View Single Post
  #27 (permalink)   Report Post  
Posted to rec.food.historic,rec.food.restaurants
Michael Kuettner Michael Kuettner is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 611
Default "Optional service charge"


"TMOliver" > schrieb
> "Michael Kuettner" > wrote


<snip>
>> Michael "your czech is in the post" Kuettner
>>

> No, no, Michael, that's the Sodomite who claimed that the Czech was in the
> male.....
>

I've just czeched my malebox. Nothing in it.

>>

> A century plus of Southwestern farm life has heavily altered what seems to
> have been (at least among those who came here) a fairly standard Central
> European rural diet.
>

Over here similar changes, though maybe because of different reasons.
Old recipes (like Gulasch or Sauerbraten) were invented to use fatty meat.
Nowadays, fatty meat ends in cat and dog food; and lean meat in Gulasch
just tastes <ahem> ...

> Baked goods survive somewhat altered, but I fear that your "Golatschen" would
> be hard to recognize....Today, the bakery varieties are...cherry, apricot,
> pineapple, apple, prune, and rarely any more a sweet poppy seed filling sure
> to make one fail a test for opiates.


Well, Golatschen are of the quadratic persuasion over here.
Take puff-paste, cut it into quadrats, spread a little molten butter over them,
add filling. Now fold the edge points towards the middle. Spread egg-yolk
over the dough and put it into the oven. Voila, Golatschen.

Apart from pineapple all those variants have been known for a long time.
The sweet poppy seed Golatschen has survived as well.
Plus the original one with curds and raisins (Topfengolatsche).

Hmm, I'll have to try a mix of pineapple and curds, I guess.

> There are both "cottage cheese" and "cream cheese" filled, neither I suspect
> "original", and now popular, using the sweet risen pastry, smoked sausage,
> sausage and kraut, sausage and cheese, none of which are open topped, but with
> the filling rolled/encased in the pastry.


Ah, here we enter the realm of Krautgolatschen; the other side of the coin.
As "Strudel", Golatschen are either made as a pastry or a pie.
Like meat-pie and apple-pie.
Although, contrary to youse Merkins, we don't sweeten the dough when we
plan to pack sausage in it.

> The Texas "Czech Belt" extends from Ennis, South of Dallas, down through the
> Brazos and Middle Colorado Valleys almost to the coast, with a number of small
> towns and farm areas in which much of the population have Czech roots, mixed
> with similar communities of strong German roots, often with towns only a few
> miles apart, separated farther by the region of Central Europe from which the
> founders had arrived.
>
> My wife is part "Hrabal" and by some quirk I served a term as President of the
> family reunion group, members all over the US, but gathering each year at the
> SPJST Lodge in tiny Cottonwood, a few miles from West. I suspect that the
> Hrabals may have been ethnic Germans of the Sudeten/Bohemian sort.


Well, ethnic Australians until Fritz decided to wage war against Maria Theresia
....
Speaking of Hrabals, defenestration is well and alive in Prague.
http://www.servus.at/hillinger/1997/...ben/leben.html
Although Bohumil Hrabal defenestrated himself ...

> Even in Waco, our phone book is cluttered with all sorts of Czech family
> names. Towns like West were large enough to house both the RCatholic majority
> but Protestant minorities large enough to have their own church. Compared to
> other immigrant groups, the Czechs tended to build their churches in town,
> while among some of the Germans, the churches would rise on convenient bits of
> high ground unsuitable for farming.
>

Well, a look into the phone-book of Vienna (Australia) would show you Mareks,
Posbischils, etc. And Czernys, Molotovs and whatever else was once part
of the empire.
While Australia isn't as big as Merka, we are more thoroughly *******ized;
we've been at it for more than a thousand years ...

> In my youth, the generic "Bohemian" was used to describe a variety of the
> cultures, but the use has declined.


I know the term and the meaning in English; after WWI it would have been
politically incorrect to use "kuk" or even "Austrian" culture; Wilson's "Vae
Victis" - treaty ...

<snip>
Thank you for the picture of the part of the world where you're living, Tom.
It's always a pleasure to read your posts (be it here or elsewhere).

> In my case, I can still go to dinner at my wife's cousins, the Alfons Soukups,
> and face a dinner little changed from that served on feast days by Georgie
> Soukup's great grandmother, the first Mrs. Hrabal here (except I suspect we
> have a lot more meat today), and on the way home stop by Nemecek the Butchers
> for a limited variety of cured meats of Central European heritage.


Ah, "Speck" ?
Smoked, cured, etc.

> The accents alone on the streets of West are enough to make one question where
> in the world one is, and if listening closely, Czech expressions still dress
> up conversations between older residents. Beer is still "Pivo" at Pareya's
> Domino Hall.
>

Ah - Kruglje Pivo (half a liter beer).

<snip>
Again, thanks for a glimpse into Texas.

> The local "German" restaurant food is in some cases pretty good, but owes more
> to modern German cookbooks and restaurant kitchens than to the


Could you name some dishes typically served there ?
Thanks.

