My 2010 in a few pics

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It's Christmas Time = POTICA Time!!

What is Potica???

Mom tells me the recipe she has followed for over 50+ years is Croatian derived. 

sticky sticky dough

The sweet dough is spread so thin you could read a newspaper through it.  

The filling consists of walnuts, graham cracker, honey, egg and milk. 

The rolling of the dough is very tricky, generally rolled out on a sheet.. she grabs the edge of the sheet lifts and it starts to roll. 

Once rolled,ends are tucked and it gets transferred to a cookie sheet and shaped into a slight "C". 

When the Potica is baked and pulled from the oven, she brushes butter on top of the warm bread. For me, it has been one of the constants of Christmas. I can't remember a time when it hasn't been on the table. Along with nutbread. She used to use a meat grinder attached to the table to grind all of the nuts and graham crackers, which now is done by the Cuisinart Food Processor.

 Mom grew up in Hibbing, MN, an Iron range town which has a recognizably Italian, Slavic, and Scandinavian heritage. Much of my favorite dishes she has handed down have these cultural accents to them.

POTICA

Bread recipe:

5 to 6 cups flour

1 Cup Milk, scalded (heat on low until milk is scalded)

3/4 Cup lukewarm water

3 packets yeast (small)

1 cup sugar

2 tsp. salt

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup butter, melted

Sprinkle yeast into water and add a pinch of salt; stir with a wooden spoon until dissolved.  5 - 10 min until it bubbles.  Combine lukewarm milk, salt and sugar in a large bowl, add yeast mixture, melted butter and eggs.  Mix with wooden spoon.  Add 1/2 of the flour - mix well, slowly.  Add rest of flour.  Kneed dough until heavy and sticky.  Cover and let rise for 1/2 hour. (Make filling while dough is rising)  Sprinkle flour on a table cloth.  Put sleeve on rolling pin and sprinkle lots of flour on it.  Divide dough into 4 parts.  Roll out dough until very thin.  Go slowly, this is the hardest part!!

Filling:

2 lbs walnuts, coarsely ground 

12-14 graham crackers, finely crushed

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup honey

2 eggs

1 Tbl butter

1 Cup milk

3/4 Cup sugar

Mix everything together, should be very thick.  Divide into 4 parts.  Spread onto rolled out dough up to the edges. (Be very careful, this is where you could rip the dough) Grasp edge of table cloth and lift (watch video for directions) doing this will roll up your dough and filling very easily and evenly.  Very carefully, transfer to a cookie sheet, bend the roll into a shape that will fit on the cookie sheet.  It will look like a big smile shape.  Tuck the ends of the roll in.  Bake at 300° for 1 hour, check often.  Take out when brown. Brush immediately with butter.  When cooled, wrap in foil and let sit two days or three... the flavors will be wonderfully married. Or cut and eat with a glop of butter and enjoy!

Roasted Chestnut Russian Teacake Cookie

Scored chestnuts before being roasted for ease of peeling

♪♫ CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE

JACK FROST NIPPING AT YOUR NOSE ♫ ♪

Every Christmas I sing those two lines from that song... because that's all I know. But, it brings to mind a big fire in a fireplace with a nice family roasting them and then laughing, singing and eating them.  Yes, I'm a fan of old movies with unrealistically happy families. The girls in their dresses with perfect hair and ribbons, the boys in their little outfits and slicked down combed hair.  LOL!!

Roasted and peeled chestnuts

I have ALWAYS wondered what roasted chestnuts taste like.  When I was in NYC for my 40th birthday in February, it was cold, there was snow on the ground and vendors were selling them on the streets.  I regret never having bought a little bag of those nuts.

Chopped roasted chestnuts tossed into food processor

One of my favorite food blogs, http://smittenkitchen.com/  Smitten Kitchen, had posted a roasted chestnut cookie recipe last week. She commented on how incredibly difficult it is to find chestnuts in the grocery store. I thought it looked like an awesome twist on my favorite Christmas cookie the Russian Teacake, but I let it go thinking I'd never find these nuts in the store.

Bake me baby!!

