jiri's cooking page

garlic

My mother was a great cook. So it came as a bit of a shock when I met Jana, my future wife, and she couldn't cook an egg for breakfast. She was from a better family, her mother was the same. They did not cook at home, they ate in restaurants. Someone else always cooked for them.

With me, Jana could not afford good restaurants. So we bought some pots and pans and learned how to prepare our own meals.

Over the years, Jana has become a competent cook. She bakes, for example, the best rye bread in town. But she does not enjoy cooking, so we share the load: I cook and she cleans the bathroom...

I am not a professional cook, just an enthusiastic amateur. So why am I doing this?
Ok. Most of us, immigrants, are reasonable cooks, because we want our basic comforts too. Unfortunately no one can be a master of everything, so we specialize and we share our masterpieces. These days, a web page is just a convenient replacement of greasy bits of paper traded in the past.
Also don't forget the kids. They want to know, now that their partners are nominally in control of their stomachs, how to prepare their own favorite dishes.

The number of 'normal' adults served is usually indicated as four, but bear in mind most of my recipes were originally designed to feed two adults, a couple of hungry teenagers and one or two of their precious friends who invariably turned up at meal times. If you are looking after a smaller bunch, and do not like leftovers, you can almost always safely halve the given quantities.

 

Recipes

Lentil Soup
Kulajda
Rye Bread
Potato Fritters
Bread Crumb Cake
Easter Bread
Filled Cakes
Muffins
Fancy Meat Loaf
Flat Roasted Chicken
Pork Roast
Goulash
Szeged Goulash
Meat Balls in Creamy Mushroom Sauce
Beef with Potatoes
Braised Kidneys
Potato Salad
Summer Fish Salad
Fabada
Spanish Birds
Stuffed Peppers in Tomato Sauce
Piquant Pot Roast
Stewed Cabbage
Fruity Coleslaw
Fried Rice
Spinach with Eggs
Cauliflower with Eggs
Bread Dumplings
Dumplings from Hot Potatoes
Raw Potato Dumplings
Tartar Sauce

Tips and Tricks

 

Lentil Soup (Cockova polevka)

My maternal grandmother, Cecilie, was a remarkable woman. She raised eleven children, six of her own and five other brought into the family by various men, who kept dying on her, figuratively speaking, I think.
She never had much of anything material in her life, just a small house, she built herself, less than two acres of land to feed all her children, a dog and a couple of cats, a pig, two or three goats (for milk) and a yard full of chickens. She also had a big heart and an enormous appetite for life.
I treasure my memories of rare weekends with her, I learned a lot. One summer, during the school holidays - I was only seven or eight - she introduced me to the magic properties of garlic. A terrible chicken plague was sweeping the district and Cecilie knew how to deal with it. I helped her force-feed her hens, a clove of garlic each, every day for about a week, and we saved them! Our flock was the only one in the neighbourhood that survived.

1 meaty bacon hock
300 g brown lentils
1 carrot, roughly sliced
1 stalk celery
1 smaller onion, quartered
3 or 4 large cloves garlic
about 10 whole spice and 10 black pepper corns
2 bay leaves
1.5 l water
soy sauce
plenty of chopped fresh parsley

Soak lentils in cold water for several hours, best over night.
Wash the bacon hock and cook it with all the vegetables and spices in a large pot, just submerged in water, until the meat is so tender it's almost falling off the bone. (You may prefer to save one or two cloves of garlic, mashed with little salt, until the soup is almost ready, for much sharper taste.)
Remove the hock. Strain the liquid and return it into the pan, this time with lentils. Cook them, occasionally stirring, until they are quite soft. Mash about two thirds quite finely, using your food processor, or a liquidiser, or simply forcing lentils through a coarser sieve with a spoon, but leave one third intact for a bit of a texture.
You can either discard all cooked vegetables, or dice the carrots and celery and shove them back to give soup more body and color.
Separate pure meat into smaller bits and return it into the pot too. The soup does not require any additional salt, there's plenty of it in the meat, but a splash of good quality soy sauce helps bring out the flavour. It's brilliant on a miserable winter day, served piping hot and garnished with lots of parsley. It is almost a complete meal with just a stick of french bread or a generous bowl of croutons.
It also freezes well, so if you make more than you can eat in a day or two, you can save some for the next wintery blast.

Serves 4, at least twice.
(toc)

 

Kulajda: cream dill soup [coo-li-dah]

This porcelain smooth, white summer soup comes from Southern Bohemia. In the original recipe some of the eggs were replaced, no doubt, by more potatoes and the sour cream with plain milk and perhaps few drops of vinegar, but it was still a fabulous midday treat for tired hay makers, to whom it was usually delivered in a large earthen pot wrapped in a blanket, together with a loaf of freshly baked rye bread.

1 l water or chicken/beef stock
400 to 500 g potatoes, diced (1cm)
handful of dried forest mushrooms, or two or three larger cultivated mushrooms, sliced
250 g sour cream
4 eggs
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
40 g butter
1 heaped dsp flour
fistful of fresh dill, stripped and chopped
salt and ground black pepper
optional: 1 tsp sugar and juice from 1/4 lemon

Soak the dried mushrooms in a cup of warm water.
Melt butter in a large pot, add flour and make a very pale roux. Just when it starts bubbling, add onions and cook for only a minute or two. Gradually add water, stirring vigorously all the time to prevent lump formation, then potatoes and some salt.
When the potatoes almost cooked, and they take only 10 to 15 minutes, add drained mushrooms, sour cream and dill. Bring back to a gentle boil, but remove from heat completely as soon as the first bubbles appear. Break the eggs into the soup, wait for about a minute, only until the whites are starting to set, and stir the lot a little to burst the yolks.
Adjust salt and pepper to taste, optionally adding up to a tea spoon of sugar and some lemon juice for sharper taste.

It is not a bad light lunch, or a substantial first course, with a hunk of fresh bread.

Serves four to six people easily.
(toc)

 

Rye Bread (Zitny chleb)

When my compatriots start moaning, again, about how hard it is to get a decent loaf of bread locally, and how nice bread was 'back home', my standard reply is that their beloved Czech rye bread was the real reason behind my emigration...

The following simple formula is my wife's creation. It is also the best Czech bread recipe, by far, used in the Southern hemisphere.

