Ingredients: one whole chicken, 1 onion, 1 tablespoon paprika, one bay leaf, 1 pint heavy cream, flour, salt, oil, pasta (shells or macaroni)
Prep Time: about one hour

Here are the ingredients you will need. Besides the chicken and cream, you will also need an onion, spices and some pasta for the side.

Chop up the onion pretty fine and stir on a medium-hot oil until it turns golden and transparent. In the mean time, wash the chicken and cut it into major pieces, such as legs, wings, and few cuts of the breast meat. Add to the pot. Also add one teaspoon of paprika, salt, and one bay leaf. Cover with water. I used approximately 12 oz.

Stir and mix well and then cover. Reduce heat once the water comes to a boil. Continue stewing for about 45 minutes. In the mean time, I used the leftover bones and the giblets to make a delicious chicken soup. I also fried few pieces of the chicken skin for a tasty snack.

When the chicken is ready (after about 45 minutes), boil salted water and cook the noodles. Then remove the meat and set aside. This is optional, but if you have a blender, carefully blend the hot liquid for a smoother sauce. Then dissolve a heaping tablespoon of flour into the cream. Stir into the sauce.

Bring the sauce back to a boil and then add the chicken back to warm it up. If the sauce is too thin, you can thicken it by adding more flour or Wondra. And if it is too thick, you can thin the sauce by adding milk. Serve over pasta. Enjoy!

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Ingredients: 1lb chicken breast, 1 large onion, 1 packet (4oz) mushrooms, rice, oil, paprika, crushed red pepper
Prep Time: 45 minutes

The ingredients: chicken breast, mushrooms, oil, paprika, rice, crushed red pepper, and onion. I used shiitake mushrooms just to try something different. In Slovakia, we love mushrooms (you’ll even find on them on Christmas trees)! Unfortunately, here in the US you are pretty much limited to the white button mushrooms and their older sibling, portabellas. Shiitake are the only other variety available in my grocery store, so I figured I’ll use, for a bit of variety.

Start by cooking the rice. Bring 2 cups of salted water to boil. Also add a tablespoon of oil or butter into the water. Then add one cup rice, reduce the heat, and cook covered for 15 to 20 minutes. Cube the chicken, slice the mushrooms, and dice the onion. To cut the onion, first peel it and slice off the top and bottom ends. Then cut it in half. Next slice it in direction parallel to the end cuts. Assemble the slices together and then slice them in the perpendicular direction. This method is quick and takes advantage of the natural orientation of the layers.

Heat up two tablespoons of oil in a pot and add the chicken. Fry it on all sides until no pink meat remains. Then carefully spoon the chicken out onto a plate. Add the onion and mushrooms into the pot and fry, stirring, until the onion turns golden.

Add the chicken back into the pot, and add 3 cups of water. Also add a tablespoon of paprika and a teaspoon of crushed red pepper. The paprika will give the stew nice brown color.

Cover and stew for about 20 minutes (until the chicken and the mushrooms are done). If you want, you can serve the dish like this. This is actually how it was served at the embassy, I think. But I decided to go one step further and blend the onion stew for sauce. To do this, first take out the meat and the mushrooms. This is bit tricky, the easiest way is to remove the pieces using a spatula, and then return onions that also got scooped out back into the pot using your hands once the meat cools off a bit.

Next transfer the onion stew into a blender and blend for few minutes. Transfer back into the pot and add two heaping tablespoons of cornstarch (or flour).

Bring to boil and stir to dissolve the starch. Add the chicken and mushrooms back into the sauce to let them warm up. Serve with rice – fluff up the rice with fork before serving. And that’s it. It may not look like it, but this is a super easy and fast recipe for a tasty dinner. Dobrú chuť!

And here are few photos from the reception. On the left, in the middle, is the minister with a couple of Slovak students attending the Georgetown University summer program thanks to a scholarship from Friends of Slovakia, along with my friend Martina. Martina (in white) is from my hometown of Banská Bystrica, and Veronika, the student all the way to the left in gray, is from Zvolen, the town right next door. And the second picture is of me and my girlfriend, Sandra. Sandra is from Colombia and this September will be her first trip to Slovakia.

