While in Slovakia, Sandra and I visited my grandma Pavka. Pavka is my “city” grandma. My other grandma, Terka, has been living in a village all her life, raising animals, and cooking dishes the old traditional way. Pavka on the other hand has lived most of her life (the part I remember) in an apartment highrise. Their cooking styles are very different. But they share one thing in common: they are both great cooks.

When we stopped for the visit, Pavka treated us with little cheese bread sticks (tyčinky). I wrote down her recipe, carried it along all the way through Prague, Wiesbaden, Amsterdam, and London back to Virginia. I took it out to start cooking, realized I was missing cream cheese, ran to the store, came back – and could not find the darn recipe anywhere! So I finished making the snacks from what I remembered from the quick glance in the morning. How they say in Slovakia, od oka (by eye). I eventually did find the recipe, so the ingredients below are as given by grandma.

Ingredients: 1.5 cups flour, 3 tablespoons of cream cheese, 1 yolk, 3 tablespoons of margarine, salt, grated cheese
Prep Time: 40 minutes

Combine all ingredients except for the grated cheese to form a fairly stiff dough. I used milk instead of margarine.

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out on a board dusted with flour to thickness of about 5 mm. Next, using a dough cutting tool (or a knife), cut the dough into rectangles. You can put the cheese on now, but it’s better to do it after you arrange the slices on a baking sheet.

If you have a large baking pan or wax paper handy, just transfer the whole sliced dough as a single piece. I instead arranged the pieces one by one in my baking pan. Grease the pan with oil first. Sprinkle grated cheese over the dough. I used a block of Jack and a hand grater. Sprinkle bit more oil on top. Bake in an oven preheated to 400F for about 20 minutes, or until the cheese starts turning brown. That’s it.

I actually did bit of Googling post baking and found a similar recipe on varecha.sk. Their version calls for sour cream and a bit of yeast.

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These open face sandwiches are called obložené chlebíčky which means garnished small breads. And indeed, the bread pieces are much smaller, they are often made by slicing baguettes and topping them with a variety of meats, cheeses, vegetables, and hard boiled eggs. These sandwiches date back to the Middle Ages, times before plates and utensils became common. In those days, a piece of flat bread was used as a plate onto which various baked meats were placed. This bread/meat combination evolved into the modern open face sandwich…

Ingredients: French/Italian bread, butter, mustard, ham, sausage, hard boiled egg, smoked Gouda, Brie, red pepper toppers, pickles
Prep Time: 15 minutes

There is really not much to making chlebíčky. Just grab some bread, some spread such as butter and mustard, your favorite salami or ham, and toppings such as the red peppers in a jar. Also slices of hard-boiled egg. Feel free to make some meatless (butter, egg, and cheese is a great combination). Add hot chocolate and you got yourself a tasty Slovak breakfast!

And just couple more photos. The one on the right is of me few years ago eating open face chlebíčky in Slovakia after finishing the Košice Marathon. They tasted great! The other person in the photo is my grandma who is a huge inspiration for many recipes on this site.

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Hi Lubos

I lived in Banská Bystrica for 12 years from 1994 to 2006 and since then I’ve been living in China. I’ve decided I want to introduce my Chinese girlfriend to the wonders of Slovak food and that’s how, today, I came across your fantastic site. I’m going to start easy tomorrow and cook some haruľa, then go buy some edam for vyprážaný syr the day after.

However, my question for your is, did you ever eat a Zapekanka from the buffet under the archway on Národná Ulica? It’s been driving me crazy trying to remember how they made it, but to make matters worse, I had a very good friend who used to work there, who sadly I’ve lost touch with.

Hopefully you can help jog my memory and I thank you regardless for your amazing efforts in putting all these recipes together..

Best wishes

Neil

I knew exactly which buffet Neil was talking about! Buffets like these are common throughout Slovakia. One of my favorites in Banská Bystrica (my hometown) is the one outside Starý Prior (meaning “Old Prior”, Prior is a communist-era department store, this one is still in existence). That buffet sells delicious fried dough langoše.

