The regular type of knedľa is made from flour, yeast and egg, and is cooked in hot steam. However, there is also another kind, the kind shown in this recipe. This one is made from potato flour, and if I am not mistaken, this kind is more popular in the Czech Republic. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients: 2 medium sized potatoes (400g), 1 cup (125g) flour, 1 egg, salt, extra flour
Prep Time: about an hour

Cook the potatoes (zemiaky) with their skin still on in salted water until they are soft. This will take about 30 minutes. Also put a big pot of salted water onto the stove once the potatoes are done. Bring to boil while making the dumplings.

Let the potatoes cool off by pouring out the hot water and replacing it with cold one. Let sit for about 10 minutes. Then peel off the skin (this will come off easily by hand, you don’t need a potato peeler). Then grate the potatoes or mash them. I recommend you grate them, it’s easier than mashing. Add one cup flour (múka), one egg, a dash of salt (soľ, to taste), and just a tiny amount of lukewarm water, if needed. Mix everything together to get smooth dough of medium consistency. As my grandma said, neither soft nor hard…

Next dust a rolling board with flour and also use some flour to coat the dough so you can handle it. Divide the dough into two section. Roll each into a long cylindrical dumpling.

Carefully move the dumplings into the boiling water from step 1. They’ll probably stick to the bottom, so use a wooden spoon or a spatula to unstick them. Cover the pot and cook for about 12 minutes. Then to remove them, what I found to work great is two coffee cup plates. Hold one on each side of the dumpling and lift it up. Just be careful when doing this as some of the hot water will remain on the plate. Place the dumplings onto a plate. Let them dry for few minutes and then rotate both dumplings upside down so the bottom side gets dry as well. To serve, cut out slices quarter to half-inch thick with a knife or using a thread.

And here is how the dumplings look: regular knedľa on the left and the potato one on the right.

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Ingredients: 1 cucumber, half a clove of garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar, sugar
Prep Time: 10 minutes

Start by peeling the cucumber (uhorka). Slice it into thin slices using a box grater and place in a salad bowl. Then add a teaspoon of salt and half a clove of garlic (strúčik cesnaku), minced.

Then add sugar and vinegar, to taste. Or if you don’t like it too “vinegary”, mix the vinegar with water, so that you have enough liquid for the cucumbers to swim in. I ended up using two tablespoons of sugar and no water. Top off with black pepper and let sit for few minutes to allow the flavors mix through. Enjoy!

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Another popular thing to do with bryndza, the Slovak national cheese, is to make a spread (nátierka) commonly known as šmirkáš. I made it using the fake bryndza – the Israeli style Feta cheese from Trader Joe’s.

Finely slice onions (I like using spring onions and I used three of them) and combine them with about equal amounts of bryndza and butter. Also add a spoonful of paprika. You should use less than what I have here.

Mix together, and voile – done! The spread shouldn’t be so red (should be more pinkish), but unfortunately I did not have any more bryndza to dilute my little paprika pouring accident. If you serve the spread on bread rolls, you can either slice them in the middle, like shown in the olovrant post, or you can spread the nátierka on top of the roll.

That’s it. This is a very simple, yet very traditional Slovak recipe.

Update June 6th, 2010

And this is what the spread should look like when you make it right.

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Something I always look for on my travels to Slovakia is stopping in a deli for freshly baked bread rolls (called rožky) and some Parisian salad, parížský šalát. Whether this salad has anything to do with Paris is to me a mystery. At least my roommate who grew up in France has never seen something similar to this. Anyway, here is a recipe for this tasty and very simple side dish. Turns out, there are manz variations on this food. I ended up using the recipe posted here. It was the simplest of the bunch, and also resembled the most what I remember this salad being made of. Some of the other recipes called for ingredients like corn, eggs or ketchup, ingredients I don’t believe belong in this salad. But, just in case you want to experiment, I posted these variants below.

Here is what you will need. I used Bologna, since it has the closest consistency to the soft salami that is used in Slovakia.

Cut the salami (saláma) into strips. Also, either finely dice the onion (cibuľa) or grate it using the fatter holes on a food grater. One benefit of using the knife is that (if the knife is sharp), it won’t release as much of the juice which causes the eye irritation. The irritation is caused by an enzyme called alliinases which is released as the cells break. Fewer broken cells means fewer irritants being released.

Strain the peas (hrášok) and also add half the 16oz sour cream (kyslá smotana) container and 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise (majonéza).

Finally, add cubed dill pickles (zavárané uhorky), about a teaspoon worth of salt (soľ) and pepper (mleté čierne korenie) and mix through. Place in the fridge for few hours to allow the flavor mix through. Serve with bread – home made is the best!

