So I opted for pork – and ended up with the national dish of the Czech Republic. It’s vepřo, knedlo, zelo, which means, in Czech, pork, dumpling, cabbage.

The Slovak translation would be bravčové, knedľa, kapusta. See, Slovak and Czech languages can be very close sometimes, almost as if they were dialects of each other. But on many other occasions, the vocabulary is different enough to make it difficult for Slovaks and Czechs not exposed to the other language to understand each other. This actually seems to be getting more and more of a problem, as I often experience when visiting my cousins outside of Prague. The older guys have no problem understanding their Slovak part of the family. But my youngest cousin, who was born after the country split up, often gives us confusing looks. And it’s even worse with her friends. They look at us ako by sme boli Maďari (as if we were Hungarians, this is a common Slovak expression which means that somebody speaks in a way you can’t understand). The reason for all this is that during the Czechoslovakia days, TV stations played programs in both Slovak and Czech. Everyone was raised with exposure to both languages. However, after the split, this stopped being the case, especially in the Czech Republic. Slovak TV is too cheap/poor to dub movies from English to Slovak, so a good number of foreign films still get shown on Slovak TV in Czech. The opposite is not true in the Czech Republic. So even though quite a few young Slovaks still learn Czech simply from watching TV, this is not the case with the kids in the Czech Republic. I’ve heard somewhere that the Czech government is planning to start showing more Slovak programs to sustain bilingualism, but I have no idea if this is true or just rumors.

Anyway, enough history for one day, let’s start cooking! To make this dish, you will need dumplings, either the regular kind or the ones made from potato. Or both. This recipe comes from mimibazar and from Recepty Starej Mamy.

I made this dish with a 2lb piece of pork loin, but neck, shoulder and thigh meat is also commonly used. Loin is the meat from the back of the pig, which is less fatty than the belly. By the way, if you want to learn more about the different types of pork, as well how a pig is butchered, check out this amazing guide to pork cuts on Amazing Ribs. The butchering videos at the bottom of the page are great.

Ingredients: 2 lbs of meat for roasting, 4 cloves of garlic, one medium onion, 2 strips bacon, salt, black pepper, caraway, head of red cabbage, side of dumplings, 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 teaspoons vinegar
Prep Time:2 hours

Turn the oven on to 450F. Rinse off the meat and make several slices into the meat. Stuff each with garlic (cesnak) – I used half a clove per slot. You can also stuff it with bacon (slanina). Coat with salt (soľ), pepper (čierne korenie), and caraway (rasca)

Melt bit of lard in a baking dish (or use little bit of oil). Add the meat along with an onion (cibuľa) sliced into rings, and 1/3 cup of water.

Cover and place in the oven. Turn the oven down to 350F and bake, covered, for one hour. In the mean time, prepare the dumplings and cabbage.

Cabbage and Dumplings

Remove the old outer leaves from the head of red cabbage (červená kapusta) and also remove the hard core. Cut it into two halves, and then cut each half into another half like shown. This makes it easy to cut it into strips that are not too long. Heat up two tablespoons of oil in a pot and add the cabbage. Also add a dash of salt, one teaspoon of caraway, and one 1/3 cup of water. Cover and let simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently.

Check to see if the cabbage is done. Add sugar and vinegar, two teaspoons each. Finish cooking uncovered. But keep an eye on it. I actually ended up overcooking my cabbage and it got mushy. Also prepare the dumplings.

Back to the meat

After the hour the meat has been baking, it’s time to turn it over. Carefully remove the baking dish out and, using a knife and a fork, flip the meat over. I had cut mine into two halves, which made this easier. Put the cover back on, and stick in the oven for another 30 minutes. Then remove the dish once again and take out the onion. Also spoon out 2/3 of the sauce into a mug. Place the glass baking dish back in the oven, but this time, keep it uncovered to roast the meat.

After 15 minutes of baking uncovered, baste the meat with the sauce in the mug. The mimibazar recipe said that basting with cool sauce helps the sauce penetrate more into the meat. Another 15 minutes, and it’s done.

Dinner is served!

You should let the meat rest before cutting (I didn’t do this, I only found that article afterwards). Letting the meat rest will allow the fibers to reabsorb moisture, leaving you with a juicier cut of meat. Serve with dumplings (I used both kinds) and the cabbage. And of course, few spoonfuls of sauce over the dumplings and the meat. Dobrú chuť!

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Here is a recipe for a really awesome and simple dish called živánska. There is really no way to translate the name, since it doesn’t mean anything, so I decided to go with meal in a foil. Because foil (alobal) is a crucial part of this dish. It is often baked in the fire pit during camping trips. The wrapped meal is placed in the hot coals and left there for an hour to cook. You can see great photos of this here.

