a man and his hoe

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Tag: mach kuchen

  • Mach Kuchen – From Garden to Oven


    I’ve never made Mach Kuchen from scratch this way, by first going into the garden and harvesting poppy seeds. Collecting poppy seeds is so much fun, I’m surprised it’s legal for adults to do it.


    Looking at the way poppy seed pods are shaped, somewhere there must an insect that has evolved to live in poppy seed pods. The pods are made of bug-sized chambers with little doors with roofs over the doors, keeping the chambers nice and dry. With the seed pods lifted high above the ground, they’d make great apartments for flying insects to buzz off from in the morning, and return to in the evening.



    Mach Kuchen is a simple dish. You start off with poppy seeds, grind them a bit, and make a jam out of them. The usual method is to use sugar, but this time I used honey instead.

    You roll out a soft yeast dough into a thin rectangle, spread the poppy seed jam over it, roll it up, let it rise, and bake until it is done. Covering the top with butter and poppy seed is an option.






    This may be the first Mach Kuchen made from poppy seed grown in the Skagit Valley. It’s certainly the first one made with poppy seed grown in this neck of the woods. Baking Mach Kuchen may bring good luck. This afternoon, the sky turned a shade of blue, the bluest it has been since the forest fire smoke blew in a week ago.

  • Open Poppy – Embrace the Unexpected – Keep the Dream Alive


    Yesterday our skies turned hazy. The Cascade Mountains became wrapped in gray gauze, the snowy peaks barely visible. Smoke from the forest fires in British Columbia drifted south, dulling the sun, blunting our heat wave. The 90ºF heat forecast for tomorrow will just be 85ºF now.


    The garden has taken on its summer look. The ao-shiso 青しそ, Perilla frutescens, is ready to pick. This is a must have condiment for civilized people. If you can find it in a country’s grocery shelves, you know you’ve landed in a civilized land.




    I went out into the garden this morning to plant more cabbage and beets, and was interrupted by the sight of poppy pods opening. When the unexpected happens, you need to embrace it. I set aside my cabbage seed planting to harvest poppy pods. Let them go, and they’ll fall to the ground before you know it, dashing your hopes and dreams of poppy seed jam and Mach Kuchen.



    Few things delight like harvesting poppy pods. What other plant comes with seed chambers with doors that open when they are ready to harvest? To collect the poppy seeds, all you have to do is tip the pods upside down and tap them. The tiny black seeds pour out with ease. My dreams of poppy seed jam and Mach Kuchen live.

  • Mint to the Rescue


    The slugs are plentiful this year. It’s not surprising after the long, wet spring. But I’ve noticed that you never see a slug on the mint, and we have long hedges of mint, so I can load wheelbarrows full of mint to lay between the vegetable rows. Maybe that will keep them away from the vegetables. Every evening and if I happen to get up in the middle of the night, I go out with scissors and a flashlight to snip, snip, snip the slugs away.



    The poppies are in full bloom, and some are already shedding their petals and showing fat, pregnant seed pods. There is a trick to picking the seed pods before they drop to the ground, or something comes along and eats them. Growing up, Mach Kuchen, poppy seed rolls, were a rare treat. Basically what you do is grind up poppy seeds, cook them with sugar to make a poppy seed jam, spread it on rolled out yeast dough, roll it up, and bake. The thinner the dough, the more layers you can roll, and the better the Mach Kuchen. A good Mach Kuchen should be more poppy seed jam than dough. A few hundred seed pods should provide enough poppy seeds to make an unforgettable Mach Kuchen.



    The poppies which have not fallen have gone to sleep this evening. Every night, the poppies close their petals fast, and sleep the night away.