No other time of the year carries more significance for me in terms of food memory than the Christmas holiday. At home my mother would make date-nut bread (which came from her in-laws) or the kolacky of her mother’s, my Hungarian grandmother. But the one dish she did not make, the sole province of my grandmother, was her Hungarian-style strudel. It would come to us in an ancient lidded Marshall Field’s box, back when department stores provided such things, lined with foil, sliced and dusted with powdered sugar. It was absolutely magical and a special treat.
My grandmother was a remarkable woman in many ways. She grew up on the grounds of Betliar Castle in what is today Slovakia but was the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian empire when she was born at the turn of the twentieth century. She was the only one of her siblings to emigrate to America in the early 1920s, although a great aunt had come to the Minnesota Iron Range in the late 19th century where she worked as a famous midwife. Her father was the gamekeeper for the estate, a representative of the establishment. Interestingly our Slovak cousins today remember the Hungarians as oppressors, and I’m afraid that my grandmother’s family were certainly in league with the Count Andrassy, the lord of the manor.
My grandmother on the estate sometime in 1922 with her younger brother Julius (holding the German police dog). Yes, she had a pet fox. 
My grandmother with her cousin, Nicolas Furjanik during the Christmas of 1923 – “Cousin Nick” was a renown violinist who played with the Philadelphia orchestra and the owner of the camera! 
My great grandfather, Michael Holecko, outside their home on the Betliar Castle grounds, Christmas Day, 1923. 
Taken in the 1930s, a last hunting party with Uncle Julius (far left) the Andrassy (middle) and Cousin Nick (far right) not long before the estate’s nationalization.
Making the strudel seemed like the thing to do since for a change, with the pandemic, we were not doing any traveling or hosting for the holidays. I’d been meaning to try this for years on my own (my brother and I made it together in 2009 and it was superb!) but hadn’t found the time. Until now.
The strudel turned out ok – the dough was perfect, but I should have cut up my apples much smaller and done so first so they had time to soften. That was the only actual problem. Everything else worked well enough except for my bad planning on getting the rolled up strudel off the tablecloth.
You can find the full recipe and how to make it in the video. But the dough ingredients are as follows:
- 1 pound of all-purpose flour
- 1 4oz. stick of butter
- 8oz (1 cup) of sour cream
- 2 eggs
- “some warm water” if needed and some flour for dusting when kneading.
Justin A. Nystrom 
What lovely memories and images. Food and family history go hand in hand.
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A couple of other holiday things Grandma would make…pigs feet in aspic, Kocsonya. ( though I thought she called it stolts, or something like that) I liked the tender flavorful meat, but there was a lot of non-meat, ( collagen, skin, fat, etc.) they tasted good, but I really did not have the level of “sophistication” , (or peasant-ness) to enjoy those parts. Gets back to the “eat everything”, it is food/energy…the clear aspic was good. Like pork broth, but, being a cold gel was weird. And goose grease. Cold, in a jar or other repurposed container. Spread like butter ( well, lard actually) on good rye bread, sprinkled with salt. Again, use it all. It tasted good. But. Fat and Salt. I actually saved the grease from the last time I roasted a goose. And ate some on rye bread. It has a good meat flavor. And Dang…goose is expensive so eating the grease makes sense even now…sort of, cholesterol and blood pressure notwithstanding. 🙂
PS: that plate looks familiar…
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