First snow at Krumlov

 It's always so joyful to watch the first snow gently cover the familiar outlines of the town. And after some gloomy November days, to welcome back the blue sky that inevitably comes with the snow.

 I especially love the way the snow outlines so sharply every textural detail, the branches, the rough bits of rocks, even adding white hats to all the town statues.

The difference between here and the snow in England that I remember is that as there is so little or no wind in this country, the snow stays on the trees, even on the thinnest of branches, making a beautiful black and white contrast against the blue of the sky. Lovely.

Now I shall get my walking skis out now and go for a walk in the forest - to celebrate this gift from the heavens :-)

CHRISTMAS BISCUITS

Looking at the Statscounter, I realize that the time has come when hundreds of our readers search for Christmas biscuits and pastries again. So I thought to put more recipes up. If you haven't seen my posts from previous years, do have a look, there are many more delicious traditional Czech Christmas pastries and cookies recipes. Bon apetit! 

 Each of these recipes makes a fairly large quantity of biscuits – use half the ingredients if a smaller quantity is required. 

Please note all these biscuits will need to be stored for a period of time in cool temperatures (5-10C) to allow for the flavours and texture to develop fully 

GINGER FLOWERS 

INGREDIENTS 4 eggs, 6 yolks, 500g caster sugar, 550g flour, 2 tablespoons ground ginger

METHOD

In a mixer or a mixing bowl, beat the whole eggs, the yolks and the sugar till fluffy. Fold in flour and ginger.

Put the mixture onto a lightly floured board and work gently into a smooth pastry. Roll out gently to about a 5mm thick – do not use much pressure or the resulting biscuits will go hard. Cut out flower (or other) shapes. Put these onto a greased baking tray, or a tray lined with baking paper. Leave to stand for several hours, or overnight.

Baking:

Put your tray into a fairly hot oven, to allow the biscuits to quickly rise – but then turn the temperature down so they don't turn brown – they should be golden colour.

Decorating:

When totally cooled, brush them over with egg white, and (optional) use the egg white to stick a small piece of candied ginger on the top.

Store in paper shoe box or similar for 3 weeks or longer in a cool place.

YUMMY HAZELNUT STARS

INGREDIENTS:

for the pastry:

400g flour, 170g icing sugar, 150g unsalted butter, 2 eggs, 4-5 tablespoons soured cream, 2 sachets vanilla sugar, pinch of salt (optional)

for the topping:
160g hazelnuts - ground, 80g marzipan, 4 level tablespoons icing sugar, 2 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice

METHOD

Mix all the pastry ingredients together to a smooth consistency, form a ball and leave it in the fridge for an hour or so.

Shred or grate the marzipan, and mix it with the yolks. Add sugar, juice and nuts.

Roll the pastry to 4-5 mm thickness, cut out star shapes, place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and brush with egg white. Spoon a small heap of the topping on each star. Optionally, place a whole hazelnut on top.

Bake at around 180C for 15 minutes, leave to cool and store in an airtight container in a cool place for two to three weeks.

FRUITY/NUTTY GINGERBREADS

INGREDIENTS

Pastry:

2 cups milk, 6 tablespoons honey, 4-5 tablespoons melted butter, 200g caster sugar, 2 eggs.

600g flour, 2 sachets raising powder, 100g ground hazelnuts, 100g ground almonds, 100g ground walnuts, 100g sweet candied fruit (raisins or sultanas, orange and lemon peel, or similar mix), 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground cloves., largish pinch of ground star-anise, 2 tablespoons cocoa, grated lemon rind to taste.

Icing: 300g icing sugar, 2 egg whites, 2 teaspoons lemon juice or rum. 

METHOD

In a pan, gently melt butter, stir in milk, honey and sugar. When cooled down, mix in the eggs.

Put all the dry ingredients onto a floured board, mix through and add the honey-milk mix. Work into a pastry, adding more flour if too sticky.

Form a ball, cover in cling wrap, and leave in the fridge for a minimum of three hours – or overnight.

Next, roll the pastry to about 5mm thick, and cut out shapes. Place your shapes onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Bake in low to medium oven – check that the honey isn't caramelising or the biscuits will turn bitter.

When cooled, before removing biscuits from the tray, pour a thin layer of sugar icing over the upper part of the biscuits.