While at CUB, our local grocery store, stocking up on food before our big blizzard came, I was walking through the produce section and saw a big basket of chestnuts.  I was much more excited than a normal person should have been and I think I embarrassed Parker, my son, when I whooped out loud.  I grabbed a bag quickly as if I discovered gold and was SURE someone was going to snatch those nuts up before I had a chance to fill up my bag!

Its hard to tell when your cookies are done, the bottoms should be nice a brown.

I filled up that bag full of nuts and if Parker didn't pull me away I would have taken all of them.  I was very excited to make my cookies.  My son didn't share the same excitement as I did. Imagine that out of a 13 year old!

Powdered sugar to roll your cookies in with a bit of cinnamon

When you live in Minnesota, you know that you eventually will be hit with a blizzard.  Today should have been a day spent in the gym watching boys basketball.  It being canceled due to the big snowmagedan, it turned into a cooking day!

Roll those gems in the wonderful world of powdered sugar

I now understand why the Smitten Kitchen blog author is so in love with chestnuts.  The smell of those nuts roasting in the oven and the sweet nutty taste made them the perfect nut to compliment the powdered sugar topping. Wow.

You pop one of these in your mouth and they just melt.  One has to be very careful though... they are filled with butter! You will get a tummy ache if you eat too many. I say this as I type and I have a tummy ache that I'm nursing.

The expression on my Mom's face as she is devouring her cookie says it all

So enjoy the recipe! I challenge you to find chestnuts in a store near you and roast 'em, grind 'em and make them into these fab Russian Teacake Cookies! You will not regret a single mouth melting moment. 
(recipe from Smitten Kitchen)
Roasted Chestnut Cookies

Start with a whole pound of chestnuts, although you’ll only need about 2/3 of them, because chestnuts are notorious for surprising you, once roasted, with rotten centers. If you’ve got a winning batch (as I did), you get a little to snack on and everyone wins.
Makes about 4 dozen 1-inch cookies
1 pound chestnuts
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) butter, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon + additional for coating
A few gratings of fresh nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 450°F. Cut a small X on the top of each chestnut with a very sharp knife. Don’t be afraid to cut into the “meat” of the chestnut a little; I found that the the ones that were the most easy to peel start with a deep enough cut that the skin peels back while roasting. Roast chestnuts on a baking sheet for about 20 to 30 minutes, until a darker shade of brown and the X peels back to reveal the inner nut.

Cool on tray and then peel. Don’t worry if they break up as you do so if you have to dig them out in pieces, you won’t need whole ones for this.

Once the peeled chestnuts are fully cool, chop them coarsely on a cutting board. Measure 1 cup of chopped chestnuts, and dump them in the bowl of a food processor. Grind them until they are very well chopped, then add the softened butter, and pulse again until combined. Add 1/2 cup of your powdered sugar, vanilla extract, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and flour and pulse until an even dough is formed.

[No food processor? Chop-chop-chop those chestnuts as fine as you can, then use an electric mixer to whip the butter and 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Add the vanilla, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, flour and chestnuts and beat until well blended.]

Divide dough and wrap each half in plastic, chilling for one hour or until firm. Once chilled, preheat the oven to 350°F. Whisk remaining 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and a few pinches of cinnamon in a small bowl. Set aside. Working with one half of the chilled dough at at time, roll it into 2 teaspoon-sized balls (I use my 1 tablespoon measure, but didn’t fill it) in the palm of your hand. Arrange on parchment-lined baking sheet but no need to leave more than 1/2 inch between the cookies; they won’t spread.

Bake cookies until golden brown on bottom and just pale golden on top, about 14 to 17 minutes. (See Note up top about baking times.) Cool cookies 5 minutes on baking sheet. Gently toss warm cookies in cinnamon sugar to coat completely. Transfer coated cookies to rack and cool completely. Repeat procedure with remaining half of dough. To touch them up before serving, you can sift some of the leftover cinnamon-sugar mixture over them.

Do ahead: Dough can be chilled in the fridge for a day or two, longer in the freezer. Chestnuts can be roasted in advance, kept at room temperature for a day or so. Cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for a week.