300 g hard flour
150 g rye meal flour
0.25 l water
1 dsp dry yeast
2 tsp salt
1 tsp carraway seed
splash of virgin olive oil (optional)

Dissolve a teaspoon of sugar in warm water. Add yeast and a dessert spoon of flour. Stir well, cover and leave for about 5 to 10 minutes, until quite frothy.
Combine the remaining dry ingredients, add olive oil (only if you like it, and just occasionally, for a bit of change) and activated yeast mixture. Knead it well, until it no longer adheres to the side of the bowl. The dough should be firm, but not dry, and quite elastic (if it is not, get better baking flour, harder, with a higher gluten content!). Leave it, covered preferably with a wet tea towel, until it at least doubles in volume, 'punching' it once or twice for even better results.
Turn it on to a floured surface and form into a small loaf. Transfer loaf on to a baking sheet and let it rest again for about 30 minutes, under cover in a warm spot.
If you like a darker, glossier look, wet the loaf surface with your hand dipped in running cold water just before you shove it into the oven. And do it again, once or twice towards the end of baking. But if you prefer dusty, floury surface, leave it as it is, and bake it in fairly hot oven for roughly 50 minutes. Initially at about 230 degrees C, but do not forget to turn it down to 200 after about ten minutes of baking.
(toc)

 

Potato Fritters (Bramboraky, cmundy)

Garlic, just like Paris, is always a good idea. And there should be tons of it in these fritters!
They have always been extremely popular with my kids and all their friends. These days only on very special occasions can I be forced to juggle two or three frying pans simultaneously over a hot stove to please the hordes. It is a dangerous job too, because I have to be a policeman as well as a judge to deal with the less scrupulous queue jumping family members, always prepared to snatch a fritter, out of turn and straight from the pan, even before it is properly cooked.

1.5 kg potatoes
250 g flour
0.75 l milk
3 eggs
100 g smoked ham or bacon, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, more if you really like it, mashed with salt
ground black pepper
pinch of marjoram
splash of soy sauce
lard or oil for frying

Scrub potatoes thoroughly and remove all blemishes, but do not peel unless absolutely necessary. They also have to be grated, which is the hard part. If you value the skin on your knuckles, use a food processor with a reasonably fine grater.
It is essential to get rid of as much starch as possible, a really good taste depends on it. My mother had a loosely woven linen bag specially for this purpose. She would fill it with grated potatoes and squeeze them almost dry by twisting the top of the bag. I use a larger sieve and the pressure of my palm to expel most of the starchy liquid. (The puzzling thing is, and I admit I don't understand it at all, the starch is almost immediately replaced again, only in a slightly different form, by flour! But it works...)
Mix all the ingredients. You should have a very fluid mixture. If not, add a bit more milk.
Only the best quality, fresh and pleasantly aromatic lard should be used. If you can't get it, any good odourless cooking oil is acceptable, but it is a distinctly inferior choice. Use liberal amounts of fat, even with modern non-stick pans. When a blue haze is starting to form, ladle a small heap of the mixture in to the middle of the pan. Spread it quickly and evenly with a fork, barely covering the bottom. The best fritter is really thin. Turn it over just when the underside has reached a deep gold color, possibly adding a bit of fat at the same time. When the other side is fried too, drain the fritter briefly on a paper towel, and serve immediately, while still really hot and crunchy.
Always taste the very first one, even if you have to fight for it, and adjust the seasoning as required.

Servers 4 or more, depending how much they like them...
(toc)

 

Bread Crumb Cake (Strouhankovy kolac)

I love french bread. I buy a 'boule' almost every morning on the way to work. The trouble is, with the boys gone and Jana always on some sort of a diet, I can't eat it all, even if I try. We finish with a mountain of stale bread every weekend. I grind it all into bread crumbs.
Bread crumbs are very important to Czechs. It's a national obsession. Almost anything can be drenched in flour, dipped in beaten eggs, coated in bread crumbs and fried. Steak, fish, chicken, sausages, sheep brains, cheese, mushrooms, cauliflower, liver, you name it, even slices of celeriac. Yuck!
But there are only so many Wiener schnitzels a man can eat in a week, so I am always on a lookout for a good recipe involving bread crumbs. I'll share some of them with you later, but the best must come first. The cake below is also my very own invention. You will love it!

5 eggs
150 g caster sugar
150 g unsalted butter, softened
200 g dry bread crumbs
100 g fine shredded coconut
2 tea spoons baking powder
2 to 5 dessert spoons water
500 g seasonal fruit
vanilla & lemon essence
some sugar to sprinkle on top of fruit
grease proof paper

Separate eggs.
Cream softened butter with caster sugar, yolks and flavourings until white and fluffy.
Mix bread crumbs with coconut and baking powder, and combine with the butter mixture. Add two to five dessert spoons of water, more if bread crumbs are really dry.
Beat egg whites to a stiff peak and fold gently into the mixture. It should be easily spreadable, but not runny.
Spread it evenly into a 30 cm greased & lined tin (I use a large flan dish) and cover with the fruit of the season.
Some fruit varieties, like apricots, red currents, or one of my favourites, thick slices of kiwi fruit, require a lot of extra sugar. Just sprinkle it on top, evenly, heaps of it!
Bake it at 180 degrees C for 45 to 55 minutes.
When it cools down a bit, flip it over, face down, on to a baking sheet. If you greased the sides of the dish properly, the cake will just pop out. Peel off the paper and flip it back on to a large plate.
Try it with fat ripe apricots. They taste great, and the warm smell of caramel, with just a hint of coconut, always reminds me of the tropics. And it sure looks almost as good as sunsets in Bali.

A weekend treat big enough for the whole family and some friends too.
(toc)

 

Easter Bread (Mazanec)

Easter 'Down Under' is a joyless affair, invariably accompanied by relentlessly grey skies and truck loads of inedible marshmallow eggs. Even the Easter bunny looks out of place in the driving rain at the beginning of winter...

Yesterday, to make my misery complete, I spent several hours searching for white eggs. Every Easter, while my boys were still manageable, we always decorated a plate full, about a dozen of cooked eggs in crazy colors and patterns in crude imitation of folk art. I wanted to start the same tradition with Monique, now that she is already four and always keen to make a mess. But for proper work of this kind you really need white eggs, and I would like to know why it gets harder and harder every year to purchase them! You can get all sorts of eggs these days, giant eggs, free range eggs, duck and quail eggs, you name it, but they are all brown or grey or spotty, and plain white ones are just as rare as the proverbial teeth of the creatures that are supposed to lay them. But I am rambling again...

