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Interview with the Food Bloggers of Emperors Crumbs

The Hungarian Girl | September 2, 2010 | 0 Comments

Katy and Valerian who are the creators of the blog "Emperors Crumbs."

It’s always nice to see other blogs or websites that focus on Central and Eastern Europe in some way. That’s why I couldn’t resist doing this interview with Emperors Crumbs, who are an American family that lived in Slovakia and blogged about their cooking experiences there. Presently, they’re back in the USA but are still blogging about their interactions with food.

They’ve also kindly offered to share their recipe on Császármorzsa (Hungarian) or Kaiserschmarren (German), a caramelized pancake dessert. The dish is very common throughout Central Europe. In English, it’s often referred to as “emperors crumbs”, which ironically is the name of their blog.

You can find the recipe below the interview. Enjoy!

Can you tell us a bit about your blog?

We’re a husband and wife team, from Slovakia and California, respectively. Our blog features recipes from and inspired by Central European cuisine.

How did it get started?

Just over a year ago we made the decision to move from Slovakia to California with our two kids. We’ve always been enthusiastic cooks, trying to recreate our favourite dishes at home, and with home about to move 6,000 miles we didn’t want to lose track of the delicious things we’d been enjoying in Central Europe. Since we enjoy writing and photography, and we thought other people might enjoy trying to make langose or parene buchty, a blog seemed like a fun project.

Why did you decide to call it Emperors Crumbs?

Of course because we do love to eat császármorzsa! But also because this dish is enjoyed under various names in many of the countries of Central Europe and symbolizes the ways in which food links the whole region. There is so much intermingling of cultures and flavours in the area where we lived, and throughout the part of Europe that used to be the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Part of the fun of working on these recipes is seeing the different versions of family favourites and tracing them through time and across geographies.

Has living in Slovakia changed the way your family eats?

Well, living in a village of 2,000 people there wasn’t a lot of take-out around! We make most of what we eat, even now. Prepared foods weren’t widely available (although that’s changing) so if we had a craving for Chinese or Indian food we had to make it ourselves, sometimes improvising with the local ingredients we could find. Now we’re making Hungarian-style bread in California. We also learned to be much more intuitive about cooking; classic Central European dishes often aren’t prepared according to a written recipe, but are handed down through families and rely more on experience and instinct.

What does your family most enjoy about cooking?

You mean besides eating? We’ve both combated homesickness with cooking; the familiar sounds and smells of the kitchen are always comforting. When we were living in the Balkans with an unreliable power supply and just a few utensils on hand, we still managed to make versions of our childhood favourites for each other: chocolate chip cookies and bryndzové halušky.

Do you have a favourite dish?

Mine is coffee. Seriously, I am crazy about coffee and I roast, grind and taste my own. Yes I don’t drink coffee I taste coffee. While living in Slovakia I had a micro roasting company and we roasted coffee on a Probat coffee roaster from 1938. Yes I don’t drink coffee I taste coffee.

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Emperors Crumbs Recipe

Makes 5-6 portions

Ingredients

2¼ cups/300 g semolina
3 cups/750 ml milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
5 eggs, separated
pinch salt
1½ cups/300 g sugar
1 lemon zest
1/4 cup/50 grams butter for sauteing
powdered sugar, compote or jam or all three as topping

Method

Mix together the semolina, flour and milk. Let it sit for an hour or so to let the semolina absorb the milk. Mix the egg yolks together with sugar and stir it into the milk mixture. Whip the egg whites and a pinch of salt into firm peaks and fold it into the milk/egg mixture. Melt the butter and add the batter. Stir the batter with a spatula or wooden spoon until it starts to form little clumps – crumbs. Depending on the size of the pan this can take up to 30 minutes. Serve hot with powdered sugar or with jam, or with compote or drizzle with some syrup.