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.

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Dough: 2 cups (250g) flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1-2 yolks, 2 tablespoons (60g) powdered sugar, half a stick (50g) unsalted butter, 4 tablespoons cream, 2 tablespoons white wine (or rum), 1/2 cup of milk
Topping: powdered sugar, half pocket vanilla sugar (optional)
Prep Time: 2 hours

Start by combining flour, butter, sugar, yolks, cream, milk, baking powder, salt, and the wine (or rum if you prefer). Mix together for 10 minutes until you get smooth elastic dough. Add more milk if needed. Form into a ball, dust with flour, and let rest in the fridge for an hour.

Roll the dough out to thickness of about 1/6th of an inch. It may help to cut the dough into two halves, especially if your board is on the smaller side. Using a dough cutting wheel or a knife, cut the dough into rectangles about 2×3 inches. Then cut two slots in each rectangle in direction parallel to the shorter edges. Loop one end piece through the slot closest to it.

Then repeat with the other end to make a dough bowtie.

You can also just cut the dough into thin strips which you roll around your finger. Fry all this goodness in oil that is not too hot – I kept mine just a tiny turn past low. Fry on both sides until the dough gets pinkish light brown.

Scoop the fried fánky with spatula onto a plate covered with paper towels. Use another paper towel to pat dry off the oil from the top. Then coat the fried dough in powdered sugar (I also mixed in half packet of vanilla sugar), just like funnel cakes. Happy Easter!

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Okay, so that’s probably a simplification. But the villagers of the days gone knew how to celebrate life. Winter was the season for parties and holidays – I guess this was the time between when harvest was collected and new seeds were planted. The first set of celebrations occurred in winter, before Christmas advent set in. But as soon as the Three Kings day rolled around, signaling the end of the Christmas season, it was time to put on the dancing shoes, round up some musicians, and start frying šišky.

The period between Three Kings day (January 6th) and the Ash Wednesday (Popolcová Streda, March 9th this year of 2011) is known in Slovakia as Fašiangy. This is when people dressed up in costumes, just like is done nowadays at the Mardi Gras or at the Carnival in Rio. This is also when a pig got slaughtered (also check out Allan Stevo’s great post on 68 steps to killing a pig on his blog). And of course, this was also the time for making various Easter Slovak specialties.

The most famous of these are šišky or pampúchy. Think of these as Slovak donuts. Actually one well known Slovak fairy tale (rozprávka) tells the story a small pampúch, pampúšik. In the fairy tale, grandpa asks grandma if she could make him one of these donuts. Well, times are hard, and there is no flour to be found. But grandma goes to the pantry and dusts the shelves for flour. She manages to dust off enough to make one jam donut. She sets it on the windowsill to let it cool. Well, the donut starts looking around, and decides he (?) wants to go see the world. So he rolls off, meeting a bunny, wolf, and a bear along the way. All of them want to eat him! But he is faster and escapes. That is, until he meets a clever fox (foxes are always clever and conniving in Slovak fairy tales, if you see a fox, you better watch out!) Of course, back in the hut, grandpa and grandma are crying, their only donut has gone missing! Well, grandma makes her way to the mill and asks the miller to spare some flour. The miller has a kind heart and offers her some. Happy ending, grandpa got his sweet breakfast, and the fox got to eat. So perhaps not a happy ending for the first donut…

If you ever wanted to make home-made donuts, the Slovak way, here is the recipe. Of course, I recommend you go to your grocery store to buy flour instead of dusting it off your pantry shelves.

Ingredients: 2 cups (250g) flour, one yolk, 3/4 cups milk, one packet yeast, 2 tablespoons (20g) powdered sugar, 1/5 stick (20g) unsalted butter (melted), little bit of salt, dash of rum (optional), jam filling and topping, powdered sugar for topping
Prep Time: 30 minutes to mix up the dough, few hours for it to rise, another hour or so to make and fry the donuts

Mix the dough

To start making these Slovak fried pastry donuts, we first need to make the dough. Start by dissolving yeast in little bit of warm water or milk. Combine all ingredients, except for jam in a bowl, and add the yeast. If you want, you can use the left-over egg white to make strawberry frosting. Mix for about 15 minutes, folding over, until the dough becomes smooth and no longer sticks to the wooden spoon (varecha). Dust with flour, cover with a cloth, and let rise. Since I made the dough at 2 am after coming home from a play/bars, I put it in my cool basement and let it rise overnight.