500 g hard flour
250 g fine semolina
150 g sugar
150 g melted butter
0.35 l milk
3 eggs
100 g sultanas or mixed fruit
75 g sliced almonds
1 heaped dessert spoon dry yeast
1 tea spoon vanilla essence
zest of one lemon
1 tea spoon salt

Reserve half an egg and a small hand full of almonds for later.
As for bread dumplings below, or in fact any yeast dough, dissolve a teaspoon of sugar in warm milk. Add yeast and a dessert spoon of flour. Stir well, cover and leave for about 5 to 10 minutes, until quite frothy.
Combine dry ingredient, flour, semolina, sugar and salt. Make a well in the middle, break the eggs into it, add melted butter, grated zest of lemon, vanilla essence, and finally milk with yeast. Combine well and add the dry fruit and most of almonds. Knead until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl. If it is not firm enough, add a bit of flour. The dough should be quite firm, elastic, almost glossy.
Leave it in a warm place, covered with tea towel, until well risen, more than double in volume. You can also 'punch' it once or twice and leave it rise again for an even better result.
Form one large, or preferably two smaller round loaves on a greased sheet. Push them quite high, because the rich dough has a tendency to sag and spread under the heat.
Let it rise again for 20 to 30 minutes, brush the surface with the reserved beaten egg and sprinkle with the remaining almonds.

Bake initially at quite high temperature, 220 - 230 degrees C, for only about ten minutes. Then reduce the heat to about 180 for a total of about 40 to 50 minutes. The finished bread should have a deep, horse chestnut color, and when pierced with a skewer, the wood should come out quite clean. If the loaf starts to darken too soon too much, cover it with a piece of tinfoil or a sheet of greased paper (discarded butter wrapper is ideal).
For an extra effect, dust it generously, while still hot, with icing sugar. Vanilla flavored sugar is the best, if you can get it.
(toc)

 

Filled Cakes (Buchty)

Buchta (singular) is, no doubt, the most common kind of cake in Bohemia and Moravia. And because it is not particularly rich or excessively sweet, it also often doubles, usually in combination with a hearty soup, as a quick substitute for a main dish, especially popular with kids.
Buchty come with a variety of fillings, ranging from sweetened cottage cheese with raisins, through all sorts of jams and preserves, to special mixtures of chopped nuts and/or crushed poppy seeds and milk and sugar.

400 g hard flour
200 g fine semolina
100 g caster sugar
100 g melted butter
2 eggs
300 ml milk
fairly full dessert spoon dry yeast
grated rind of one lemon
1 tsp vanilla essence
300 g jam
salt

100 g additional melted butter for brushing
some icing (vanilla) sugar for dusting

Warm the milk in a microwave and stir in a tea spoon of sugar, a dessert spoon of flour and yeast, one of each. Mix all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and make a small well in the middle. Pour in melted butter and the yeast mixture, which by now should be nicely frothy. Finally add eggs, lemon rind and the vanilla essence. At this stage a really good food processor is highly desirable, because the dough has to be worked on heavily, kneaded basically until it no longer sticks to the wall of the bowl. The dough should be quite soft, easily spreadable, but definitely not sticky. When finished, cover it with a moistened tea towel and leave it in a warm place until it doubles in volume. That can easily take an hour, or even more, depending on the temperature.

In the meantime, grease thoroughly a big enough baking dish. I use a large 30 cm fluted pie dish, which is just about perfect for the given quantity. When the dough has risen, turn it on to a floured board and, using a large knife, divide it into a number of more or less equal bits. I usually end up with 24 little cakes. Pull each piece of dough into a circle about 70 mm in diameter and place a heaped tea spoon of filling in the middle. Lift the edges to form a little bag and pinch it closed. Place each little parcel, upside down, in the greased dish, starting at the edges, going round and towards the middle. Each parcel has to be brushed immediately and on all sides, otherwise the baked lot will not separate easily into individual cakes.
Leave the arranged dish to rise again. This time it should not take more than about half an hour in a warm spot.
Bake the cakes initially in a fairly hot oven, 220 to 240 C for only about ten minutes, then turn the heat down to about 170 degrees C and cook them for further 30 minutes, or until they have a deep gold colour.
Stand them for about ten minutes after they have been taken out of the oven, then turn them on to a suitable dish, and immediately, while still quite hot, dust them liberally with icing sugar. It will react with the hot, moist surface, creating a delicious crust.
(toc)

 

Muffins

Muffins do not really fit the style of Czech baking, which is much better known for its delicious yeast doughs and a huge variety of elaborate cookies and small cakes. I bake muffins quite often, mainly in emergencies: they are easy and very quick to make.

300 g small fruit(blackberries, raspberries, etc, frozen ok)
120 g butter
200 g caster sugar
60 g ground almonds
60 g flour
60 g dry breadcrumbs
3 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 dessertspoon vanilla essence
grated rind of a lemon
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 medium size muffin paper cups

Separate eggs.
Cream softened butter with sugar, yolks, vanilla essence and lemon rind until white and fluffy.
Mix remaining dry ingredients, and combine them with the butter mixture. Add milk, and finally fold egg whites, beaten to a stiff peak, gently into the mixture. Fill the paper cups in a lightly greased muffin tray and decorate each muffin with three or four pieces of fruit.
Bake in 175 degree C oven for about 30 to 35 minutes.
(toc)

 

Fancy Meat Loaf (Svatecni sekana pecene)

This is my granddaughter's favourite dish. For a Kiwi kid, she has got a surprisingly discerning palate!

400 g beef mince
400 g pork mince
2 stale bread rolls, cubed
0.15 l milk
2 eggs
50 g lard or oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, mashed
1 dessert spoon soy sauce
1 table spoon tomato paste
1 tea spoon mustard powder
1 tea spoon ground sweet paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 tea spoon marjoram
pinch of cayenne
0.1 l water

filling:
2 long frankfurters
2 sweet-sour gherkins, quartered length-wise
3 hard-boiled eggs, shelled

Cut bread rolls into 1 cm cubes and pour milk over them. Add fresh eggs, mix lightly and leave to soak for several minutes.
Add mince meat, onion, garlic, tomato paste, heaped tea spoon of salt, soy sauce and spices, and combine well. If the mixture is too moist, add a hand full of dry bread crumbs.
Cover the bottom of an oval lidded pyrex or ceramic dish with oil or lard. Use half the mixture to create a slightly hollow bed and arrange the boiled eggs, frankfurters and gherkins on it. Cover with the remaining meat mixture and form into a neat loaf. Add water, cover and roast in a fairly hot oven, 200 to 220 degrees C, for about an hour. Remove the lid, turn the heat down to about 180 degrees and cook for another hour, basting frequently, adding a little bit of water, if necessary.
Serve hot with boiled potatoes, stewed cabbage or coleslaw, and good Czech beer.
(toc)

 

Flat Roasted Chicken (Pecene kure naplacato)

I am sure you will not find this recipe in any cookbook. It is a fusion of an old Georgian dish with a hazy memory of a meal we had, many years ago, on holidays somewhere in the green heart of Portugal.

