Happy Fat Tuesday! In the Czech Catholic tradition, the period of days leading up to Ash Wednesday is called Masupost and is similar to what American Southerners know as Mardi Gras, and Carnival that Brazilians celebrate. It’s a time of food, music, costumes, and revelry before the self denial of Lent, the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. An article on the Czech Expats website declares five “sinful” foods to have during Masupost, presumably dishes to gorge on before giving up things like sugar or fried foods during Lent. The list includes koblihy (according to the article’s author, “Masopust wouldn’t be Masopust without a batch of Czech carnival donuts”), and bozi milosti. These are fried squares or triangles of unleavened dough sprinkled with powdered sugar.
My mother made neither of these things, and my aunts don’t
remember their mother, my grandmother, making them either. However, in an oral
interview done with my grandmother in the 1990s, she remembered her
mother-in-law (Terezia Migl Kallus, at right with four of her children) making koblihy
the day before Ash Wednesday. Apparently, her children and grandchildren would
come over to the house in Wied to play dominoes and cards (also given up during
Lent) and she would make a “mountain” of koblihy
filled with either poppyseed or prune filling and fried in hog lard. All these
years, I thought my great grandmother’s choice to fry koblihy that night was a random one, but then realized they’re
actually a traditional dish for Masupost.
Recipes for both koblihy and bozi milosti can be found in many Texas
Czech community cookbooks, so though the word Masupost isn’t mentioned in any of the academic books I have about
Texas Czech culture, clearly women were and are still making the sweets
associated with the holiday.
I have one fail and one success story about making both of
these fried wonders last weekend for my kids. I offer my fail to highlight the pitfalls of
“testing” recipes from community cookbooks. I do this a lot because I have a
big, wonderful collection of books. They’re a treasure trove of recipes, but sometimes
a crapshoot as far as quality and reliability. Also, my grandmother and mother
have passed away, so I don’t have them any longer as a first hand source of
cooking advice.
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| Bozi Milosti |
The fail was my first attempt at making bozi milosti. I think
the end result looked fine, but the recipe was terrible. Only later comparing
it to other recipes, did I realize there was no sugar and no fat in the dough
and there should have been. All other recipes included these and I can only
assume their addition would have made a significant difference. My pastries
tasted like eating cardboard sprinkled with powdered sugar. I’d been hopeful
because the recipe was so simple and I certainly know how to fry things, but we
were so disappointed. They went straight in the garbage. The recipe came from The
West Heritage Cookbook (1986) on a page that had no less than four bozi milosti recipes.
My
success was frying koblihy, though
the first shaping attempt was a fail (first photo below). I
first followed the recipe and cut two circles of dough out, added a dollop of
filling on top of one, and then set the other circle on top, pinching around
the edges to seal the filling in. The two sides of all the koblihy separated
during frying.
 |
| Koblihy fail. |
Both sides were delicious (we spread jam on the side that had no
filling), but that’s not the look I was going for. For the next batch, I flattened out one
larger circle of dough, plopped the filling in the center, gathered up the
sides around it, then rolled it into a ball.
 |
| My koblihy, ready to fry, with an egg for size comparison. |
They ended up more ball shaped
than donut-shaped, but at least the filling stayed inside. There is
hardly anything more delicious than hot fried donuts. My sons ate them while
playing Magic the Gathering, not cards or dominoes, which they’re unfortunately
not giving up any time soon.
 |
| Koblihy success. |
The recipe
below is by Claudia Matura from the Texas Czech Genealogical Society’s book Tribute to Texas Czech Cooks Cookbook
(2014), submitted by her granddaughter Elizabeth Ripple. The measurements below
made a dozen koblihy and are for half
Ripple’s original recipe.
Filled Doughnuts (Koblihy)
1 cup cream
4 egg yolks
2 tablespoons
sugar
1 teaspoon
salt
2 teaspoon
vanilla
2 ¼-2 1/2
cups flour
grated rind
of ½ lemon
1/2 teaspoon
lemon juice
1 tablespoon brandy
or bourbon
1 package of
yeast softened in 1/8 cup water
1/8 teaspoon
of cardamom
filling of
your choice [as for kolaches]
homemade lard
or Crisco oil for frying
sugar
Warm cream to
lukewarm. Beat egg yolks and slowly add to cream while beating mixture. Let
cool Gradually add sugar, salt, vanilla and ½ cup flour. Mix and add lemon rind
and juice brandy, yeast, cardamom, and remaining flour. Dough must be very
soft.
After all ingredients are added, beat the dough with a wooden spoon until
it pulls away from the sides of the bowl and makes a “slapping” noise. Cover
bowl and let rise until more than double. Roll out on a floured board until
about 1/2 “ thick. Cut into rounds and place a small amount of prune or filling
of your choice into center and cover with another round of dough. Pinch edges
and recut edges with smaller cutter so that they are well sealed Let rise about
15 minutes. Fry in deep fat. Oil or lard is hot enough when it bubbles around a
small piece of dough. Drain on absorbent paper and dip in sugar. You can also fry donuts without filling.
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