Leave in a tissue-paper lined paper box, in a cool place for two to three weeks.

HEART-WARMING CHOCOLATE HEARTS

INGREDIENTS

Pastry:

300g flour, 150g icing sugar, 150g ground hazelnuts, 150g butter, 150g grated bitter chocolate, 2 eggs, 1tbsp orange peel, large pinch cinnamon.

Filling: cranberry or apricot jam – or Nutella

Topping: melted chocolate

 METHOD

Mix sugar and eggs, add the flour, nuts, and butter. Add lemon rind and cinnamon, turn onto a floured board and work into a smooth pastry while adding the chocolate flakes. Form a ball, wrap it in cling-film and leave in the fringe for an hour or so.

Roll the pastry out quite thin – 3mm, and cut out heart shapes. Place these onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, and bake in a moderate oven (170C approx) for about 10-15 minutes.

When cool, spread half of the hearts with the jam or nutella, put the other hearts on top like sandwich, and pour on melted chocolate.

These biscuits need to be stored in an airtight container in a cool place for a week.

ALMOND DELIGHTS

(THESE DO NOT REQUIRE BAKING)

INGREDIENTS

400g skinned ground almonds, 160g icing sugar, 80g melted white chocolate, 40g powdered milk, 2 egg-whites, 4-5 drops of almond essence, icing.

METHOD

Mix the sugar with the egg-whites, add almonds, powdered milk, melted chocolate and almond essence. Put the mixture between two greaseproof paper sheets or foil, and roll to about 3mm thick.

Gently peel off the top paper and cut shapes from the rolled-out pastry. Leave these to dry for at least three hours.

When dry, use your imagination in decorating – white icing with coloured balls, or just plain roasted almond flakes...

DATE SURPRISE

(THESE DO NOT REQUIRE BAKING)

INGREDIENTS

Pastry:

300g ground almonds, 200g ground walnuts, 160g icing sugar, 150g ground butter biscuits, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 6 tablespoons brandy or rum, optional pinch cinnamon.

Icing: melted dark chocolate, half a date for each biscuit

METHOD

In a mixing bowl mix all the pastry ingredients. Roll out between two sheets of greaseproof paper or foil., to about 3mm thick.

Gently peel off the top paper, cut out diamond shapes and leave them to dry out till the next day.

Decorate with a date covered with melted dark chocolate.

Leave in an airtight container for a week or so.

DATE PURSES

(THESE DO NOT REQUIRE BAKING)

INGREDIENTS

500g dates, 200g marzipan, 80g cooking chocolate, tablespoon butter.

METHOD

Cut each date lengthwise, remove stone and replace with a piece of marzipan. Dip into melted chocolate and leave on a wire-mash stand to harden. Store in fridge.

MOROCCAN GRILLAGE

INGREDIENTS

500g mixed peel, 500g mixed nuts, 500g sugar (or less if peel is very sweet), 600g flour, 1/2l whipping cream

Melted dark chocolate as icing.

METHOD

Chop the candied fruit and nuts and mix them with the sugar and the flour. Bring the cream to boil and remove from heat straight away. Pour the cream into the mix, and let it stand to cool.

moroccan grillage

Place small heaps of the mixture onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, and bake in a cool oven (max 150C) till orange-brown. As soon as the colour changes, remove from the oven and tray while still on the paper, and leave to cool. Then pour melted chocolate on the top.

History of ponds and pond-making

To finish off the pond-making strand, just a few additions.
First I want to go back very briefly to the time before Jakub Krcin and his contemporaries - see blog below - to the time of the Husite wars (largely peasant Protestants versus establishment Catholics, in the 15th century). The Husite's main centre was the South Bohemian town Tabor, and many of their campaigns were therefore fought in South Bohemia. The fact that they knew the landscape and understood its characteristics aided their strategy many times over. So for example the battle by the Sudomerice pond is famous because the Husites, dressed in peasant clothes and with light weapons, lured the heavy, suit-of-armour clad opposing army into the adjoining marshes, where the metal knights, even their horses, stuck in deep mud and so the Husites practically massacred the lot.

