M is for Mohnkuchen

Austria cultivates about 1000 metric tons of poppy seeds (mohn) annually. They’re not the biggest global producer, that’s Pakistan, but they’ve been at it for a good long time. Poppy seeds are used in lots of Austrian dishes, nearly all of them sweet, including dumplings, noodles, and as a filling in many different kinds of cakes. I once made a complicated Austrian layer cake that required I boil poppy seeds in milk and honey until they acquired a thick, paste-like consistency.

In the US, it was not easy to find poppy seeds in the quantity I needed, they tend to be limited to little spice jar sized units used mostly as decoration on the surface of bread and rolls. It is easier to find the paste ready made in cans; kosher and import markets sell the stuff as its commonly used as a filling for hamentaschen, a cookie that’s made for Purim.

Mohnkuchen is a rolled cake. You make a yeast dough, slather it with poppy seed filling, and roll it into a spiral before you bake it. My mother-in-law made the one you see here, it’s very yeasty and not too sweet and makes for an excellent breakfast treat.

The village of Armschlag near the Czech border has a whole tourism schtick devoted to the poppy seed. It’s renamed itself “Mohndorf” — poppy seed village. There’s a walking path and shops selling all kinds of poppy seed based products and restaurants with poppy seed madness on the menu and a harvest festival and a poppy seed queen, of course. It must be quite a sight in late spring when the meadows are all full of those bright flowers with their papery petals or late in the season, just before the harvest when all the seed pods are ready for harvest.