Ingredients: 10 cloves of garlic, butter, 4 potatoes, 8 cups of water, 2 tsp paprika, 1 tsp caraway, salt, toast, cheese
Prep Time: Fast, 20 minutes

Peel the cloves of garlic (cesnak) and crush them using a garlic press. Alternatively you can chop them using a grater, or just slice them fine with a knife (this is what I did). Melt two tablespoons of butter (maslo) in a pot and add the garlic. Fry for few seconds.

Next add some eight cups of water (voda), 2 heaping teaspoons of paprika (mletá červená paprika), another teaspoon of caraway (rasca), and salt (soľ) to taste. Then peel the potatoes, cut them into small cubes, and add to the pot.

Boil for about 15 minutes until the potatoes get soft. In the meantime, toast a slice of bread (chlieb). I toasted mine on butter in a frying pan but you could just use a toaster. Cut the toast into squares and put them in a bowl. Then scoop the finished soup over the bread.

Finally, grate some cheese into the soup (I used Swiss) and also decorate with some garnish, such as parsley (petržlenová vnať). Enjoy!

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Ingredients for 40 servings: 1.5 cups oil, 3.3 lbs onions (about 8 large ones), 7lb cubed beef, water, 4 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp Cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, 2 tbsp salt, 4.5 lbs potatoes (15 small ones), 3 tbsp marjoram, 8 cloves garlic, beer (optional)
Prep Time: 30 minutes of prep time, 2 hours for cooking

Here is what you will need for this version of goulash: beef, potatoes, onions, and various spices.

Chop the onions (cibule). The pieces don’t have to be too small since the onions will dissolve during cooking. Pour the oil (olej) into your kettle and wait for it to get hot. Then add the onions. Fry them until they get golden and glass-like translucent. Add the meat (mäso) and brown it from all sides. You can brown all the meat in the kettle but I figured it will be faster if I do one half (one 3lb packet) separately in a frying pan. If you fry your meat separately like this, make sure to pour in all the juices into the kettle. Add water. I didn’t measure how much I added in, but it was enough to get this 16L stock pot 2/3 full. Roughly speaking, you want half the soup be water and the other half meat. When adding water, it’s better to add in several small batches and wait for the water to come to boil in between each addition. This way the meat will continue to cook.

Add the spices: paprika (sladká červená paprika), Cayenne pepper (štiplavá červená paprika), ground black pepper (mleté čierne korenie), and salt (soľ). Cover and let simmer on low heat for about an hour. In the meantime, peel and cube all but two potatoes and get minced garlic ready to go.

About an hour later

Add the cubed potatoes into the goulash once the meat is almost ready. Also add the marjoram, I used both fresh and dried. When substituting fresh herbs for dried ones, use one tablespoon of fresh herbs for each one teaspoon of dried herbs.

Mince the garlic cloves and add these into the pot. Also grate the remaining two peeled potatoes using a grater. Add these in as well, these potatoes will help thicken the stew.

Finally, if the goulash tastes too thick, you can thin it by adding some dark beer. Or just add the beer regardless. I used about 1/3 bottle of “dark amber” brew. And that’s it, look at all that delicious oil floating on top!

Slovak Picnic in Turkey Run, VA

And just few photos from the picnic. I ended up reheating the goulash using this portable gas stove. This was my first time using it and it’s a really handy thing! The only issue is that the flame is really hot. It didn’t even occur to me to keep stirring the goulash while heating it up, and some potatoes on the bottom burned. So unfortunately the goulash had bit of a burned taste. But nobody really complained, I guess that’s part of the charm of eating in the outdoors…

We also had hot dogs (párky). The Giant grocery chain sells “New York deli-style” hot dogs that look and taste very much like Slovak hot dogs. By the way, hot dogs are served differently in Slovakia than here in the US. One way is to serve them in a hollowed out bread roll. These are hollowed out by a heated spike that toasts the roll from the inside. You then squirt mustard into the slot and then put in the párok. This kind of hot dog is called, quite appropriately, párok v rožku (hot dog in a bread roll). The other way of serving hot dogs is by simply placing two cooked pieces on a paper plate with mustard and few slices of rye or whole wheat bread. This way is popular at festivals where vendors may not have that fancy bread roll toasting spike.

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Ingredients: half a fresh green cabbage (~1.7 lb), oil, 1tsp caraway, 1tsp nutmeg, 2/3 cups flour, 10 cups water, 6oz can of tomato paste, 5 tbsp salt, 3 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp vinegar
Prep Time: about one hour

Here are the ingredients you’ll need: cabbage (I used half of it),tomato paste (not sauce, sauce has spices and such), vinegar, sugar, caraway, nutmeg, and butter or oil.