But back to pond-building itself. Thed Golden Age of pond-building and carp-farming ended by the 30 year war (17thC) when many ponds were turned over to farming, mainly for sugar beet and for sheep grazing. It was essential to farm more sheep apparently, because much wool was needed for soldiers' uniforms, and the decline continued well into the 19th century with the Industrial revolution, and so by 1886 an official count lists only 51 000 hectares of ponds. But the decline continued even beyond that, especially during the Communist times when large-scale, Soviet type agricultural methods were quite unsuitably used here: small fields were joined into vast, combine-harvester- friendly tracts of monocultures, which involved further drying out of peatlands and marshes, and diverting natural brooks and streams for underground amelioration. This helped produce more grain and sweetcorn, but changed the natural aesthetics and ecology of the region. Now, after many centuries, there are moves to restore some of the worst excesses of this agricultural method, some ponds are being re-filled, some amelioration has naturally stopped working and brooks are finding their way up onto the surface again. But we have no equivalent of the enlightened aristocrats of the Middle ages and Renaissance with their largesse and their long-term vision of carefully managed estates - after Communism came Market capitalism, and so much of the lanscape is being robbed of its produce without much thought to replenishment and the continuity of generations - be it forests, ponds or decisions as to what to best farm in this particular climate or conditions. Some hope for continuity rests on the regional Agricultural college whose Fisheries faculty is now joined with a research institute for ecology and countryside management. We hope they can have at least some good influence, this beautiful countryside deserves it.

Pond building history 2 - Jakub Krčín

The personality of Jakub Krčín is so legendary that it is sometimes hard to make out what is true and what has been embroidered in peoples' imagination. Perhaps it is because this brilliant builder and engineer, estate manager and regent over the vast Rozmberk empire, himself a gentleman landowner with several own fortresses and châteaux and a great number of own farms and villages, was so spread out - both in the astounding amount of work accomplished and in distances he must have travelled - that it's hard to imagine a single human being capable of such an achievement. We have the facts that are indisputable, and then we have the mysteries: the greatest mystery is connected to his grave. The grave is inside the church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Obdenice, but the curious thing is that although the gravestone bears Krčín's birth date of July 1535, there is no date of death. And when in 1944 the church underwent a thorough reconstruction, the Krčín grave was found empty. Curious, given that he himself oversaw the building of his sepulchre and the making of his gravestone, and curious given that there were plenty of family around him, so they should have had the date carved into the stone. He wrote his will on the 19^th January 1604 but there is no record of his death or burial. And although guesses abound as to other places where he might have been buried, to this date no academic researchers or archeologists have found his remains.

Krčín studied at Prague University and then was employed as a land manager at a monastery in Borovany where he learnt his first pond-building skills from the experienced monks. But his main career started in 1562 when he entered into the service of the Rozmberks, where apart from ponds he designed and built more efficient sheep-farms, breweries, glass-works, mills, even silver mines. And he managed the running of the Krumlov castle - we still have his hand-written accounts in the Krumlov archive. He was obviously much valued as at the age of 35 he was made Regent of the whole Rozmberk 'empire'. But, as much as he was valued by his bosses, he was hated by the people who worked under him; he had a reputation of a cruel and impatient master – apparently, for example, he employed the local executioner as workforce supervisor at the building of the Rozmberk pond! No wonder then, that legends started to burgeon in people's minds. Often his brilliant calculations and engineering ideas seemed impossible to his workforce - they believed the only way that some of his more daring designs stood the tests of reality was because Krčín had a pact with Hell. They whispered that he walks the banks of his canals with black cats on his shoulder of a night, and when he built his own Krepenice fortress in a record time, people were convinced the speed was due to devils working for him in exchange for his soul. This especially as they observed noxious smoke issuing out of Krčín's chimneys on dark nights. This was the smoke from his alchemical laboratory. Whether he wanted to make philosopher's stone or just plain gold, or an elixir that would help him father a son and heir (he produced 6 daughters) we shall never know.