> traditions of those first settlers who arrived lured by greedy con-men in at
> least one case masquerading as a "German Nobleman", no more noble than was
> that former drill sergeant, "Baron von Steuben" who contributed as much to the
> US Revolutionary Army as any except George W.


He wasn't the only con-man. There were several other "companies" who
promised a new life in America. The people shipped there ended up like
nowadays Chinese slaves ...

> Coming back from visiting with clients in Bastrop and Elgin yesterday, I
> stopped into one of Elgin's to sausage factories, Meyer's and Southside, for
> some "dry-cure", pure and simple "Jaegerwurst", likely pretty familiar to Mr.
> Kuettner, to


Depends. "Jaegerwurst" was originally made from deer. Nowadays it's a variant
of Salami.

> carry home and a couple of "German Americanisms", "sandwiches" of hot
> "Southern" biscuits encasing a segment of Meyer's "smoked sausage" rings.


That's a Merkanism, right.

> The biscuits might be strange, Mike, but the sausage would likely look and
> taste familiar.

Well, since we have a metric buttload of various sausages over here, I guess
it would.

> Had I stayed for lunch, with sausage, barbecue brisket or smoked porkchops for
> entrees, the side dishes were a quaint blend of cultures...boiled potatoes
> with bacon dressing (obviously "German Potato Salad" in the big city),

Hmm, potato salad.
Boil potatoes. Peel them, cut into slices.
Put them into a bowl and pour hot beef-soup mixed with vinegar over the slices.
Chop onions finely. Add and mix.
Let mix rest for 20 minutes.
Cut fatty bacon into little cubes and fry until crunchy.
Pour over salad and mix well.
Sprinkle finely chopped chive on top and serve.
Was that the one ?

> Collard Greens (Southern), Kraut w/caraway seeds


Kraut is always made with caraway/cumin seeds.

> (Central Europe), Pinto Beans (Mexican), "Dumplings" (which are a sort of
> chicken and dumplings without the chicken, only the stock for flavor, an
> adaptation of a European tradition).


Well, "dumplings" are supposed to mean "Knoedeln", which is wrong.
The most apt translation would be the Northern-German "Kloesse".
"Knoedel" in the Southern German area can be anything from pastry
(Marillenknoedel),
inlets for soups (Leberknoedel), side-dishes (Semmelknoedel or Kartoffelknoedel)
up to meals in their own right (Selchknoedel).
TW(OK)IAVBP ;-)


> That's about as multi-cultural as life gets. There were cornbread and
> biscuits, and for dessert the venue was purely American, a choice of pecan pie
> or banana pudding. Had I spent a cold morning in pasture hunting deer or
> walking behind a bird dog in crop stubble, I could have dealt with the
> calories implicit in the menu, but with it close to 90F and early September,
> the prospects were less than healthful.
>

That I can believe easily.

> From a food history standpoint, the classic West Texas version of "Chicken
> Fried Steak" (in my view the original) is a thin cut of beef, seasoned with
> salt and pepper, into which flour is "pounded" with the edge of a plate or
> other object used to break down the fibers


Yep. We have a special hammer (Fleischklopfer) for that purpose over here.
It looks like that, although mine has a wooden handle :
<http://www.intergastro.de/artikelnummer/178324/pgruppe/2271/rp/-1>

> of what was originally "range beef", tough and stringy by today's standards,
> then "pan fried" in a modest amount of grease, not deep fried as in East Texas
> and much of the South (where the meat after tenderizing is dipped in a heavy
> batter). "Chicken Fried Steak" as I grew up with it is clearly a dish of
> Central European origin, a Schnitzel in anybody's cookbook.


Yep. Good meat became Wiener Schnitzel or Kotellette, tough meat would be
fried and served with sauces, or be made into Gulasch.
One of my favourite dishes, Sauerbraten mit Kartoffelknoedeln, was invented
to use tough meat.

> Our regional tendency to use "Brisket" as a popular cut of beef seems equally
> borrowed from Central European kitchens. "Barbecue" for us is certainly no
> more than adapting a cut once oven-cooked to use, untrimmed and fatty, to be
> very slowly smoked, and one still encounters altered versions of "boiled beef"
> from the same cut in family homes and the occasional restaurant (although the
> traditional sauce/gravy I recall from childhood, diced celery and carrots
> which had been cooked with the meat, a white roux, the pan juices plus stock
> as needed, and fresh horseradish, has been lost in time).
>

Ah, "boiled beef" covers a great variety of dishes here.
From the famous "Tafelspitz" down to "Siedfleisch" (the meat which is used to
make
beef-soup).
The diced celery and carrots hint to Tafelspitz - where you simmer prime beef in
bouillon
for a short time; serve with cooked and pan-roasted potatoes, cream-spinach &
cie.

Thanks for a most informative post; I hope I mentioned something which makes up
for the time you invested to show me some aspects of Texas.

Cheers,

Michael Kuettner