Week 8 - Ukrainian Fried Pastries

I'm a big fan of finding new recipes online, I have a 3 three inch binder filled with print outs waiting for me to try. And because of this hobby of collecting recipes, I am aware of the writing trend of cooking blogs. I am of course referring to cooking blogs that start with the title of the food item, and then follow with a small novel worth of unrelated fluff. "The shade of green of the mug of coffee served to me this morning brought me back to the lush jungles of the amazon that I had once trekked through...." blah blah blah, ten paragraphs later... "Here is my favourite homestyle macaroni and cheese recipe!!!"

I decided when I started this blog/personal challenge, I would keep my entries short and related to the recipe. A review of the food, thats it. Well, today I'm adding some fluff. You see, this recipe has some backstory and I didn't feel right not including it in this post.

My Granddad was one of my most favourite people in the world. He passed six years ago the day after his 85th birthday and I miss him. I think I miss him more since my son was born, he would have  been over the moon with joy to be a great grandfather. His birthday was last week and I spent the day telling my infant son stories of his namesake. About how he was born during the great depression, and lived on a farm in Saskatchewan in a one room log cabin with his six siblings. How he had a dog named Rex and a horse named Sorley.

And I told my son about his great grandfathers mother, and how one of my granddads favourite memories of her was when she would make her fried cookies. How she would roll the dough out on their giant wooden kitchen table, making it almost paper thin. Then she would use a knife and cut the dough into long strips and then diagonally to make diamonds. He said that she would twist each piece around and then fry them in oil, dust them with sugar and that was their big treat.

The day before he died, my grandfather was in the hospital. We had a small party in his room to celebrate his 85th birthday, and family friends of ours stopped by at the end of the night with a box of fried cookies from a polish bakery. They were the same that his mother used to make, and they were the last thing he ate before he went to bed. (he playfully refused to share)

He passed in his sleep in the early morning hours, and it is a source of great comfort to me that his last hours were spent with all of his family and that the last thing he ate was a box of his mothers cookies.

A few years ago I received a Ukrainian cookbook, and inside was the recipe. I flagged it for this year long project and decided that I needed to make them for my grandfathers birthday. Because I wanted them to be as fresh as possible, I actually made them on his birthday and let me tell you, while I spent most of the day thinking about my granddad, I couldn't help but think about my great grandmother while making these cookies. I don't know how she did it, raising seven children in the middle of nowhere, in a small cabin with no running water, no electricity. I made these cookies while also taking care of my four month old son and I barely managed!

The dough was easy to make and cut up,  the twisting the knot was tricky but I eventually got the hang of it. The recipe called to make the diamonds quite small, but on the second half of the dough I doubled the size and found them more manageable.

They were well received by my family who ate them with coffee after dinner as we toasted to my grandfather and shared some of our favourite memories of him. Heres to you Big Al, and to you Great Grandma Rose.

Final Rating: Love you more 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
pinch of baking soda
1/4 cup butter, cubed and chilled
1 egg
1 egg yolk
5 tsp sugar
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tbsp vodka
pinch of salt
1 cup sunflower oil
1/2 cup confectioners sugar

Mix the flour and baking soda together, then cut in butter until it looks like fine crumbs.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and pour in the egg, egg yolk, sugar, vinegar, sour cream, vodka, and salt, then mix well into a firm party dough.

Flour work surface really well and divide the dough into 2 pieces. Roll one piece of dough as thin as you can. Slice dough into 1 1/4 inch strips and then diagonally across to end up with diamond shapes. make a slash in the centre of each diamond and pull one of the ends through the slash. Repeat with the second piece of dough.

Heat the sunflower oil in a medium saucepan until very hot. Drop the diamonds in carefully and fry briefly until the float to the surface. Lift out with a slotted spoon and dry on paper towel. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar and devour.