Few hours later (or next day): Filling donuts

After the dough has fully risen (meaning that after you poke it with a finger, the dough does NOT snap back and the dimple remains), transfer it out onto a board dusted with flour. Separate into manageable pieces. Roll the dough out to about half inch thick. Then dust the rim of a small drinking glass with flour and use it to cut out circles from one side of the rolled out dough with a twisting motion of your wrist. Mark off the same number of circles on the other side. Place about a teaspoon worth of apricot jam (marhuľový lekvár) to the center of these marked circles.

Cover each with one cut out piece, and press shut by pressing down with your finger as you go around the circle. Then take the glass again, and cut out the donut. This will further help seal the jam in.

I ended up with five of these filled donuts. The second half of the dough was used to make a simpler version of šišky: ones that are topped with jam after frying. To make these, roll the dough slightly thicker and just cut out circles. Done, no filling required. Cover the donuts with a cloth and let rest for 15 minutes.

Frying homemade donuts

Then to fry them, put quite a lot of oil into a pot or a frying pan. There should be enough oil so the donuts float. If you don’t put in enough (like me), you will end up with the center getting darker than the rest of the donut. No big deal, but they’ll look better if you use more oil. Keep the oil temperature low. Fry them from both sides until they start turning pink/light brown. I used two butter knives to flip them over.

Carefully spoon them out with a spatula onto a plate covered with paper towels to soak up the oil. Then top the with powdered sugar by shaking a strainer over them.

Then top some with raspberry jam (malinový lekvár) or with strawberry foam frosting (jahodová pena). Enjoy! These were really delicious, and not too over-sweet as so many other deserts out here.

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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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And it’s also super delicious. Bad combination, indeed!

I decided to surprise my mom this Christmas by baking a štedrovečerný koláč (Christmas Eve cake), or štedrák for short. This cake (koláč) is baked for Christmas or New Years, but never in my family. This was the first time for both my mom and me to try this treat. We’ve been missing out!

Štedrák is a layered cake. The layers are made of leavened dough, and are filled with the traditional Slovak village home-cooking fillings: plum jam, poppy seeds, ground walnuts, and farmer cheese. Think of it as buchty, poppy seed rolls, and tvarožník all fused into one delicious calorie bomb.

I found the recipe for the cake in Slovenská Kuchárka (available online here). I also found several recipes online on mimibazar, toprecepty.cz, and mojerecepty). The last one, from mojerecepty, is interesting, because instead of being layered, the fillings are organized as concentric circles.

This cake originated as traditional ceremonial holiday bread, similar to the Eastern Slovak kračún, which was believed to hold magical powers. This bread was prepared for the Christmas Eve dinner, and the many layers symbolized abundance, fertility, and good harvest. This is because the belief of first-day magic was prevalent in the olden days. Back when Christmas coincided with New Years, and as one did on Christmas, one was bound to repeat during the whole next year. There are also different versions of this cake, some containing ingredients such as hazelnuts, prunes, or apples. These days, it is prepared only rarely. Instead, it’s place at the Christmas table has been taken over by the poppy seed (makovník) or nut rolls (orechovník), or various assorted Christmas cookies (this info comes from Úľuv, Slovak Centre for Folk Art Production).

Anyway, enough blabbering, let’s start baking! The recipe below is how I made it. It’s a variation on the recipes above. Feel free to experiment, especially when it comes to the fillings.

Dough: 500g flour, 70g sugar, 2 yolks, 3dl milk, 1 stick of butter, packet of yeast, lemon zest, yolk for covering
Poppy filling: 150g ground poppies, 2dl milk, 120g sugar, 1 tbsp butter
Nut filling: 180g ground nuts, 1.5dl milk, 100g cukru, 3 tsp bread crumbs, 4 tbsp sugar, one packet of vanilla sugar
Farmer cheese filling: 300g farmers cheese, 4 tbsp sugar, 4 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp raisins, 2 yolks, snow from two whites, vanilla sugar, lemon zest.
Plum filling: 200g plum butter
Prep time: 5 hours

Here are the ingredients you’ll need. If you are having hard time finding poppy seeds, try asking the bakery department in your local grocery store. I was able to buy a pound of poppy seeds for a mere dollar at my local Giant! The plum jam came from Russian gourmet store.