Few variants

This recipe is very similar, but includes 6 hard boiled eggs, only one pickle, one tablespoon of ketchup, 3 tablespoons of oil, 1 tub of tartar sauce (but Slovak tartar sauce is different from the American kind). Amount of meat, onion or peas is the same.

A whole lot more complicated version is found here. Ingredients include 300g of salami, 1 onion, 3 eggs, 3 pickles, 100ml of tartar sauce, 100ml of sour cream, 200g of canned corn, 200g of canned peas, 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoons of oil, 2 tablespoons of ketchup, 2 teaspoons of mustard, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, salt and ground black pepper. WOW!!! The recipe starts with a quick boil of the Worcestershire sauce, oil, ketchup, mustard and vinegar. The mayo and sour cream is added once the mixture cools down. If you end up making this version, please leave a comment on how it turned out.

Yet another version is found here. This one uses 500g (1lb) of salami, 1 container of mayo, 1 soft butter, 2-3 spoons of mustard, pickles, 1 can of sweet peas, 1 can of corn, 5 hard boiled eggs, salt, black pepper, and 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar!

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If you have visited Slovakia, you surely came across little slightly-curved mini baguettes called rožky. These baked bread rolls are a HUGE part of Slovak cuisine. I have no statistics to back this up, but I suspect Slovaks get at least half of their bread in the form of rožky (plural of rožok). In this recipe, I show you how you too can bake them at home. The recipe is based on an article on SME.sk, titled “Bake your own bread rolls, everyone can do it!”. Very true, indeed. Baking these bread rolls is really easy, and you don’t need any fancy bread machine.

Here is all you’ll need: flour, milk, oil, yeast, salt and sugar.

Combine all the ingredients in a container. Knead the dough by hand, or with a food processor with attached dough hooks. I have this handy mixer, so I used that a bit. But I don’t know if it was really easier on my hands. The hand-held gizmo produced quite a bit of torque which my wrist had to compensate form. So, if you are planning on doing much baking and cooking, you should get a stationary dough mixer, like the one shown in the video on the SME recipe page. The dough is done when it becomes smooth and elastic.

Let the dough rise, covered, for about 2 hours, until it doubles in size. I placed it in a warm oven; this worked great. Form the dough into a loaf and cut it in half.

Take each half and roll it out into a circle about 4mm thick. Make sure to flip the dough while rolling to get it smooth on both sides. Cut the circle into four sections. You can use a knife, but if you can find them, get one of these dough cutters. They work great! Now, let’s make rožky using the following four-step process. First, grab the triangle by the “ears” and stretch them out a bit. Fold the ears over. Second, tuck the long end over and roll up. Third, continue rolling with the palm of one or both hands. Fourth, there really isn’t a fourth step. Just finish rolling and place the tube onto a greased baking pan, the tail piece down.

Let them sit in the baking pan for about 20 minutes, so they rise again. I gave the rolls a little bend too, to make them look more like rožky you would find in a bakery shop. In the mean time, preheat the oven to 375F. Bake in the middle for about 20 minutes, until they turn golden brown. Ah, there is nothing like home-baked bread! Slightly crunchy on the outside, yet fluffy on the inside.

Next make some Parisian salad to go with them.

If you compare my rožky with those you will find in Slovakia, you will see that mine are much more twisty-looking. I am not sure why this is – and since this was my first time ever trying this method, I have not yet had a chance to experiment. The issue is that the individual layers should have fused together. Since they didn’t, I suspect my dough was tad too stiff. I wasn’t very precise with the measurements, so perhaps I had just a bit too much flour, or slightly too little liquid. I will report any findings – I will definitely be baking these again. And in the mean time, feel free to share your experiences by leaving a comment.

Update May 11th, 2010

I figured I give rožky another try, and boy, did this second batch turn out great! Although still not as pretty as you would find in a bakery, the taste was amazing! Lightly crunchy on the outside and fluffily soft on the inside.

The main thing I did different this time is that I let the tubes rise an extra time, about an hour, before baking. You can see how they doubled in the photos below. I also let the dough rise overnight in a fridge, but I don’t think this made any difference. Turns out, you can make the dough the night before, let it sit overnight in the fridge, and in the morning have dough ready for baking.

Here you can see how much the dough increases in size.

I baked them for about 15 minutes at 375F. Although you can’t tell from the photo, these rolls are about twice the size of the ones from the first batch. The baking sheet is much larger.

One great thing to do with these rolls is to top them with butter and jam and make a quick mid-afternoon snack.

Update January 16th, 2011

And one more update. This time they are looking much more like the way they are supposed to. It’s partly because I let the dough rise for over a day, not on purpose but because of various social commitments that got in the way of baking. These were nice and fluffy. By the way, If you have to let the dough rise for a long time like this, you can sprinkle flour over the top to keep it from drying up, and also place it in the fridge to slow down the yeast activity and to prevent the dough from going sour.

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