1 chicken, medium size
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1 small carrot, coarsely grated
4 or 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
50 g smoked ham or bacon, shredded
fist of fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons olive oil
20 g butter
ground sweet paprika, salt and ground black pepper
2 tablespoons water

You will need a larger stainless steel, ceramic or heat resistant glass dish (I use a circular Pyrex dish, 25 cm in diameter, which is just about perfect!). Mix onions, carrot, garlic, ham and rosemary with olive oil and water and cover the bottom of the dish evenly with the mixture. Cut through the breast bone and spread the chicken flat on the bench top. Sprinkle it on both sides generously with salt and pepper, and arrange it, skin down, on the mixture. Roast the bird in a 190 degree C oven for about 30 minutes, then take it out and turn it skin up, sprinkle with paprika and decorate with thin slices of butter. Turn the heat down to about 160 degrees and roast the chicken for a total of about two hours, basting frequently with its own juices.
Serve with plain long grain rice (basmati rice is my favourite!), or on a bed of couscous with currants and chopped almonds. (toc)

 

Pork Roast (Veprova pecene)

You will find pork roast with stewed cabbage and dumplings (vepro-knedlo-zelo) on a menu of every self-respecting restaurant of Central Europe. Germans and Austrians love it (with sauerkraut of course), Czechs and Slovaks cannot even imagine life without it. There are dozens of slightly different recipes of this truly national Czech dish in circulation, and the one below is quite good and very simple.

1 kg pork (loin or shoulder) in one piece
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
20 to 100 g of lard or equivalent amount of oil
4 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp caraway seed
salt and lots of ground black pepper
1 cup stock, or just water

I prefer to use a pyrex or a ceramic dish with a transparent lid, so I can see what's happening without opening the oven door. Just sprinkle the joint with salt, pepper, garlic and caraway seeds on a bed of a mixture of lard and onion chunks. Use only good quality, aromatic lard; if it's not available, virgin olive oil gives the dish an interesting twist. The amount of additional fat depends, obviously, on how lean the meat is. Finally, add 1/2 cup of water or stock and bake, covered, in 200 degree C oven until the meat is very tender, possibly for up to two hours. Turn the joint once or twice during roasting, and baste it often, adding more stock if necessary. At the same time, try scraping most of the brown film developing on the walls of the dish into the juices, it improves the taste enormously. Take the lid off for the last 30 or 40 minutes, or, alternatively, you can finish the crackling separately - it takes just a few minutes under the grill.
Rest the meat for at least 10 minutes after roasting, and serve it thickly sliced with steamed bread dumplings or raw potato dumplings and stewed cabbage.
The serving trick is to keep every thing separate on pre-heated plates, so that dumplings do not get soggy. Put just a few drops of juice on each dumpling slice, for decoration only, and use the rest to enhance the flavour of the cabbage.
Serves 4.
(toc)

 

Goulash (Gulas)

A variant of this famous Hungarian dish can be found on the menu of every pub in Bohemia (Czech part of the Czech Republic - the other, smaller eastern part, is Moravia)

700 g lean meat, cut to bite-sized pieces
3 table spoons lard or oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1 red pepper, sliced to thin ribbons
3 cloves garlic, mashed
0.25 l bouillon or water
1 dessert spoon flour
1 teaspoon ground sweet paprika
salt and ground black pepper to taste
pinch of cayenne, optional

Just about any kind of meat can be used. Beef is the most common, pork and lamb is also used a lot as well as chicken, rabbit and goat, even fish. Excellent chewy goulashes can also be made from hearts (beef, pork or sheep - they all taste roughly the same), or even a mix of meats.
The best are cheaper cuts of meat with plenty of connective tissue, it contributes beautiful viscosity to the sauce.
Seal the meat quickly on all sides in very hot fat. Add onions and stir-fry for three or four minutes, then turn the heat down and add half the stock, tomatoes, garlic, salt and spices. Cook slowly until the meat is almost tender, shaking the saucepan occasionally and adding liquid as required.
Finally stir in the flour and cook for about 15 minutes longer.
Fold in the red pepper ribbons just before serving with steamed bread dumplings, or rice, boiled potatoes, or even pasta.
(toc)

 

Szeged Goulash (Segedinsky gulas)

This is a truly marvellous variation. Just follow the goulash recipe above, using traditional belly pork.
Stir a can (400 g) of sauerkraut into the finished dish and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes longer. Remove from heat, add 200 g of sour cream and serve.
(toc)

 

Meat Balls in Creamy Mushroom Sauce (Masove kulicky ve smetanove omacce s houbami)

My first encounter with meat balls was in a Copenhagen restaurant way back in 1968. Tiny, cherry sized, flavourless balls drowned in a sickeningly sweet tomato sauce. It took me good thirty years to get over that experience!

500 g pork, or pork-and-veal mince
1 large bread roll cut into small (1 cm) cubes
2 eggs
100 g brown mushrooms, sliced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, mashed
dash of tomato sauce
2 table spoons oil
1 table spoon butter
1 tea spoon sugar
salt, ground black pepper
200 g sour cream
1 table spoon tomato concentrate
1 cup stock, or water
1 cup milk
some flour

Mix bread cubes with eggs and 1/2 cup of milk. Add mince, garlic, half onion, salt, pepper and a dash of tomato sauce. Blend thoroughly, and if the mixture is too runny, add a handful of dry bread crumbs.
Form little balls, not bigger than a golf ball, and roll them in flour. Fry balls in fairly hot oil, and when they are brown on all sides, take them out. Discard most of the oil, add butter, mushrooms and the second half of the onion. Toss for a minute or two, stir in a desert spoon of flour and cook for another minute. Gradually add stock, tomato concentrate, sugar and remaining milk while stirring diligently. Return the balls into the pan, turn the heat right down and cook gently for at least thirty more minutes.
Finally mix in the sour cream, adjust salt, add some black pepper, or even a dash of soy sauce. Serve with pasta, or rice, or ever popular bread dumplings.
Serves four, preferably with plenty of green salad on the side.
(toc)

 

Beef with Potatoes (Hovezi s bramborami)

If I had enough money and a lot more courage, I would buy a small house somewhere in the Tuscan hills and spend the rest of my days sipping Vin Santo and reading...

I am not quite sure about the Florentine origins of this dish, but it's my favorite. It has a clear Italian charm: unpretentious simplicity, with just a handful of fresh rosemary and plenty of good red wine.