In that Slovak recipe above (for those of you who don’t speak Slovak), the folks used tomatoes and a whole hunk of meat smeared in mustard. My mom makes this dish bit differently. This is her recipe. We actually made it, along with the soup from bones, while baking Christmas cookies few weeks ago.

We baked this dish at home, so we used a casserole pan lined with the aluminum foil. When you do this, make sure to use much more foil than the pan is wide, since you will need to cover up the top.

Peel and slice potatoes and place them in a layer on the bottom. Season heavily with salt, pepper, paprika, marjoram, and whatever else you like. Then add a layer of meat, cubed. Season heavily again.

Then add cut up onions. Season heavily. Then add more vegetables. We used celery, carrots and green peppers. Season heavily. Add bacon. Season heavily.

Fold the foil over, and then cover with another layer of foil, which you tuck under. Bake for a while, at least an hour. It’s best to avoid checking on the dish too often, so the juices don’t leak out. You may need to season the dish more when ready – despite all this heavy seasoning, it may need more. Serve just the way it is. Enjoy!

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Ingredients: 1 cucumber, half a clove of garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar, sugar
Prep Time: 10 minutes

Start by peeling the cucumber (uhorka). Slice it into thin slices using a box grater and place in a salad bowl. Then add a teaspoon of salt and half a clove of garlic (strúčik cesnaku), minced.

Then add sugar and vinegar, to taste. Or if you don’t like it too “vinegary”, mix the vinegar with water, so that you have enough liquid for the cucumbers to swim in. I ended up using two tablespoons of sugar and no water. Top off with black pepper and let sit for few minutes to allow the flavors mix through. Enjoy!

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Ingredients 2 beef pork round steaks (about 0.6lbs), half an onion, hot peppes, salt, black pepper, 50g mushrooms, lečo (or one bell pepper and one tomato), 1 teaspoon mustard, 1 teaspoon ketchup
Prep Time: 30 minutes

Start by cutting the meat into thin noodle strips. Do the same with the onion. Then sear it on hot oil from both sides for a minute or two.

Add the onions and cook until they start turning golden (another few minutes). Then add the remaining veggies: hot peppers, mushrooms, and lečo. If you don’t have lečo handy, you can substitute diced bell peppers and tomato.

But not having that either (the tomato, that is), I put in some four tablespoons of tomato paste. And to give it more color, I used half of a green pepper and half of a red one. Also mix in one teaspoon of mustard (I used the horseradish, chreň, kind), and the same amount of ketchup.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and continue braising until the veggies soften. I added about a cup of water to thin the tomato paste. Also, the peppers were not hot at all. So I added about a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper. I chose those peppers as they looked very much like the kind that’s used in Slovakia, called ram’s horn, baraní roh. If I remember right, they are much hotter overseas. Serve with rice, potatoes, or potato pancakes. Or, even IN a potato pancake… Dobrú chuť.

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Ingredients: 6 tomatoes (I used cherry tomatoes from my garden, but you can buy whatever kind you like), 2 peppers (no dark green) yellow or red, 2 onions, 4 gloves of garlic (I used small heads of garlic grown in my garden), 2 eggs, 1 big sausage, polska kielbasa or some type of hot dog (i usually use what I have left over in fridge; also cooked ground beef or ham is fine too), 5 table spoon oil, sour cream, salt, vegeta, bread

Cut up all ingredients based on the pictures below. In pan, saute the onion and after 7 min add minced garlic, sausage and peppers. Cook about 10 min and add tomatoes. Cook until tomatoes are soft (I like them a little crunchy and not cooked all the way through). Taste for seasoning as the amount of salt depends on the saltiness of your meat. Use salt and vegeta to taste. Then add 2 mixed eggs and cook an additional 5 min. Now you are done!

I put sour cream on top of plate, mix it up, and eat with good bread. My American husband doesn’t like sour cream, so you skip the last step. However, I sneak a little bit sour cream in the finished dish…just don’t tell him. He thinks there is not sour cream in his plate.

The ingredients for lečo, Slovak vegetable stew.

Saute the onion (cibuľa) and garlic (cesnak). Add sausages (klobásy).

Also add the peppers (papriky) and tomatoes (paradajky). Stir in the eggs (vajcia) once the vegetables soften.

Enjoy with good bread (chlieb). Dobrú chuť!

Visit SlovakMama.com to see the original recipe. For another simple breakfast dish, check out hemendex.

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