A Recipe for the Holidays...or Any Time

Papanasi

Of all the dessert recipes I’ve made and consumed over the years, many stand out for their deliciousness and for the many requests over holidays, gatherings, and birthdays. But these days, since a large number of my "boomer" friends and family need to watch what they eat (and not just from plate to fork), I’ve had to find ways to adapt them for a variety of dietary concerns. My father, for instance, was diabetic; my brother-in-law doesn’t eat dairy; another has developed allergies to a gazillion foods; and I have cholesterol issues and need to avoid salt for my blood pressure. While almost anything in moderation can't be too bad, sometimes it’s not possible or even desirable to avoid the urge to splurge.

Take the Romanian delicacy, papanasi (pronounced pop-a-nosh). I tasted it for the first (second and third) time while visiting Romania in 2000. From Bucharest, my friend and I traveled to scenic Transylvania to the mountain resort of Sinaia and to the medieval city of Brasov, where I had the equivalent of gastric euphoria after sampling what my kids (and many others) have come to refer to as Romanian jelly donuts. They used rose petal jam in the restaurant, which was heavenly. My friend and I split a serving, consisting of two of those darlings.

Because they are fried in oil, papanasi is perfect for Hanukkah, along with latkes (yum), and other artery-choking, heart-stopping delights. Papanasi are lighter in texture than donuts and distinctive due to the soft cheese that is an integral ingredient in the dough.

I wish to thank my dear friend (and moose enthusiast), Professor Liliana Popescu, for sending me this recipe back in July 2001, which I have used on more than one occasion for our Festival of Lights celebration feast.

By the way, papanasi, or dumpling, can be prepared and cooked in a number of ways for a number of purposes (think of shrimp a la "Bubba" Buford from “Forest Gump”). The following recipe is as close to the papanasi I remember from my trip. Most of the online recipes nowadays feature an actual donut shape, topped with a munchkin. (The comments in parentheses are mine.)

Papanasi cu branza de vaci

(Fried dumplings with “Cow Cheese”)

makes four large “donuts” or eight small ones

Ingredients:

400 g. soft cheese such as farmer cheese (make sure it’s Breakstone), cottage cheese, ricotta

500 g. flour

250 g. sugar (use your judgement; sugar probably is not necessary)

3 eggs

Zest of one lemon

½ tsp. rum extract

Oil for frying

1 Tbs. confectioners sugar

Jam or preserves

Sour cream or crème fraiche

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients (except the oil, jam, powdered sugar) until the batter is the consistency of a sticky dough.
2. Mould the papanasi into balls (the ones in the Brasov restaurant must have been nearly tennis ball-size)
3. Fry in hot oil until golden (best done submersed until they rise, or turned frequently).
4. Dry on paper towels
5. While still warm use a spoon to pierce the papanisi to create an opening for the jam or preserves
6. Fill with your choice of jam or preserves
7. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and top with sour cream or crème fraiche

Enjoy!

 ~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, "The Serpent’s Tooth" trilogy: Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her BWL Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from a host of online and brick and mortar retailers. Look for Where the River Narrows (wriiten with BWL author Ron Crouch), the 12^th and final novel in BWL’s Canadian Historical Brides series, coming in July 2018.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

I’d Like to Thank…by Kathy Fischer-Brown

photo © Janice Lang

Reading this month’s “assignment” on the Canadian Historical Brides blog has been fascinating. No two writers, it would seem, do things the same, from our approach to researching and plotting, to the ways in which we find and receive support. While some of us find ourselves on the receiving end of our families’ understanding and encouragement, others find themselves misunderstood and seek affirmation and inspiration in groups of likeminded people.