700 g rump steak
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
fresh rosemary
0.3 l red wine
800 g potatoes
1 ripe tomato, or a good dessert spoon tomato paste with 1/2 cup beef or chicken stock, if it's handy, otherwise just some water
olive oil
salt and ground black pepper

You will need a sharp knife to cut the steak into really thin strips, not more than three or four millimeters thick. Stir-fry the meat in a splash of really hot olive oil, for about three minutes, turn down the heat a little, and add salt, pepper and finely chopped onion, tomato, garlic and rosemary. Keep stirring while gradually adding wine. Finally, if you do not use fresh tomato, dissolve the tomato paste in the stock and pour it in as well. Cover and cook on low heat for about 30 or 40 minutes, until the meat is almost tender, before adding cubed (15-20 mm) potatoes. They do not require more than 10 to 15 minutes. The finished mixture should be fairly dry; if it is too dry, just add a bit more wine!

I do not usually prepare this dish myself, my wife does, when she wants to please me. And believe me, it works!
Serves 4.
(toc)

 

Braised Kidneys (Dusene ledvinky)

You need a strong kitchen fan to attempt this simple marvel. The smell during the first fifteen, twenty minutes of cooking is ghastly - only a badly maintained public pissoire can match it - but the finished dish is sheer heaven.

750 kidneys
0.25 l stock or water
3 table spoons oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tomato, diced
0.1 l dry white wine
1 dessert spoon flour
1/2 tea spoon caraway seeds
1/2 tea spoon ground sweet paprika
1/2 tea spoon ground black pepper
salt
splash of soy sauce

optional:
100 g ham, cut to match sticks, or
2 smoked frankfurters, thinly sliced, or
150 g mushrooms, sliced

Any kind of kidneys is fine, but I prefer pig's kidneys, they have a nice nutty flavour.
Halve kidneys length-wise and discard all fat, ducts and veins. Slice them thinly across (3 to 5 mm) and stir-fry in very hot oil for at least 20 minutes. By this time the smell becomes almost bearable and most of the juices would have evaporated, so you can add stock, onions, garlic, tomato, spices, and ham, if you like, or frankfurters, or mushrooms. Turn the heat right down, cover and simmer until the meat is quite tender, it usually takes about an hour. Finally stir in some flour with a splash of wine and cook for 10 to 15 minutes longer.
Add the soy sauce and serve with fluffy long grain rice and plenty of crisp green salad.

Serves 4.
(toc)

 

Potato Salad (Bramborovy salat)

Way back in my younger days everybody loved potato salad, it was quite rare and it was special. My mum prepared it only three or four times a year, it was simply too much trouble.
It is not such a big deal these days, all the ingredients are readily available, and you don't even have to make your own mayonnaise...

750 g potatoes
2 medium carrots
2 celery sticks
200 g green peas
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 large cooking apple, diced (1 cm)
2 sour-sweet gherkins, finely chopped
1 dessert spoon capers, chopped
2 heaped tablespoon good quality European style mayonnaise
ground black pepper and salt
optional: juice of 1/2 lemon

If you do not have good waxy potatoes, don't even bother, they are essential.
Scrub the potatoes, but do not peel! Cook them slowly in salted water, adding carrots and celery after about 10 minutes of boil. Test the potatoes quite often with a fork or a tip of a knife - make absolutely sure you do not over cook them. Drain and allow the vegetables to cool right down to room temperature.
Peel the potatoes and dice them (1 cm), add green peas, chop up everything else, and toss the lot very lightly with mayonnaise. Adjust salt and black pepper to taste. Squeeze some lemon juice over the salad, if you like sharper taste. For the best result, allow flavours to fully develop: refrigerate for several hours, or better still, overnight. (toc)

 

Summer Fish Salad (Letni rybi salat)

Fish does not figure terribly prominently in the Czech cooking landscape. It is very much a one day wonder: traditionally Christmas Eve dinner consists almost entirely of fish dishes. At any other time of the year, unfortunately, you probably have to travel to Trebon, about 250 km south of Prague, where the Christmas Carp is farmed in huge man-made lakes, to get a decent fish bite.

For some reason, this salad is hugely popular with both young and old. When people ask me 'what's in it', I usually say 'whatever was in the fridge'. It sounds flippant, but it's true. As with all my salads, there are no rules. I simply use whatever is left in the vegetable bin, usually seasonal offerings, in peak condition, cheap and plentiful...

250-300 g fish, boned and skinned
2 hard-boiled eggs, roughly chopped
1 heaped tablespoon good quality European style mayonnaise
1 small apple, cored, quartered and thinly sliced
1 small onion, quartered and sliced
6 firm ripe cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 lettuce, just the inner heart, roughly torn or chopped
juice of 1/2 lemon
ground black pepper and salt

Additional and strictly optional ingredients:

1/2 red pepper, sliced
handful of bean sprouts
dozen olives
2 or 3 spring onions, sliced
1 small sour-sweet gherkin, halved and thinly sliced
1 small stalk of celery, sliced
1 small orange, peeled and segmented
2 or 3 cultivated mushrooms, sliced
100 g cooked small prawns
etc, etc...

Use only a firm flesh fish. Blue cod is probably ideal, but I personally prefer red gurnard, if I can get it at a reasonable price.
Put fillets in a ceramic bowl, drizzle with lemon juice, and microwave on high for about two minutes. Let it stand for another minute or two, rearrange the fillets slightly, and microwave again for one more minute, or until all flesh loses its translucency. Set aside to cool.

Put everything else, except mayonnaise, in a large salad bowl. Discard accumulated liquid from the fish (some cats love it!), and crumble the fillets into the bowl as well. Add the mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and very gently toss, only until the mayonnaise is evenly distributed. Serve chilled with crusty bread, a glass of your favorite white, and with plenty of sunshine.
(toc)

 

Fabada (Fazole po Spanelsku)

It was time for lunch on a cool, early summer day in Asturias. Or was it Cantabria? I do not remember exactly, somewhere in the north, my favorite part of Spain - after Barcelona, of course. We stopped in a small village in front of an unremarkable pub. It did not look much, but there were just enough cars parked around, always a good sign!

On the inside it was a gem. A large room, with just a handful of people, full of light contrasts and beautiful smell of roasted meat, garlic, spilled wine and smoke from an open fire next to the bar. We sat by the window in a pool of sunlight and watched, utterly fascinated, a strange ritual unfolding in the opposite, darkened part of the room. A couple of older men were tasting local cider. The first release of the season, we were told later, with much waving of hands. - They could not speak English and our Spanish was even worse. But that's a different story...

As usual on the road, we were having coffee and a glass of water first. Just to relax and gain some time for the most important decision of the day: what to eat and what is most likely a good local dish.

