld. Chryss and I tried that for a bit, but then we cheated, using the heavy duty Kitchen Aid mixer and its torque and mighty pastry hook. The whole process was faster, cleaner, and I still feel like I cheated, that the country folk Slovaks would think me a city upstart who might as well be Czech. Sorry, ancestors.

You put that in the fridge overnight covered with a dish towel, and in the morning it's practically a volleyball of dough, ready to get separated into smaller balls (the recipes doesn't call for how many, but we went for 6--a pretty good guess), and then those get rolled out so they can be stuffed. By what, the recipes is mute, so memory had to take over. The walnut one I knew my mom used to grind down in the cellar with a hand grinder, which probably makes you think she's wearing a babushka and standing in candlelight but this was very suburban New Jersey. We, instead, used the food processor and a recipe for nut filling Chryss had found online, which I figure is just many villages' wisdom made magically accessible and so therefore fair game. Some brown and granulated sugar. Lots of big juicy sultanas (do not be afraid of the raisin!) then were mixed in--not chopped, no. The poppy seed ones, well, I remembered that coming from a can (as did cherries for pie--cans were made for fillings, it seems). When Lazy Acres failed me I figured the European Deli & Market had to have something to do the trick. Once there, I was confronted with cans in languages I did not know and felt at home (being a horrible grandson and never much learning my grandmother's tongue beyond volke whoonsuit [that's very very phonetic, not accurate]--which means something akin to spoiled, bad child). In small print on a label it did say poppy seed, so I figured I was good, especially with the photo helping me. Either that or I had bought coffee grounds.

Turns out both fillings, while perhaps not quite those of my youth, tasted wonderful. The nuts one became crunchily delicious after baking and just the right amount of breakfast sweet (and I like me some breakfast sweets). The poppy seed had that poppy funk that it is both interesting and a tiny tiny bit offputting (much more so when I was really young and refused to eat it at all)--it's a kind of bitter that's almost hop-like, I think, now. Then there's also some sugar, and some citrus peel, and a bit of whatever else Eastern Europe likes in a can, I guess.

The recipe meant we baked 3 of each, each a foot long, so we gifted some. Since that's what you do in the Old Country, and they had some good ideas, you know. Good baking makes good neighbors.

Hard to Swallow Traditions

It's been years, but for years Christmas Eve meant the traditional Slovak supper in my family--turns out it even has a terrific name, Stedry Vecer. (No, he wasn't a linebacker for the Lombardi Packers, wise guy.) Also turns out our version wasn't the same as the traditional ones people have posted on the web now--those all talk about a fish dish, but we didn't do that. No, for the most part our meal was all about the mostly inedible. Which seems fitting, as so much of being Slovak seemed to be misery--this is my mom's side of the family I'm writing about, the one that doesn't say, "Have a good time," when you're out the door to do something fun, they intone, "Just be careful." Remember, the Slovaks are the poor peasants in the Czechoslovakia divorce.

I can vividly remember one year having the meal at my grandmother's house in Dunmore, PA (that's right, they didn't even rate Scranton itself, but one of its suburbs). I felt sick beforehand, so barely ate, but my guess is it was an anticipation-born illness, as I didn't want to face the meal. For it's not just a meal, it's religion and superstition wrapped in a lovely Christmas bow. My grandmother and mother were super-Catholic--Baba's church was a mere 4 minute walk out her back gate, even, that's how close to god she was--but that didn't mean a bit of Slavic voodoo didn't run in their genes. Back when I lived within driving distance of her house and would still come home for holidays my mom would put her statue of the Blessed Virgin in the window to watch out for me.

Coming from a legacy like that, it's no surprise that the dinner's components were more about symbolism than taste. It kicks off with something I now know is called oplatky (notice while Italian is a language of grace and beauty, Slovak is a language of dumpling-lumpy consonants) and looks like a communion wafer but it's rectangular, maybe 2 by 4 inches, and stamped with a Nativity scene. You get to put honey on it, so it tastes like sweetened cardboard and if you're lucky your piece is the one with the baby Jesus. You get it served to you, I'm not kidding, on a bit of straw, to symbolize Christ's humble birth. The straw could be the tastiest part of the meal. (They do let you drizzle a bit of honey on it. Yes, that makes it sticky cardboard.)

I'm not sure of the order of the middle courses, four of them that lined-up any way spell gastronomic disaster. To be honest, there was one good part of the meal, mushroom soup, although I'm not sure how they made the stock (no meat, remember?) and I didn't start paying attention to cooking until I went to college and had to feed myself and by then learning the mysterious ins-and-outs of the Stedry Vecer were out of the question. I do know my mom would use dried mushrooms actually shipped from the Old Country, which truly seemed old to me, full of things beyond my young life at the time. So that was good. But pairing it with a mix of sauerkraut tossed with ripped up poppyseed rolls (poppyseeds being a Slovak staple--it might be the closest they got to a spice) was a bit perverse. Seems from the web that the mushroom soup itself in other traditions had the sauerkraut, so it was "nice" of my ancestors to pull it out and give you a separate dish to dislike, a deconstructed sauerkraut sandwich.

Then there was pierogi, that Eastern European dumpling that has all sorts of expressions in that area of the world. The kind passed down in my family, however, perhaps should never have been expressed. Super-doughy, they lacked any sense of lightness something a cross between a pasta and pastry should have. For filling, since they weren't starchy enough, the choice was potato. For a crowning touch, they got slathered in brown butter, but I think there was even flour in that--we're not talking the light napping of a brown butter and sage you might find with your gnocchi. We're talking cannonballs of carbohydrates. My guess is they symbolism here is "don't enjoy food, it's fuel."

For the last of the main course components also could be something lovely, but the ingenious Slovak cooks figured out a way to make it something disgusting. It was sort of a quiche, but made with cottage cheese. And I don't think anything else in it--maybe onion--but it just had a mushy texture and a bland taste. The one thing my mom could always pull off in the kitchen was great pie dough, but that wasn't enough to save this dish.

Dessert was fruit, and you can imagine how exotic an orange might be to a Slovak (now I've got them in my backyard, so stop on in, Baba!), and whole nuts you got to crack open, which as a kid is a blast. Of course we didn't have an ornate nutcracker, but the element of danger (don't get your finger in there!) and the opportunity to break something with impunity always seemed like a good deal. It was also good to take your time with your nuts, using that extra pick tool a dentist might wield to get out all the walnut, slowly, as the candle awaited.

For, on Christmas Eve, while most children dreamed of Santa and loot, I dreamed of learning I wouldn't die during the next year. For after dinner, a single white taper makes its way from diner to diner, and each person gets to light the candle and blow it out. If your smoke goes straight up, that means good luck for the coming year. If it blew downward, that meant bad luck, and perhaps the worst luck of all, no luck at all. What could be more Slovak than this: "Merry Christmas, your candle just told you you're going to kick the bucket next year"?

So maybe I didn't want to eat as that candle waited at the end.

And now that Baba's candle and my mom's candle and my dad's candle have all blown out, I miss these meals, miss hating them, miss their bitterness that knew more than I still want to know.