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Barbara Kužnik

Antropology of food


" I am what I make, or better what I bake."

Today you can buy anything. Almost anything. They can sell you the form, but it will never be the same as the smell and the taste of our childhood.

As my dear Friend says "I listen I hear, I watch I see, I touch I feel, I smell, I taste, I dream ... but there are still Things that I miss. So, I create them."

I mix a pinch of sweet imagination, a few spoons of experience and a large amount of manual crafts my mother taught me.

I don't consider baking as showing off, but rather as a confrontation with the past and memory of all the people that made me as I am today.

My grandmother's stories about simple things she had dreamed about in the time of war.

For example a coal miners sunshine was never only a modest lunch under the earth, but a lot more.

My parents inherited recipes from their parents and they from a generation before them. This know how doesn't only ennable you to survive, but leads you also on the way of self recognition, creativity and love.

The kitchen family secrets define us. And it is a luxury if we are able to catch the time to master them and pass them on.

The smell of cinnamon, baked apples and walnuts are colours of my childhood. So they will always turn up in recipes I plan to share with you. Not to suggest you do the same, but to find your own way to meet forgotten stories of the past.

For the beginning let me tell you the story of Buckwheat.

Buckwheat is an ancient crop which has played an important role in the history of mankind. From China, buckwheat and its many uses spread to Central Asia, Tibet, and then to the Middle East. It's popularity later progressed throughout Europe, Australia, South America, and eventually into Canada and the U.S.

This crop has been shaping the traditional Slovenian cousine for centuries and we use it a lot.

Buckwheat apple walnuts pie

100 g white wheat

70 g buckwheat

½ teaspon of baking powder

2 eggs

125g butter

60 g brown sugar

1 vanilla

Rum, lemon peel, cinnamon

Grated apples

1 cream

2 big spoons of grounded walnuts

First you mix sugar and eggs (without the white part, you save the snow for later), add melted butter, wheat, a bit of rum, lemon and baking powder. You put the dough on baking paper into a baking tray, grate two big pilled apples, you springe the base with 1 vanilla sugar and cinnamon. All over the top you pour a mixture of cream with walnuts (and a bit of sugar)with added egg white.

Put the pie in the oven for 30 minutes (180°) and you will have a perfect taste and smell of the past. :)

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