I consider myself fortunate to have had a number of influential “muses” over the course of my life. Starting in third grade, there was Miss Silverstein, who to my utter embarrassment, read my little stories aloud to the class and hung those gold-starred, neatly-printed-on-loose-leaf products of my imagination on the bulletin board. This was a special honor, considering I wrote them without prompting, just because I wanted to…or perhaps because something compelled me, like an itch needing to be scratched. Then there was Mrs. Barr in fifth grade, Miss Debevoise in eighth grade and Mrs. Cohen in 10th. I’m especially grateful to Dorothy Debevoise, who not only read my first historical novel (poor woman to have been subjected to such a yawner), she also marked it up with suggestions and offered to read it again!

In high school, I switched the focus of my need for expression from penning stories to acting on the stage. I continued to write, but for the most part, except for an occasional poem published in the school literary journal, I wrote late at night when no one in the house was awake to ask silly questions. These scribblings were solely for my own amusement and thankfully have never seen the light of day.

When I abandoned the stage following the birth of our first child, I became consumed with an idea for a novel that came to me in a dream. I knew next to nothing about writing for publication but lots about creating characters, thanks to an MFA in Acting. Back then, in the early 1980s after we moved from Connecticut to Indiana (where my husband accepted a position at a small private Catholic all-girls college), before the internet and personal computers, I subscribed to “Writers Digest” and “The Writer” magazines, pored over each issue from cover to cover, ordered books on plotting and markets. Through the classified section of one of these publications, I found a pen pal with whom I exchanged chapters of works in progress. Maureen and I enjoyed a lengthy working friendship until our lives changed and we lost touch with each other. (We recently reconnected after nearly 30 years; she's writing and publishing again.)

During this time my husband, a retired theater teacher/director and published playwright, read my work and served as a sounding board. In the early years prior to publication, Tim probably knew as much about my stories as I did. Upon returning to the east coast, I found my first writers group. It was an odd bunch, made up mostly of men who saw themselves as God’s gift to the world of fiction while looking down their noses at the few women in the group. Except for Norma Giles, the founder of the group and singular mind, who encouraged me to keep on keeping on, despite the snide, whispered comments and outright guffaws.

Another move followed the birth of our daughter and brought our little family to where we are now, 29 years later. Shortly after moving to Central CT, I found a terrific critique group. Not long after that I joined Romance Writers of America and its local chapter, CTRWA, where I became involved with the best bunch of women ever to wield colored pens. Through their insightful comments and encouragement, I entered Winter Fire in the Golden Heart contest, where it earned a finalist ribbon. For that, I will always be grateful to Nancy, Suzanne, Jan, and Mariana.

I can’t forget my first agent. Ruth took me on because she absolutely loved what has since become “The Serpent’s Tooth” trilogy. Unfortunately, she didn’t live to see the books find their way into print and ebook with BWL.

My dear, departed father also deserves thanks for pushing my first published novel (2001) on all of his friends. He bought a carton-full of Winter Fire paperbacks and handed them out to nearly everyone he knew. I’m sure my mother would have been proud as well.

And where would I be without Matt and Hannah, my grownup kids? Both of them came of age while their mama wrote nearly every day, often into the wee hours, pausing to prepare tea and cookies when the school bus dropped them off and making time to cook dinner, go to parent/teacher conferences, take them to plays their father directed, rehearsals and performances of their own, cub scout and brownie scout meetings, Little League practices, overnights with friends and shopping trips to the mall. Both, I might add, are pretty decent scribes in their own right. If not for them, I never would have learned how to balance my time.

And last, but definitely not least, I am thankful to Judith Pittman, founder and publisher of BWL. I’d been with several publishers before Jude launched Books We Love in 2010. Ultimately, Jude’s vision and expertise in marketing won me over. I’ve been with BWL ever since.

 ~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, "The Serpent’s Tooth" trilogy: Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from a host of online and brick and mortar retailers. Look for Where the River Narrows, the 12^th and final novel in BWL’s Canadian Historical Brides collection, coming in July 2018.