Prepare the dough

Combine the ingredients, minus the yeast and milk, in a bowl. I decided to scald the milk. Scalding milk used to be required back in the days before all milk got pasteurized. Nowadays, it’s no longer needed for safety reasons – and there is an interesting debate on About.com on this topic. The recipes did not call to scald the milk, but I figured it will improve the taste. The warm milk will also heat up the dough, aiding the fermentation.

Mix everything together, and only then add the primed yeast. Yeast likes it warm, but not hot. By adding the yeast to the hot milk directly your run the risk of cooking the yeast, which would be bad. To prime the yeast, simply pour little bit of milk into a bowl, microwave for 10 seconds, add a spoon of sugar and the yeast, and then whisk for 20 seconds with a fork to give the yeast air. Let sit for few minutes until it bubbles up. Knead together until you get smooth dough that doesn’t stick. Form into a ball, cover with a cloth, and let rise for 3 hours. You can also do what I do, and that is after two hours deflate the risen yeast, knead for about 5 minutes, and let rise again.

Alright, that’s done. Now let’s start preparing the fillings!

Make the poppy seed filling

You will need a poppy seed grinder to make the poppy seed filling. Coffee grinders don’t work too well. The blades simply slice the seeds, but you actually want to break them by squishing them. This releases the oil stored in the seeds resulting in a smooth paste. Poppy seeds ground in a coffee grinder end up looking like dust.

Combine the seeds, butter, and sugar in a pot and heat on low heat. Bring to boil, stirring continuously. This will take about 15 minutes.

And also make the walnut filling

The walnut filling is made similarly, but you use ground walnuts. I ground the nuts by first chopping them in a food processor to get small chunks. I then ran them through the same grinder used to grind the poppy seeds.

And the farmer cheese (tvaroh) filling

To make the farmer cheese (tvaroh) filling, combine farmer cheese, two yolks, sugar, raisins, lemon zest, and vanilla sugar. Save the egg whites and beat them for about 10 minutes until you get foam, called snow (sneh) in Slovak. It shouldn’t be as stiff as when making meringue, whisk it until it resembles whipped cream. You don’t cook this filling. Just mix it together until everything is blended.

The cookbook said to mix the plum jam with lemon zest. It actually said to add lemon zest to all the fillings. I only added it to the farmer cheese, and used plum jam straight out of the jar.

The layers are now done. Let’s assemble it all together.

Roll out the dough and layer the cake

After the dough has risen, form it into a brick, and divide into five equal chunks. The recipe book said to roll out each section to the thickness of a finger (about 1cm). I had WAAY too little dough and WAAY too much filling for this – the cake would be as big as an index card, and tall as a small child if I did it like that. This cake is usually made in a rectangular shape, but I happened to have this convenient aluminum pie pan lying around. So I rolled the dough out to the size of the pan. It ended up being about 3 mm thick.

Place one layer on your baking sheet or in the pan (make sure to grease it first). Then spread plum jam on it. Top with another layer of dough. I rolled the first layer bit too small so I made the second one slightly larger bigger than the pan and pushed the extra dough down to seal the jam in.

Gently flatten the dough with your palm, and spread the walnut filling on it. Then top with another layer of dough.

Cover this layer with the poppy seed paste, and top again with another layer of dough.

And then cover this one with the farmer cheese filling. Now, take the last piece of dough, and roll it out into a long rectangle (instead of a circle). Cut into stripes and arrange these in a grid on the top.

Bake

This was my first time making such a grid – I definitely need more practice! Try to arrange the strips so they alternate up-and-down to get a nice cross-stitch pattern. Then beat one yolk and coat the top of the cake with this egg wash. Bake in an oven preheated to 350F for 40 minutes until the top gets nicely brown.

And enjoy

Let cool, slice into small squares (the cake is really rich and filling), and enjoy. A lot of work, but definitely worth it!

Check out my little write up to find out more about Christmas in Slovakia. And also check out the other Christmas recipes.

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