 But this was a time when Alchemy was a pursuit very much in vogue – especially here in Bohemia where the Emperor Rudolf himself, a man of burning interest in Nature, philosophy, and the arts and sciences of the time, was also passionate about alchemy, gathering around him in Prague not only top natural scientists, astronomers and artists of his time, but also alchemists and magicians. And Vilem Rozmberk – a man perhaps even richer than the Crown, wasn't going to be left behind, and his South Bohemian dominion became a meeting place for alchemists: Vilem even sheltered the English alchemists John Dee and Edward Kelly when they escaped Emperor Rudolf's wrath. But that's another story. Suffice to say that Krčín did labour on his own Opus. Well, who knows, perhaps he really managed to achieve the ultimate Elixir: perhaps he is still alive somewhere, hence the mystery of his empty tomb :-)

But what does make him truly immortal is his engineering genius, as all the ponds, and most of his other works have not only survived but are still in working order now.

Well, that's, in brief, the story of Krčín. I will do one more (and more sobre) blog just to finish the general history of the pond building.

Some history of pond building in Bohemia - I

Now, I am not a historian so I am sure I can't write with the kind of precision jargon others would, but I like stories, so here goes:
If you look at the map of Bohemia, especially using satellite imaging, you can see that it looks like a bowl with mountains for a rim. Legend has it that the bowl was formed by a meteorite – and indeed even in the Renaissance, the astronomers and alchemists believed this, calling Bohemia a sacred receptacle of the Hieros Gamos, where this 'Marriage of heaven and earth' left its passionately destructive mark. But this destruction was also a blessing because it formed an almost ideal environment for human habitation: moderate climate with defined seasons and little wind, and waters running from the surrounding mountains into wide, shallow valleys. The mountains were ideal for forestry and wine growing, while the broad valleys offered rich soil for arable farming. And then there were large areas of lakes and marshes: almost the whole of the Southern Bohemia lowlands – the Budejovice, Trebon and Vodnany regions, were one vast lake during the Tertiary period of pre-history, which slowly changed into marshlands over the following thousands of years.
Like I said in my previous posts, it was these marshlands that provided the basis for the wholesale landscape works that took place between (mostly) the 14th and the early 17th centuries.

In the last millennium the Bohemian lands were the home of Celtic tribes to start with, but it wasn't until the Slavs arrived, sometime in the 6th century, that the water-rich region began to be deliberately used for fishing: the Slavs made dykes and small dams to provide good environment for fish to breed, but also to ensure enough water for the hot, dry Bohemian Summers. Then, around 10AD colonising Christians made inroads into this territory, and started building ponds as the monks needed a good supply of fish for their monasteries. They kept themselves, and the fish, to themselves for the following 400 years or so, until Bohemia caught up as a civilised Kingdom and part of the Holy Roman Empire. A significant Royal dynasty of the Luxemburgs brought much order and prosperity to Czech lands, especially King Charles IV (to many Czechs the beloved and respected father of Bohemia). Charles IV (14thC) was a fascinating, erudite, truly visionary ruler and a mystic of whom tomes could be written – but I must try to stick to pond building (alas). He actually ordered his subjects by a decree to build ponds in and near their villages, so as to provide food 'and freshen the air'! - so a proto-ecologist as well :-)

From then on ponds were busily being instituted all over Bohemia, and it almost seems (to me) as a period of huge competition for prestige too – which aristocrat's pond is bigger than the other's. For example William of Pernstejn (Hluboka castle) had over 300 ponds built on his estate in the 15th century. But of course this boom was also due to the realization that ponds were a more profitable business than farming on wetlands. Because ponds supported not only fish growing but also – as I mentioned in my previous post - their supporting networks of canals, so clever that (somehow – I can't quite work out how) they could even run uphill, and gave cheap and plentiful energy to run flour mills, saw-mills, glass and metal workshops, iron foundries and 'hammer mills'. The ponds themselves were reservoirs for water, supplied breweries, prevented floods, served for filling moats for defence purposes, and quenched fires. Some of this was true also for the smallest of ponds - in fact even now if you travel around South Bohemia you will find that most villages are built around a green with a pictoresque central pond which inevitably has a little fire station right by it. And so by the end of the 16th century Bohemia had over 150 000 ponds. That was the peak – now there are only around 50 000. But more of all that later.