A young goat, or a lamb was gleaming on a spit by the fire, and I was going to have a bit of that, I thought, even if I had to steal it. Then an enormous plate of beans hit the next table. It belonged to a young truck driver with a shy, friendly smile. He obviously enjoyed his food: Fabada! I almost shrieked when its aroma reached my nostrils...

An this is how I remember my glorious lot, that arrived only about ten minutes later:

400 g beans (any mixture, but some large Fava beans should be in it)
200 g Chorizo sausage
150 g Morcillia (salty Spanish blood sausage)
1 medium onion
1 red pepper
4 cloves garlic
good splash of olive oil
saffron or sweet ground paprika
ground black pepper and salt

stock:

1 ham bone
1.5 l water
handful of coarsely chopped root vegetables (carrot, parsnip and a stalk of celery)
six black pepper corns
six whole spice kernels
a couple of bay leaves

or

1.5 l water with some instant stock
200 g ham

Soak beans for several hours, preferably overnight.
Prepare stock from the bone, vegetables, pepper corns, whole spice and bay leaves in a large soup pot. Boil until the meat starts, literally, falling off the bone, and drain. (Plain instant beef or chicken stock is also not a bad, although definitely inferior, alternative.)
Drain beans and cook in the broth until quite soft.
Brown roughly chopped sausages and ham in olive oil, add diced onion and pepper and minced garlic, and cook until just soft.
Mash about a third of beans and return to the pot together with the sausage mixture. Add saffron or a dessert spoon of paprika and simmer for about 30 minutes longer. Adjust salt, grind a bit of black pepper into it as well, if you like, and serve it hot with your favorite bread and a glass of Spanish red.
(toc)

 

Spanish Birds (Spanelske ptacky)

Why Spanish? I don't have a clue. In fact it is a classic dish, almost as much a fixture in the Czech culinary landscape as 'vepro-knedlo-zelo' (a folk shorthand for 'pork roast and stewed cabbage with dumplings'), or the Sunday treat, veal schnitzels and potato salad.
The beauty of this dish is that it can be prepared a day or two in advance. It actually gets better every time it is re-heated. It also freezes well. I used to make huge quantities of it when I was taking my older son's team to table tennis matches around the country some fifteen years ago. Much later I learned the boys had called it, affectionately of course and behind my back, Jiri's turds.

4 beef schnitzels, thin and large
4 rashers streaky bacon
1 hard boiled egg, quartered
1 pickled sour-sweet gherkin, quartered
1 medium size onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 tomato or a table spoon of tomato paste
1 table spoon lard or some oil
prepared mustard
sweet or bitter-sweet paprika powder
salt and ground black pepper
handful of bread crumbs
about 2 cups of water
dash of worcerstershire sauce

Spread the schnitzels on the bench top, smear them with mustard and sprinkle with salt, black pepper and liberal amounts of good paprika powder. Arrange the egg quarters as well as the gherkin and the bacon slices in neat piles on each schnitzel and roll into small parcels. Secure with toothpicks, or better still, wind about a metre of thin white sewing thread around each 'bird' in a spiral, especially if the beef slices have a tendency to fall apart.
Brown the rolls on all sides in smoking hot fat, then reduce the heat and add a cup of water, onion, garlic and the chopped tomato. Cook gently in a small amount of liquid for about an hour, or perhaps a bit longer, until the meat is quite tender.
Remove the 'birds' from the juices, toss in the bread crumbs and add some water, or a splash of wine, if you just happen to hold a bottle in your hand. Cook for several more minutes, stirring diligently.
Remove the toothpics or the string and reheat the 'birds' in the sauce before serving on a bed of plain rice or with dumplings.
(toc)

 

Stuffed Peppers in Tomato Sauce (Plnene papriky v rajske omacce)

I loved mum's stuffed peppers, they were sure sign of summer: tomatoes in our garden were ripening, Bulgarian peppers were plentiful and very sweet, and the long school holidays were just around the corner...

4 medium size peppers, any color
400 g mince, preferably mix of pork and veal
2 eggs
1/2 cup cooked left overs: rice, or chopped pasta or potatoes
500 g ripe fresh tomatoes, or contents of a small can
1 table spoon tomato concentrate
0.5 l beef/chicken/vegetable stock or just plain water
1 medium size onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 medium size onion, finely chopped
4 table spoons oil
2 table spoons flour
2 bay leaves
salt and ground black pepper to taste
dash of Worcestershire sauce

Brown mince quickly in two table spoons of very hot oil, add rice, eggs and half of the onions together with one clove of garlic, teaspoon of salt and lots of ground black pepper. Stir until the eggs are almost set. Set aside to cool a little.
Cut off the stem ends of peppers, make lids about 1 cm thick. Discard the seed clusters and the stems. Stuff each pepper with enough meat mixture that tops are filled as well when the peppers are closed.
In a pot just large enough to hold all four peppers, prepare very pale roux using the remaining oil and flour. Gradually add stock, then chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, garlic and bay leaves, and simmer for about 15 minutes. Add salt and ground black pepper, and discard the bay leaves. Carefully lower the stuffed peppers into the sauce. The peppers should be almost totally submerged. If not, just add a bit more water or stock. Cook on very low heat for 10 to 15 more minutes. Do not stir, just occasionally shake the pot a little.
Finally add Worcestershire sauce, and serve with rice, or boiled potatoes or even bread dumplings. (toc)

 

Piquant Pot Roast (Pikantni hovezi pecene)

Almost all my recipes are real mongrels. Most of them are vague recollections of treats from my childhood, some are fading travel memories, and the rest simply bastardizations from obscure cook books to suit truly primitive local conditions, as we encountered them some thirty years ago.
A dish remotely similar to this one is still popular in some parts of southern Moravia.

