My granny enjoyed baking and was, for that reason, an outstanding baker. I can still see her massaging flour, sugar, eggs, yeast, butter and milk into dough and injecting the pastry with apricot jam to make buhteljni. I keep in mind devouring her apple pies, pear pies, blueberry strudels, half-moon-shaped vanilla biscuits called kifeljčki, quark rolls kindly topped with cream, and fried yoghurt pastries, referred to as miške (little mice), while constantly desiring more. I can still hear her stating that to her, a sustainable farmer, baking was the closest she might get to “the world of art”. I are sorry for never ever informing her that despite the fact that she wasn’t beautified with the life of an artist, she was nevertheless weaving something bigger than her: a culture. Perhaps she comprehended what she was doing. As soon as, she advised me to never ever follow her dishes, however rather to adjust them nevertheless I chose. A culture, she was basically stating, need to be customized in line with the tastes and requirements of the times. Well. I have actually changed the majority of my granny’s dishes, apart from the one– her dish for potica, a standard Slovenian pastry typically served at vacation, birthday and unique events. In essence, it is a roll made from leavened paper-thin dough, usually packed with walnut filling and raisins, blanketed with powdered sugar. It needs to be snow white. Potica, a standard Slovenian walnut roll. Photo: Darko Bandić/ APCalling potica a “filled roll”, makes it appear simple to prepare, however it needs hours of work– ideally by more than one set of hands. The most agonizing part is squashing the walnut shells and after that grinding the walnuts. Before my granny started utilizing a mill, we filled a bag with, state, 100g of walnuts and beat the bag with a hammer, till the nuts– and our wrists– turned to paste. Ah, however why not just purchase a kilo of ground Californian walnuts? Oh! Since the trick to the very best potica understood to people is walnuts from a tree that grows on my granny’s farm. This lavish, 15m-tall person is a theme park for crows and bugs, and is likewise typically occupied by naively brave kids. It bears the crunchiest, sweetest walnuts– yes, walnuts can taste honeyed– which odor of early fall, even in a potica made in the darkest of winter seasons. Was, bore, smelled, I ought to compose. In the previous years, the 30-year-old tree has actually altered. Initially, the romantic in me wished to think it was grieving my granny’s– its main carer’s– death and simply could not yield sweet nuts anymore. It might just provide us bitter ones. Next, I turned to sound judgment. Walnut harvests, I informed myself, vary from season to season, so our half-empty baskets are absolutely nothing to fret about. After the 5th bad harvest with dry, astringent fruit, I comprehended that I was experiencing something else completely. A transformation much better referred to as decay. In appropriate conditions– moderate weather condition, low temperature level variations, low humidity– walnut trees in our area can measure up to 100 years and yield nuts up until they’re middle-aged. The scenarios for that specific potica tree and, by extension, its kin, have actually aggravated. The trees sustain spring frost and snow. Winds looking like twisters. Storms and floods. Greatly contaminated air, water, soil. Fires. Summer seasons you may anticipate in the tropics– with parasitic fungis one would believe just existed in such environments. The walnut tree in my grandma’s front garden sustained this whipping, flexing to it, for more than 10 years. Today, I– a solidified realist– am not even from another location shocked that it simply needed to break. Flooding in Prevalje, Slovenia, August 2023. Photo: Jure Makovec/AFP/Getty ImagesMy potica tasks may, less unfortunately, end. Given that I can’t make an appropriate walnut roll anymore, I chose to lastly adjust the dish. I purchased a number of bundles of almonds, from California, obviously, however when I saw them resting on the kitchen area counter, I believed nope, I am refraining from doing this. Those 500g went directly into my early morning porridge, where they can’t harm my grandma’s tradition. Despite the fact that she advised me to customize dishes, she could not have actually indicated for me to catch a culture that, after a preliminary sweep of exploitation, constantly discovers intake options. She could not have actually suggested that, since hers was a culture of protecting the lives of that potica tree and all its different kin, of bees, of felines and cows and birds and granddaughters. Hers was a culture of securing life. avoid previous newsletter promotionafter newsletter promo Well. I identified a twinkle of wish for poticas early this year. A sapling beside the passing away tree. It endured a summertime of devastating floods with heatwaves on the one hand, and suspiciously low temperature levels on the other. Maybe the passing away tree provided all its staying nutrients to this sapling, whispering: “The preservationists are currently here, believe me. A few of them are solidified realists, others are dreamy romantics.” Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian author, editor and critic
My granny’s walnut tree didn’t make it through fires and floods– however she left us a dish for hope|Ana Schnabl