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Ingredients: chicken parts, potatoes, onion, frozen vegetables, salt, pepper, paprika
Prep Time: 10 minutes to get it ready, 90 minutes for baking

Preheat your oven to 375F. Peel and cube two or three potatoes. Also peel an onion and slice it into circles. Grease the bottom of a baking pan with oil. Add potatoes and onion. Also add some frozen vegetables. Place the chicken on top of all this. Season with paprika, salt and pepper. This is one of those recipes where the exact ingredients don’t matter so feel free to experiment with whatever you have in your fridge.

Wrap the baking pan in aluminum foil and place in the oven for about an hour. Check the chicken few times close to the end to make sure it doesn’t get burned. Be careful when unwrapping the foil as there will hot steam escaping from the inside. Then when everything looks almost done, unwrap and lift off the foil from one end. Bake like that for additional 20 minutes. This will brown the potatoes and the skin.

And that’s it. Enjoy!

For a totally different chicken recipe, check out chicken paprikash.

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Ingredients: one small chicken cut into pieces (I used three fairly large thighs), one large onion, 3 tablespoons oil, 150g (about half a container) of sliced button mushrooms, salt, pepper, flour, noodles, garnish
Prep Time: about 20 minutes to get stuff ready, and then one hour for stewing

Start by dicing the onion (cibuľa) into small pieces. Heat up the oil (olej) in a pan or a large pot for which you have a lid. Add the chicken (kura) and brown on both sides. Shake the pan after you add the chicken to prevent it from sticking.

Then add the onions and sizzle them until they turn golden and glass-like. Then add the mushrooms and also a cup of hot water (horúca voda). Cover, reduce the heat, and let simmer for about 40 minutes. You can check if the chicken is done by sticking in a meat thermometer. It should register 180F.

In the mean time, add macaroni (makaróny) into salted boiling water and cook till done. Then rinse them off in hot water, and drain.

Take the chicken out once it’s done and set aside. Dust the sauce with flour, I used about a tablespoon worth. Stir in on high flame to let the flavors sizzle.

Also stir in a tablespoon worth of butter (maslo), and a pinch of salt (soľ) and ground black pepper (mleté čierne korenie). Add in bit of hot water to thin the sauce. I added about 5 tablespoons, but this will depend on how much water you started with, and how much has evaporated during cooking. Make sure everything tastes good and add the chicken back in.

Serve with noodles and a garnish of vegetables. Dobrú chuť!

And for few other similar tasty recipes, checkout rabbit on mushrooms and chicken on salt.

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Alena from Žiar nad Hronom sent me recipe and pictures of her mom preparing španielske vtáčky, a delicious dish consisting of meat steaks filled with egg, hot dog and pickle. I have to admit that for the longest time I thought the name of this dish was španielske vtáčiky (notice that extra i), which would mean “little spanish birds”. But it’s not. I have no clue what vtáčky means! I even tried Google Translate and the online Slovak dictionary at slovnik.sk but no luck. My best guess is that it is derived from zatáčat (vtáčat?) which means to roll up. Which makes sense, since these are rolls, spanish rolls.

Žiar nad Hronom is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants. It is located less than an hour from my home town of Banská Bystrica, on the way to the capital, Bratislava. Very near the city is thermal spa Sklené Teplice (Glass Thermals). I spent a really fun Valentine’s Day weekend there (yes, Valentine’s Day is now celebrated even in Slovakia). The most unique feature of this spa, and something definitely worth your visit, is the cave bath. You basically swim inside a cave with water temperature reaching almost 108F!

Here is Alena’s recipe for spanish rolls. They look great!

Start by tenderizing the meat (mäso) with a meat tenderizer (the hammer, not the chemicals!). Also hard boil the eggs (vajíčka). Salt (osoľ) and pepper (okoreň) the meat and then load it with hot dog (párok), pickle (kyslá uhorka) and egg (vajce) – a quarter of each, that is. Roll into a tube and tie closed with a string (niť).

Then heat up oil (olej) in a pot and fry diced onion (cibuľa) until it turns golden. Add paprika.

Also add little bit water. Then add the rolls, steam covered until the meat is done. Add more water as needed.

Take the rolls out once the meat is cooked and remove the strings. Add little bit of flour into the pot to thicken the sauce. Place the meat back in the sauce and boil for few minutes.

Serve with mashed potatoes (zemiakové pyré)or rice (ryža). Dobrú chuť!

By the way, I am always looking for more recipes. Feel free to send me your own step-by-step recipes and I’ll gladly publish them here. I am especially looking for instructions for baking various koláče.

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