Spring is in the air! As the winter is going - slowly but surely - and nature is waking up after a long sleep, I feel ready for new adventures. I've set off for another culinary journey recently, collecting material for the last volume of A Taste of Slovakia series - the Spring Book. My … Continue reading In search of Slovakia’s sweet and savoury delicacies
I first heard about spravovník two years ago, when I was shooting Christmas wafers for the Winter Book at a country house in Mačov. It was one of the few abandoned houses in the village that had been turned into a museum of traditional folk culture. While I was documenting the wafer baking, we chatted … Continue reading Cheese and Potato Bread Cake from Mačov
Smoked pork is an essential part of Slovak Christmas. Often in the form of rolled pork shoulder or pork neck, it is cooked in kapustnica (Christmas sauerkraut soup) together with sausages. We also serve slices of smoked pork alongside the potato salad. Mäsové guľky na kyslej kapuste - as this dish would be called in … Continue reading Minced Pork Potato Balls on Sauerkraut
It was a clear and surprisingly warm weekend in mid-November with perfectly blue skies. My family and I had booked self-catering accommodation in a small village under the High Tatras - Slovak most visited mountains. It doesn't happen very often that the Tatras unveil their majestic peaks for longer than a few minutes, because the … Continue reading There are gems under the High Tatras you may have not heard about
Three volumes of A Taste of Slovakia series have been published to this date. The Summer Book, which came out at the end of 2016, is already sold out. The Autumn/Fall Book followed three years later and the new Winter Book has just come out. If you want to know where the books can be … Continue reading Where to buy A Taste of Slovakia books
Have you heard about witches' days and do you know what happens at this time of year in Slovakia? Have you tasted the beautifully crafted medovníky and would you like to know how these honey cookies are made? Or do you want to see what our Christmas dinner looks like? This and much more is … Continue reading Winter tastes of Slovakia are coming to bookshops
It's between September and November when the main cabbage harvest takes place in Slovakia. Although we grow spring and midsummer varieties that are harvested earlier in the year, autumn is the prime season for collecting firm storage cultivars and those that go in sauerkraut. It is also the best time to visit Slovakia if you … Continue reading The season of cabbage festivals has begun
Soups are rarely missing from a Slovak table, no matter what time of year it is. Sometimes they are clear meat or vegetable stocks with pasta added towards the end of cooking. These are usually served as starters or appetizers. At other times, they can be filling enough to stand as the main course, like … Continue reading Creamy Kohlrabi Soup
Putting together a cookbook during a global pandemic wasn't as easy as you might think. True, I had enough time for writing and testing recipes. I spent hours in the kitchen, and I didn't complain. Quite the oppostite, it was relaxing, sort of therapeautic. Doing online research was less fun, because we were all overloaded … Continue reading The Winter Book is already at the printers
First things first - you wouldn't hear about a starter or a dessert a hundred years ago, when kashas were part of each and every Slovak wedding. There was no wedding menu as we know it today, neither was there a written seating plan or candles or confetti. Yet there were quite a few norms, … Continue reading An old-style Slovak wedding kasha – was it a starter or a dessert?
cookslovak 