It was during one of my pregnancies when I fell out of love with shop-bought ketchup. My taste became sharper and more sensitive to artificial flavourings and chemical preservatives, so I naturally avoided them in all foods. On one occasion though, I tried my mum's homemade ketchup, and it felt like a discovery. As a … Continue reading Home-made Ketchup
As with all other produce this summer, we're blessed with a plentiful crop of apricots. Their main growing area is in the warm southern regions of Slovakia, but thanks to the new tougher varieties developed over the last few years, we can now harvest this soft, fleshy fruit in colder climates as well. I don't … Continue reading Preserving apricots
This year's strawberry season has been so good and so long. Ample sunshine and an uncharacteristically warm spring made the berries ripen earlier than usual and brought about very good crops, even in areas that aren't normally considered 'strawberry-friendly'. To get hands-on experience of the harvest, we went to a self-pick farm about an hour … Continue reading Delicate Strawberry Pie
I have to say it straightaway that the title of this post is somewhat misleading. In fact, I'm going to show you how to separate curds from whey in leftover milk, which some people like to call 'old' milk. I, for my part, would never use the term for the milk that is close to, … Continue reading How to make your own cottage cheese
There is a host of traditions and beliefs linked to Slovak Easter. Some are Christian with traces of Jewish mythology, others have pagan roots. It seems to me though that they all celebrate Easter as a spring festival that brings new life. The Slovak name for the Thursday before Easter is Zelený štvrtok, which literally translates … Continue reading Potato Kugel
I came across the recipe for Sour Cherry Cakes (Višňové koláče) when I was researching beer as an ingredient in Slovak cooking. You might not know, as I hadn't before, that beer can also be used in baking. And you may be surprised, as I was two years ago, just by how tasty these little cherry-filled … Continue reading Sour Cherry Cakes
Sauerkraut is as important an ingredient in Slovak cooking as olive oil is in Italian or tofu in Asian. We grow up eating sauerkraut in both the raw form or cooked in our most typical and oldest dishes, like a sauerkraut soup or strapatchki. Indeed, all these ancient recipes come from the times when sauerkraut, alongside … Continue reading Red Lentil and Mushroom Dip
We have an abundance of forests, woods and meadows in Slovakia that are not only a home to flowers, berries, bears, wolves and other wildlife, but they also fill with a great variety of mushrooms every year. It's fair to say that Slovakia is a mushroom paradise. Mushroom picking has become a national sport, so … Continue reading Wild Mushroom & Tomato Risotto
When I was preserving cucumbers a few weeks ago, some of the vegetables were not suitable for pickling, mainly because of their size. So I had to put them away in the fridge, and use them either in salads, or cooking. Here's an example of what I did with the last one left in stock. … Continue reading Cucumber Patties with Parenitza Cheese
Have you ever heard of buckwheat? Did you know this long-forgotten food plant is more than 6000 years old? It was first cultivated in Southeast Asia, from where it slowly spread all over the world. As an inexpensive source of valuable proteins, buckwheat had played an important role in Eastern European cuisines before it was … Continue reading Buckwheat Groats with Sautéed Vegetables