1.0 to 1.5 kg beef
100 g smoked speck (pork fat)
100 g ham
2 hard boiled eggs
2 small or 1 larger pickled gherkin (sour-sweet)
1 dessert spoon pickled capers (optional)
larger knob of lard or small quantity of oil
2 tea spoons cornflour
about 3 cups of water in total
3 or 4 thin slices of ginger or a pinch of ground ginger
1 clove garlic
salt and ground black pepper to taste
a bit of soy sauce, if you must

Clean and trim the meat, remove all excess fat. You can use a cheaper cut, it does not matter, because it will be cooked very slowly. Tougher cuts take a little longer, but are just as good if not tastier.
Cut speck into slightly tapered sticks, blunt wedges several centimetres long and not more than 5 to 10 mm across, and thread the meat with them evenly. (You can buy fancy instruments for doing this, but I use a sharp thin knife to make a deep incision, then I twist the knife handle a little and slide the wedge along the blade into the cut.)
Heat oil or lard in a heavy, thick bottom sauce pan. (I use a larger ceramic dish in which the roast can be eventually served.) Sear the meat quickly on all sides, then kill the heat with a cup of water. Add salt, lots of black pepper, ginger and finely chopped garlic.
Cook for about two hours, until the meat is really tender, turning it occasionally and adding a bit of water each time to prevent it from burning dry. It can be cooked either on a stove, or in an oven (at about 180 degrees C).
Take the meat out of the pan. Mix cornflour with about a cup of water and combine the mixture with the juices in the pan. Bring to a gentle boil again, just for a couple of minutes. Add gherkins and ham, both cut to matchstick pieces, as well as roughly chopped eggs and capers.
Cut the meat, across the grain, into thin slices and reheat in the sauce.
Serve with dumplings or plain long grain rice.
(toc)

 

Stewed Cabbage (Dusene zeli)

Cabbage, regardless of its color, has only one purpose in life: to accompany pork roast and dumplings to the table. Traditionally Czechs prefer it also murdered. Moravians are even worse, they add generous dusting of flour in the final stages of very long cooking process; it's not just dead, it's also slimy!

1/2 cabbage, shredded
1 medium size onion, finely chopped
1 large apple
1 kiwi fruit (optional)
1/4 cup oil
1 or 2 dessert spoons sugar
5 whole cloves
spash of cider vinegar
1 small glass wine (optional, white with white cabbage, red with red)
1/2 cup water
salt

Put finely shredded cabbage with a small quantity of water, less than a litre, in a large pot and bring to vigorous boil, uncovered. Keep turning the cabbage for two or three minutes, until it's all nicely wilted, and then strain. This is supposed to get rid of all unpleasant, sharp tastes and odours.
Saute the onions in oil and return the cabbage when they turn translucent. Add all remaining ingredients, coarsely grated apple and finely sliced and chopped kiwi fruit last. Cook for not more than about ten minutes. At this stage you have to do quite a bit of tasting to balance sugar with the acidity of kiwi fruit and vinegar, so you have to watch it, it's so easy to over cook!
The final product should have mildly sour-sweet taste and very little liquid, but it must not be dry. And if it still has some residual firmness, a bit of bite, so much better. It is customarily served in large dollops with all sorts of dumplings (boiled potatoes are ok too), always moistened with meat juices.
(toc)

 

Fruity Coleslaw (Americky zelny salat)

I make coleslaw quite often, especially when our grandchildren are around - it is just about the only salad males of all ages would eat without duress.

1/4 cabbage, shredded
1/2 medium size onion, finely chopped
1 larger carrot, coarsely grated
1 large apple (don't peel!), coarsely grated
2 pieces kiwi fruit, peeled, quartered and finely sliced
2 tablespoons European style mayonnaise
salt and ground black pepper

optional:
1 stalk celery, finely sliced
handful of bean sprouts
handful of currants
juice of 1/2 lemon & tea spoon of sugar for sharper taste

Shred cabbage, as finely as your patience will allow, into a large bowl. Add everything else (apple last to minimize browning!) and toss lightly.
(toc)

 

Fried Rice (Smazena ryze)

For mysterious reasons risotto is back in vogue. I hate it - I do not like sticky, gooey dishes. Fried rice is a much better alternative to dispose of your leftovers.

about 300 g of cooked meat, finely sliced
50 g smoked ham or bacon, shredded
1 to 2 cups of boiled fluffy rice
1/2 cup green peas
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 egg
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons oil
salt, ground black pepper and cayenne to taste
fist of parsley or coriander, chopped

optional:
1 or two dried tomatoes, chopped
2 or 3 mushrooms, sliced
1/2 red pepper, diced
1/2 teaspoon your favourite curry powder

Stir fry meat, ham, onions and garlic in very hot oil until onions start to caramelize (about 10 minutes). Add rice and peas and reheat. Finally add the egg, salt, spices and soy sauce, and cook for about two or three minutes longer, stirring diligently. Serve garnished with parsley, or coriander if you can stand it (toc)

 

Spinach with Eggs (Spenat s vejci)

I have never met a child that likes spinach. Or lentils. In my case, you could add tomatoes as well. I avoided all of these, like a deadly plague, until I was about twenty! - It's funny how our tastes change as we grow older...
Well, since you are reading this, I hope you are mature enough to enjoy the following simple recipe.

large bunch of spinach, at least 300 to 400 g
1 medium size onion, finely chopped
3 eggs
1 tbsp flour
3 to 4 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup oil
1 litre water
salt and ground black pepper to taste

Wash spinach under running water, discard damaged leaves as well as the bottom two centimetres near the roots. Boil water in a large pan, and cook spinach for just a few minutes, not more than two or three, until it is all nicely wilted, forcing leaves under water, if necessary. (Genuine cooks, the real professionals, recommend plunging boiled spinach, immediately, into iced water to preserve the color - but I am not a professional, and I am colorblind too...)
Strain, saving about 1/2 cup of liquid for later.
When spinach is cool enough to handle, chop it reasonably finely, or better still, give it a pulse or two in a food processor. But do not over do it, if you do not want to end up with a horrible, runny mush.
Saute chopped onions in oil, add flour and stir for a couple of minutes, then add spinach. At this point you can add several spoons of the saved liquid. The dish must not be swimming in juices, but it also should not be dry.
Finally, when the spinach is reheated, add garlic mashed with a bit of salt, stir in eggs, very gently, and season with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

What can you do with it? - I can be served, hot, with any kind of meat, roasted or stewed. It is also nice with sausages and barbecues, or even on its own, perhaps just with some boiled new potatoes. I love it piled up on a piece of french bread, cut length wise, topped with a thin slice of cheese and grilled for several minutes, until the cheese is bubbly and turning dark gold at the edges...
(toc)

 

Cauliflower with Eggs (Kvetakovy mozecek)

I hated a simpler version of this dish my mother used to make. Its Czech name translates as "cauliflower brains", in other words 'fake' brains, a lousy substitute for the real thing, a reflection of the times when you needed a medical certificate, or at least a party card, to get what you really wanted from your butcher...

about a quarter of a large cauliflower head, broken into small florets
50 g smoked ham, cut into matchstick sized strips
1/2 medium size onion, finely chopped
4 or 5 eggs
3 to 4 cloves of garlic, mashed with salt
40 g butter
3 button mushrooms, sliced
handful of chives, chopped
salt and ground black pepper to taste

Boil cauliflower in salted water for about 7 to 10 minutes, until it is just tender with a bit of residual firmness, and drain.
Fry onions, ham and mushrooms in very hot fat until the onions start to caramelize. Add cauliflower with garlic, reheat while tossing lightly, and finally add the eggs, salt and pepper, and combine gently.
Remove from heat just as the eggs begin to set.
Serve sprinkled with chives with boiled potatoes and your favourite white wine.
(toc)

 

Bread Dumplings (Houskove knedliky)

Dumplings are universally popular throughout Central Europe, but only Czechs find them really indispensable. This recipe is a sort of an every day classic: ubiquitous plain bread yeast dumplings.

