Posted on 12/21/2004 3:08:45 PM PST by Little Bill
When I was a kid, newly exiled from Idaho, I ran across Kilbasa(sp) from Chet and Dots on Cottage street in Lynn, Mass, behind St Mikes.
Now, I am not a Pole, my mother was an Irish war bride form Lynn, but this stuff was great, my family is of English descent, we like our meat on a spit and near raw. My Ex, of 27 years, was a Pole but generally burned water.
I discovered that a person that I work with is the grandson of Chet and Dot, and made 85 pounds of the home made stuff in the control room af a major electric utility in Mass, it was great.
I used to get bulk dry poppyseed for making yeast rolls from SoulardMarket in St. Louis... there's a spice shop there that sells things in huge quantities and it smells like heaven.
Smaller quantities of dry poppy seed are available in any grocery store that offers more than salt and pepper... if you really want to grind it I reckon you can toast it a bit to release the essential oils and then grind it with mortar and pestle, or put it in a ziploc bag and use a rolling pin or the bottom of a glass to crush it.
WOO-HOO! Recipe thread!!!!
Bookmmmmmmmmmarking.
BOHEMIAN BUCHTA-PLUM
Buchta
3/4 Cup scalded milk
1/3 Cup butter
4 Tablespoons sugar.
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 whole eggs, slightly beaten
1 cake of yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar
3 to 3 1/2 Cups sifted flour [these days flour seldom has to be sifted]
about 3 dozen blue plums
Buchta crumb topping
6 Tablespoons flour
6 Tablespoons butter
12 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Mix the topping ingredients using your fingertips- clean them first, of course- rubing the mixture against the bowl until you get small crumbs.
In a bowl mix together the butter, 4 Tablespoons of sugar, and salt.
Pour the scalded milk over the mixture.
When the butter is melted, cool it to room temp, then add the beaten eggs.
Sprinkle the yeast with the 1 teaspoon of sugar and a little warm water, let it sit for a bit and then stir until it gets a little stringy, then add it to the milk, butter, salt, egg and sugar mixture.
Add sifted flour a little at a time, beating until it is smooth and satiny.
Cover the dought and set in a warm place to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.
Punch it down, cover, let it rest for 15 minutes.
Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it for a few minutes.
Divide it into thirds, press it into 3 round 9-inch greased cake pans.
Top the dough with sliced plums, arranged to suit your style...
Some people cut plum halves into little fans and this looks good, for example.
Let the dough rise again, and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
When the dough has risen, put the pans into the oven for 15 to minutes, then take them out and sprinkle the buchta with the crumb topping mixture.
Put the cakes back into the oven for 10 to 15 more minutes or until they look done.
I think it'll take about 1/4 cup of water to prep that yeast in, by the way.
Unfortunately, that's exactly where I've run into a brick wall trying to trace the family tree.
It seems as if our family name is the Bohemian equivalent of "Smith" or "Jones".
(Actually, it IS a variant of the Czech word for "Green" (surprise!) which is just as bad because the Czechs seem to have as many words for "green" as the Eskimos have for "snow".)
Anyway, it also seems as if all the Bohemian "Greens" had some kind of obsessive cumpulsion to name all their kids Frank or Joseph or Anna or Mary (all of which are also bountiful in our family tree but I can't connect the dots to the right ones). It is only through my grandfather's sister Rose that I've been able to determine that my great grandfather was named John and was simply born in Bohemia in 1858. (Internet research, I haven't yet gone back to the Pennsylvania county courthouse to dig up my grandpa's birth certificate which should tell me more.)
LOL! I might be able to figure it out one of these days, but I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.
My offer is still open,Willie.If you want to send me any info via FREEPmail,I'll be happy to try to lend you a hand.:-)
LOL! Tracing my grandmother's Bohemian roots is gonna be a challenge as well. I know her maiden name, of course, but only approximately. Even my Dad wasn't certain exactly how she spelled it! It's one of those situations where when HER parents/uncles etc. came over on the boat together, they ALL wound up with slightly different Americanized spellings of the same family name. (Czechs don't use the same alphabet that we do.) So while we "know" the name, we also spell it 3~4 different ways, and the only way to be certain which one my grandma used is to check either HER birth certificate or her marriage license to my grandpa!
But you're still missing the point,Willie. I said the TOWN where they came from,NOT their last names.My Baedeker can't possibly help with last names...it's a book of MAPS and descriptions of towns,cities,and sites.
I wish you good luck with the research,it's fun to do and interesting as well.
Yeah, well I gotta get the names straightened out first before I start looking for immigration/naturalization records which might tell me the town they came from.
I'm just trying to explain some of weird gyrations I gotta go through on my Dad's side of the family. On my Mom's side (Irish) there's no such problem whatsoever, even though my maternal great-grandparents emigrated at approximately the same time. Mom's side of the family has always kept track of their heritage. Heck, the family never even lost contact with the descendents of relatives who stayed in Ireland. I have a cousin who went over for a visit with relatives just last year, and the family "news" gets circulated throughout the entire family tree!
My Dad's side is the exact opposite.
To call them "loose knit" is putting it mildly.
They never considered it very important to keep track of that kind of stuff.
Afterall, THEY all already KNEW who was who and where they came from. Why bother to write it down or tell somebody else?
Heck, I remember going to my granpa's house for Christmas dinner when I was maybe 10~12 years old.
"Great Aunt Mary" was there too.
(Grandpa's oldest sister, maybe 15 years older than he was.)
Anyway, while chit-chatting during dinner, grandpa says something about how he's going to retire in March when he turns 65.
Great Aunt Mary says: "You weren't born in March, you were born in November"
Wow!!! Did THAT ever start a spat!!!
Grandpa started to prove that his birthday was in March. First he pulled out his driver's license. Then he went upstairs to get his important papers: his birth certificate and his Army papers. Everything said he was born in March. Great Aunt Mary said: "Those are wrong. You were born in November"
Turns out, yeah grandpa was born in November. But the midwife who delivered him didn't make the 20 mile horse & buggy trip to the county courthouse to register the birth until the snow thawed in March. And when she got there, she listed EVERY baby she delivered that winter with having a birthdate the same as the day she made the trip.
And grandpa's family let him live almost his entire life thinking he was born in March, 6 months younger than he actually was! LOL! Some things just weren't very important to them back then!!!
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