Remove the inner hard core from the cabbage, and also remove the outer green leaves. You can save them for later to make the popular stuffed cabbage (holubky). Cut the cabbage into thin “noodles”. At least that’s how I started. Soon I lost patience and I cut the rest into all sorts of random shapes.

Place the cabbage strips into a pot along with oil (I used half a cup). Fry the cabbage for 5 minutes while continuously stirring. Then add caraway (rasca) and nutmeg (muškátový oriešok). They both should be ground, but I didn’t have ground caraway, so I used it whole. Top this with flour and pour in a cup of water.

Stir and cover with the lid. Steam covered on low heat for about 30 minutes until the cabbage is almost fully cooked (soft). But keep an eye on it and stir every few minutes to make sure it doesn’t burn. Also add more water as needed.

Pour in the rest of the water and also a small 6oz can of tomato paste. Then finish seasoning with salt, sugar, and vinegar. I used 5 tablespoons of salt, 3 of sugar, and another 3 of vinegar. Feel free to adjust these to your taste.

And that’s it. By the way, I don’t think there is any food in the world more delicious than soup (any kind) with a slice of toasted home-baked bread with garlic scraped on top. Yum!

Of course, there is another kind of cabbage soup which is even more famous: the famous Christmas sauerkraut kapustnica.

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Here is a recipe for a simple soup you can make from bones (kosti) left over from other dishes, such as the baked meat. Turning the left overs into soup is a great way to reduce waste and stretch your meal dollar further.

Put the bones in a pot of water. If you have any other left over meat pieces, add those too. Cook on low heat – the soup should not be steaming, but not actually boiling. This way you’ll end up with a clear soup, otherwise it would get murky. Cook like this for an hour.

Then add various root vegetables and also a whole onion. We used carrots (mrkva), celery (zeler) stalks and root, and turnips. The turnips were put in instead of kohlrabi (kaleráb), popular root vegetable in Slovakia. Also add parsley root if you have any. Salt and pepper to taste and also add other herbs you like.

Continue cooking until the vegetables soften. Then strain the soup to remove the “stuff”. Bring the liquid to boil again. Then reduce the heat and slowly ease-in an egg or two. This is how my mom serves this soup. Of course, you don’t have to make it with poached eggs, you can add in noodles, dumplings, or rajbanička (grated dough). Cook the eggs for about 5 minutes.

To serve, scoop out the vegetables into a bowl. Pour the liquid broth (with the egg) over it. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving in West Virginia

I actually made this soup about a week before Thanksgiving, but only got to posting it today since I was really busy with school. I spent my Thanksgiving in West Virginia. My friend Sandra and I rented a rustic wilderness cabin from Wildernestinn.com. The cabin we stayed in was called Wildwood and it was absolutely awesome. It’s a two story log cabin from the 1800s, but it’s been upgraded with a hot shower, small kitchen, and electric heaters. It even has a fireplace and a porch with grills (it was too cold to use these). The cabin is located not too far away from Seneca Rocks, 5 minutes down a forest road off a 2 lane road in a small village by a lake. The view from the kitchen is amazing – nothing but trees. I was hoping to see some bears (there is plenty of bear photos on the Wildernest Inn Facebook page), but all we saw was deer.

The second day we drove up to the top of Spruce Knob, West Virginia’s Highpoint, and also visited Seneca Rocks. On the way back, we stopped for dinner at Yokum’s Restaurant. I asked the waiter if he happened to have any bones, and he and possibly his mom came out with a big bag of leftovers from Thanksgiving. It was awesome. So the bones went into the soup, this second time, it was turkey flavored.

Making this bone soup again at the Wildwood wilderness cabin in West Virginia.

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Nothing that wild here. Instead, below you will find recipe for one of my favorites: potato soup. Since potato soup is somewhat bland in taste, I flavored it with a handful of dried mushrooms and bacon. You can never go wrong with mushrooms and bacon!

Ingredients: 4 cooking potatoes, 6 dried mushrooms, one strip of bacon, pepper, one small onion, 2 tablespoons oil, 2 tablespoons flour, 4 chives, salt, marjoram
Prep Time: Very fast, under 30 minutes.

Start by peeling and cubing the potatoes (zemiaky). Add them to boiling salted water. Use approximately twice as much water as potatoes (in volume). Also add in the dried mushrooms (sušené hríby) and sliced bacon (nakrájaná slanina).

Then grate the onion (nastrúhaj cibuľu). Brown the flour on oil and add the onion. It will soon turn into solid mass. Brown on each side for a minute to let the onions caramelize.

Take the skillet off the heat and add a cup of water to dissolve the onions. Add to the soup.

Then just season to taste with pepper, salt, and marjoram. Also add finely sliced chives or parsley. (note, the soup was not that red, it’s my camera playing tricks on me)

And that’s it. Very simple. Enjoy!

For few other soup options, check out mushroom soup (which is quite similar to this one, but creamier), and soup out of green beans.

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