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.

On Twitter or Facebook? Connect with us. Prefer email? Subscribe to the newsletter.

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.

On Twitter or Facebook? Connect with us. Prefer email? Subscribe to the newsletter.

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.

On Twitter or Facebook? Connect with us. Prefer email? Subscribe to the newsletter.

A young lady rings the bell to her neighbor’s apartment. “Excuse me, may I offer you some apples in a bathrobe?”
“Of course”, the voice from inside says, “but feel free to offer them even if you are not wearing anything at all.”

That was an old joke I still remember from my childhood. It’s a little play on words: apples in a bathrobe (jablká v župane) is a sweet Czech and Slovak treat. It’s apples stuffed with a nut filling, wrapped in a puff pastry “bathrobe”, and baked in the oven until soft. I’ve actually never had this snack prior to today, but I’ve been wanting to try it for a long time. So I baked a batch. I made it following an excellent video instructions posted on akosatorobi.sk (“how it’s made”.sk). Here is the recipe:

Ingredients: 9 small apples, 1 sheet of puff pastry dough, about half a cup of ground nuts, 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar, tablespoon of lemon zest, 2 vanilla sugars, 2 tablespoons cinnamon, 1 egg, quarter cup of water
Prep Time: at least 30 minutes to get everything ready, plus another 30 minutes for baking.

First, make sure you have a defrosted sheet of pastry dough ready to go. If not, take it out of the freezer now and let it thaw out. Take the apples (jablká) and peel them. Next remove the stem and the core. The lady in the video had a neat core-removing contraption, but I just used a knife. I started by cutting off a wedge from both ends. I then cut through and then “drilled” the core out by twisting the knife back and forth.

Next we make the filling. Grind up two handfuls of walnuts (orechy) in a food processor. Combine in a pot with quarter cup of water (voda, you could also use milk), two tablespoons of powdered sugar (práškový cukor), and a teaspoon of lemon zest (citrónová kôra). The original recipe also called for a bit of rum. I didn’t do this since I didn’t have any. Cook the paste together until it’s like honey.

Also mix two packets of vanilla sugar (vanilkový cukor) with two tablespoons of cinnamon (škorica). At least that’s what the recipe called for. I ran out and had to make more (using regular sugar). I think that for 9 apples you need at least twice this amount.

Roll out the defrosted sheet of puff pastry dough (lístkové cesto). Flip it over few times, dusting the surface with flour to keep the dough from sticking. I rolled it until it was thin enough for the markings on the mat to show through. Cut it into 9 squares. Place each apple, coated in the cinnamon sugar mixture, at the center of each square. Fill each apple with the nut filling. I didn’t have enough for all the apples, so the last three apples got filled with currant, plum, and apricot jams.

Alright, almost done! You just have to wrap the apples in their “bathrobe”. Do this by folding two diagonal ends together, and then cover with the two remaining ends. When folding the second time, try to tuck in some of the dough that will stick out along the crease. Place a toothpick in the middle to keep the robe together.

Move the apples onto a baking sheet lined with a wax paper. Sprinkle any remaining cinnamon mix over the apples, and brush each apple with a beaten egg (vajce). Bake on 330F for 30 minutes. Enjoy! It’s so easy to get your apple a day, especially when baked and coated in cinnamon and sugar…

.

On Twitter or Facebook? Connect with us. Prefer email? Subscribe to the newsletter.

Breaded and fried pork cuts, like these, are very popular in Slovakia. You will find every one of the variants below in a restaurant or a Slovak cookbook under various names, often related to Slovak towns or villages. I am guessing these names are picked by the chef depending on where he had a schnitzel like that for the first time. I didn’t even bother trying to figure out what to name each, so here you have a dinner (or four) full of assorted delicious fried meats.

Ingredients: thinly sliced pork chops, cheese, ham, hard boiled egg, canned peas, flour, milk, egg, potatoes for baking and mashing, oil, salt, pepper, mustard, ketchup
Prep Time: One hour

Baked Potatoes

Before we get to the meat, let’s make some baked potatoes. Peel 2 or 3 medium sized baking or all purpose potatoes, slice them into larger wedges, place in a baking pan, coat well with oil and salt, and bake in the oven until they get brown on the outside. This will take between 30 minutes and an hour.

Onto the meats

Carefully slice the pork chops in half so they are about quarter inch thick (here is a video on this butterflying technique). Tenderize the meat by beating it on both sides with the tenderizing mallet. Salt and pepper from both sides. Then get creative. I started by making a meat sandwich. I topped one piece of pork with edam cheese (popular frying cheese in Slovakia), one slice of a hard boiled egg, ham, and topped with another pork cut.

I made another piece by topping the pork with ham (šunka) and a slice of brie.

Or you can make meat rolls. I made two of these. First one I smeared with mustard and ketchup and rolled up. The second one didn’t have any ketchup or mustard but I first topped it with a slice of ham.

Frying the meat

Now to turn these meat patties into delicious dinner, you’ve got to fry them. Here I used two types of coating: plain flour and “pancake” dough. Schnitzels coated in flour and fried in oil are said to be done “natural” (prírodne). The other kind, in dough made of flour, egg, and milk (or water) are “in dough” (v cestíčku).

Fry them, using toothpicks to keep the rolls together. Fry on both sides for a minute or two, until they get brown. When it came to flipping the rolls over, I took the toothpicks out, flipped them over, and then place the toothpicks in again to keep the roll from opening up.

Another delicious topping (which I learned about from my father who runs a restaurant in Banská Bystrica) is peas (hrášok). Just spoon these into the dough. If you have extra dough, you can even fully cover them. And there you have it, a plate of assorted fried meats. Delicious with mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, and some peas and apricots on the side. What do you think, worthy of Man vs. Food?

Here are recipes for two classic schnitzel types: wiener schnitzel and shepherd’s steak.

On Twitter or Facebook? Connect with us. Prefer email? Subscribe to the newsletter.