But since it’s been few years since I’ve had zapekanka (roughly meaning something that is baked), I recruited a small army of friends and relatives in Slovakia to find the recipe. I’ve got a bunch of responses (thank you all!) but eventually settled on a recipe from mimibazar that my friend Janka sent in. Another recipe, sent in by my sister, was similar but only had mushrooms – good choice if you are vegetarian.

Ingredients: one small onion, sliced mushrooms (Neil said in his response that oyster mushrooms work the best, I used portobellas), 3 strips bacon, 3 slices of ham, clove of garlic, pinch of caraway seeds, pinch of cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, bread rolls or rožky, cream cheese, block cheese like edam, colby, or brie, tomato (optional)
Prep Time: about 30 minutes

Peel and finely chop the onion (cibuľa). Fry it on oil along with bacon (slanina) till both start turning yellow. Then add sliced mushrooms (pokrájané hríby), ham (šunka) chunks, salt and pepper, and also a pinch of caraway and red pepper. Also add one clove of garlic (strúčik cesnaku), minced. Cover and let simmer until the mushrooms get soft.

Slice the bread rolls, baguettes, or, even better, home-made rožky, in half and spread cream cheese (syrokrém) on them. Except I didn’t have any so I topped 4 with butter (maslo) and 2 with mayonnaise (majonéza). I also spread horseradish on one of them, just to experiment. Let the mushroom mixture cool off for few minutes and then spoon it onto the bread rolls.

Cover each roll with slices of cheese (syr). I used Colby on 3, Edam on 2, and Brie on 1. I also topped two rolls with sliced tomatoes (paradajky). I figured you can never go wrong with toasted tomatoes. Then toast in the oven until the cheese melts. The recipe said to bake the rolls for 8 minutes, but I figured that broiler would work better, so that’s what I did.

And that’s it, super simple! Top them with ketchup (or tartar sauce) before eating. Enjoy!

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Oatmeal is a porridge made from oats (ovos), type of cereal (obilniny). Cereal does not mean sugary puffs that come in a box with cartoon characters on them. In fact, sugary breakfast cereals were completely unheard of in Czechoslovakia during my childhood. I remember quite vividly trying them for the first time here in the United States and not knowing quite what to make of them.

Instead, cereals are grasses with large edible seeds (or grains) that can be turned into flour, porridge, and many other products. Corn (kukurica) is the most common American cereal. Wheat (pšenica) is another common cereal which is used to make flour. If the entire kernel is ground up, you end up with whole wheat flour. If the skin and the germ (the “embryo” part of the seed) are removed first to retain only the starchy endosperm tissue, you get the white flour. Grind up the wheat kernels in some other way and you get farina (or cream of wheat). Farina is basically the same thing as grits, except made from wheat instead of corn. And oats are just another type of a cereal. They are grown mainly as livestock feed, but are also very popular with us humans. Not only do they taste good, they are also very healthy. Oats are believed to lower the bad (LDL) cholesterol and they also contain more soluble fiber than any other grain, which helps slow down digestion and also make you feel full faster.

I prepared this “oatmeal” from a combination of five different grains. My local grocery store carries an awesome tub full of five grains, oats, rye (raž), triticale (wheat/rye hybrid), barley (jačmeň), and golden flax (zlatý ľaň, flax has also been used historically to make linen, along with hemp, konope). The tub costs only $2.50, and is plenty big for at least two dozen breakfasts.

The instructions said to cook the grain in water, but I prefer milk. In a pot, combine quarter cup of cereal with about the same amount of milk. Bring to boil but be careful not to burn the milk – turn the heat down when the milk (mlieko) starts getting close to boil. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring, until the porridge thickens. In the meantime, prepare you favorite topping. I like my oatmeal with banana and raisins. As you can see, I don’t bother using a knife for slicing – a spoon will do.

