Ingredients: 10 cloves of garlic, butter, 4 potatoes, 8 cups of water, 2 tsp paprika, 1 tsp caraway, salt, toast, cheese
Prep Time: Fast, 20 minutes

Peel the cloves of garlic (cesnak) and crush them using a garlic press. Alternatively you can chop them using a grater, or just slice them fine with a knife (this is what I did). Melt two tablespoons of butter (maslo) in a pot and add the garlic. Fry for few seconds.

Next add some eight cups of water (voda), 2 heaping teaspoons of paprika (mletá červená paprika), another teaspoon of caraway (rasca), and salt (soľ) to taste. Then peel the potatoes, cut them into small cubes, and add to the pot.

Boil for about 15 minutes until the potatoes get soft. In the meantime, toast a slice of bread (chlieb). I toasted mine on butter in a frying pan but you could just use a toaster. Cut the toast into squares and put them in a bowl. Then scoop the finished soup over the bread.

Finally, grate some cheese into the soup (I used Swiss) and also decorate with some garnish, such as parsley (petržlenová vnať). Enjoy!

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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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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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Ingredients: 4 potatoes, 2/3 cups of flour, 1 cup milk, small onion, bacon bits
Prep Time: 30 minutes

Peel and cube several potatoes (zemiaky). While they are cooking, chop one small onion (cibuľa) and few strips of bacon (slanina).

Once the potatoes get soft, strain most of the liquid out into a cup. Add flour and mash everything together. Then add the liquid back. Also add salt to taste.

If the porridge is too thick, add another cup of water or milk. You could also use less flour but then you end up with less porridge…

Bring the porridge (kaša) back to boil while stirring so the potatoes don’t burn your pan. At the same time, fry the onion on small heat. I started by first frying the bacon on small heat to render the fat. After about 5 minutes, I added the onion and also a bit of butter. Cook the porridge until skin forms on top and the porridge starts “puffing” all over the place. Fry the onions until they are crunchy.

Top with the onions and bacon and serve with a glass of milk or kefir. There you have it, Slovakia’s second national dish!

Fučka is one of those foods that surely originated during the times when the pantries were less plentiful than today. It’s a super rich and filling dish (sýte jedlo). You won’t be hungry again for half a day after one bowl like this. If you want to put your family on a little financial diet, try serving this porridge few times a week. You could save some real money!

This porridge doesn’t have to be topped with bacon, or even onions. There are other popular toppings, including bryndza or fried cabbage. Feel free to experiment with whatever you like. And if you don’t know what the number one national dish of Slovakia is, it’s bryndzové halušky. Another popular traditional dishes are bryndza pierogi, and strapačky.

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Ingredients: frozen spinach, egg, potatoes, butter, salt, pepper
Prep Time: about 20 minutes

You will need a cube of frozen spinach (špenát). Melt butter in a skillet and add the defrosted spinach. Or optionally defrosted. I added it in frozen (I was hungry) and let it defrost in the pan, keeping it covered and scraping the melted spinach off the ice cube.

In the mean-time, boil potatoes and fry an egg. Also prepare zátrepka, which is a mixture of cream and flour. Basically add about a spoonful of flour into a bowl of cream, and blend in.

Stir the cream mixture into the spinach once the spinach is hot and much of the liquid has evaporated. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with mashed potatoes by placing the fried egg over the bed of spinach. Enjoy!

For another delicious vegetarian recipe, check out lečo.

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