250 g hard flour
150 g fine semolina
120 g stale white bread
0.2 l milk
2 eggs
1 level dessert spoon dry yeast
1 tea spoon sugar
1 tea spoon salt

Dissolve sugar in warm milk. Add yeast and a dessert spoon of flour. Stir well, cover and leave for about 5 to 10 minutes, until quite frothy. Combine flour, semolina and salt. Make a well in the middle, break the eggs into it, and finally add the milk with yeast. Knead until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl.
Cut bread into small, about one centimetre cubes. Ideally, the bread should be several days old. If it's too fresh, fry it, with just enough butter (or oil) to cover the bottom of a thick frying pan, until a golden brown.
The dough should be quite soft. Combine it thoroughly, on a floured board (clean bench top is ok!) with the bread cubes. Cut it in half and form two cylindrical shapes, each about 20 centimetres long. Cover them with a tea towel and leave in a warm place until risen to almost twice the original volume. Boil them, covered, in a very large pan, half full of vigorously boiling salted water for about 25 minutes, turning once.
Remove them, using a couple of smaller plates, onto a cutting board and puncture them right through, immediately, three or four times with a thin knife (this is supposed to stop them from collapsing as the steam inside condenses!). They are traditionally served cut, using a string loop, into 1.5 to 2 centimetre thick round slices.
(toc)

 

Dumplings from Hot Potatoes (Knedliky z horkych brambor)

This is a very simple recipe for all seasons. Most often it is used to make fruit dumplings: in late spring strawberry or tiny cherry dumplings, later in summer really delicious apricot ones, and in autumn, when sweet, dark blue European plums ripen, the best of the lot, famous Czech plum dumplings. Plain round dumplings are also popular with all roasts, usually served together with stewed cabbage.

600 g potatoes
200 g fine semolina
100 g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder (optional)
1 egg
teaspoon salt

Peel potatoes and chop them into smaller (about 2 to 3 cm) chunks. Boil potatoes until they are just soft, but drain them well before they start falling apart. Mix the dry ingredients together, form a heap on a kneading board or a patch of clean bench surface, and crush the hot potatoes into the flour mixture. Make an indentation in the middle and break an egg into it. Combine the sticky lot together thoroughly. Work reasonably fast, because the dough has a tendency to get even stickier with time!
For plain dumplings, divide the dough into six even parts and form little balls. For fruit dumplings the number obviously depends on the size of fruit. For cherries about 18 would be right, for plums it would be too difficult to enclose the fruit with more than twelve pieces. (Hint: dip your hands as well as fruit in flour).
Have a large pot half filled with vigorously boiling salted water ready and quickly, but carefully lower the dumplings into it. Initially they sink to the bottom, so it is a good idea to loosen them after about a minute. Eventually they will float to the surface and will be ready to take out with a slotted spoon after about ten to twenty minutes, depending on their size.
Fruit dumplings are served with a variety of sweet toppings. Sour cream or plain cottage cheese sprinkled with raw sugar is quite popular, grated ginger bread, or bread crumbs fried with little butter to gold colour and sweetened with icing sugar are also good alternatives. With plums it has to be crushed poppy seeds mixed half-and-half with icing sugar, with melted butter poured all over it!
(toc)

 

Raw Potato Dumplings (Bramborove knedliky)

This is not the classic 'blue' dumpling (some times also called 'hairy') that my father loved so much, but it is very similar. Simply a must with a roasted duck or a goose. My mother hated them, because they were just too much trouble in those pre- food processor days. And if my father was really desperate, he had to grate the potatoes himself. And he usually did.

This simpler recipe was given to me by a friend, a properly qualified cook. Unfortunately, she is no longer with us. No, she is not dead, just departed. She tried to make it on the local restaurant scene for more than twenty years, but eventually gave up two or three years ago and went back home. I heard she has a thriving business in a small provincial town in Eastern Bohemia.* If you try this recipe, you will know why...

* 5 Aug 2000 : Not any more. At the end of last year Toni was diagnosed with cancer. She rapidly deteriorated and I've just learned she died three weeks ago. Rest in peace, my friend...

800 g potatoes
200 g fine dry bread crumbs
2 large or 3 small eggs
salt

Prepare the potatoes the same way as for the potato fritters . Once again expel as much starchy liquid as possible from the potato mass, before adding all the remaining ingredients and mixing them together thoroughly. At this stage you will have to get your hands dirty. You will have a very dry, non-cohesive mixture, if you did it right. Divide it into four to six even parts and form perfect balls. - It can be done, I did it only this afternoon...
Boil them, covered, in plenty of salted, vigorously boiling water for about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on size. Loosen them, after the first three or four minutes, from the bottom of the pan, they will reluctantly float to the surface. When you think they are ready, take just one out, cut it in half, and if the inside is still quite raw, put it back for five more minutes, it will be ok.
(toc)

 

Tartar Sauce (Tatarska omacka)

I have never found good enough commercially produced tartar sauce. So I make my own - it's easy!

2 or 3 heaped table spoons European style mayonnaise
1/2 small onion or a whole shallot, chopped
2 small firm sour-sweet gherkins, chopped
1 dessert spoon capers, chopped
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 tea spoon your favourite mustard
1 dessert spoon tomato ketchup
a good shake of black pepper
optional: tea spoon green pepper corns, chopped

Just mix everything together and serve! (toc)

 

Tips and Tricks

In all our daily activities, including sex, we derive a lot of satisfaction, yes, even pleasure, from the use of the right equipment. It is even more important in the kitchen than it is in the bedroom. Good quality, but not necessarily the most expensive ingredients are even more important. What does it mean? Whenever possible, just go with the seasons. Select and buy your fruit and vegetables when they are plentiful, cheap and usually in a peak condition. Find the best baker in town and walk that extra mile or two to get the stuff you really like, rather than utter rubbish from your local supermarket. Educate your butcher and your fishmonger about your ways, what you like and dislike, and they will be more than pleased to deal with a real customer! Generally: (toc)


home   news   euphoria   bridge   family album   european trip 2005   maxine's paintings

This website maintained and coded by jiri babor