German Bacon And Potato Kuchen

June 22, 2020

A few years ago, a friend of mine went to a neighborhood garage sale in Pittsburgh where she found a Slovak cookbook. She decided to buy it for me as a gift since I collect vintage/ethnic cookbooks. When I received this book, I liked it immediately because it was put together just after World War II and it had a lot of ration recipes. As I skimmed through the pages, to my surprise I found three recipes submitted by my very own grandmother!

Intrigued by this discovery, I was curious how my grandmother came to be involved with this project, considering she was living in Ohio at the time this book was put together. I also tried to find out if anyone in my family knew why our grandmother submitted German food recipes to a Slovak cookbook. It made no sense, until I started digging deeper.

No one had any answers to my questions, so I began looking for German Slovak connections. My father's family came from Carpathian Germans and settled in Slovakia. Even though my grandparents migrated to America, many of their friends and family members remained in Slovakia until the 1940s. In 1945, over 200 German Carpathian Slovaks (mostly women and children) were massacred by Czechoslovakian soldiers.They were pulled off a train near Přerov and then marched outside the city to a hill, "Švédské šance", where they were shot after they were forced to dig their own graves. It was an incident that remained unknown until the late 1980s. I learned that my grandmother traveled to Pittsburgh repeatedly during the 1940s to get the churches involved in the matter. Supposedly, she had several friends who had been killed in the incident.

My late father always told me that my grandmother was a gutsy woman. She may have been quiet in her demeanor, but she was not meek. It is quite possible that my grandmother's choice to include German recipes in this Slovak cookbook was her way of asserting she too was a Slovak German (Slowakeideutsche). When I asked my eldest cousin about it, she agreed that it was something our grandmother most likely did.

With this subtle gesture, my grandmother decided to affirm a heritage that was now being denied. The fact that she used German words (kuchen) in all three of her recipes even further drives home her point. She was sending all the Slovaks that would read this cookbook a message, no doubt. One wonders if her repeated travels to Pittsburgh were to make certain the recipes were being published as she had written them.

Food has a long history of being associated with various social protests. I muse that whenever I make this recipe and the other two I found in that cookbook; I am championing my grandmother's cause. The coincidence that my friend would come across this little cookbook may not have been a coincidence at all.

Ingredients:
2 unpeeled Yukon Gold Potatoes
4 eggs
1 tbsp sour cream
Salt and Pepper to taste
6 slices bacon, diced
1 small onion, chopped
2 tbsp parsley
2 tbsp minced chives

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

1. Cook potatoes in salted boiling water until barely tender (15 minutes). Drain, peel, and slice about ¼ inch thick. Mix in salt, pepper, and sour cream.

2. Sauté the bacon until crisp. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the drippings and sauté the onions and potatoes until glazed.

3. Layer the potatoes in baking pan (I use a pie pan).

4. Pour the eggs over the potatoes.

5. Bake in oven until eggs are set.

6. Sprinkle parsley and chives to garnish.

Makes 4 servings

Note: You can use substitutes for the eggs (Egg beaters).

Dr. Mary Hricko is a professor at Kent State University, and serves as the Library Director at the KSU Geauga Campus.