Something I always look for on my travels to Slovakia is stopping in a deli for freshly baked bread rolls (called rožky) and some Parisian salad, parížský šalát. Whether this salad has anything to do with Paris is to me a mystery. At least my roommate who grew up in France has never seen something similar to this. Anyway, here is a recipe for this tasty and very simple side dish. Turns out, there are manz variations on this food. I ended up using the recipe posted here. It was the simplest of the bunch, and also resembled the most what I remember this salad being made of. Some of the other recipes called for ingredients like corn, eggs or ketchup, ingredients I don’t believe belong in this salad. But, just in case you want to experiment, I posted these variants below.

Here is what you will need. I used Bologna, since it has the closest consistency to the soft salami that is used in Slovakia.

Cut the salami (saláma) into strips. Also, either finely dice the onion (cibuľa) or grate it using the fatter holes on a food grater. One benefit of using the knife is that (if the knife is sharp), it won’t release as much of the juice which causes the eye irritation. The irritation is caused by an enzyme called alliinases which is released as the cells break. Fewer broken cells means fewer irritants being released.

Strain the peas (hrášok) and also add half the 16oz sour cream (kyslá smotana) container and 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise (majonéza).

Finally, add cubed dill pickles (zavárané uhorky), about a teaspoon worth of salt (soľ) and pepper (mleté čierne korenie) and mix through. Place in the fridge for few hours to allow the flavor mix through. Serve with bread – home made is the best!

Few variants

This recipe is very similar, but includes 6 hard boiled eggs, only one pickle, one tablespoon of ketchup, 3 tablespoons of oil, 1 tub of tartar sauce (but Slovak tartar sauce is different from the American kind). Amount of meat, onion or peas is the same.

A whole lot more complicated version is found here. Ingredients include 300g of salami, 1 onion, 3 eggs, 3 pickles, 100ml of tartar sauce, 100ml of sour cream, 200g of canned corn, 200g of canned peas, 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoons of oil, 2 tablespoons of ketchup, 2 teaspoons of mustard, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, salt and ground black pepper. WOW!!! The recipe starts with a quick boil of the Worcestershire sauce, oil, ketchup, mustard and vinegar. The mayo and sour cream is added once the mixture cools down. If you end up making this version, please leave a comment on how it turned out.

Yet another version is found here. This one uses 500g (1lb) of salami, 1 container of mayo, 1 soft butter, 2-3 spoons of mustard, pickles, 1 can of sweet peas, 1 can of corn, 5 hard boiled eggs, salt, black pepper, and 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar!

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Treska is my favorite Slovak salad. So I was really excited when Kristina posted a recipe for it on the Facebook page! I made it and it turned out quite tasty. Here I show you how to make it. But, there is a caveat. When I went to buy the ingredients, I learned that my grocery store was having a 60% off sale on fillets of “blue fish”. This was a deal too good to pass! Well, this is a problem because, you see, the word treska means “cod”. So here you have a cod-free cod salad. You’ll see that when you make this salad out of the right fish, the resulting creation will be of much lighter color.

Start by preparing “vinegar stock” by combing 3 liters of water, one cup of vinegar, whole black peppercorns, 6 bay leaves and salt. Let boil for 5 minutes. Then add the fish fillets. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes. Then take the fish out and place in a large salad bowl. Let cool down.

While the fish is cooling, cook two whole peeled carrots. Place them into boiling, salted water, and cook for about 3 or 4 minutes. Let them cool down. In the mean time, finely flake up the fish with a fork. You could also use a mixer.

Next finely grate the carrots and two whole onions.

Add mayo (3/4 of this medium sized tub), …

…, two tablespoons of vinegar, 4 tablespoons mustard (I used spicy brown), …

…, black pepper and salt. Then let sit in the fridge for 24 hours. This will let the flavors mix through. Enjoy with few fresh rolls, or even better, with rožky, Slovak mini baguettes. Dobrú chuť!

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