Once the porridge is thick enough to your liking, mix into the bowl with your choice of fruit. I don’t add any sugar, I find the sugar from the fruit sufficient. This dish is quite delicious with white coffee.

White Coffee

White coffee (biela káva) is something my mom used to make for me when I was kid. When you are not old enough, you get to drink only white coffee. Once you grow up, you grow up into the world of real, black coffee…

White coffee is basically coffee with a LOT of milk and sugar. It’s the poor man’s latte…

Start by making coffee. Coffee maker is fine, but I don’t like the taste of coffee from those. For some reason it tastes very acidic to me. So I either use a French press or cook the coffee directly on the stove top. The secret is to use finely ground (espresso grind) coffee. This way, the grinds will settle to the bottom, and you can just pour the broth into a cup without needing any filters.

You want the mug to be about 1/3 coffee. The rest is hot milk. And sugar. I used two teaspoons. Delicious!

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This way of life is not linked to any particular country. Instead, it’s the way of the times past, times when people lived in harmony with their environment, leading life of sufficiency. In those times, people grew their own food with care, and with care learned to utilize it to its fullest potential.

I like this way of life. The modern way is the way of excess. We define ourselves by our “streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes” (as Johnny Cash noted). Christmas, which should be devoted to spending time with family and friends, has turned into a mad dash to buy presents and then return them the following day. Allan Stevo from 52insk.com mentioned in his latest post that he found it surprising that in Slovakia many shops still stay closed on Sunday and also during Christmas. I say to that, keep it that way!

To me, Slovak cooking is not the foods nor the recipes, it’s the process. Watch any modern cooking show, and it will surely be dominated by a discussion of the various gadgets and gizmos you need to buy prior to attempting to recreate the recipe. I bet that these days many folks think it’s straight impossible to bake bread without having a bread machine – or peel an avocado without a dedicated peeler (avocado peelers are a pet peeve of mine). Yet our ancestors didn’t have any of that, and yet were able to feast on amazingly delicious dishes. Some of the best food I have ever eaten was cooked by my grandparents, often using not much more than a pot and an old wood-burning stove.

Our ancestors were also masters of reuse. Chicken cooked to make chicken noodle soup was mixed with rice for risoto. Old bread became bread pudding. And bones left over from baking meat turned into delicious soup. Cook without ever measuring the ingredients and supplement with whatever you have at hand in the pantry. This to me is the definition of Slovak cooking…

Speaking of reuse, here is a recipe for scrambled eggs (praženica) with mushrooms (huby). I made these eggs with the stems left over from baking mushrooms with bacon. This combination is very popular in Slovakia, and it’s the most common way to prepare gathered wild mushrooms. Unfortunately it also leads to fatalities when a poisonous mushroom is inadvertently mixed in and ends up contaminating the rest of the dish. But no worries, you should have nothing to worry about if you stick to store-bought varieties. If you have never had scrambled eggs with mushrooms, try this combination. It’s very tasty!

Ingredients: mushroom pieces, one small onion, 2 eggs
Prep Time: 25 minutes

Start by peeling and chopping up the onion (cibuľa). Fry it on oil for about 3 minutes until it starts turning yellow. Then add the chopped up mushroom pieces and also a small cup of water. Cover, and let cook on low heat for about 15-20 minutes until the mushrooms are soft and most of the water stored in the mushrooms has evaporated. To help the water evaporate, you may want to remove the lid the last few minutes.

Then crack the eggs (vajcia) into a bowl, add a dash of salt, and scramble with a fork till bubbles start forming. Pour into the pan. Keep stirring. It’s better to have the heat on low. I like the eggs watery like shown in the photo. I turned the heat off moments before they were the way I like them, and let them finish cooking on the plate. Top with chives, paprika, or peppers, and serve with a good bread.

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