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: one head of cabbage, 2 tbsp of oil or lard, 1 onion, 3 tsp flour, 1 small container of sour cream, paprika
Filling: 0.5lb ground beef, 1tsp oil, rice (half a cup to a cup), water (twice as much as rice), 1 small onion, 1 egg, black pepper, one clove of garlic
Prep Time: 40 minutes

Make the filling and prepare the leaves

Start by cutting out the core from the cabbage (kapusta). Also take an onion (cibuľa), and grate it using a hand grater or a food processor. You will need two onions, one for the filling, and one for the sauce.

Stir the onion on a bit of oil until it foams. Add the rice (ryža). Next add water (twice as much as rice), cover, and cook until the rice is almost done. The recipe called for 1 cup of rice for the half pound of meat, but this made for a mixture bit heavy on the rice. Use less rice if you prefer more meat.

In the meantime, put the cabbage in a pot of hot water and bring to a slow boil. The leaves will start to fall off. Carefully remove the leaves as they come off with a knife. Next cut off the bottom stiffer part so you get a flexible leave that can be rolled. Save all pieces.

Chop the stiffer cut-off pieces into small strips. Fry for few seconds on oil along with a grated onion and paprika. Cover with water and bring to a boil.

Stir in 3 teaspoons of flour (I used Wondra) into the sour cream. Take a small amount of the liquid from the sauce pan, and stir into the sour cream mixture to dilute it. This is better than directly putting the cream in the sauce, as it will keep the cream from lumping up. Stir the diluted cream into the sauce.

Mix the meat, the egg, ground black pepper, salt, and a crushed clove of garlic. Add the cooked rice, and mix together.

Filling cabbage leaves

Start filling the cabbage leaves. Take about a teaspoon of the filling and place it to one side of the leaf. Flip one side over. Ideally, do this diagonally, as if you were making a funnel. This is not shown too well in this set of pictures.

Complete the roll, and finally tuck the end pieces in.

Cook the Holubky

Place the holubky in the sauce and cover with a lid to keep them from coming apart. This may not be really required, since I cooked some separately and they stayed together.

Cook until done, the best way to check is to take one and try it. It cooked mine for about 30 minutes, until the cabbage leaves were nice and soft. By the way, you can also cook the holubky separately. This will give them a cleaner appearance. 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 for 40 servings: 1.5 cups oil, 3.3 lbs onions (about 8 large ones), 7lb cubed beef, water, 4 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp Cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, 2 tbsp salt, 4.5 lbs potatoes (15 small ones), 3 tbsp marjoram, 8 cloves garlic, beer (optional)
Prep Time: 30 minutes of prep time, 2 hours for cooking

Here is what you will need for this version of goulash: beef, potatoes, onions, and various spices.

Chop the onions (cibule). The pieces don’t have to be too small since the onions will dissolve during cooking. Pour the oil (olej) into your kettle and wait for it to get hot. Then add the onions. Fry them until they get golden and glass-like translucent. Add the meat (mäso) and brown it from all sides. You can brown all the meat in the kettle but I figured it will be faster if I do one half (one 3lb packet) separately in a frying pan. If you fry your meat separately like this, make sure to pour in all the juices into the kettle. Add water. I didn’t measure how much I added in, but it was enough to get this 16L stock pot 2/3 full. Roughly speaking, you want half the soup be water and the other half meat. When adding water, it’s better to add in several small batches and wait for the water to come to boil in between each addition. This way the meat will continue to cook.

Add the spices: paprika (sladká červená paprika), Cayenne pepper (štiplavá červená paprika), ground black pepper (mleté čierne korenie), and salt (soľ). Cover and let simmer on low heat for about an hour. In the meantime, peel and cube all but two potatoes and get minced garlic ready to go.

About an hour later

Add the cubed potatoes into the goulash once the meat is almost ready. Also add the marjoram, I used both fresh and dried. When substituting fresh herbs for dried ones, use one tablespoon of fresh herbs for each one teaspoon of dried herbs.

Mince the garlic cloves and add these into the pot. Also grate the remaining two peeled potatoes using a grater. Add these in as well, these potatoes will help thicken the stew.

Finally, if the goulash tastes too thick, you can thin it by adding some dark beer. Or just add the beer regardless. I used about 1/3 bottle of “dark amber” brew. And that’s it, look at all that delicious oil floating on top!

Slovak Picnic in Turkey Run, VA

And just few photos from the picnic. I ended up reheating the goulash using this portable gas stove. This was my first time using it and it’s a really handy thing! The only issue is that the flame is really hot. It didn’t even occur to me to keep stirring the goulash while heating it up, and some potatoes on the bottom burned. So unfortunately the goulash had bit of a burned taste. But nobody really complained, I guess that’s part of the charm of eating in the outdoors…

We also had hot dogs (párky). The Giant grocery chain sells “New York deli-style” hot dogs that look and taste very much like Slovak hot dogs. By the way, hot dogs are served differently in Slovakia than here in the US. One way is to serve them in a hollowed out bread roll. These are hollowed out by a heated spike that toasts the roll from the inside. You then squirt mustard into the slot and then put in the párok. This kind of hot dog is called, quite appropriately, párok v rožku (hot dog in a bread roll). The other way of serving hot dogs is by simply placing two cooked pieces on a paper plate with mustard and few slices of rye or whole wheat bread. This way is popular at festivals where vendors may not have that fancy bread roll toasting spike.

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