Story Arc: Where the River Narrows, by Kathy Fischer-Brown

“It’s always best to start at the beginning.” Wise words from the Good Witch of the North in one of my all-time favorite movies, The Wizard of Oz.

Then again, I doubt old Glinda ever wrote a novel or she probably would have come up something a bit less confusing. Unlike Dorothy, I would have asked, “What is the beginning?” 

Okay, in the context of the movie, this is pretty much self-explanatory: If you’re heading from Munchkin Land to the Emerald City, you start out on the Yellow Brick Road and keep going until you reach the big gate with the broken door bell. But with a novel, it ain’t that easy. You can start in media res (in the middle of the action) or at square one, as in Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, with the lead character as a baby. You can start at the end and work backwards, or with a prologue…. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Today’s readers are not so forgiving as Mr. Fielding’s in the middle of the 18^th century, or Charles Dickens’s in the 19^th  or even Margaret Mitchell’s in the early 20^th century. They want something more fast-paced. They want to jump into a book without the long preambles and slow development our pre-multimedia-consuming ancestors found so appealing. Gone are the days of the family sitting around the fire, by candle- or lamplight after supper on a long winter night, reading aloud as the sole form of entertainment.

Then again, the beginning of a book is dependent on the type of story you want to tell. A murder mystery will begin quite differently from, say, a contemporary romance or a high fantasy. And even with those genres, the author has choices to make. Whose point of view is most compelling and appealing off the bat? First person, second, third, omniscient? Will there be more than one point of view in the novel? Present or past tense? Not to mention how to introduce the setting and its details.

photo © Janice Lang

The fact that I write historicals places certain restrictions on how I approach the arc of a book. The characters are vital to the plot, and the setting has nearly equal weight when planning how the book will be structured. I like the deep third person point of view that allows the reader to get into the skins of more than one character, and I try to include just enough details of time and place without them being overwhelming.

In Where the River Narrows (with fellow BWL author Ron Ady Crouch, to be published by in July 2018), I’ve chosen to begin the book at a what I consider to be a logical start-off point. The Exposition introduces the characters (Elisabeth Van Alen, her family, servants and neighbors, and Gerrit Bosch, the groom in this “Brides” story) without a lot of preamble. The goal is to show them going about their normal lives while painting in the features and subtleties of the era as a natural offshoot of their daily activities. But to simply present a bunch of people running around in costumes performing out-dated tasks would be boring without a hint of something about to happen. Something is brewing that will upset this charming scene and have far-reaching consequences.

Before the proverbial cart is overturned, relationships between the characters are established, the groundwork laid for the “bride” aspect of the book, and the external conflicts put in place that are responsible not only for capsizing the wagon but for trampling its contents under foot.

Following the “Exposition,” we move on to the “Rising Action.” After the inciting incident (the event that sets the wheels turning), the story takes on an entirely different feel. What had been normal and comfortable no longer is so. War does this, and war, in the form of the American Revolution, has dire consequences for Elisabeth and Gerrit. There are losses and separations. Loved ones die, confidences are betrayed, and the survivors are forced to carry on amid harsh and forbidding circumstances. In this part of the book, Elisabeth and the remnants of her family and servants make a perilous trek to Canada where they hope to seek asylum among the British troops and loyalists to wait out the conclusion of the war. On the way, they meet up with an assortment of colorful characters based on historical accounts from a variety of sources. Once they arrive in Quebec Province, they need to survive further hardship and privation.

The Climax, Falling Action, and Denouement haven’t been written yet. (Neither, for that matter, has much of the Rising Action). But the arc of this story plays out nightly in my mind before I fall asleep. Even though I do not “plot” per se, this book is already as indelible as it could be. There is room for change…but not much. That depends on the research materials I continue to pore over. As anyone who’s ever written a historical novel will tell you, there are gold nuggets waiting to be mined from some dusty old tome that can put a new spin on even those story elements that today seem untouchable.

We shall see….

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad,  an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and other online retailers.