Monthly Archives: December 2011

Slap Leather

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Slap Leather finalG.indd

I don’t like to do a lot of self promotion on this blurb, but tonight my chapbook, Slap Leather, published by dancing girl press, came out. I am very happy and very proud of the book and the press. Thank you to everyone who made it come together. Here is a little sample. Happy Holidays everyone!

THE GRASS WIDOW

If you haven’t heard
of the grass widow,
hang around. She’s fond
of fires, is half seas over
for flumes. Doesn’t draw
the blinds at night—

prefers the moon
and her convolutions.

They say she stitched
closed the beak
of a meadowlark.

Sing-songed, the grassland
ocean in her throat.

Full as a tick and twitching.

Kalács and Beigli

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Once a year at Christmastime, my mom (as her mom did before her and her grandmothers did and great-grandmothers did before them) makes what we call kalács (pronounced kolach). Kalács, as it’s known in Hungarian, is actually a sweet brioche-type bread commonly served at Easter, but somewhere along the line, Slovak-Americans and Hungarian-Americans smashed a few different holiday breads together and what was once known as Beigli (and still is in Hungary) is now usually known as kalács in English. The reason for the confusion is that the word  kalács (despite being a Hungarian word) is Slavic in origin. But let’s get back to the deliciousness.

 

While the breads can be filled with a variety of ingredients, the standards are walnuts, poppy seeds and apricots. My mom doesn’t really like poppy seeds, so our  kalácses have walnuts and apricots. So we mix up pulverized walnuts with a little sugar and condensed milk. It’s not too too sweet, but you wouldn’t want to eat a cup before getting your blood sugar levels tested. In a second pan we boil down the apricots until they are like jam.

 

This was my first year making the recipe (under my mom’s direct and strict supervision, of course). As she did when I was a kid, she scraped the dough from my fingers because she was worried I had too much margarine on my fingers and not enough was getting into the dough. Don’t worry though, Internet, she only scraped me with the sharp side of the knife a few times.

Dry margarine-coated ingredients are mixed with egg yolks, yeast and sour cream.

And pretty soon a rollable batter can be turned out onto the table.

We form them into dough balls, which then have to rise. This is fun because while over-kneading is discouraged, you can slam the dough balls onto the table. It’s quite satisfying.

After the dough balls rise a little bit, you can roll them out and spread on a layer of nuts or apricots.

After spreading, it’s roll up time, after which the rolls have to rise for another hour before baking.

Then it’s just a short thirty minutes before  kalács/beigli perfection!