Another Christmas is over, another year is coming to a close. The festive cookies that we baked before Christmas are still in sufficient supply, but we have already finished cream-filled Honey Dough Slices and Štedrák - the traditional Christmas cake that would loosely translate as Generous Cake into English. To sweeten the last day of … Continue reading Glazed Apricot Cake with Whipped Cream Swirls
I love cooking with seasonal ingredients, especially when they are locally sourced and therefore at their freshest. This recipe is a good example of sustainable cooking: it features the iconic Slovak cheese, the asparagus grown in local farms, and bear garlic - a herb that is widely available in our woods and forests right now. … Continue reading Asparagus with Roast Potatoes and Garlicky Bryndza Cheese Sauce
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
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
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
Springtime brings fresh herbs to our forests and meadows. Many of them are edible and we not only use them to flavour food, but also cleanse our bodies and boost our immune systems after winter. Wild garlic, or bear garlic (medvedí cesnak), as we call it in Slovak, appears in our latitudes towards the end … Continue reading Millet Stir-Fry with Walnuts and Bear Garlic
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