Breakfast Dishes and Snacks

Mid-afternoon Snack (Olovrant)

Ingredients: bread rolls, butter, honey, jam, hot chocolate Prep Time: 2 minutes You can use the freshly baked rolls (čerstvé rožky) anywhere you would use regular bread. They go great with soups, spreads, and you can even turn them into a butter and cheese sandwich. Another of my favorites is to top them with butter and honey or jam, and make a quick mid-afternoon snack. Such a mid-afternoon meal is called olovrant in Slovak. I feel almost silly posting this simple dish, but then, it shows some differences between Slovak and American cuisines. In Slovakia, we don’t have peanut butter. Read the Rest…

Raisin Bread (Vianočka)

Ingredients: leavened dough, raisins Prep Time: about an hour Another food item that can be prepared from the sweet leavened dough is vianočka. It is a sweet braided raisin bread that looks very much like the Jewish challah. It is often eaten for breakfast, topped with butter and jam (raspberry being my favorite). It is also often prepared for Easter and for Christmas. In fact, the name vianočka is derived from the Slovak word for Christmas, vianoce. The trick in making this bread is in braiding the dough. I am sure that just about every Slovak babička (grandma) has her Read the Rest…

Salt Sticks (Slané Tyčinky)

Ingredients: frozen pastry dough, eggs, salt, sesame seeds, caraway seeds, cheese Prep Time: 30 minutes Today I watched my dad’s friend Janka prepare salt sticks, slané tyčinky. These are tasty snacks that are made from the flaky pastry dough (lístkové cesto, meaning “leafy dough”). In Slovakia, this dough can be purchased frozen in the supermarket. I am not sure how easily available the pastry dough is in the United States. I’ll post the recipe for the dough at a later date. Roll out the pastry dough (lístkové cesto) on a floured surface. It should be few millimeters thick. Cut the Read the Rest…

Fried Dough (Langoš)

Ingredients: 3 cups flour (~400g), 1 packet yeast (~25g), 1 egg, teaspoon salt, teaspoon sugar, 1 plain yogurt or 6 ounces of sour cream, various items for toppings (garlic, ketchup, shredded cheese, sour cream). This will make about 6 large langoshes. Prep time: 30 minutes to make dough, 4 hours to let dough sit, another 30 minutes for frying Langoše (plural of langoš, pronounced langosh) are these fried dough snacks that are very popular throughout Slovakia and the Czech Republic. You will find them offered by street vendors, in the same fashion that hot dogs are available here in Washington, Read the Rest…

Grits with Cocoa and Cinnamon (Krupicová Kaša)

Ingredients: milk (2 cups), 6 tablespoons of grits, ground cinnamon, cocoa, sugar, unsalted butter Prep time: 20 minutes When I was growing up in what used to be Czechoslovakia (the Czech Republic and Slovakia now), people never ate cereal for breakfast. I don’t think anything like cereal was even available. Some folks ate oatmeal (ovsené vločky), but for most the typical breakfast consisted of a raisin bread with jam, bread with a meat spread (pašťeka), hemendex, or, the meal I show in this post, sweet grits with cocoa and cinnamon, krupicová kaša (meaning grits porridge). If you never had grits, Read the Rest…