So I opted for pork – and ended up with the national dish of the Czech Republic. It’s vepřo, knedlo, zelo, which means, in Czech, pork, dumpling, cabbage.

The Slovak translation would be bravčové, knedľa, kapusta. See, Slovak and Czech languages can be very close sometimes, almost as if they were dialects of each other. But on many other occasions, the vocabulary is different enough to make it difficult for Slovaks and Czechs not exposed to the other language to understand each other. This actually seems to be getting more and more of a problem, as I often experience when visiting my cousins outside of Prague. The older guys have no problem understanding their Slovak part of the family. But my youngest cousin, who was born after the country split up, often gives us confusing looks. And it’s even worse with her friends. They look at us ako by sme boli Maďari (as if we were Hungarians, this is a common Slovak expression which means that somebody speaks in a way you can’t understand). The reason for all this is that during the Czechoslovakia days, TV stations played programs in both Slovak and Czech. Everyone was raised with exposure to both languages. However, after the split, this stopped being the case, especially in the Czech Republic. Slovak TV is too cheap/poor to dub movies from English to Slovak, so a good number of foreign films still get shown on Slovak TV in Czech. The opposite is not true in the Czech Republic. So even though quite a few young Slovaks still learn Czech simply from watching TV, this is not the case with the kids in the Czech Republic. I’ve heard somewhere that the Czech government is planning to start showing more Slovak programs to sustain bilingualism, but I have no idea if this is true or just rumors.

Anyway, enough history for one day, let’s start cooking! To make this dish, you will need dumplings, either the regular kind or the ones made from potato. Or both. This recipe comes from mimibazar and from Recepty Starej Mamy.

I made this dish with a 2lb piece of pork loin, but neck, shoulder and thigh meat is also commonly used. Loin is the meat from the back of the pig, which is less fatty than the belly. By the way, if you want to learn more about the different types of pork, as well how a pig is butchered, check out this amazing guide to pork cuts on Amazing Ribs. The butchering videos at the bottom of the page are great.

Ingredients: 2 lbs of meat for roasting, 4 cloves of garlic, one medium onion, 2 strips bacon, salt, black pepper, caraway, head of red cabbage, side of dumplings, 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 teaspoons vinegar
Prep Time:2 hours

Turn the oven on to 450F. Rinse off the meat and make several slices into the meat. Stuff each with garlic (cesnak) – I used half a clove per slot. You can also stuff it with bacon (slanina). Coat with salt (soľ), pepper (čierne korenie), and caraway (rasca)

Melt bit of lard in a baking dish (or use little bit of oil). Add the meat along with an onion (cibuľa) sliced into rings, and 1/3 cup of water.

Cover and place in the oven. Turn the oven down to 350F and bake, covered, for one hour. In the mean time, prepare the dumplings and cabbage.

Cabbage and Dumplings

Remove the old outer leaves from the head of red cabbage (červená kapusta) and also remove the hard core. Cut it into two halves, and then cut each half into another half like shown. This makes it easy to cut it into strips that are not too long. Heat up two tablespoons of oil in a pot and add the cabbage. Also add a dash of salt, one teaspoon of caraway, and one 1/3 cup of water. Cover and let simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently.

Check to see if the cabbage is done. Add sugar and vinegar, two teaspoons each. Finish cooking uncovered. But keep an eye on it. I actually ended up overcooking my cabbage and it got mushy. Also prepare the dumplings.

Back to the meat

After the hour the meat has been baking, it’s time to turn it over. Carefully remove the baking dish out and, using a knife and a fork, flip the meat over. I had cut mine into two halves, which made this easier. Put the cover back on, and stick in the oven for another 30 minutes. Then remove the dish once again and take out the onion. Also spoon out 2/3 of the sauce into a mug. Place the glass baking dish back in the oven, but this time, keep it uncovered to roast the meat.

After 15 minutes of baking uncovered, baste the meat with the sauce in the mug. The mimibazar recipe said that basting with cool sauce helps the sauce penetrate more into the meat. Another 15 minutes, and it’s done.

Dinner is served!

You should let the meat rest before cutting (I didn’t do this, I only found that article afterwards). Letting the meat rest will allow the fibers to reabsorb moisture, leaving you with a juicier cut of meat. Serve with dumplings (I used both kinds) and the cabbage. And of course, few spoonfuls of sauce over the dumplings and the meat. Dobrú chuť!

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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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Ingredients: half of head of cabbage, oil, two tablespoons granulated sugar, salt, black pepper, pasta flakes, bacon, caraway, powdered sugar for topping
Prep Time: one hour for the cabbage to cook, 15 minutes to get the noodles ready

Start by shredding the cabbage using a grater. The squeeze out as much liquid as you can, this will keep oil splatter down.

Heat up about quarter cup of oil in a pot and add two tablespoons of sugar. Wait for the sugar to start turning to brown caramel, this will take about 2 minutes.

Then carefully add the cabbage. Doing it like this by hand is probably not the smartest, since the oil will splatter. Be careful not to burn yourself! The cabbage will quickly absorb the oil, and the liquid caramel will also turn into rock chunks. No worry, it will dissolve when you add water. Add just enough water to cover the cabbage, pinch of caraway seeds if you like them (and also black pepper), lower the heat, cover, and let simmer for about an hour, stirring frequently.

When the cabbage starts getting tender, start preparing the noodles. Cook the flakes in a pot of salted water for 10 to 15 minutes. Strain the noodles and mix into the cabbage, which by now should be dry and have all the water evaporated out.

Top the noodles either with bacon bits, or if you like them sweet, with powdered sugar. Enjoy!

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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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Today I came back from a four day conference (International Conference on Plasma Sciences in Norfolk, VA) to an empty fridge. An almost empty fridge. Besides one lonely yogurt, some cottage cheese and a stale nut roll, it contained one potato, about half a bag of sauerkraut, and fried bacon bits left over from making cabbage dumplings. In other words, just the right ingredients for making baked potatoes with sauerkraut, the dish from the times when money was scarcer and pantries less plentiful.

Ingredients for two plates: one potato and about 0.8 lb of sauerkraut. Also caraway seeds and some oil. I used bacon bits and the rendered fat. Feel free to throw in a sausage if you have some.

Peel and slice the potato and rinse the kraut.

Grease the bottom of a baking pan – I used half of the melted bacon fat. Then take half of the potato slices and make a single layer out of them. Mix the drained sauerkraut with about a tablespoon of caraway seeds and add on top of the potatoes. Also throw in some bacon bits for a good measure. Then top off with the remaining potatoes, pour on the rest of the grease and bacon, and also salt lightly. Then stick the pan into a 375F oven (I bake pretty much everything at 375F) and leave for about 30 minutes. About 20 minutes into baking, the kraut started looking tad dry, so I added just half a small glass of water. Also, while the potatoes were baking, I remembered I had a tiny bit of sour cream left in the fridge, about 1/6 of a cup. Mix this with an equal amount of water, and whisk well. Then when the potatoes are almost ready, pour the sauce in and bake for few more minutes. This is not required, but the cream definitely gave the meal a very nice taste.

This dish goes great with a glass of milk or kefir. Enjoy!

For another cheap, yet filling potato recipe, check out bacon potatoes.

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