More on carp harvest(s)

As I have already mentioned, the carp harvest is a kind of ceremony - a marking of passage from Autumn to Winter, eagerly participated in by the Czechs at the many ponds that criss-cross the South Bohemian countryside. Why? Because it is a wonderful spectacle, and because the Czechs are particularly partial to carp, the fish that will grace their Christmas Eve tables; a fish that has over the years become one of the most enduring symbols of Christmas. To give you an idea of the harvests' popularity, on the 10th October this year 37 000 spectators came to witness the harvest at Svet - the 214 hectare carp pond at the town of Trebon. The largest pond, Rozmberk (yet to be harvested), measures 647 hectares, and there are many more ponds where Trebon comes from!

Our pond, Olsina, is at some 170 hectares smaller by comparison, but still many people come, including schools and large parties of people from a wide surrounding area. There are blow by blow accounts of the Olsina 2008 harvest in my earlier blogs , also an account of why and how Carp at Christmas, and Potok's blog where she describes yesterday' s harvest in great and lovely detail - so this time I shall instead give a little more factual information for those who might be interested:

Fish farming in artificial ponds in South Bohemia goes back to the Middle Ages. The first ponds were built in the 14th century, when large parts of otherwise useless boggy landscape were transformed into a prosperous region by retaining walls to hold water in the valleys, and a complex web of channels and canals that connected these ponds. By default, these channels also powered mills and water-driven 'hammers', and they were used to transport wood from the surrounding forested mountains, as well as provided water to farms during hot dry Summers, even drinking water for the towns along their banks. The 'golden period' for the ponds and their canals was the Renaissance: the reign of the Rozmberk family who owned large swathes of Southern Bohemia. The Czechs have much respect for the feats of engineering that went into these massive works.Why, just the Rozmberk pond has a wall 2430 meters long, that is capable of holding 50 million cubic meters of water. And the 'Golden sluice', a 47,8 km long channel built in 1505-1520 to connect, oxygenate and protect several carp-ponds, is still fully functioning now, five hundred years later.

Every Czech child when asked to name a famous pond builder will immediately give you two: Štěpánek Netolický (1460-1539) and Jakub Krčín z Jelčan (*1535). It was Netolicky who built the Golden Sluice and started on the big works around Trebon that were continued equally brilliantly by his successor, Krcin. These two personalities - knights, inventors, alchemists, true Renaissance men - are the stuff of story and legend (which I shall blog about later).
The largesse with which the Rozmberks oversaw these enormous landscape works has come to an end with the Thirty Year War (17thC) after which the whole country went into a general decline for a long time. But the ponds remained. And so did their tradition.  In fact, as I have been researching into the subject  I am smitten by so much of the material, that I am determined to blog more about it - would be nice to have some feedback to see if anyone's interested :-)

preparing for the big day at the Lake house

Great excitement, it's only a few days till the next carp-harvest at the Olsina lake. As you can see, the 'lake', really a centuries old man-made pond, has been slowly draining out over the past three weeks and now it's only mud-flats with a small amount of water in the middle. The reason for this is to force the multitude of fish that have been growing there for the last two years into the smallest amount of water possible. On Wednesday next week, men with boats and nets will come and take all the carp away, ready for the Christmas markets.

This is a method that has been in use since the Middle Ages, when the monasteries and the nobles had the bright idea of using valley bogs that would have been of no use otherwise as handy receptacles for fish-farming. All you needed was a stream running through a boggy valley that was naturally formed like a bowl, and a retaining wall at one end, with a sluice to let the water out. This ensured a constant replenishment of fresh water for the fish. In a land-locked country, that meant that there was always a plentiful supply of carp - and if you look at the map of Southern Bohemia, you will see it woven through with blue, a true tapestry of lakes; especially around the town of Trebon - an amazing feat of mediaeval engineering where the massive ponds are interconnected with channels that act as conduits between them.

Olsina lake is not part of such a complex web, it is a pond on its own. But at 167 hectares, there is a lot of room for fish, and if the last harvest is anything to go by, we have much to look forward to: on Wednesday at dawn, we shall watch the fishermen use the same methods that their counterparts have been using since the 14th century - apart from the lorries that will carry the tanks with live fish away. But one can imagine the heavy carts of old, the strong horses, the large wooden tubs ... after all the fish need to be kept alive and well till Christmas!  Because the main reason for the big harvest is that carp are THE Christmas fare for the Czechs, as they have been as long as memory can reach.

Well, I shall be there to watch the spectacle, and take some photos to share the day with you.